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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41652)	9/14/2001 5:12:32 PM
From: BirdDog	Respond to of 65232

we adapted well in VietNam, but lacked will to win The lack of will to win came from the South Vietnamese. They didn't want to fight. They weren't hungry. We were fools for trying in Vietnam. From what So Vietnamese I know have told me: Anytime we wanted, we simply rolled over the north. The North gave up when we bombed Hanoi Harbor...then we told them they couldn't. ... The whole thing was big blunder and waste of American lives... We will do well this time.... the world can't tolerate terrorists...not even the Islamic nations... BirdDog

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41652)	9/14/2001 5:18:17 PM
From: Murrey Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 65232

<we adapted well in VietNam, but lacked will to win> jim...I was a small unit commander in Korea in 1967-68. Believe me when I say the GI's had a will to win. It was the political machine in Washington that lacked the will. Right now, the people and the machinery are in sync. Let's hope that it lasts for a while. Hope I didn't open a can of worms on this statement, but it is the truth.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41652)	9/14/2001 8:41:24 PM
From: Voltaire	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 65232

Hi Jim, for the most part I feel you have been right on, but even with what you have said, I find lacking in your view the true inevitability of what these acts portend. I am stunned beyond belief at the conventional attitude that seems to dwell in the mind of most that I have heard and read. I truly believe that many of our leaders, not to mention citizens, have been blinded by the incomprehensibility of it all. If I had given you two scenarios to debate as to their POSSIBILITY - one, that there had been a small atomic device detonated in a plaza in Tel Aviv, OR - that two passenger aircraft highjacked by terrorists had caused the leveling of the WTC Twin Towers - WHICH would you have deemed possible? - Probably the former. I am convinced that most of our leaders and citizens have by instinct secluded themselves in the spheres of the Idealistic and to some degree the Romantic. The sphere we had better begin to gravitate to is the one of Realism and the quicker the better. There are extreme variables involved here that go far beyond training camps, passports, interest rate cuts and whether Pakistan is willing to work with our country. It is my profound belief that IF HISTORY CAN BE RECORDED 100 years from now, the biggest distinction between our generation and that of our fathers will be that they had the ability to recognize war when they saw and we failed to. Whether we like it or not, we have been attacked and had better wake up to this fact and respond accordingly or suffer unimaginable consequences. If I hear one more time that the United States should go into ANY country and rid it of any of it's ROTTEN ZEALOTS I will throw up. To hell with individuals or their camps and training sights. War does not provide such luxury and ease. The guilty supporting countries WILL CO-OPERATE and hand these bastards over or parts of that country BE DAMNED. This has been the painful lesson that weak, scared, idealistic, liberal and submissive countries have learned through the ages. As Sherman and many others have said, " War Is Hell " and we had better get use to it. What we witnessed in New York was not the one time bombing of a 110 story Pizza Hut, no, it was the destruction of over 225 acres of building and contents of our Financial Heart in less than two hours. In comparison, the entire Pentagon complex including it’s vacant space is only 34 acres. To my way of thinking it is nothing more than a Planned Prologue on the part of this group for the destruction of Israel via the anger and reaction of the United States and if we do not take the proper steps at this juncture while we still have the capability, then there is little doubt in my mind we can get ready for the destruction of Western Civilization as we know it, with millions perishing in the process. Selah, V

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (41652)	9/15/2001 2:15:36 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Afghanistan - A bitter harvest Sep 13th 2001 \| LAHORE From The Economist print edition The sufferings of Afghanistan come to New York IN ITS understandable rage for justice, America may be tempted to overlook one uncomfortable fact. Its own policies in Afghanistan a decade and more ago helped to create both Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalist Taliban regime that shelters him. The notion of jihad, or holy war, had almost ceased to exist in the Muslim world after the tenth century until it was revived, with American encouragement, to fire an international pan-Islamic movement after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. For the next ten years, the CIA and Saudi intelligence together pumped in billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) to the many mujahideen groups fighting in Afghanistan. The policy worked: the Soviet Union suffered such terrible loses in Afghanistan that it withdrew its forces in 1989, and the humiliation of that defeat, following on from the crippling cost of the campaign, helped to undermine the Soviet system itself. But there was a terrible legacy: Afghanistan was left awash with weapons, warlords and extreme religious zealotry. For the past ten years that deadly brew has spread its ill-effects widely. Pakistan has suffered terrible destabilisation. But the afghanis, the name given to the young Muslim men who fought the infidel in Afghanistan, have carried their jihad far beyond: to the corrupt kingdoms of the Gulf, to the repressive states of the southern Mediterranean, and now, perhaps, to New York and Washington, DC. Chief among the afghanis was Mr bin Laden, a scion of one of Saudi Arabia’s richest business families. Recruited by the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al Faisal, to help raise funds for the jihad, he became central to the recruitment and training of mujahideen from across the Muslim world. Mr bin Laden fought against the Russians on the side of the ISI’s favourite Afghan, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, whose Hezb-e-Islami party became the largest recipient of CIA money. After the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the Americans quickly lost interest in the country and a struggle for power erupted among the mujahideen. But since no group was strong enough to capture and hold Kabul, the capital, Afghanistan slumped into anarchy. In 1995-96, a movement of Pathan students—Taliban—from religious schools in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan swept the country, promising a restoration of order. They enjoyed Pakistani backing, and almost certainly the approval of the Americans. Meanwhile, Mr bin Laden had become a self-avowed enemy of America, appalled at the presence of American troops on holy Saudi soil during the Gulf war. Exiled to Sudan, he was soon forced to leave. He secretly returned to Afghanistan, becoming a guest of the Taliban, whose interpretation of Islam and hostility to the West he shares. After attacks on two American embassies in 1998, America tried to persuade the Taliban to surrender him. When the regime refused, the Americans retaliated by raining cruise missiles on guerrilla camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban have steadfastly refused to hand Mr bin Laden over. As their guest he remains.