Slashdot Mirror
A New Kind of War
Americans think of D-Day or the invasion of Iraq when they think of war -- massed fleets, armies and planes, tanks and fortifications. But the National Security types and military brass were clearly talking about something else completely.
This sort of offensive, confusing and strange-sounding to non-tech laypeople and those outside the military, will clearly rely heavily on security technology -- surveillance, wire-taps, electronic ID's from cards to voice and fingerprint scanning, biological warfare and defense, e-mail encryption and interception, satellite photographs, the digital tracing of money, the use of pin-point troops and weaponry to go after small numbers of terrorists located in inaccessible cells in distant countries. Such a conflict raises all sorts of policy questions, from our grasp of different cultures to the nature of religious fundamentalism to changes in traditional ideas about civil liberties, to use of the Net as a communications medium for terrorism, to technologies that might make airplanes and buildings safer. People have suggested more sophisticated X-ray devices to spot weapons and bombs, stronger pilot cabins, buildings less massive and vulnerable than the World Trade Center towers.
Most officials were quick to say the war would like unlike any other, and that drafting vast numbers of people wouldn't be necessary. This war would be fluid, varied, combining weaponry with diplomacy and economic pressure.
The intelligence experts who came out of the cold last week were nearly unanimous in agreeing that old-fashioned spies -- sometimes unsavory humans -- were crucial to get close to terrorist "cells" but also that new forms of communications -- e-mail, cell, the transmission of encrypted files -- required new laws and better technologies to monitor them, since they were terrorist tools. Also needed, they said, are computer programs to better track the movement of money.
Is such a war possible? Technologically feasible? Can encrypted terrorist communications really be followed online? Is it possible to trace money so precisely by digital means? To what degree can civil liberties or privacy be protected in this context? Is there technology that can spot a knife in a briefcase or hidden in a human body? How close can satellite surveillance take us to small terrorist hideouts in urban or rural areas? Is the idea of the mobile, tech-equipped soldier feasible? What weapons would he or she carry?
Over the last few years, I've gotten e-mail from academics, defense researchers, satellite trackers, government cryptographers about various issues relating to technology. It would be interesting to hear from some of you who know more about this than most people. In fact, some of you might be directly involving in working on these things.
America's defense and policy planners are calling for a new kind of war and a new kind of warfare. Few people have any idea what it might look like or how it might work.
Quite frankly, now that Afganistan has declared a holy was against us, I have no qualms about going in and giving 110% and making sure there is nothing left!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Recently we gave G.W. Bush 60 billion dollars to spend how ever he'd like... I'd like to question the wisdom of this. What can we do with 60 billion dollars.
Can we buy hope instead of terror?
With this 60 billion dollars could we start enough "rebuilding" efforts in Afgan, Iraq, and Palestine to turn would-be terriorists into brick-layers?
All the old kinds really sucked.
What could this "different kind of war" be:
Shut down the power grid in Kabul immediately before the first bombing.
Interception of secure terrorist communications
Turn their own military technology against them
How can the random hacker help:
Exploit hotmail security holes to monitor for terrorist activity
Execute DoS attacks against Afghani web sites
Target virii at the .af domain space
My favorite - transfer $4 million from Usama bin Laden's bank account to the American Red Cross
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
solar power laptops to the Taliban.
With the IE homepage set to something like http://www.muslimsex4u.com or http://www.indiansex4u.com
Trust me, they'll be too busy surfing one handed to bother the US anymore.
Is this new war one of information, education, and image?
now we geeks can contribute to the war effort with math and science.
It sounds much more comfortable than the position they were considering for us all as cannon fodder.
I know a little sig that's just ten words long
Technology today gives individuals the power once reserved for entire nation states, and it is appropriate that these powers be judiciously monitered.
In any case, you had zero privacy before any of this started - its virtually impossible for you to have less than you already do.
If we are forced to change our lifestyle, they've won.
Technology has brought us to a point where communication can be relatively clear and simple over great distances. It's no longer necessary for communities to share a physical location (Slashdot is a great example of this.)
This has also allowed the formation of armies without a single physical location. Its troops are scattered around the globe, making it difficult for the United States to simply "invade."
War is a classical pursuit, and its concepts are rooted in histoic notions of borders and terrain. We don't yet know how to attack an army made up of citizens of our own country, living in our own neighborhoods.
This is not to blame the Internet for what happened. The internet had nothing to do with it. However, access to technology gives everyone the freedom to communicate -- everyone
Got Rhinos?
Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson:
A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
Giving credit where due - I rediscovered this quote at Freedom & Liberty Quotes.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
But is this a new kind of war, or is this simply a police manhunt on a massive scale. What bin Laden has done (or what his people have done) are commit crimes against humanity. Yes we've moved against members of Governments to aprehend them for crimes against humanity, and moved against them in a war footing, but bin Laden isn't a member of the Taliban, or any other government faction -- he's one man with his own organization.
Would we send the army in to a country to capture the CEO of a forign corporation and call it war? I hope not.
I don't think this is truly a 'new kind of war', I think that's rhetoric to get the public onside for a long, and likely bloody policing action.
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
*boop* It just went off the radar.. Hello? Echelon? Are you listening?
Digital correspondence can always be buried in noise. A message could (for example) be written, heavily encrypted, and then embedded into a JPEG image in such a way that it would be undetectable without the right extraction software.
Does the government even have the processing power to do keyword searches on all the email that it monitors? Much less checking for the presence of heavily embedded messages...
I believe that any measures that the gov't takes to aid in electronic surveillence will only compromise our liberties.
-----
"I'm like a tree; I'm all root" -- Cab Calloway
We're fighting an enemy that doesn't have a physical location or capital assets to destroy. They indoctrinate their children to hate us. So what do we do?
Fight with propaganda and turn the tide of the people away from hate for us.
Drop leaflets, fund infrastructure, educate, bring CNN, bring the internet, feed them!
I submitted an "Ask Slashdot" the other day on this very topic, suggesting that in this war, the battle need not even be fought by the military. If the script kiddies can be coerced to use their "skillz" against a common enemy, the possibilities are boundless.
.af domain space
What could this "different kind of war" be:
Shut down the power grid in Kabul immediately before the first bombing.
Kabul is not the problem, the Russians conquered Kabul. The problem is the hundreds of Taliban living in caves in remote valleys.
Interception of secure terrorist communications
By this you mean the couriers going to Pakistani cybercafes?
Turn their own military technology against them
You mean point their AKs and RPGs at them?
How can the random hacker help:
Exploit hotmail security holes to monitor for terrorist activity
Execute DoS attacks against Afghani web sites
Target virii at the
My favorite - transfer $4 million from Usama bin Laden's bank account to the American Red Cross
You don't understand, Afghanistan has little IT infrastructure, is dirt poor, and is already bombed back to the stone age. Most of their internet activity is done through our new ally Pakistan.
You don't have to break the crypto to get information. Traffic analysis can tell you a lot. Who is talking to who? If person "A" gets lots of messages after an event, but only sends a few, then "A" is probably in charge of the organization being monitored. And if you know where "A" is, you can target him. Thus, you've gotten valuable strategic, and possibly tactical, information from his commo, without having to break his crypto.
Best Slashdot Co
Most officials were quick to say the war would like unlike any other, and that drafting vast numbers of people wouldn't be necessary. This war would be fluid, varied, combining weaponry with diplomacy and economic pressure.
Somehow I don't think diplomacy and economic pressure will matter to these people. Our enemy, in this case, cannot be localized to a single country. Cell infiltration and intelligence gathering will be our bread and butter. Diplomacy, in the sense that we lean on countries that support these cells, won't be effective unless we have the intelligence to discern whether or not they are indeed supporting these cells. Even without a country to back them financially, I don't think they will stop. Their fanatacism, and willingness to trade their lives for their cause, makes them immune to any suffering we could impose on them short of extermination. (Take that how you will...) We won't stop until they're no longer a threat, and we can expect the same from them.
I'm better than herpes.
First off, I think that I actually liked this article.
Nothing scares me worse than the fear of losing freedoms. I don't mind the new restrictions at the airports, or anything like that. Those are things that I don't consider a basic right. I just don't want to have to worry about encrypting all of my email, or even about possesing a strong encryption program without a backdoor.
As far as terrorism is concerned, I think that we need to treat the sickness, not the symptoms. We need to fix our foreign policy, to help stop things like this. We need to not use violence, as it begets more violence. No more innocents or civilians need to die.
I'm all for giving Osama a fair trial, but how is that possible? How do we extradite him from Afghanstan(sp?), and if we manage to, who is going to serve on his jury? I would try to be impartial, but could I, could you?
I know this is sorta off topic, and doesn't even follow any sort of logic. I just felt like rambling.
garc
I think this will be a wait and see situation. I'm not sure if they even know all of what a "new" war would require.
I have to admit I was astounded that I heard that current US policy was that informants could not have a criminal background, or some such nonsense (anyone know what the standard actually is?). I mean, who the hell expects upstanding citizens in criminal organizations?
I think that is definitely one law that needs to be reviewed.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Not smart.
A quote
BIN LADEN COMES HOME TO ROOST (From MSNBC)
At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.
Before you call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia's Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.
But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.
Beginnings
As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.
As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
Intelligent Agencies
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
In fact, while he returned to his family's construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.
Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt's Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.
Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said. "Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Tunnel Visions
It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden's connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein's monster like this.
It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA's Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party's grip on power in Moscow.
Even Hatch can't be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission," had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director William Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military Power" report right up to 1990.
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America's potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
That decision is coming home to roost.
I really don't understand why I continue to see comments like this. Are you implying we not increase airport security? Are you implying that we not more closely track foreign terrorist groups? This is absurd. We must learn from this event, and change and adapt to better evolve to a new reality. I would counter that not changing is the true threat.
This should be interesting considering the
Taliban's view on technology. Things like TVs, and "computer disks" are banned from the country.
Not to say that the terrorists abide by the laws that the Taliban has put in place, but it is mildly interesting.
Why not actually attack the source of the problem rather than the symptoms.
Money would be far better spent removing the motivation for people to become terrorists rather than putting out fires by stopping individual terrorists.
Translate "a new kind of war" to "a war with significant American casualties." I think they are trying to test the water to see if Americans can accept a war in which many American soldiers (and possibly) civilians may die.
They had to use this [stronger] kind of language because, let's face it: Desert Storm was a walk in the park for the American military. Little more than an extended field trip.
At this point, I think the public is generally accepting what is about to happen (a full-scale and sustained assault on terrorism).
-- yawn. --
Seriously, Jon, what credentials do you have for war? There are many people on /. who have military experience, and you're not one of them.
Look, it's going to be nasty, brutish, bloody, not fun. War sucks. Killing, noise, fire, confusion, being tired constantly, on edge, it's not a game.
There are many ways we can do it. The smartest would be to get some local intel of terrain and people (many of whom have fled, maybe some assistance from Afghanis who fled the Taliban to Iran would work, since the Pakistanis support and arm the Taliban, and half their intel would be designed to trap us). Land on mountain tops and passes, set up defensive perimeters with mines and mortars, anti-tank and ATA, put spread out artillery in gun pits, and blast any vehicle or concentration that moves. Because only the Taliban moves in 2/3 of Afghanistan, the local population that they control (who don't support them) don't have mobility.
But we'll probably do something dumb instead.
Some of us have combat experience in mountains, Jon. And you're not one of them. Your techie toys won't work in mountains - a defender has a 20:1 or 10:1 advantage if he knows the terrain and the opponent is vaguely unfamiliar with it. A few people can hold off battalions, when placed right, we'll be lucky to move 2 miles in a day.
And cruise missiles are economically ineffective - JATO-assisted dumb bombs have a 98 percent kill rate, while a cruise missile there has at best an 80 percent kill rate, and you just need a dug-in position and nothing short of a nuke will affect you (and even those have to get the angle right).
This isn't a war game. This is a war. We will lose people, we need sound strategy and tactics, not people with ideas about fire-and-forget missiles that get confused in mountain terrain, or using MBTs in mountains (which are easy to kill with mines and vertical attacks with anti-tank).
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I find it strange that while the USA jumped to calling this latest terrorism a war, the UK spent 25 years denying that terrorism inflicted upon them by the IRA was a war.
Disgustingly, 12 prisoners were allowed to die from hunger strike (among them, an elected member of parlement, Bobby Sands) because the IRA prisoners wanted to be considered prisoners of war.
Bin Laden wanted a war. And the USA has given in to him.
Somehow I don't think that "evil capitalists" like us could improve their image with terrorists by throwing money at them.
Got Rhinos?
Seriously, what is the point of this article again? Am I just too stupid to see something there which is not overly redundant or pointless?
Dijkstra Considered Dead
The government has siezed upon this opportunity to knuckle under the average american. Current creations in government policy would not have stopped these terrorists, and neither will they stop the next group.
.orgs than .coms" ~Taco, .org Billionaire.
From the Carnivore installations of Sept. 11 to the law they passed that legitimizes it, our rights and privacy have been absorbed by the big sucking sound. This is having the same effect on individual rights as the Len Bias death had on the War on Drugs.
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps America's Karma has achieved the proper state that someone will wipe us off the map. The Gauls are attacking Rome. (And of course, George W. is playing fiddle.)
Over the past week, I have seen a people manipulated by the media, and blindly walk down the corridor to the slaughterhouse.
Useful Links:
mediafilter.org
essential.org
globalresearch.ca
~Hammy
"You know you're a geek when you visit more
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
It might not look like anything.. I believe this new type of war ..we're all *potential* enemies!..and im sure most /. readers know what that unforntunatly means
might not even be heard on the media, ie: we won't see
cruise missles bombin the s*** out of afghanistan..
What this new war will entitle is a massive intelligance operation
that will probably last for years and years to come. It won't only affect those countries where terrorism blooms, but also
back here. The war will also be faught home
[alk]
I hope you all have read 1884, it may be a few years late but the concept still applies. I wonder how long it'll be until they outlaw the ACLU ?
It's hard for me to talk about this issue and not sound like an alarmist, or sound like I'm coming out of an ultra-leftwing camp spouting X-Files/Orwellean warnings. But that's really what we're talking about here.
/., I think we sort of have a responsibility to inform those less tech literate, less educated (including our politicians and policy makers) to understand the issues and ramifications of their actions.
Digitally tracing cash? How bout we just get rid of cash and everyone use credit cards? That's what George Orwell wrote about in 1984...
