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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (29884)	9/27/2001 2:14:40 PM
From: E	Respond to of 82486

"Sweeping out" Afghanistan? You mean, you think I might support the back-to-the-stone-age scenario? Of course not. There are some reasons to think that a decisive external intervention in Afghanistan would have some things going for it that weren't the case in the past.The Taliban are supposed to be pretty unpopular. They are resorting to press gangs to fill up their army. (A good beginning might be arming all the women, lol.) Nobody is talking about carpet bombing. We're talking about seizing strategic points and destroying the levers of power and communication, fuel etc, making an effort to find OBL and getting out when some kind of compromise government replacing the fucking Taliban can be set up. The Brits are talking about UN auspices. Christopher again: Here is one such crime that can be admitted and undone--the sponsorship of the Taliban could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims. But I detect no stomach for any such project. Better, then--more decent and reticent--not to affect such concern for "our" past offenses... Of course this would be risky and costly in lives on both sides. And it might not work. But it seems to me that it's a situation where not trying is a worse option. The Taliban and its surrogates are not content to immiserate their own societies in beggary and serfdom. They are condemned, and they deludedly believe that they are commanded, to spread the contagion and to visit hell upon the unrighteous. The very first step that we must take, therefore, is the acquisition of enough self-respect and self- confidence to say that we have met an enemy and that he is not us, but someone else. Someone with whom coexistence is, fortunately I think, not possible. And that's what I think. I think they are not like us, they are worse; and that they want us dead, and our civilization and culture dead, and that we'd best foil those plans of theirs. I'm not a military strategist. I'll post a moderate sort of article in a minute, if its online.