Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (42024)	5/8/2004 9:47:52 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

…it seems a bit dismissive to say that the fall of the Taliban didn't at least put a dent in OBL's training program. A dent, yes, and that war was certainly worth pursuing, though the postwar management has managed to largely negate its achievements. Not much more than a dent, though. There are plenty of other places to train, and plenty of other people to do the training. What do you think is going on in the Sudan these days? Certainly the training will be more dispersed and less obvious now – they learn from their mistakes – but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. If our mishandling of the Afghan occupation leads the country back into anarchy, the terrorists – with or without Osama – are likely to get the country back, and if we manage to produce an Islamist coup in Pakistan, we’ll have created our own worst nightmare. There’s a fairly clear pattern emerging in these wars. The initial military operations are brilliantly handled and extremely effective. What happens afterward is a good deal less impressive. This was, of course predictable. Terrorists need money and safe havens, like other forces. The name of the game is to work to deny them both. This is probably the single most dangerous misconception in the war on terror. They don’t need either. Most of the people who trained in Afghanistan were not “terrorists” as we understand the word. They were grunt infantry that were going back to their own countries to fight in various insurrections and civil wars. This kind of training does require a fixed base, but those trainees aren’t the ones we need to worry about. Training for an operation like 9/11 or Madrid can be conducted in an urban apartment or a suburban basement. The entire 9/11 budget could have been covered out of one Saudi prince’s pocket money. It would be very convenient if the war on terror could be won simply by military conquest, that being something we are very good at. Wanting it to be so won’t make it so. You would have a point - if Saddam Hussein hadn't been a very real and unraveling problem on his own merits. Pursuing only the 'quiet' (read: invisible) war while sanctions collapsed, the US surrendered efforts at containment, Saddam went shopping, and supplied who-knows-what to Answar, Hamas, and whoever else he dealt with, these were not really good options either. A real problem, yes, but not unraveling at any great rate. The extent of the Saddam problem was exaggerated wildly by the advocates of war: this was clear even at the time, to anyone willing to look. It was a problem that had to be dealt with, sooner or later, but it was by no means the most imperative problem on the table. There was no immediate threat, and the hypotheses of medium-term threat were exaggerated to the point of absurdity. The notion that failure to remove Saddam from power would cede him control over the gulf was one of the most blatantly idiotic bits of hysteria ever purveyed by an American government or its supporters. He was barely in control of his own country. A lot of the questions in the leadup to the war were reduced level of simplicity that made them completely irrelevant. It was ridiculous to ask whether Saddam did or did not have “links” to AQ. Of course he did. The relevant question was whether those links were close enough that removing Saddam would deprive AQ of a significant source of support, or otherwise have a major impact on AQ's ability to operate. The answer to that question was a clear and unequivocal “no”. In similar vein, the WMD question was reduced to a meaningless “did he or didn’t he” question. The question that should have been asked was whether these hypothetical weapons posed a threat to the US, and again the answer was “no”. Even at its peak, the Iraqi CBW arsenal was pretty clearly composed of primitive agents with no effective delivery systems. Devastating against a defenseless village, but ineffective against even a poorly equipped military force (Iraqi WMD were used against Iran, but had no significant impact) and useless against a modern army. It would eventually have been necessary to get rid of Saddam, but it was in no way imperative that it be done at once. There were much worse problems on the table, and they are still there. The war was considered urgent not because of its importance to the war on terror, but because of its domestic political significance. If it blows up in our faces, it might be wise to remember these things.