A "new type of war" where one country is the enemy one day and our friend the next, and the American people are supposed to go along with whatever way the winds of war blow that particular day? Again, straight out of 1984...
How about we give the government access to all our personal information? Worked for Big Brother...
Again, I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but these are extremely important, fundamental issues that are going to be raised in the next few days.
Everyone has said this, but as the tech-literate, educated people we are on
Today I plan on calling my Senators and Representatives, and writing letters (snail mail). I think it would be prudent for all of us here to show that, even in times of trial, democracy still can work. Make your voices heard and inform the policy makers of your views!!
This is a good start for some interesting conversation, Jon. But I hope that the people who are actually working on this new technology don't start posting the ins and outs of their new advancements.
The only thing that would really be new about this sort of tactic is that the American public will know about it. The real problem with this plan is the fact that the target will be mostly unaffected by these tactics. Other than the old-fashioned-spy, they simply don't have the infrastucture necessary to make such a stategy effective, no technological base so to speak, these people essentially live in the stone age.
o am Chomsky.rm?start=00:00:25&title=Noam_Chomsky:M ideast_Crises
. ht ml#Webcast
http://real.media.mit.edu:8080/ramgen/Chomsky/N
http://www.media.mit.edu/~nitin/mideast/chomsky
slashdot shenanigans
who don't want ANY sort of war, much less a NEW kind of war. This issue has been bothering me for quite some time. My stance on war is diametric compared to that of our nation. I wholeheartedly believe that it is not the answer, but alas, I didn't vote for Bush. However, as I listen to NPR and speak to other people around the nation, I can feel that a majority of others are indeed for war.
Which brings me to my request. Before we start sending off thousands of our own ground troops into a death trap, will you, pro-war person, enlist before the powers feel it necessary to draft I, 21 anti-war year old?
Just a thought.
I do believe that if you can't say that you would go to the front lines and fight yourself, you should not be for a war. And by the way, don't take this as a shot at people who are not hypocrites who happen to want a war. In that respect, they are ok in my mind.
Also, "Power Shift," by Alvin Toffler; and "War and Anti-War," by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. There are hundreds of books written on the subject that present and argue this idea cogently and completely.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Seems more to me that _they_ are doing the same thing I do when I encounter a computer related problem I can't solve or figure out why it suddenly worked. :-)
I start getting very technical and explain a lot of stuff, hoping to cover the fact that that I didn't have a clue.
(yeah, just call me stupid, but how many haven't tried to fix a error in a M$ product that dissapears as quickly as it appeared)
I think Katz is overlooking some basic points here. He ends the article by noting that we have no idea what kind of war we're in for yada yada yada. On the contrary, I think we know exactly what kind of war we're in for - Vietnam. If you disagree, I might point out that this war has a great deal of similarities to Vietnam. Among them:
-We'll be in a country halfway across the world.
-We're unfamiliar with the terrain and fighting an enemy that knows the terrain better than we do.
-We're fighting an enemy that is extremely unconventional. That is to say that we're not doing battle with Iraq here, we're going to battle where we'll bring in brute force and the enemy will employ guerilla tactics.
-This would be a war where our superior military technology is more or less useless. I'm sorry, but tanks and stealth bombers don't do us much good when the enemy is hiding in a cave.
-One word: Logistics.
While I think we can gather what type of war this could be/will be, I think by all means it is necessary. I was on IRC yesterday when someone pointed out that we shouldn't take military action against Osama since he's innocent until proven guilty. Well the folks, my question is: What do you do when you have a confirmed (yes, he has claimed responsibility for certain attacks) terrorist who won't give himself up living in a country whose current (current, not legal) government is on the virge of declaring a jihad against the West and refuses to extradite said terrorist?
I say blast Osama (not the whole bloody country), but that's just my 17 cents......
Reading this and watching the news makes me sad. It is clear that the government and Bush's administration have very little intention to have a Desert Storm type war over this, but the pundits, the reporters and news anchors; don't seem to understand this fact. They talk about "a new war" and "35,000 reservist called up", showing us pictures of tanks and ground troops assaulting a position. It is true that they have been saying something about high-tech ways to stop terrorism, but nothing of a high-tech war on terrorism.
Maybe we are using the wrong word when we talk about a war. Maybe we need something new, something that better describes what we are doing. If we look at the War on Drugs or the War on Crime or the War on Poverty these were not 'wars'. Maybe they too need a better word. A word in which we do not automatically think of large military efforts or fire raining down from the sky.
I have talked with many of my classmates and friends in the past week and most of them seem to think we will invade Afghanistan. The media has made it seem as if all of Afghanistan is part of this, and that much of the Middle East is partly responsible, when its not. It is as much our faults as these foreign states. It is not because we are free or because we don't regulate people lives like Pat Roberson seems to thing, it is a failure of our foreign policy. I am not saying a failure in Bush's foreign policy, a failure of the American peoples foreign policy. We do not pay attention to the rest of the world; we don't understand them or what goes on with them. And this is our failure. So while we look at ways to solve this situation abroad, let us try and prevent further actions like this at home.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
Jihad can be interpreted in several ways and one does include the spreading of Islam by sword and killing/converting all the "pagans" ("Jihad= Holy War" existed before the America's were discovered btw) although history has shown us that sometimes minorities were allowed to keep their faith, although they had to live as dhimmi...
One of the first things that the U.S. Government is going to need to do is to go on an offensive against individuals who are writing virus code and propogating it on the internet.
This type of act is, at it's core, a terrorist act and could contribute to the confusion surrounding other events.
Imagine if a particularly nasty computer virus had been released on September 11th... even if it had nothing to do with the actual attack, it would have contributed greatly to the feeling of helplessness that so many of us experienced that day.
Phil Agre has written an article about this which I recommend reading. Some of the language is a bit opaque, but he makes some interesting points about exactly how new this "war" really would be: if we allow our leaders to begin it, the war will extend to every facet of our lives, permanently.
Funny how among all this talk of a war against terrorism nobody makes mention of anyone other than "islamic fundamentalists"...
Interesting how the US doesn't include the IRA in this... I'm not against the goals of the IRA, but they are terrorists, and the US has done little over the years to reduce American support of them.
Also from this example... the British Army went to war against the Republicans (shoot to kill policy and all that...), and look exactly how far it got them...
Many people in America seem to be out for revenge, but how can you attack people who have already given up their lives in suicide attacks?
So who exactly are we going to war against? An individual, bin Laden? His 'network of terrorist cells'? The Taliban? The Afghani people? Terrorism in general?
It's a fundamental question, because how will we know when the war is over?
New kind of war, indeed.
BBC Sci/tech has a good article on satellite recon. Orbimage-4 is a private remote-sensing1 548000/1548860.stm
satellite with unique capabilities. It carries a
camera that takes images in 200 spectral bands - designed to analyse surface composition.
heres the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone know what happened to the foreign aid workers on trial in Afghanistan?
(Feel free to mod this away if someone manages to sends some info)
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
Think about it - almost every gainfully employed adult has a credit card. Right there you have built up an audit trail that describes you enough that most data mining techniques can reasonably predict what you might purchase (any Amazon user knows this).
Most people user their SSN to create bank accounts - once again you are easily tracked and described.
You phone can be easily tapped, as discussion on this site already have indicated.
If you have digital TV, or any TV system requiring a phone jack, your viewing habits are being cataloged.
As for your internet connection - this is probably the easiest to monitor. Just do a google search on your own name, you may get a blast from the past.
You can bemoan the current state of affairs if you want, but the fact is you have already have zero privacy.
While in Israel, my first experience with liberty in that country was in passing through customs. It was actually quite easy to get into the country, compared to leaving. I was asked the purpose of my visit (a standard question) and asked to give a list of places I would be visiting. Since I didn't really know where I would be going yet, I said so. I was greeted with suspicious looks and incredulity, but allowed to pass through. I fit the profile of "single male, travelling alone."
Upon entering the country I immediately took a bus to Ashdod where my girlfriend lived. There were several soldiers on the bus. This seemed odd, but my girlfriend assured me they were there merely as travelers, not guardians. I still felt safer knowing there were several people with assault rifles on the bus.
Over the course of my visit, I was in many busy public places, including restaurants, night clubs, transit centers, malls, etc. In the malls and transit centers I was asked to show the contents of my bag upon entering. I didn't feel violated by this. I felt safer knowing these checks were being made. The people were friendly and expeditious.
Everywhere I went in Israel I saw soldiers. All had rifles; some had rifles with grenade launchers. You actually get used to this after a while. I was only there a month, but by the end of my visit I hardly noticed anymore.
But the most important thing I noticed in Israel was the degree of freedom I had. I didn't have to pass through checkpoints (except when I went to Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian area, and even then we weren't even stopped, just looked at as we drove through) and was never asked what I was doing or where I was going.
Look people. America has been changed, and not by choice. Security must be enhanced, or we will continue to be blown to small pieces on a whim. I ask people to look at Israel as an example of how to conduct security without impinging unduly on people's liberties. There are necessary steps which must be taken. There is simply no option. But it needn't be an end to liberty. If Israel (a country that clearly has its own governmental problems) can do it, so surely can the United States.
I am hopeful.
Erasing Afghanistan from the face of the Earth won't do you a bit of good. By the time your bombs hit Afghanistan, terrorists will be long gone. Terrorists are everywhere, and they're way more mobile than your bombers or troops. They can easily avoid attacks of this scale.
The only effective way I can see of getting rid of them is infiltrating their organizations, gathering as much intelligence about them as possible, then assasinating them one by one. No fussy and cumbersome war procedures, no large-scale military operations, no pointless delays with diplomatic BS; just a few elite troops of trained assassins, quiet, accurate and deadly.
Chant of the weasels that want control.
This is an excerpt from an email my Dad sent me last Tuesday: "People you know and some you care about are probably going to die in terrible ways because of today. There is a time for war, but people should not be lead to die for the wrong reason. We rebuilt Japan and Germany after destroying and defeating them and thereby created powerful friends in the world. I don't know if there is a way to create "friends" from enemies without destroying them as enemies first. When this is over, however you solve it, make sure it's better than the way you found it. "
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Senator Torticelli is the one blamed with this rule, but it doesn't really mean that you can't papy informants that have comminted "human rights violations". It just means that the field officer has to ask permission of the CIA director (all the way up !) to do so.
Many claim this is an unecessary bureocratic step, others say it's necessary so field officers don't go acting like rogue agents.
I think the problem was not so much the law, but the current CIA director. No one on the CIA likes him, and he seems to have shot down many of the field officer proposals.
- sigs are for wimps.
Can't yo just see JonKatz camped out in the hills of Afghanistan, huddled under a poncho in soaking wet khaki pants, speaking into a satellite phone/shortwave radio: "Do any of of you have any ideas how to keep dry? Maybe some of YOU are working on anti-wetness technologies. Can mountainous weather accurately be tracked? Will we be encrypting the few ouces of rice I eat every morning?"
Come on, Katz, write what you know and stay out of Dan Rather's territory. You lack of insight and rehash of other people's ideas is tedious and uninteresting.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
War is not about who's right, it's about who's left.
My other sig is extremely clever...
1) Don't just ask for Bin Laden, ask for Bin Laden and 500 of his followers. That's right, FIVE HUNDRED. I'm sure there are plenty in his group to take his place: We want all of them, to cripple the group completely.
2) I'm surprised Bush's reaction wasn't more emotional. Sure, he cried a bit. It would have been interesting (not to mention highly motivating) if he had just flipped out on seeing the remains of the WTC. "Bin Laden you PIECE OF SHIT, when we catch you I will PERSONALLY rip off your balls and stuff them and your beard down your slimy neck!!!!" Image the American People's reaction to THAT!
i think anyone who's been following current events (save for the last two weeks) could see we were on the crest of something huge ... military-type authors, ie. tom clancy (although netforce was pretty much a joke) have been throwing terrorist theories around for years (red storm rising - opens with a group of terrorists attacking a major russian oil refinery). if you want to read something that will make your hair stand on end, try rainbow six, which begins with the hijacking of an airliner.
... as if those who acted out of their hate for american would stand-up long enough for the boot of the us military to come crashing down on their collective heads. is this a war? yes, without a doubt. but it's a war we've never see (on our own soil) or fought. i have every hope that our leaders will realize just what a huge leap we took on the eleventh, and how far we have to go to catch up.
the main problem with our military and the concept of it, is that it's geared for fighting nations, not individuals. "the us army is a broadsword, not a scapel." invading the nation that hosts the individuals who are responsible may bring them to justice. we should keep in mind that the eyes of the world are on america right now. i don't think there's citizen on this planet (who has access to television) who isn't considering what we're going to do next.
evidence to the fact that we're still not thinking about this correctly comes from quotes like "rid world of evil-doers"
_f
and you know what that means!
The FBI has used traffic analysis against the mafia quite effectively.
Best Slashdot Co
Remember the old GI Joe cartoons - a military unit in a constant battle with a terrorist group - Cobra?
That's what the US needs. A persistent military force that will not tolerate some foreign agent with guns and suicidal tendancies to stand in some 3rd world country and forment/plan/engage attacks on the US.
bin Laden (that's pronounced lah-DEEN) has attached us and many other counries before and has cells in about 30 countries, yet we've largely tolerated his actions, not acting difinitivly to end his actions. That needs to change.
We need to go after these cells like vampire hunters - and persistently. When we are done with his, we hit the sandanistas in Columbia/South America, the Hamas in Syria/India, the IRA in Northern Ireland, and don't stop - ever.
GO GI JOE!
Consider this: You are an instructor for a firearms class. One of your students uses the knowledge gained to assasinate the president. You are arrested for teaching the student a skill that was used for an illegal activity.
Granted, Osama does have violent intentions toward the US. But the way his organization works is that wanna-be terrorists go to his camp to be trained and become part of the community. They meet each other and develop their own terrorist plans, completely independent of central leadership. If Osama Bin Laden thinks that US citizens should die, then yes, he is guilty... of THOUGHTCRIME. The first ammendment would protect him until it was proven that he was somehow part of the planning for the specific incident. The US Gov has yet to produce any evidence that would prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
Bush has turned this man into a scapegoat, a punching bag for 300 million angry americans to get their agression out on. Bush has asked for the death of this man, without fair trial. How long will it take for us to lose our freedom and rights as Osama Bin Laden has? If he is guilty of planning the WTC incident, he should be punished. But the Bush administration could not allow him to be 'innocent', they would have to admit that this attack was actually performed by 18 individuals who hate the US as a direct result of Bush administration policies in the middle east!
