re: Why cant the US, Israel, GB take out el quaida, pal terror, and iraq without any help:
To Jerome's list, I would add:
6. Access. We require Muslim allies, to give us access to the battlefield. If Muslim Pakistan, and the Muslim former-USSR Central Asian nations, hadn't allowed us to use their territory, we could not have changed the Afghan government.
7. Information. Satellites are not enough. We require locals, on the ground, to tell us where our targets are. If we don't get that help, we can't find the targets. Which is why the Taliban and Al Queda leaders still elude us. Without information from locals, our enemies can hide forever, in the rugged countryside, and the teeming cities.
So, unfortunately, having Muslim allies is an absolute requirement, if we are going to win this WarOnTerrorism. If we don't get allies, then our enemies will have safe havens. And you can't win a war against a guerilla army who has a safe haven, and who can't be separated from their civilian base of support. As we learned the hard way, in Vietnam.
In the 1990 war, we were able to finesse the Palestinian issue. It was really a spectacular diplomatic achievement, to get Syrian soldiers fighting beside us, against another Arab nation, while we sent Patriot batteries to defend Israel, a nation that Syria has been at war with, continuosly, since 1948. Bush-the-Younger doesn't look able to finesse this issue, in his war. |