As far as I know, the culprits are already dead, they were on the planes. There's nobody left to kill. It wasn't a 'declaration of war', it was a group of angry individuals doing what they thought was best for their people. The US cannot 'avenge' the dead innocents by killing more. Go home, take your anti-islamic rhetoric off your pickup trucks, and ask your leaders for a more sane approach to the situation.
The governments image of being able to protect us has been shattered, SO the government has to create an NEW kind of war to justify taking all our tax dollars. Never mind they created this mess to begin with.
Isn't it about time we STOP spreading democracy around the world and start adding stars to the American flag by expanding the REPUBLIC.
Don't most people want the same rights we have as Americans? Give them something to LIMIT the scope of government not expand it. SOMETHING BETTER THAN DECOMCRACY. Long live the republic.
It was already stated that the governemnt has authorized taking away certian cilil liberties as they pertain to privacy, so they can "protect" us, and locate those assisting the terrorists. My only problem sis..in the oat when liberties and rights are taken away...for what ever reason, they are never returned.
Do we have any say in all of this? Or was "our" say electing these idiots?
(See this commentary in the New Yorker and this one in Salon for calls to treat this as a police action.)
I suggest that the best analogy for what we need to do is treat this like the Italian struggle against the Mafia. The crucial step is a cultural change, from the situation where the CD party treated the Mafia as a necessary evil that was just part of the political landscape, to where all of Italian society turned against the Mafia, and magistrates and judges were willing to risk their lives to rid Italy of Mafia control. The Mafia still exists, no doubt, but it no longer has the same insidious grip on the political system.
Here, the crucial step is getting the Arab and Muslim countries to stop treating their radical Islamists as necessary evils who, since they can mobilize the poor, and can kill dissenters, must be tolerated and accepted. Many countries, such as Iran and Syria, have used these groups to fight proxy wars for political control over the Middle East. The best thing that can come out of this tragedy is an alignment of Arab and Muslim contries against their radical elements, and a change in the culture there to stop accepting bloody attacks against civilians as acceptable political tactics.
That's why bombing Kabul, for example, is likely to be counter-productive. As much as we want the Taliban to be out of Afganistan and replaced by some more acceptible government, the likelihood that we will succeed is low, and the likelihood that we will simply piss off the very countries we need to align against these guys is high.
I suspect that what Rumsfeld et al. are talking about by "new kind of war" is making their point on asymetric warfare: the notion that we have gotten so good at fighting conventional wars that no one will send armies and navies against us, but will instead fight with more "terrorist-like" actions. My guess is that internal in the Pentagon this is being used as an "I told you so/wake up call".
OK, well there's two issues here: what are we going to do about Bin Laden and the Taliban, and what are we going to do about future terrorism.
Taliban: they are stacking up some 25000 troops for a possible attack on Pakistan, or to resist an invasion by the US. That is an army folks, no new war here, if they attack, we fight back, and it's a war just like the others. We will send in our planes and our choppers and our cruise missles, and eventually our tanks and troops. Its warfare like we all witnessed on live TV during the gulf war.
Future Terrorism: Bush and others are calling for the collaboration of intelligence agencies from around the world to prevent future terrorism and hunt down all terrorists. This is the new kind of war, and it really is just a reincarnation of the old west with outlaws and bounty hunters, now on a worldwide scale. Instead of getting leads and slowly acting on them and not stepping on anyone's toes (other countries',) investigators are going to have no political lines to worry about and they will be able to pursue terrorists wherever they may go.
All in all, if you're wondering what kind of war we're going to have because of the attacks, rest assured, our military is going to go in and kick some major ass just like we did with Iraq, but this time we will finish the job. In addition, we will wage war on anyone else who attempts, encourages, or harbors terrorism.
~ now you know
First, As noted here, The Russians already bombed Afghanistan back to the stone age. and the Taliban are not the Afghans. The Taliban are a bunch of psychopathic nuts, hated by the majority population.
Some more interesting proposals(only half tongue in cheek) are to builds special monuments to the WTC dead, consisting of cities razed perfectly flat and with enormous amounts of salt to make sure no one lives there again. Some people have objected to this. It is worth discussion.
Another idea is based on historic precident, seen in a letter on this page (towards the bottom). - It is based on the idea that we must use cultural factors as well force to fight the war:
Incidentally this really is from Harry Reddington..."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"Some companies were at least taking the minimal step of blocking out encrypted e-mails to their networks, said Russ Cooper, surgeon general of TruSecure, a security services provider based in Herndon, Virginia."
How the hell can blocking encrypted e-mails improve a companies security against terrorism?
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
This might be a minor point, but I must confess I'm more than a bit worried by the fact that everyone, everywhere is already talking about "war" as if it was the most natural thing to do.
Let's face it, there is simply no clearly defined enemy at the moment, and under these circumstances, *any* military strike *anywhere* is extremely likely to kill many more innocents than the WTC attacks did - and will presumably only serve to increase the problems that caused these attacks in the first place.
When everybody is talking about war, it seems that we've already accepted all the things that usually go with wars - killing innocents, tightening security, etc.
I would feel much better if we were talking about counter-terrorist measures here, but I suppose it's too late for that...
frotz grue
I thought this article at News of the World was interesting. It lists some of the weapons the U.S. could use to fight a modern war: a two-barrelled rifle that shoots shells that "explode in the air over the target and unleash a rain of death"; a helmet with visor that highlights enemies in red and friendlies in green; wrist-mounted keyboards for sending text messages to other soldiers' visors; Robot Swarms; a 2-megawatt, 747-mounted laser that "is so accurate it can pick out and destroy an individual in a crowd 180 miles away without harming people around him".
This has escalated to a personal level for me. The very first time I heard the word "draft" I about had to change my boxers.
This "new" type of war, going after small factions with ground troops... this will have high casualty rates. On top of that, we will have to send in hundreds of men at every target, over and over. We're going to run out of men in a hurry.
Then I, the 18-26 year old in good health, get a call. I am called to active duty so that I, your basic computer nerd, can be taught how to shoot a gun and aim for the head.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would opt for another solution. Granted this will be tough, but I don't think that more American lives need to be lost over this.
I also agree that Afghanistan is almost already ruined, so there's no use going to war with them. What would we have to gain? The Taliban would seem like hero's for defending the people of Afghanistan...then guess what, suddenly there's a whole new group of people that want to join in the holy war against the U.S.
Bin Laden is a smart guy...he would be dead or in jail if he wasn't. I don't think we have a prayer of getting through this like Desert Storm. People will die if we get cocky and think we'll just toss 'em around like Iraq.
One last thing I'd like to mention is this: When America fought the revolutionary war against England, we were far outnumbered and didn't have a chance. But we were fighting with our hearts, and had a purpose.
By waging a holy war, Afghani's now have that same sort of purpose. They may be far outnumbered and technology inferior, but I'd put my odds on the man fighting with his heart any day of the week.
Celebrate Steak and a Blowjob Day!
I am sorry if your life sucks. I don't know you, so I never before realized that it must be my fault.
Do you read all of the comments of people saying Americans should be nice to the rest of the world? Even Americans themselves saying this?
I'm sorry there are some idiots in this country, but most of us do not hate the rest of the world.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
UNDERSTANDING BIN LADEN
SOURCE: Iran News
William O. Beeman teaches anthropology at Brown
University in Providence, Rhode Island. A specialist on
Middle East Culture, he has written extensively on
fundamentalism and terrorism. He has worked for the
past four years in Tajikistan, where he has been able
to monitor developments in Afghanistan.
UNDERSTANDING BIN LADEN
The United States risks a severe miscalculation in
dealing with the destruction of the World Trade Center
and the attack on the Pentagon on Tuesday. This event
is not an isolated instance of violence. This is not an
"act of war." It is one symptom of a cancer that
threatens to metastasize. The root cause is not
terrorist activity, as has been widely stated. It is
the relationship between the United States and the
Islamic world. Until this central cancerous problem is
treated, Americans will never be free from fear.
Merely locating and hunting down a single "guilty
party" in this case will not stop future violence: such
an action will not destroy the organization of
terrorist cells already established throughout the
world. Of greater importance, it will do nothing to
alleviate the residual enmity against America that will
remain at large in the world, continuing to motivate
violence. The perpetrators of the original attack on
the World Trade Center in 1993 were caught and
convicted. This did not stop the attack on Tuesday.
The chief suspect is the Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden
or his surrogates. He has been mischaracterized as an
anti-American terrorist. He should rather be thought of
as someone who would do anything to protect Islam. Bin
Laden began his career fighting the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan in 1979 when he was 22 years old. He has
not only resisted the Soviets but also the Serbians in
Yugoslavia. His anger was directed against the United
States primarily because of the U.S. presence in the
Gulf Region, more particularly Saudi Arabia itself, the
site of the most sacred Islamic religious sites.
According to bin Laden, during the Gulf War America
co-opted the rulers of Saudi Arabia to establish a
military presence in order to kill Muslims in Iraq. In
a religious decree issued in 1998, he gave religious
legitimacy to attacks on Americans in order to stop the
United States from "occupying the lands of Islam in the
holiest of places." His decree also extends to
Jerusalem, where the second most sacred Muslim siteâ^À^Ôthe
al-Aqsa Mosque. The depth of his historical vision is
clear when, in his decree, he characterizes Americans
as "crusaders" harkening back to the Medieval Crusades
in which the Holy Lands, then occupied by Muslims, were
captured by European Christians.
He will not cease his opposition until the United
States leaves the region. Paradoxically, his strategy
for convincing the United States to do so seems drawn
from the American foreign policy playbook. When the
United States disapproves of the behavior of another
nation, it "turns up the heat" on that nation through
embargoes, economic sanctions or withdrawal of
diplomatic representation. In the case of Iraq
following the Gulf war, America employed military
action, resulting in the loss of civilian life. The
State Department has theorized that if the people of a
rogue nation experience enough suffering, they will
overthrow their rulers, or compel them to adopt more
sensible behavior. The terrorist actions in New York
and Washington are a clear and ironic implementation of
this strategy against the United States.
Bin Laden takes no credit for actions emanating from
his training camps in Afghanistan. He has no desire for
self-aggrandizement. A true ideologue, he believes that
his mission is sacred, and he wants only to see clear
results. For this reason, the structure of his
organization is essentially tribalâ^À^Ôcellular in modern
political terms. His followers are as fervent and
intense in their belief as he is. They carry out their
actions because they believe in the rightness of their
cause, not because of bin Laden's orders or approval.
Groups are trained in Afghanistan, and then establish
their own centers in places as far-flung as Canada,
Africa and Europe. Each cell is technologically
sophisticated, and may have a different set of
motivations for attacking the United States.
Palestinians members of his group see Americans as
supporters of Israel in the current conflict between
the two nations. In the Palestinian view, Ariel
Sharon's ascendancy to leadership of Israel has
triggered a new era, with U.S. government officials
failing to pressure the Israeli government to end
violence against Palestinians. Palestinian cell members
will not cease their opposition until the United States
changes its relationship with the Israeli state.
The Mujaheddin fighters in Lebanon also direct their
hostility against Israel and the United States. They
also operate against the Maronite Christian community
in their own country, who were supported by the French
from World War I until the end of World War II. They
will not cease their operations until the region is
firmly in Islamic hands.
Above all, Americans need to remember that the rest of
the world has an absolute right to self-determination
that is as defensible as our own. A despicable act of
mayhem such as those committed in New York and
Washington is a measure of the revulsion that others
feel at our actions that seemingly limit those rights.
If we perpetuate a cycle of hate and revenge, this
conflict will escalate into a war that our
great-grandchildren will be fighting.
________________
Copyright 2001 William O. Beeman. This article may be
distributed for any non-commercial purpose.
Who indeed?
It's almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.
Use of overwhelming force to beat already poor countries further into the ground, continued erosion of civil liberties, increasing the gap between political rhetoric and what is actually going on and why - none of these are "new" at all, just the continuation of existing trends, going back 40 years or so.
As for a war on "terrorists and those who harbour them" avenging the terrible "assault on democracy" - this is laughable. The CIA has been subverting elections around the globe since its inception, and propping up dictatorial regimes where there is no democracy in sight. There's a long, long list of countries where this has occurred.
America is also one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism. They trained noted terrorist Osama bin Laden at their famous "School of the Americas" which specialises in teaching subversion, torture and terrorism (recently renamed, but not shut down), they helped Saddam Hussein into power and helped him keep there ...
Politicians lie, distort and fabricate in order to manipulate you, and the case in point is just another example of their tweaking your emotional response to a human tragedy in order to justify big arms spending, further interventionist adventures, and further erosion of your freedoms. Don't buy it.
.sigs: Just Say No!
I've been repeating it over and over, thanks for saying it too.
Bin Laden is primarely upset that we dared set foot on Saudi Arabia, "Holy Land". Ironically as the poster said, it was to his own countries benefit, if not his own fanatical leanings.
Oh, 9 out of 10 dollars in foreign aid to Afghanistan come from the US, last year we sent over 40 million in drought relief.
Yup, no rational action of cause and effect when you are dealing with "Holy Warriors" and Theocratic despotic governments.
- sigs are for wimps.
Sorry! It has already been tried and you don't even have to go to the history books to learn about it. Just watch news related broadcasts. I have even seen an interview or two with Russian experts with real world experience in Afghanistan, unlike you.
The Russians went bravely into Afghanistan and got torn to bits. Their technology was not too much different from our current technology. They even had the support of some local left wing Afghan politicians.
Afghanistan is a vast area of all rocks, hills and valleys and caves. One can't re-fight the Gulf war here with tanks. The Russians proved that aircraft didn't work much better.
Afghanistan has been the graveyard of great conquering armies all the way back to pre-history.
Oh pulease....how about some links and hard info...everything so far is pointing to Bin Laden's network...EVERYTHING. (Guess that's all part of the setup now right? Sometimes things are actually what they seem!)
"I feel sorry for the people who are going to be thrown into those deserted mountainous, regions where the enemy knows every single rock, every cave.
"No maps, no computer training can prepare you for it."
Korolkov says he saw critically wounded Afghan fighters still clutching their weapons and firing until their last breath.
Many of them, he says, used drugs before launching operations.
He says they were the most effective force he has ever faced, honed on 20 years of continual war.
He added: "These fighters can bring any country, even a superpower -- be it Russia, the United States or Europe -- to the brink of catastrophe."
Reminds me of a saying from a movie not long ago. Wish I could remember which one!
"Yes, you've got the responsibility and authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?"
Assume the U.S. is now in charge of governing Afghanistan. What are you going to do with it?
Even a wounded animal can wreak vengeance. It will take some serious thinking to reconstruct a country in a way that benefits everyone.
For example, bulldozing mosques in Kabul to make way for a video store and a McDonald's may not be the best way to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Recall that ObL used his personal fortune to build houses for the widows and orphans of the struggle years ago. Take a lesson.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
if $1 can break into nasa and pentagon machines, why can't they focus on infiltrating terrorist cells? that would be a demonstration of real talent: hacking a borderless enemy.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Second, we will not be attacking ("offensive"), we will be defending ourselves against terrorism - in a way that European countries already have for years.
Third, before asking for new toys, how about those in charge of this defense started by using the info they already had? See
(According to La Repubblica, this "memo" dates from October 20, 2000. They don't say how they got it -- I couldn't find the complete text online, but another part is in "Jeff"'s guilty plea in "USA v. Ali Mohamed", dated the same day.)
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Specifically, the cultivation of human sources and the exploitation of mistakes that humans eventually tend to make. Informers, the faking of informers (falsely implicating a loyal member of Al Qaeda as an informer, say; I doubt that Al Qaeda merely hands out pink slips to suspected traitors), and otherwise inducing paranoia and purges would help.
Reading e-mail won't help if the vital orders are communicated through a heavily guarded face-to-face meeting in some anonymous mountain retreat -- or if you don't know whose e-mail to read, or what code phrases they're using. Nor did satellites or signals interception tip off the CIA about the Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons programs, it seems, despite the fact that governments often leak information like sieves. bin Laden presumably knows what can happen to cell phone users -- his people might be aligned with certain Chechen separatists, and a former leader -- Dudayev -- got his cell phone triangulated by the Russians. He rapidly found out that grease spots don't lead very well.
Sometimes, you just have to have an informer willing to betray his organization, or be able to infiltrate somebody in -- although Al Qaeda almost certainly would minimizes information flowing downwards from the upper echelons, while making it difficult for outsiders to attain higher-level positions; that's no-brainer good operational security. So it's not exactly easy, but it's probably necessary.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
full story:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?disp
it's also posted at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/camps1.htm
btw note the use of "mr. bin laden" ;)
--+
Afghan Taliban Camps Were Built by NATO
The New York Times August 24, 1998
By TIM WEINER
- WASHINGTON, Aug. 23
Throughout the 1980's, the Soviet Union threw almost every weapon it had, short of nuclear bombs, at the Afghan camps attacked by the United States last week.
During their nine-year occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviets attacked the camps outside the town of Khost with Scud missiles, 500-pound bombs dropped from jets, barrages of artillery, flights of helicopter gunships and their crack special forces. The toughest Soviet commander in Afghanistan, Lieut. Gen. Boris Gromov, personally led the last assault.
But neither carpet bombing nor commandos drove the Afghan holy warriors from the mountains. Afghanistan has a long history of repelling superpowers. Its terrain favors defenders as well as any in the world, whether their opponents, like the Soviets, are trying to defeat them on the ground or whether, like the United States, they are trying to disperse, deter and disrupt them. It is uncertain that the United States, which fired dozens of million-dollar cruise missiles at those same camps on Thursday, can do better than the Soviets.
The camps, hidden in the steep mountains and mile-deep valleys of Paktia province, were the place where all seven ranking Afghan resistance leaders maintained underground headquarters, mountain redoubts and clandestine weapons stocks during their bitter and ultimately successful war against Soviet troops from December 1979 to February 1989, according to American intelligence veterans.
The Afghan resistance was backed by the intelligence services of the United States and Saudi Arabia with nearly $6 billion worth of weapons. And the territory targeted last week, a set of six encampments around Khost, where the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has financed a kind of "terrorist university," in the words of a senior United States intelligence official, is well known to the Central Intelligence Agency.
The C.I.A.'s military and financial support for the Afghan rebels indirectly helped build the camps that the United States attacked. And some of the same warriors who fought the Soviets with the C.I.A.'s help are now fighting under Mr. bin Laden's banner.
From those same camps, the Afghan rebels, known as mujahedeen, or holy warriors, kept up a decadelong siege on the Soviet-supported garrison town of Khost.
Thousands of mujahedeen were dug into the mountains around Khost. Soviet accounts of the siege of Khost during 1988 referred to the rebel camps as "the last word in NATO engineering techniques." After a decade of fighting during which each side claimed to have killed thousands of the enemy, the Afghan rebels poured out of their encampments and took Khost.
"This was the most fiercely contested piece of real estate in the 10-year Afghan war," said Milt Bearden, who ran the C.I.A.'s side of the war from 1986 to 1989.
United States officials said their attack was intended to deter Mr. bin Laden, whom they call the financier and intellectual author of this month's bombings of two American embassies in Africa, which killed 263 people, including 12 Americans. They said the damage inflicted on the Khost camps was moderate to heavy.
But the communications infrastructure used by Mr. bin Laden is based on portable satellite telephones, not a centralized command-and-control system that can be destroyed with a missile, intelligence officials said. The strongest power that binds his loose-knit network of confederates is his money, which is hidden inside a thus-far impenetrable global maze.
And history does not favor superpowers trying to subdue men dug into the mountains of Afghanistan.
Mr. bin Laden has said he spent the 1980's supporting the mujahedeen from their political base in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the foot of the Khyber Pass. He was most strongly allied with the most fundamentalist leaders of the Afghan resistance, particularly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of the group called the Islamic Party. After the fall of the Soviet-backed Government, Mr. Hekmatyar spent most of his brief tenure as Prime Minister hurling missiles and mortars at Kabul, trying to dislodge more moderate rebel leaders from power.
The more militant Afghan rebels, like Mr. Hekmatyar, denounced the United States and backed Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, as did Mr. bin Laden. A year after the Persian Gulf war, posters throughout eastern Afghanistan displayed heroic, if imaginary, portraits of Saddam Hussein and Mr. Hekmatyar standing side by side.
No amount of money or moral support could keep the veterans of the Afghan resistance from killing one another after the fall of Kabul. The chaos that their infighting created led to the rise of the Taliban, the militant armed religious party that now controls most of Afghanistan and harbors Mr. bin Laden.
In the nine years since the Soviet withdrawal, Afghan resistance veterans have hoarded the remaining weapons sent by the C.I.A. and set up military training centers at resistance camps like the one near Khost, according to United States officials. In those years, thousands of Islamic outcasts, radicals and visionaries from around the world came to the borderlands of Afghanistan to learn the lessons of war from the mujahedeen. Mr. bin Laden sponsored many of those foreigners.
In a 1994 interview, a commander loyal to Mr. Hekmatyar, Noor Amin, said that "the whole country is a university for jihad," or holy war.
"There are many formal training centers," Mr. Amin said. "We have had Egyptians, Sudanese, Arabs and other foreigners trained here as assassins." United States officials said the former mujahedeen camps it attacked on Thursday were precisely that kind of "university for jihad."
Mr. bin Laden, stripped of his Saudi citizenship and formally stateless, returned to the anarchy of Afghanistan in 1996 from the Sudan, where United States intelligence analysts believe he built at least three training camps for veterans of the Afghan war.
He said in an interview with CNN last year that one of his main missions during the war, which he helped finance with millions of dollars of his own money, was to transport bulldozers, front-end loaders and other heavy equipment to Pakistan to help build tunnels, military depots and roads inside Afghanistan for the mujahedeen.
It is unclear whether Mr. bin Laden, who inherited about $250 million from a fortune his father made building mosques, palaces and public works for the Saudi royal family, personally helped build the Khost camps during the war against the Soviets, or has substantially upgraded them since returning to the mountains of Afghanistan.
[(c) 'N.Y.Times', 1998, Reprinted for Fair Use Only]
I hope the new war is more effective than the FAA's knee-jerk reaction to implement heightened security measures at the airports. Take this example:
Yesterday I walked into the McAllen, TX airport to catch a flight to Houston. I had my briefcase and a 20oz disposible coffee cup with me. I approached the security checkpoint, put my briefcase on the conveyor belt, put the coffee cup on the side of the metal detector with my change, and walked through. I picked up my change and coffee cup and then waited for the security guard to spend 5 minutes looking through my briefcase (30 seconds of which was figuring out how to turn on my Palm Pilot).
In case you haven't figured it out yet, no one ever looked inside my coffee cup, and it never passed through the x-ray machine or the metal detector. I could have had a 6" blade tucked away in that cup.
This brings me back to a point which has been raised many times previously: We will NEVER prevent knives or other weapons from getting on airplanes. And I'm going to offer the same solution mentioned by others: Every passenger should be REQUIRED to carry a knife on the plane. Put a box of knives at the end of the jetway. Pick one up as you get on and drop it back in when you get to your destination. I like to see 6 terrorists with knives try to hijack a plane with 100 armed passengers.
tpm
"I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fucking book." -- Sean in "Good Will Hunting"
I for one, would like to see geeks, and even the more unsavory characters amonst our midst organize into a form of on-line, or cyberspace government. When the US declairs war on terrorism, this cyberspace government could coordinate similar assaults from the cyberspace point of view, which has no "boundarys" or a "front line". Us geeks, I believe, have the resources and will power to make dead sure that Bin Laden, or any of his cohorts would think twice before setting foot in cyberspace at all. We could turn it into a dangerous place for the terrorists to be. Leave there physical extermination to our own government, let us organize and drive this scourge from the face of cyberspace. We have the power, we run the systems that make up "cyberspace" and all of its aspects. Hense we are the citizens of this great world, as such we have a right to be governed by our own soverin government, of our own election, it is high time cyberspace be considered a realm worthy of government, government that isnt hindered, or misinformed much as our US government is when it comes to affairs of cyberspace. We have those rights, lets exersise them. People of Berkly.edu, you are the "chief" geeks among geeks, I would propose starting the government there. If such a government someday exists I would be a willing, and happy participant, dual citizenship between the US and Cyberspace (dont we all already live this way anyway?). We can help, we can be patriotic, even though us geeks have been known for our sceptisism, we still are patriotic. If we organize I have one thing to say to Ben Ladden, "Watch your BACK."
-Atrox
-"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." -Ghandi
-Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
If we invade Arghanistan we will break out back. Don't believe me? Just ask Russia. Or anyone else who has tried to take over Afghanistan (Including the "ruling" Taleban who only controls about 2/3 of the territory).
Defensive perimeters, land mines, etc., have proven historically to be ineffectual in that kind of territory with a motivated enemy. But, as one mujahdeen was quoted, "I do not fear the Russians, but I fear their helicoptors."
Now IANAG (General), but I believe the best way to go about something like this is a long series of directed raids by missile, bomber, helicopter and (most importantly) Special Forces units. They need to be focused though, and directed by good intelligence. Something we have precious little of in that area. We would be well advised to ally ourselves with the Northern Alliance if we are going to have any sort of protracted involvement in the area, because they actually have people who know the terrain and are in contact with the enemy. (This of course assumes that the Taliban will back bin Laden).
In defense of Jon Katz, technology will most certainly play a pivotal role in the intelligence gathering (although I definitely hope we invest more money, time and effort in HUMINT). It will also be big in any kind of attack. A large part of the reason our Special Forces are so effective is their superior helicopters, our planes achieve dominance because of their better technology. Saying that the technological portions of this battle will not be significant would be terribly naive.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
how would he even remember what he did?
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Am I the only one beleiving that the NSA is actually able to break RSA?
Think about it:
1) The only role of the NSA is working with cryptography, and help the CIA deal with crypto.
2) The NSA is the institution that hire the biggest number of mathematicians in the world (that's a lot of brains!)
3) The NSA has been receiving requests from the CIA to break RSA for what, 20 years?
I'm not saying that they can decrypt RSA in real time, but when looking at the past, the British secret services were breaking Enigma every day when everyone was absolutely sure this was unbreakable (heck, they invented the computer!). I'm pretty sure that 20 years from now, we'll learn that in the 2000's the NSA was able to break a RSA encrypted message in a few days.
That would also help Echelon make a lot more sense; Echelon without a RSA breaking technique is much like a car with flat tires; it works but it's pretty lame.
"we must be willing to continue our bombing until we have destoryed every work of man in North Vietnam if this is what it takes to win the war"
-Curtis LeMay
General US Air Force
Long Beach CA,
April 1, 1967
"We have dropped twelve tonnes of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam. Whole provinces have been substantially destroyed."
-Robert Kennedy
Senator from New York
Washington DC,
Feb 8, 1968
"You've got to forget about this civilian stuff. Whenever you drop bombs you're going to hit civilians. It's foolish to pretend you're not."
-Barry Goldwater
Senator from Arizona
New York City
January 23, 1967
"It has become increasingly apparent that the US bombing of North and South Vietnam has been one of the most wasteful and expensive hoaxes ever to be put over on the American people."
David M. Shoup
Commadant US Marines Corps
in Atlantic magazine
April 1969
2 1337 4 u!
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/docs/camps.htm
That is spot on. The majority of the Afghanis are almost certainly just like people anywhere. They are almost certainly decent, hard-working, and kind. The sort of people that you wouldn't mind having for neighbors. Unfortunately, both for us and especially for them, their country is currently being run by madmen who harbor terrorists. Both the Germans and Japanese from World War II show what a devastating effect that can have on a populace. Once the madmen were removed, it was relatively easy to rebuild these countries. But while they were gripped by the insanity of their leaders they were willing to order the massacre of millions in concentration camps, and to send their own sons to their deaths as kamikaze pilots.
Madmen must be opposed. Otherwise there can be no safety, peace, or liberty for any of us. In a perfect world the citizens of Afghanistan would take care of these madmen for us, but if they insist on following their lead, then it will probably take a war to straighten things out.
God help us all.
1)They probably can do a somewhat decent job of following the money trail - Last time I checked Afghanistan's internet/communications infrastructure weren't exactly the most complex and up-to-date.
2)Computers can't replace Humans on the ground, in crowds, infiltrating organizations. We don't like the thought of Americans going somewhere and slitting some throats (although Hollywood and males between the ages of 18-44 do!) among other things. It's a dirty business, The elder President Bush may have chuckled when he mentioned money and women as a motivating factor for spies, but there's more truth there than joke.
I don't. (I'm not American so I am not bound by your wholly commendable loyalty to your commander-in-chief in times of trouble, so perhaps I can say it where others can't.)
Words - language - matters at times like these. What he's saying and how he's saying it is causing some people some disquiet.
Churchill, he ain't.
As it stands, it was taxation that prompted the American revolution - the highbrow rhetoric about rights and freedoms, important as it was, was just gift wrapping.
It doesn't matter what has happened thus far. The pigs who killed the Americans will die. The American people seem like paper tigers. They seem like fluff. Really, most of them are big fat pussies. However, there are millions of Americans that love death. They love to kill. They have wanted to hunt down pigs for a while. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT BODY BAGS. I have seen their warriors up close. They are no pussies when they are trying to kill people. When, not if, they attack, I pray that I am not in their way. The American people are not people, they are animals, when it comes to war. You don't know what you are in for. They will not stop. They simply will not stop. Just as they have spread capitalism, whatever you might think of that, they will spread death. The pigs that did this thing to the Americans will be very sorry. No Jihad will help. No Allah will help. In this world, the American killers will eat you alive. I must go pray now for you. You can pray but your life is over, pigs.
To determine what a solution for a problem is you need to analyze all it's failures.
These are the issues we need to consider:
1. Enemy has strong inteligence
2. Enemy does not care if he dies
3. Enemy has financial support
4. Enemy might be able to operate without central leadership
This all proves that our enemy is brainwashed and that's where we need to focus because a brainwashed person does not have too much sense of reality until you start showing him what is real.
The Taliban made the internet illegal and the reason why is because they want to keep their own people in the dark.
- If you can just take over TV and Radio systems in the Taliban controlled countries and show people what reality is, you might be able to enlighten them.
- If we go on a killing spree there will be no benefit, they will retaliate even worse, and they will never be able to accept reality as it is, for generations!
There are a lot of dangers to this "new kind of war" The problem is that there is a blurring of the distinction between warfare and criminal justice. In war justice, guilt and innocence are secondary to victory and survival. The individual soldiers killed on the battlefield are not considered "guilty" thier death is not a matter of justice or punishment for a crime. It is an unfortunate requirment to defeat the enemy. How does a war against terrorists, many of whom are on our own soil, hidden among the general population work?
I think the U.S. unfortunately has to, and is, viewing this as a war and is willing to do a lot of things that would not have been considered prior to the attack. It seems that we are pursuing a fairly prudent course. Inside the borders of the U.S. this is being dealt with as a criminal matter which protects the civil liberties of the people. Law enforcement may get some expanded powers, some of what it is seeking is probably an appropriate response to technological changes and some is overreaching with frightening potential for abuse. We should be careful to make that distinction. If we oppose every single effort by law enforcement to use new technology or counter criminal uses of technology we will lose our credibility when the issue really is one of fundamental liberties. Clearly we are at least going to suffer the inconveniences of a heightened concern for security (some of which will be silly but not an assualt on our freedoms).
Outside of the U.S. I think is where this really will look more like "war" Before this incident we were trying to snatch Bin Laden to bring him to justice. Now I think we will forego that nicety. If we find him, we will kill him.
We have also made it clear that we are willing to use "old fashioned" war to win the "new kind of war." If we find a state that is sponsoring these terrorists we will seek to "end it" (as Sec. Rumsfeld said) to deny the terrorists that support. And I can't help but think that fear of "old fashioned" war is what is driving nations not usually very friendly to us to bend over backwards to to be our new best friends. Pakistan is willing to risk civil war to help us, don't think for a minute that it is just because we asked nicely. I would imagine we asked in a way that wasn't nice at all, in a way that at least implied that civil war with the Talibans supporters in Pakistan wasn't the worst thing that could happen to them. Syria and Iran are also eager to display their support for a war on terrorism.
The point is, fanatics do not appear spontanously. People with a nice live, food, a house, and a future don't want to blow things up. It takes time for those groups to dissolve, but they can appear quite fast.
Diplomacy will be a key part of this crisis - only diplomacy can prevent new sources of terrorists. Take Pakistan, this situation is putting a lot of stress on the country. A lot of people from Afganistan are fleeing to Pakistan. The country has "accepted" to help the US (not that it had a lot of choice). This has generated a lot of tension both inside the country and with it's neighbours. If Pakistan collapses as a result of this crisis, there will be one more civil war, misery and despair. Guess who gets the bad karma?
It's all about messages, it can be "we try to make things better" or "we kill our enemies and put those who helped us in trouble". If you leave it with the military, the message might well be the second.
My God. You're right. Fresnel lenses over the monitors and everything, probably.
Terry Gilliam is brilliant. I just wish he wasn't so damned accurate, too.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
However, that makes no sense. Iraq knows by experience that the US can whoop their heinie. Would they really try such a coverup? They would be WELL aware of the risks involved.
I'm partial towards "bin Laden did it", or "someone we don't know yet did it". bin Laden har motive and means to have executed such an act. However, it goes against his pattern in one particular way - AFAIK, he has always struck at the military or government. He even said that striking against civilians is clearly against the Koran in some interview. So the WTC bombing does not sound as much like him as the Pentagon attack. Maybe we are dealing with somebody else?
I've been toying with the idea that some of bin Laden's followers have broken out and started to operate on their own. bin Laden has consistently stated that the assailants did it for "personal reasons". It could very well be a break-out group within his organization.
It could also be Right-wing extremists with shoeshine in their face, or it could be Israel, Egypt, Libya, Palestinians or just a brand new Moslem organization. It could be a bunch of people.
If I were to pull off an attack like that (and I wouldn't consider it), I would certainly attempt to obscure the traces and possibly make them appear to point to someone else. That is called "Covering Your Back 101", and is taught in real life every day.
Anyhow - I've been worried for a few days that the feds are blindly following the wrong path. I hope I'm wrong.
Stop the brainwash
href=http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English/DecFe b99/bowdish.htm
Psyops is in full force. We are at an extremely high threatcon level. The rage against the machine message board was closed by the Secret Service and there were some credible tactical reasons for doing so, but that shows you where we have went today.
The big radio companys are under orders not to play a huge list of songs and that is really, really wierd, I was just at the page where the list of songs were, I went back to memepool to grab the url it was gone. This goes way beyond extra security checks. This is scaring the shit out of me ten times as much those planes. I'm not even going to try and clean up my post as I'm worried that the first link I posted will disappear as well. Maybe the sky really is falling.
We sent in tons of Cubans to fight for us... That was short-lived. People from other countries don't fight for the US with the same zeal that Americans will... even when fighting for their home. If we want to use their troops, then either we must arm and heavily train them, or we have to do ourselves.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
> They were not talking about Desert Storm, but something radically different. As usual, the media offered much rhetoric, few details.
Wow, sound similar?
Okay, so we go out and infiltrate terrorist organizations, and then assasinate their leaders. A beautiful plan. Oh wait except that people who aren't afraid to die aren't too concerned about being assasinated and would be happy to be made a martyr. Oh and also, what is a terrorist really? Just a political dissident with a bomb, right? So we better infiltrate dissident groups too. And hey, maybe they say a few things they shouldn't about the government. Wouldn't that be a terrible shame if all the dissenters started having accidents?
*sigh*
Assasination isn't the answer folks. Open trials, clear evidence, long long long prison sentances. Those are the answers. Reveal them for what they are in the stark light of truth and the lock them away.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This is a political war. It is being fought for the hearts and minds of Islam.
The terrorists did not attack us in order to end curbside check-in. They attacked us so we would become enraged and attack an Islamic country causing the people of Islam to see America as a mortal threat. They hope we will do something stupid with a cruise missle which will lead to Islam uniting in a Jihad with the terrorists as the leaders.
I know it's nutty but that is what they want.
When our top dogs describe this as being different from other wars it is because they see that this war will be won or lost in the shadows, not with large battles, fleets, or bombing campaigns.
This war demands that we are smart, crafty, devious, decepive, brutal, ruthless, and effective all without inflicting mass causalties and while walking through the political minefields of Islam.
Ick. Not only an unnecessary bureaucratic step, but that would probably greatly increase the probability of the informant's identity being leaked, you'd think -- or at least the fact that there IS such an informant under consideration, which may be useful to know by itself.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
It is time for us to stand up for our country.
It is time for us to do whatever we reasonably can to make it safe.
I am not talking about limiting our already fleating civil liberties, but about learning how to defend ourselves from this kind of threat.
The terrorists that are here do not have scarlet letters denoting who they are. They look like you and me. They are our neighbors and appear to be our friends.
The government can and will ferret these people out and will destroy them.
I, for one, trust our President in these matters. Though I am a staunch Republican, I would have even trusted Clinton under the same circumstances.
They simply have more information available to them.
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
whatsonever, be sure to investigate your chances of acquiring this URL from us, so that you too, can be a visible participant in the gnu millennium.
jonkatz, slashdot, and the rest of you [sigh] americans: SHAME ON YOU.
a 'new kind of war'? ooh, how original.
why must you just eat up everything CNN feeds you? this "new war" hype is nothing more than straight propaganda.
is it such a mystery to you all that your puppet twit of a president was just waiting for this kind of excuse? do you even remember who brought him to power? whose hand is really up his ass?
the CEO's at lockheed-martin, raytheon, mobil-exxon, general dynamics, and other great fruits of america's "public investment, private profit" system have been laughing their flab off for over a week now.
covert warfare à la 1980's nicaragua just wasn't good enough anymore i guess -- you people need a new 'great satan' to focus your destructive energies on. and to think you've still got no tangible proof of *who* actually slapped your pudgy faces with such insolence. bin laden? please, let's get real.
before you rally round the flag and go on murdering innocent people around the planet, before you switch from covert to overt fascism, think for a second about who will really profit from this war.
peace
-p
---
http://www.zmag.org
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the cafe.
Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day. A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely a question of losing Central Africa: for the first time in the whole war, the territory of Oceania itself was menaced.
A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of undifferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded again. He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even retch slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine, themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way, could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst of all was that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night and day, was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those --
He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so far as it was possible he never visualized them. They were something that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his face, a smell that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter since they released him, and had regained his old colour -- indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the current issue of The Times, with the page turned down at the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty, he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill, but he had the impression that they always undercharged him. It would have made no difference if it had been the other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old job had been.
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had been over-fulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This is news of the highest importance. Take care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!' The tinking music struck up again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and moved it across the board. There was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary medley of feeling -- but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost -- struggled inside him.
The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:
2+2=
'They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could get inside you. 'What happens to you here is for ever,' O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist.
There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and done that if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been.
He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something -- something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.'
'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer.'
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again.'
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the everflowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people. He made a half-hearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable from behind.
'At the time when it happens,' she had said, 'you do mean it.' He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over to the --
Something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came into it. And then -- perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound -- a voice was singing:
'Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me --'
The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.
He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank. But it had become the element he swam in. It was his life, his death, and his resurrection. It was gin that sank him into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken, it would have been impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, listening to the telescreen. From fifteen to closing-time he was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what he did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admonished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth and did a little work, or what was called work. He had been appointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were engaged in producing something called an Interim Report, but what it was that they were reporting on he had never definitely found out. It was something to do with the question of whether commas should be placed inside brackets, or outside. There were four others on the committee, all of them persons similar to himself. There were days when they assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another that there was not really anything to be done. But there were other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished -- when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels, threats, even, to appeal to higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out of them and they would sit round the table looking at one another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.
The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised his head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely changing the music. He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow horizontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?
His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move. Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because --
Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a candle-lit room with a vast white-counterpaned bed, and himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared. It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well, a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscoting until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother said, 'Now be good, and I'Il buy you a toy. A lovely toy -- you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby, and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill-cut that they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tiddly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting-point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny sister, too young to understand what the game was about, had sat propped up against a bolster, laughing because the others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had all been happy together, as in his earlier childhood.
He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally. They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they were. Some things had happened, others had not happened. He turned back to the chessboard and picked up the white knight again. Almost in the same instant it dropped on to the board with a clatter. He had started as though a pin had run into him.
A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears.
The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the telescreen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: 'Vast strategic manoeuvre -- perfect co-ordination -- utter rout -- half a million prisoners -- complete demoralization -- control of the whole of Africa -- bring the war within measurable distance of its end victory -- greatest victory in human history -- victory, victory, victory!'
Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive movements. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago -- yes, only ten minutes -- there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.
The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Better idea
We load a bunch of fat people into 747's, fly it over afghanastan, open the windows, and have them shit all over the country!
Take that you afghans (isn't that a bunch of blankets??)!
This will be a completely different type of war than the US has ever ever experience. I imagine most military personnel which have served in a war (as opposed to 'in Texas') probably recognize this. As much as I dislike his policies, GWB knows that he doesn't quite know what to expect, and knows that he has to defer to military personnel. At the same time, he also has to give the American people a sense of justice, and show the world a strong America. All of these things aren't diametrically opposed, but all take on different tactics. Its obvious that we have dubbed Bin Ladden, and the country who protects him, Afghanistan, as the villians, and I assume that has happened from some facts unreleased to the public, as I have not seen any more than circumstancial evidence linking the two at the time. I am, however, all in favor of persuing an extraction of Bin Ladden for *at least* previous terrorist attacks. Anyway below is a list of possible strategies and my vague understanding of their effectiveness against such an enemy.
Nothing: Not an option. The people won't stand for it, and the events will occur again.
Embargos: Um, lets starve the people of a country who are already abused by their government. The people don't have anything, and additional sanctions will only make the situation worse for them. Bin Ladden and the Taliban will still be able to procure goods through other means. Only the people will suffer. However, this is a necessary portion of any conflict as it requires Bin Ladden increase the spending of his infrastructure to get goods which wold otherwise be easier to obtain.
Financial Crackdown: Siezing assets, cracking systems, and otherwise disrupting any high tech aspects of Bin Ladden and Afghanistan will only be partially possible (at least as of now). Part of the problem is - they can't touch him once he is inside the US (of all places) networking system. GWB hopes to change that, that's the part that screams of echelon.
Missle strikes: As shown following Clintion's attempt, do not inspire the american people, do little lasting damage to an already war-torn country, possibly endanger civilians, and otherwise only infuriate and unite a culture against us.
Air strikes add an element of personal involvement, which works in favor of approval raitings with the american people early on in a conflict, but endanger the lives of pilots, and suffer from the same problems of missile strikes. The Taliban does not believe in following the Geneva convention (obviously). Expect any POWs to be horribly mistreated and tortured, and in reality they may be better off dead.
Assasination or extraction: We haven't gotten Bin Ladden yet. He is content to sever communications, live in a bunker, and wage guerilla warfare against us. He's done it in the past and he will do it again. We won't even know which bunker he is in. He uses low-tech means to survive when necessary, and provides the US little to track him with.
Small scale insertions, etc: These will drastically increase the chances that a US soldier will be captured. We may out tech them, but even with the gulf war under our belts, most of our troops would still qualify as highly trained, but green. Afghanistan has been at war for the past 22 or 23 years, they may not have much, but they are highly vetran in regards to guerilla warfare, and they've already beaten the former USSR with that stacked against them. In addition, ground forces will only inspire others to become terrorists. More than likely the terrorists inspired will be from a different country, and more than likely will be able to strike in a similar manner to the WTC (just probably not the same scale of distruction or target).
Full scale assault: The most US lives imaginable will be on frontlines, facing an enemy closer in tactics to vietnam. They will be viewed as a savior for a few, but for many they will be the enemy. The war will be against the people of Afghanistan at that point (in addition to the Taliban). We will inspire a sense of nationalism and fanaticism in them, similar to what we are experiencing now. If we are upset neghboring Islamic countries, who usually side together, we will be faced with more than just Afghanistan as our enemy. Many lives will be lost, and yes, it will require the support of every civilized western country to be won - i.e. world war III. World War III will be viewed as ended when either: the Jihad is called off (an unlikely scenario) but will still inspire some fanatics to continue to perform terrorist actions, tensions will still run high. The US may also choose to withdraw in the Saigon or HoChiMihn City sort of fashion. Terrorist actions will increase as the US is viewed the looser by radical islamic fundamentalists. The third scenario is complete and utter devistation, possibly thermonuclear. Regardless, almost evey man woman and child will have been affected in some way, and how do you tell a terrorist from a refugee in these circumstances? The Western world will either emerge united, or the western world will view the US as having committed one of the worst global vendettas ever seen, and remain in shock and disbelief with relations strained to near breaking points.
Eh, these are just some thoghts...
You say you want a revolution?
this is not a "new war" this is the "new world order"
the timing of this is so perfect, its result was so perfect, the whole world coming together against a very small group of people. people sickened so much that doing anything seems right. bush has already said this will "last a long long time", what does that mean? forever? its a not a war its changing everything. in as many countries as possible. its against america and other countries want to help. they get into all sorts of countries and get all of their spy systems set up. perfect, what theyve always wanted. they also can take away so much more of americans freedoms too. and watch everything you do. i am not crazy. think about the facts. think about how much your government actually cares about you. they dont. if this wasnt planned by them id be very surprised. if its not they are sure jumping on this chance to really implement this new world order. the repeating of "new war" over and over on tv, the saying the press must stay away. like its unamerican to ask questions. leave us alone. let us do what we must do. sure.. they also SAY the whitehouse was a target, but look at that, it was missed. i dunno. it all doesnt add up at all. or maybe it DOES add up. am i crazy? this is just all too perfect and you see what they are doing about it in a hurry here.
Because if you looked like a person from an Arab country......
Your reception would not have been so great.
Israel only has liberty for 5/6 of its inhabitants. I should hope we never get to that point.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Here, read the interview with bin Laden, it's all right there.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html
Not only is bin Laden pissed at the U.S. being mostly Christian, he's pissed because we aren't allowing them to literally exterminate the Jews in Israel. But it goes farther than exterminating the Jews in Israel, he really wants to exterminate all non-Muslims around the world.
And for all the Liberal Europeans blaming U.S. foreign policy on the whole mess, watch out, he doesn't like you much better and wants you dead too.
note: I'm not condoning U.S. foreign policy, there's plenty I don't agree with, however, preventing other middle-eastern countries from taking over Israel and exterminating the Jews is not one of them.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The stated objective for this war is to eradicate terrorism. Not only to catch the people responsible for the attack, but to actually eradicate any terrorism. Bush representatives keep saying that he war will not be over until that is achieved.
It's obvious that such a goal can not possibly be acheived. We're not even talking about the in itself impossible task of catching everyone who has commited terror, but the claimed objective is to somehow stop any terror attacks to even occur, ever.
So what does this mean? Are we entering a state of permanent war until something that will never happen happens?
An other very clear problem with all this is that "terrorism" is a vague and undefined term. One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. There really are no clear lines. So the objective is undefined and arbitrary.
Just based on these two issues alone, I think this may end very badly.
afghanistan is already covered with mines, so we can leave that step out.
First of all, I've been amazed (and disgusted) by the onslaught of whining about our impending loss of privacy ever since this disaster happened. We've seen the destruction of a national landmark in our greatest city and you people are worried about our very own government reading your email. I think you all take a great many things for granted.
What exactly do you fear? Is there something you all are trying to hide from the government? Is it just the principle of the thing? Having my email filtered or my phone calls monitored seems like a trivial price to pay if it means I can get on a plane this christmas and fly home without worrying about smashing into a skyscraper or having my throat slit with a box cutter. It's YOUR government listening and YOUR security and life being protected. Why oppose these things?
You're probably going to reply to me and say "but the Constitution says...!". Do you honestly mean to tell me that you are construing a document written hundreds of years ago as being directly applicable to this situation? That is suicidal and not realistic in the least. When the Constitution was written, there were no planes, no internet, no skyscrapers, no phones, and there were no terrorist groups committing mass murder. Committing an atrocity on a scale equal to what we witnessed was perhaps impossible. Hell, there werent even Arabs crashing horses into barns!
Certainly the creators of the Constitution never could have forseen the kind of cowardly attacks we faced recently. Do you people even grasp the severity of what happened? The "impenetrable" United States was attacked on its own soil! I believe the Constitution says that our privacy is guaranteed not to be violated "without reason", or something to that affect. Clearly this attack was well beyond reason. In fact, for many of us, it is beyond comprehension.
For those of you claiming that we are "violating" the US Constitution, I propose that it is YOU who wish to violate it. One of our government's greatest strengths is that it is NOT rigid. It must constantly evolve to maintain the balance of liberty while giving due powers to those who must protect us and our way of life. Obviously, when an unseen enemy turns our own modes of communication and transportation into terrible weapons, it is time for an adjustment.
I value my right to privacy, but I value my way of life, my security, and that of my country more.
For those of you who wonder if we are actually at war or not, consider the following definition of war: "A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious". If this is indeed how war is defined, then I sincerely hope that we are very much at war.
Fighting a war on this scale would really transform the US--just as profoundly as WW II. OBL has publicly stated(in his ABC interview) that he would _rather_ deal with a nationalistic US government than the present regime--which says something of the range of options here that are acceptable to him.
The Pakistani government has openly stated it prefers only Islamic troops to be stationed in its borders. If the US/EU arm Islamic nations to accomodate Pakistan--OBL's folks may think they can inspire popular revolts in those countries and get those arms--and thus present a stronger front down the road. If the US goes into roughshod into Pakistan, OBL can leverage this to gain credibilty in the Islamic world. The US/EU would need then to either a) cut the Islamic world a better deal or b) cut them loose. Option a) means that the already strong Islamic presence in the US/EU would expand, making future wars against a united Islamic front more difficult. Option b) means that OBL may wind up dealing with a nationalists in the US/EU---many of which aren't exactly friendly to Israel.
Long term, all of these options mean that OBL or his successors have a win here by their standards.
It seems the Taliban and other extreme Islamic groups don't want you capitalize thier country so they can enjoy the latest DVD player. Otherwise the Taliban wouldn't have banned any music and TVs and other frivilous sources of western entertainment.
I agree we should attack the source of the problem when we have the opportunity, but what do we honestly do now? What can we do with 60 billion dollars? I know we can't secure this country 100% from terrorists, but can we secure it from 80% of terrorists?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I think we can safely say this new war, "The War on Terrorism" is going to be fought just like the old war, "The War on Drugs". It is going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, strip us of freedoms and accomplish nothing. If anything it will make it worse.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
let the mountain go to mohammed, that way we'll know he's there when we vaporize it
It's interesting to note that the countries we have fought and occupied, not just a negotiated peace, not just a withdrawl after a few good kicks, have done extremely well.
;)
Look at Germany: we fought them tooth and nail, clashing on levels not seen before. Yet now they are among the world's most prosperous nations.
The same, and even more so, with Japan. We slagged Tokyo on the scale of Dresden as well as her other cities, and then nuked two more. Now Japan has the world's second largest economy in the world, but the fact is we went in and rebuilt her after WW2.
Perhaps what we really, truly ought to do, even though it will be unpopular in the long run, is to go in, kick ass, take names - baring in mind the xUSSR's experience there and ours in Vietnam - and then...rebuild her.
There are enough volunteers here in the US that would probably be willing to go over and help rebuild. Plenty of patriotic americans that are muslim as well. Send them over as the teachers while the rest of us build roads, factories, and more. Build their economy from nothing to something. Take 10-15 years to do so. Just like in Europe and in Japan.
Then transition things back into their hands like we did before...and leave. well off people rarely rise in revolt.
Let the people who want to die fighting us, do so...those that want to live, live.
Then we can work our 'infamous' reconstruction project and go home. It would be great - and amusing - to see Afghanistan as one of the top 4 economies in the world.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
That's not new. Countries, tribes, and people have been doing it for thousands of years.
Best Slashdot Co
[boq]Defensive perimeters, land mines, etc., have proven historically to be ineffectual in that kind of territory with a motivated enemy. But, as one mujahdeen was quoted, "I do not fear the Russians, but I fear their helicoptors." Now IANAG (General), but I believe the best way to go about something like this is a long series of directed raids by missile, bomber, helicopter and (most importantly) Special Forces units [eoq] Turkey fought a similar war, and there are only two high(mid) tech tools that did more than marginal help: helicopters and pilotless surveliance planes. Granted, we did not have intelligent missiles or spy sattelites but we had pretty much everyting else. None helped, nor will they when their operators are americans.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
A simple thing triggers so many questions for me:
Why there is no negative images on TV besides the falling WTC and hitting planes?
Are the media waiting for the war to develop to zero with the images of the innocent death people on "the other side"?
(message form the other city hitted TWICE by islamic terrorists: BUENOS AIRES)
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
Traditionally, the most prolific and trusted spies are planted in a target country from youth to allay suspicion. They are then groomed, secretly indoctrinated, and let loose. This application works poorly against terrorists overseas because of the turbulence of foreign people and governments. Average lifespan in these countries is short, and new regimes waltz in and out every so often; these things foul a spy network. But against terrorists residing in North America this application has only one formidable obstacle-- the number of agents required. This number will exceed even the federal government's ability to support. That means any effort without direct involvement of Joe Citizen will have minimal impact at best. The easiest way to get Joe Citizen involved is to comp them for ratting out their friends. Safe (seemingly), simple, and profitable. Hey, it worked in the Soviet Union. It even worked on Jesus, who predicted it on himself and us (sorry, no direct hyperlinks).
"Dis be what happened to get muh ayazz here."
Wassup.
So back da fuckin' day n' shit I had a fuckin' ancestor niggrah in Niger. He lived in a fuckin' tree and chased monkey's and threw fuckin' spears n' shyit. The asshole had one fuck of a good life, till the fuckin' whitie man got on the wrong turf. There were no gizzats back then, so muh nigs got on a shyip n' shit.
Fuckin'...they went to a cotton place or some shit. They would pick cotton for whitey and get whipped for it. If they learned to read, they get a gat in the face, yo. Word.
So when dat white fuck let the slaves free n' shit, Great grandnig was free n' shit. He fuckin' met my Grat Grandma bitch and they fucked...a fuckin' lot, negro. After a while, my fuckin' Grandpa popped outta Great Grandho's poon.
Some fuckin' day, a crackah-ass Skinhead bitch raped Grandma up the ass and shot her in the clit and stole her crack and her 40. Grandpa went ape-shit and tried to kill whitey. Shit went down, and Grandfuck joined the fukkin' army n' shit so he could carry a fuckin gat or some shit.
One day some Germany whities try to start a war or some shit. Grandfuck was sent to Germany land to fight the Niza's. Grandpa was amped out one fuckin' night from Germaine crizzack rizzock. The nig was chasin Jeebus around and fuckin stepped on a land mine or some shit. He had to go to duh fukkin' hospitable. There he fuckin' met muh Grandmizza. They fizzed the shiznit outta each other till GRandies ebony rhythym stick turned fukin white.
Months or some shit latah, Muh Mizzom pops her black ass outta Gramndna cunt. Affah dat, some whizzite Neezah bitch fucked Grandpuhs ayazz and capped his ayazz. Grizzma saw dat shit and ran. Duh dumb bitch end up in some white people party an nevah came back o' shome shit.
Affa dizzat, some Noza find Mizzom and told da beotch if he fizzucked her tight blackass, he wouldn't throw no bleotch in da face o' some shit. Mowma said fuck yeah o' some shyit, and dat was fuckin' dat.
Fuckin' years or some shit latah, da big fro whizzite Nicza bitch found out dis crazy-negro shit. He bring fuckin' Mowme to the Headquarters fuckin' crib n shit. They all pass da bitch roun n' shit. She not even get paid from dem. Massa Hitelir fuck dat puss when Mizma wuz old enuff and affa dat, ah pizzopped muh pearly whits outta dat cizzunt. Fuck if ah now, but I be here n' now. Yeah. I'm blizzack gizzowd n' shit. Nigs woship muh ayazz, an yo ass should too.
Das why duh fuck I be here, nigs.
What speed do you think the NSA could crack a PGP encrpted message. Say a moderatly strong 2048/1024.
1. Assuming they just had the message.
2. Had the message and public key.
3. Had the message, private key and public key.
Or is encrption just too hard to break even with the fastest computers at your disposal, without a mathematical shortcut.
Veramocor
Veramocor
Two Pentium Pros, each running at 233MHz, with 1 meg L2 cache, on a 66MHz bus! With 1 *gig* of RAM, a 2 gig hard drive, and QNX RTOS 6.1.0!
.8 as fast as the last, my box is like having two Pentium IV 875MHz, or put more simply, ONE 1.75GHZ PENTIUM IV!!!
Fear my dual socket 5 P120's with 60MHz bus, and *192* mb of RAM.
Bow down, using the formula of each successive generation of Pentium being
That makes my socket 5 rocket even faster, maybe even as fast as a IA64!!!
Osama bin Laden is only one of the combatants here. Let's think about who the combatants are in this conflict, which has already been going on for several years:
1) North America, Western Europe, Israel, and supportive other nations (India, Japan, et. al.)
vs.
2) A very loose network of independently-funded, sometimes (but not always) externally-supported terrorists whose agendas differ, but whose means are similar.
There are Basque terrorists in Spain, clamoring for statehood and independence. Palestinian terrorists decry Israel's occupation of their homeland, and fight to remove them from Palestine. Narco-terrorists in Columbia attempt to destabilize the national government so they can make money more easily. Bin Laden directs attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia because of his rigid fundamentalist view of Islam. The IRA wages war on what it sees as Protestant invaders, fanning flames that the majority of Northern Irish people want extinguished.
All these groups are pursuing different aims, but they all are using the same means - extranational use of force. Groups of armed combatants who do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of the population.
In the days before September 11, 2001, the differences between these groups and older insurrections, such as the Viet Cong, the American Minutemen, and the Russian Communists, may have been hard to discern.
But now the real difference is clear. Those organizations were limited both in means and in goals. Their efforts were focused exclusively on obtaining control of specific geography, for the purpose of governing it themselves. In the main, most terrorists groups still are after that goal (IRA, Hezbullah, Basque separatists, et. al.).
However, the means for terrorists to wage war far beyond ther own borders has been unleashed. In a sense, what we've seen is less like Pearl Harbor than it is like Hiroshima. While the concept of a massive terrorist attack against a far-away nation has been around for a very long time, this is the first time it has been executed.
So now the reality is sinking in. Extranational terrorist groups, which are just small collections of active individuals, are now capable of unleashing the kind of destructive force previously restricted for use by nation-states.
Imagine that you're Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK. Your nation has been fighting IRA terrorism for decades, and now the US endures this massive assault from terrorists. The first thing that enters your mind is: "Perhaps the IRA will attempt something of this magnitude as well."
Repeat the scenario for any number of presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of nations around the globe. Every nation-state has enemies. They all must now realize to one degree or another, that their enemies have just been shown that massive attacks are possible.
Recall that the United States gained mastery of nuclear weapons in the late 1940s, but by the 1950s, the Soviets had acquired their own. Soon the Chinese, Indians, and Israelis followed. Now there are over a dozen nuclear-capable states.
In the case of nuclear weapons, we've been fortunate enough to avoid any further use of them beyond WWII. But that is because nuclear weapons have been controlled, so far, by national command and control structures. The implications of launching nuclear weapons when you are the leader of a country, responsible for the survival of your own people, is immense.
Terrorists, who have no national sovereignty to defend, do not have such limitations on behavior.
So this is a world-wide conflict between nation-states and independent small groups who now have been shown a new way to press their goals. Alliances have always been a part of warfare, from the Trojan War to the Gulf War. But in the main, alliances have been formed to deal with one easily-identified enemy. For example, in WWII, the Allies banded together to fight the Axis. Though composed of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the components of theAxis were still easily pinpointed on a map.
Now the threat is much more diverse and much more diffuse - nation-states face potential terrorist action at virtually any time, any place.
Beyond the short-term, technical issues of how we fight terrorists, the long-term approach needs to be wholistic. The world is a smaller place now, and actions that impact one nation impact many. One result of this interconnectedness is that internal politics that disenfranchise, alienate, or radicalize people will now be looked at more closely.
A classic example of this is Israel. By assassinating top Intefada leaders, the Israelis are taking care of an immediate security threat, but they are simultaneously helping to create a whole new generation of disenfranchised Palestinian youth with nothing to lose. In short, they are creating terrorists.
The rest of the world, led by the United States, needs to exert more pressure on Israel to come to an equitable agreement with the Palestinian people, because this conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is now no longer just their problem, it's everyone's problem.
We need also to think beyond military matters when attempting to diffuse conflicts. We're discovering that bin Laden's financial interests are extremely broad and that he has seemingly profited from the market downturn following his attacks. The international monetary system needs to be re-examined from perspective of international security. While financial privacy is important, when someone has been identified as a terrorist, we should be capable of choking off their most immediate air supply, which is money.
Every terrorist organization needs physical space to operate, even if their activities are dispersed and controlled from afar. Terrorist training camps in Libya, for example, have been showing terrorists how to wage war for decades now. Shutting them down is a key means of denying terrorists the ability to perfect their craft and plan their missions. If the international community collectively puts terrorism-supporting nations such as Iraq and Libya on notice, and destroys their ability to defend themselves swiftly and without warning if and when such camps are discovered on their territory, we'll see far less willingness to support terrorism.
Our HUMINT (human intelligence) capabilities were curtailed years ago as part of the "the Cold War is over, we don't need to be involved with nasty people" mentality of the time. We need to get off our high horse and get down in the mud. Human intelligence is vital to infiltrating terrorist cells and stopping violence before it starts.
Finally, our ability to defeat terrorists will not be contingent upon some sort of ballistic missile shiled costing billions of dollars. It will be contingent primarily on our ability to insert special operations forces at the right time and place to execute surgical strikes on terrorist cells. In short, we need to place the terrorists more off-guard than they can place us.
The western world has a wide array of resources in this regard, but the coordination of intelligence, logistics, and operational assets will be complicated. The more coordination, the more chances for over-complication and security leaks. Nonetheless, this must be a multinational effort, sustained over time.
It won't be easy. It won't involve teams of hackers taking down someone's website and winning the war. It will involve skilled, dedicated people risking their lives to kill terrorists. People will die, but it will truly be so that others may live. 21st century Americans hate to admit it, but wars aren't antiseptic, and they're not video games.
This one will be long, difficult, and frustrating, but one thing is certain: the terrorist's days of easy living are over.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"That said, I agree with you that there are too many armchair Pattons (and WAY too many armchair Ghandis)."
Its Gandhi, not Ghandi.
How difficult is that? Ghandi sounds like a &$#%$ word in one vernacular language in India. Give the great man a break.
"Personally, I think if we want to win a war in Afghanistan, we need to massively arm the opposing side who know the terrain and how to win."
Hate to spoil your party, but that's what got you people (and us) into this mess. You armed the mujahedeen against the former USSR (The CIA did it), and now you have Laden and the Taliban sticking it up your arses.
-Shaunak.
That's the position O'Reilly presented to Torticelli and kind of hammered him with it. He also said leaving the decisions in Washington, where they don't the region being covered locally, is not a good idea.
However, Torticelli said that somebody needed to be accountable for hiring people who may in turn do horrible things, which is a valid point.
The compromise O'Reilly proposed, which I think is a good one is to have the field officer report to whatever their boss is in the local region. And have that person answer for any problems.
- sigs are for wimps.
The people of Afghanistan are the first victims of the Taliban. They literally bury women alive if their husband dies. We need to wipe them from the face of this planet. But in doing this we need to assist the Afghan people into the twentyfirst century. They still live in the seventeenth. When we capture an area of Afghanistan we improve the lives of the people that live there. New roads, news houses, electricity, schools, hospitals, tractors, farm animals, Dams for irrigation, hydroelectric power and TV sets for everybody. Setup TV stations that beam in dubbed American shows from the fifties and sixties. Have their children wanting to watch Mr. Roberts. Have them all know who Big Bird is. We need to learn the lessons of WW2. When we took Saipan the Japanese civilians jumped off the cliffs because the Japanese governments told them what evil people we were. But the soldiers that we captured realized that was a lie. After being captured they got feed better then before the capture and better treated. They then realized they had been lied to by the government. This is what we need to use in Afghanistan. Kill every Taliban soilder that raises a gun to us and and vastly improve the life of the people of Afghanistan.
one of Tom Clancy's novels. Read
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The "war" will be dirty, nasty, and silent. It won't be the prime time entertainment we experienced with Iraq. We may not even know when we "win".
ps not an anonymous coward. I just forgot my pwd
With Jon Katz it always have to do with Your Rights Online [tm], doesn't it? If you're concerned about your online communications being monitored, use encryption, like
And if you're concerned that the government can break those, start supporting research for stronger encryption.
I think every packet that goes into the Internet should be monitored, and I know it can. If there's something I want private, I'll keep it private myself, and I expect everybody to do the same. Expecting the law to protect you when you use insecure technology is somewhat like those who expect the law to protect them when they use insecure encryption on DVDs. Pick up the slack yourself and quit asking the government to do it.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
FIRE JON KATZ
Fire him now
Get his ass out of here
JON KATZ: The worst reporter in history
I found this neat wrap up of American Military Weaponry. They mention several military gagets that I read about on slashdot a while back. Super-cavitating torpedo's, the ABL which is being jointly developed by TRW and Boeing, The Land warrior System which gives our soldiers on the battlefield a counterstrike like HUD with green for friends and red for enemies. It's warm fuzzies knowing that none of this is possible without computer science.
I have just seen this book on amazon : Gems.
Speaking of new kinds of war, the following excerpt from the description of the book is terrifying :
Deadly germs sprayed in shopping malls, bomb-lets spewing anthrax spores over battlefields, tiny vials of plague scattered in Times Square -- these are the poor man's hydrogen bombs, hideous weapons of mass destruction that can be made in a simple laboratory.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Oh please...lets stop talking about it...I think you guys are in for it...this is WW3
If we came in and did such things, we'd be removing their culture. They'd loose what they've grown as people having. If American infrastructure was brought in, we'd be running over their lives without invitation or motivation. To remove a culture would be genocide on a different level. Just my thoughts.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Somehow, it does not stop the rest of the US police from doing similar things as normal business.
We use smaller-time criminals to bring down bigger-time criminals on a daily basis, even rewarding the informants or cooperators, even if it is in reduced sentencing. Sometimes even by the DA letting them pork their wife/girlfriend in the DA's office (happened in San Diego a couple of years ago), om exchange for their testimony.
I say give 'em what the least expect. What if, instead of 'sending them quickly to paradise', we keep them in great health (under lock and key, of course), but make them watch 'The Sound of Music' or something 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives? Maybe that would scare them.
Giving them more opportunities to die in combat almost sounds like an incentive for them to fight.
Your monitor is staring at you.
As for the idea of sending in troops -- uh, you're talking about hilly terrain, an inner-continental climate, and the remnants of the last war fought there.
For all anyone knows, any patch of ground could be the r[e|u]sting-place for an old Soviet minefield. UXBs probably litter the ground like pebbles on a beach. The level of documentation that probably still exists is likely minimal to non-existant, and this is what the Good Ol' Boys are going to be walking over. Oh, goody. Check your life insurance for a stupidity clause, guys.
Then there's what you're going to do, once you've got there. As another poster noted, the terrain favours defence, heavily. And the opponents aren't using 30-year-old pop-guns, either. They're using high-tech US weapons, supplied by the US Government in more politically favourable times.
In fact, because none of that was exactly official and on public-record, is there anyone who can even be 100% sure what these maniacs were given??? Remember, information of this kind tends to accidently fall in the shredder, when it becomes embarassing, as Col. Ollie North showed. (And that's aside from anything they've stolen from any country they've been in contact with.)
In short, a head-on assault might be an effortless stroll. But it could just as easily be a complete fiasco. The battle for Monte Carlos, WW2, comes to mind.
The other thing that a lot of people forget is that we're going against a totally different type of opponent, for whom suicide is a perfectly legit option. The Japanese Kamakaze pilots are about the closest the US has had to tackle fanatisism in the battlefield. The cost was not trivial.
To put it another way, you can't just roll into town and expect them to roll over. What you can expect is ten-year-olds leaping from windows, carrying molotov cocktails. If we go in, by force, then we invite a war that will be over only when one side or the other is utterly exterminated. NO survivors.
Electronic war will just enslave the "free world", putting it in the control of mega-corporations and unaccountable agencies. It will not stop the terror attacks, but it will stop civilization.
A military war can mean one thing, and one thing only. Genocide. Not "attempted genocide", as Milosovich is accused of, but ACTUAL genocide. The complete destruction of an entire people.
I fully, 100%, support any attempt to genuinely prevent terror attacks. I support any Government that wishes to be free of such a menace. But I will NOT support the very actions that our fathers and/or grandfathers risked their lives to oppose, when they challanged the might of Nazi Germany and the evils of the Reich.
There are other options. Find them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In my opinion, the only thing that I read between lines is that the USA Fed Gov doesnt have an idea of who or what couse this tragedy... Or you really think that Bin Laden is the evil one and catching him is going to solve terrorism problems? I think that this will only make a show for the general audience of CNN and the rest of the networks, that will give Bush the funds he requires for Defense and will feed the need of revenge that prevails on USA. This tragedy is a consecuence of the collision between two civilizations, and I haven't heard a single intention or word from Bush or any other to work on that situation, to lower the problems with Middle East. Getting Bin Laden to justice is a necessity, but that won't solve the problem and wont guarantee that there won't be any more terrorism in the USA, less in the rest of the world. I think that the name "War against terrorism" is not appropiate, it should be "War against the most likely terrorist".
Why? You may ask. Because the FBI,CIA,NSA, etc, etc had all the information unencrypted to stop these attacks. They just failed to analyze it correctly. Stories are just now beginning to surface that the US was warned that this was coming from countries such as the Philipines. Was it encrypted that friends of bin ladin were financing people to come here to take flight training? No. Was it encrypted that they did not even want training on landing or takeoffs? I don't think so. All the information and clues were there in their unencrypted form. Our "intelligence" agencies just failed to realize it.
Allowing them more information via back doors in encryption or wiretaps or whatever will not solve anything until they are able to analyze the information they already have.
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
Who are the 3 most powerfull people in this country?
Bush, Dick & Colin.
Lets jump right in with the first few lines...
As noxious as Washington talk shows generally are, this weekend's were significant. Watching all of the Talking Head shows out of D.C., I struggled to decipher the particular meaning, language and codes of that city's inhabitants.
Jon, incase someone forgot to tell you, the Government is basically saying they don't quite know off-hand how to handle a war of this type. Its being figured out as we go, its blueprint being changed by the hour as countries in the reigon ally themselves for us or against us. Its not a videogame. It involves tying together information from several different countries with several different motives, most of which dont speak the same language, Jon. The rules aren't silkscreened on the glass, and you don't have 3 lives.
George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and others were on the tube all weekend, and they seemed to be sending the same signals and saying something important. They were talking about a "new kind of war," one that re-emphasized human analysis and intelligence gathering, but also offered a central role for many involved in security technology, from electronic ID to surveillance.
Yup, and you should be happy about that. You have nothing to worry about, provided you aren't doing anything illegal, in which case you probably deserve to get busted anyway. I could care less who monitors my telephone calls, government or otherwise. You're a fool if you have ever considered these sorts of communications "private" in the first place. See, the thing is, Jon, alot of sponges and leeches in this country hide under the blanket of "civil liberties". They want to continue committing low-level crimes like software piracy, copyright infringement, and other minor offenses under the auspices of "freedom". What they don't understand is that the notion of "freedom" does not translate to "You are free to rip someone off.". Don't associate yourselves with that crowd. Being sponges and leeches, they don't have the balls to make their way through life legitimately. They prefer to exploit rather than cooperate.
They were not talking about Desert Storm, but something radically different. As usual, the media offered much rhetoric, few details. And there are substantial concerns about privacy and civil liberties
Well, what did you expect, Jon? An hourly schedule of events in the reigon for the next 2 years downloadable to your Palm? For christ's sake, use your head, Jon. In wartime, the idea is, you don't want everyone (particularly the enemy) to know what you're up to.. They are intentionally being vague. Intelligent people realize this--Dumbasses get frustrated at the lack of disclosed detail. They fail to realize that they, their friends, and loved ones are more secure because of it. Loose lips sink ships, Jon.
People are wondering how this new kind of war might work, what it might look like. Some of you might have some ideas.
Alot of us have ideas about what it might look like, Jon. Mine looks like several giant glass craters dotting the landscape of Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lybia, Jordan, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, each of which measures two miles across. One thing's for sure.. Whatever it is, neither you or I really want to know. I don't wanna know what the military is planning to unleash on these people, because if I know about it, chances are our enemy knows about it too. The more secretive they are, they better off we'll be. They can turn the entire reigon into a parking lot for Disneyworld for all I care. Thats why I pay taxes--So I don't have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off terrified of everything that might happen. Thats one of the nice things about being American. I don't have to voice my own opinion about what I feel should happen, because the consensus of other people, with or without me, will eventually do what is right for all of us as a collective entity. Thats the whole nature of Democracy. Sure, it will be brutal, innocent people have been killed, but guess what--That shit happens, and it happens all the time. The trick is, just make sure it's not you that has to look at the business end of an AR-15.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Feed the poor bastards and then flood 'em with Porn, Beer and American Rock and Roll. A country full of well-fed, drunk Bruce Springsteen fans is not one that is likely to cause us problems in the future.
**>>BELCH
This "New Kind of War" will be a war that never ends. How can it? Terrorizm will always be there just like high school kids will always party and drink underage. How can we fight terrorists? We can kill the ones that we know about, or we can TRY to capture them and bring to trial. The latter is not likely. Once we kill all of the terrorists that we KNOW about, then the others will come out of the woodwork in even more of a frenzy then the first because now the first have been made as Martyrs. This keep going and going like this untill one of them gets thier hands on a Nuke and then this will really be a new kind of War!
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
The reason for the rule is that many in Congress were fed up with the CIA paying the likes of Noriega, Suharto, Saddam etc and supporting regimes that murdered large number of their citizens.
The underlying problem is that the US has for years cried 'wolf' on terrorism. The term was used to provide blanket justification for any policy the government of the day was into. So Cuba and other countries the US happened to have a policy difference with were labelled 'state sponsors of terrorism'. Meanwhile the CIA was funding drug running terrorists such as the Nicaraguan Contras.
A large part of the responsibility for the attack must rest on successive Presidents who abused the CIA and FBI for their own political purposes and not for national defence. The assasination of the democratically elected Lumumba in the Congo and imposition of Mugabwe cost millions of lives. The action was not done to defend democracy but to try to impose a dictator who would be on 'our side'.
In particular Nixon's actions were uniquely corrosive to US democratic institutions. The Reagan/Bush Iran-Contra abuses compounded the problem. Selling arms to the Iranian taleban types and using the proceeds to instigate a proxy war in Nicaragua.
The much maligned ban on assasination was only introduced because the US realised that having engineered the assasination of eight other world leaders it was quite likely that other countries were plotting to assasinate the US president in what they considered to be self defence.
The people running arround complaining that the CIA was handcuffed are by and large the same people whose schemes made the restrictions necessary.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This new war should end quickly and easily if we use Unix to take care of things:
/bin/laden
/bin/laden
/mnt/afghanistan
/bin/laden`
/bin/laden
/bin/laden
/bin/laden
/bin/laden
$ who didthis?
$ whois guilty?
$ finger
$ talk alot
$ flex "america's muscles"
$ make threats
$ expect taliban_to_give_up
$ cd
$ locate `basename
$ find
$ nice doggy
$ bash
$ kill
$ shred
$ dig grave.for.bin.laden
$ killall `look around`
$ faillog
$ pax americana
Sounds to me like the writing was on the wall. Desert Storm was a relatively high-tech, focused war, at least in the beginning. Remember stealth night bombing runs, extensive use of high-res satellite imagery, and smart bombs with cameras? What about the use night vision in general? That was pretty high-tech stuff for 1991, and this "war" will accordingly be of a high-tech nature in reference to current times. It's no surprise that nobody intends to have an all-out brute-force type of war anymore, and contrary to JonKatz's assumption, most people aren't expecting this kind of war.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Re:Mod parent up ! (Score:1)
I'm not entirely sure that he's upset that we "set foot" in his homeland, but that the Western culture is destroying the mid-East culture.
You're not entirely sure because you are civilized and you cannot fathom such a thing.
However, read any of Bin Laden's interviews and bios. He turned against the US when we set foot in the Holy land of Saudi Arabia.
And last time I checked, there were no McDonalds in Afghanistan.
Reading his documentation (thesmokinggun.com), you can also see the primary goal of his org, is to replace all "infidel" govt. with "just" Islamic radical ones like the disgusting Taliban.
So, no he doesn't want Coca Cola to leave, or McDonalds which is not there to never set foot on the wasteland that is Afghanistan, what he wants is for your sister to wear a tunic that covers her all day, he wants you to pray 5 times a day to Allah, and he wants to replace all Democracies with Theocracies that subscribe to his perverted version of Islam.
Just read up on him, trying to rationalize a religious zealot is not going to give you insight into him.
- sigs are for wimps.
There's a wealth of material available at:
http://www.7pillars.com/7pppub.html
The slides presented at DefCon9 are at:
http://www.7pillars.com/papers/HackerIO.zip
This is not a a game of Quake or Doom or Castle Wolfenstein. There is no reset. The people getting "fragged" are really getting fragged. I served in the Army and did a stint in Bosnia during Operation Joint Endevour. All of us have become very complacent and don't realize what's out there and too removed from the realities of what we are getting into. War sucks and you can die. Period. I'm not ashamed to say that I am scared right now. I like being a programmer, even for MS, I have many friends who are from all over the globe who have come to America because it's the best. Some underpaid, overwhelmed person who might possibly read my email is the least of my concerns right now, I'm more worried about many of us being killed and our way of life being changed in a way that none of us could truly imagine unless you've seen it with your own eyes.
Here are my predictions on this new "war" and what it will mean to us:
1. This was will be very labor intensive. It will use humans for intellegence gathering, spies to try to infiltrate the terrorist cells, troops to raid the different cells.
2. It will be costly by almost any measure - lives, dollars, time, freedom.
3. It will have a greater impact on most people around the world than WWII did. The world will change, travel will become more difficult and for people who are in any way different from their neighbors, they will be targets of suspicion and investigation on a level we never imagined before!
Police will us this new war as an excuse to investigate anyone from somewhere else, they will as a matter of routine run plates from out-of-state. They will use enhanced powers to tap phone lines and read email. Employers will perform broader and deeper background checks. Stores will identify people buying things that may concieveably be used by terrorists. Congress will finally pass legislation requiring the registration of firearms. We will be subject to search entering anyplace where there are a lot of people (concerts, sporting events, malls). Schools will lock-down.
Security will change. This will add cost to nearly every good and service provided in the world.
Taxes will go up, in part to pay for the new security and in part to add people to the armed forces.
Normal people will not be empowered by these acts but few if any of them will actually do much to prevent a determined terrorist from doing something (it may however change what they do).
In short, the free will be less free and the criminals will be as free as ever. This means the terrorists will accomplish their goal.
Having said all of this, I want you to know that I do not think that this act should go unanswered. I believe it needs to be answered loudly and with force.
I can just see the writing on the wall.
I agree with that, however, the current environment has made it impossible to infiltrate groups like the militant Islamic groups.
Obviously the past solution led to abuses, and the current one is not helping our "intelligence", so the point is this is a bug that needs to be patched.
BTW, I escaped Panama and just became a US citizen. For all the fault of the US government of having Noriega as an informant, it was us, the Panamenian citizens that were ultimately to blame for his rise to power. Sometimes the opressed countries also have to take responsibility.
- sigs are for wimps.
Last week, Rumsfeld likened the task of erradicating terrorists to exterminating cock-roaches. When you think about it, this metaphor goes a long way.
Just as burning one's own house down is the wrong approach, so is nuking Afganistan. What the "new warfare" means, at least to me, is if we see them scurrying across the floor, we stomp on them. We set up roach motel like traps to lure them in. We put down boric acid so they take toxins back into their nests.
If war were not so horribly obscene, it might be interesting to see what sort of tactics are going to be employed.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
The problem is that the CIA hires terrorists more often then tracking them down and it wants to be sure that this is koscher before people start asking a lot of questions.
Dick Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team 6 and author of Rogue Warrior, has been preparing for this long before this shit happened. The only problem is the gov't was to nice to let him get down to business. Well now I don't think they care, and mark my words the things that are troops while to terrorist while make children cry. They can declare jihad all they want be are special forces operators are going to send all of them on a magic carpet ride to Allah.
The US Constitution (unlike some US state constitutions) doesn't guarantee "privacy," it doesn't even use the word. The US Supreme Court, starting in the 60s, in a case called Griswold involving birth control, created an implied constitutional right to privacy, saying that it was an "emanation" from the "penumbra" of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The Roe v. Wade abortion decision was a product of this jurisprudence. For the last 20 years, the anti-abortion right wing has been driving the Supreme Court to retreat from the privacy right they created, and for the most part the Court has obliged the right wing.
/., often quite vitriolically, doesn't exist. To the extent it ever existed, we gave it up in order to persecute women who have abortions.
/.ers who adamantly insist that they will not accept even minor, temporary incursions on their privacy in order to curb terrorist acts are being naive, as well as short-sighted. It makes them sound like they value every crappy little email they send far more than they value 5000 human lives. This sort of extremism will only make it harder to convince Congress, etc. to stand up to protect our privacy in a rational, ongoing way.
In other words, the so-called absolute constitutional right to privacy that people are now defending on
So what does the US constitution actually say that's relevant to our current dilemma? Well, the Fourth Amendment does protect us against "unreasonable" searches and seizures. Wiretapping, mail reading, and other forms of snooping are limited by this provision. The limitation only affects those privacy-violating searches deemed "unreasonable," and the reasonableness of a search is determined in part by its purpose and circumstances.
So you were correct in spirit, if not in letter, in suggesting that the US Constitution bars only privacy-violating searches that are "unreasonable" under the circumstances. I think
However, I do disagree with your statement that "the creators of the Constitution never could have forseen the kind of cowardly attacks we faced recently," such as "the 'impenetrable' United States [being] attacked on its own soil." The US was in fact attacked rather successfully on its own soil during the war of 1812 - the British virtually burned Washington DC to the ground. Certainly some of the Constitution's authors were still around when that happened, and there's no record of them crying out "Oh my god - we've been attacked on our own soil? Better throw out the old Constitution and get a new one."
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
If they are dirt poor etc. how and why would they be sending encrypted communications over the internet? The whole point of a terrorist cell is that they dont have to send things back and forth(money, info etc) on a regular basis. Most of the infrequent communication between cells seems to be face to face.
www.cnn.com has info on this.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Do it and the terrorists will kill themselves.
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
America probably relies too much on technology in the first place. Good old fashioned human intelligence gained from exploiting human weaknesses (such as one's fondness for drink drugs sex gambling etc) are invaluable. I remember a story I read in a book whose name I can't recall that was published during the Reagan presidency; it was one of those that during the time were really popular, about how the US was so far behind the USSR in military technology. NATO wanted to know about a new Soviet tank. The US used satellites to get the info; the Brits broke in to the base, Deus Ex stealth mode and took photos and replaced the broken pad lock when they left; the French had an agent invite a Soviet tank-officer to dinner and plied him with rich food and lots of alchohol.
Training, intellegence, and proper previous planning is more import then all that stuff. They should waste there money on high tech crap. They need to train the person, get them the information on who the need to kill, and plan well to kill him.
I think that the real war against terror is a the war against ignorance, suppression and hunger.
I think that people who grow up with the friends being killed
in war, is more likely to accept a suicide mission like WTC and Pentagon.
So, the real war against terror is to make sure that no one grows up in a
environment like that.
In short it is time to ensure
Liberty, Freedom and Justice for all people on this planet.
Knud
This reminds me of the "war" on drugs. It doesn't seem to bother the average American that we are bending the principals that are America to defend it.
Karma Clown
I agree that traffic analysis would be helpful - as long as the analysts can distinguish the significance. What has evolved from the "fun faxes" of the '70s (FW:FW:FW:FW:) would show up in a log as suspicious, when it most likely would be those emails with two pages of headers, containing dozens of email addresses - people with an intent to inform family, friends, and other contacts about the "event".
My 84 yr old mother is one of those people who has to spam her family with news and pix of her Christmas cactus blooming at odd times in the summer. Should this coincide with a terrorist event, and one of the recipients is on several people's distribution lists, they would take valuable resources in the process of being ruled out.
Even more noteworthy is the necessity to analyse *after* an event. This is why it is most likely necessary to break crpto *before* an event to actually prevent it.
db
Cig:
ôô
I just learned about some rather surprising information as to why the Taliban will never (willingly) turn over Bin Laden. Rather interesting!
How nice that you give bin Laden et.al. the benefit of western tought and action.
Read This
Perhaps after you understand the religious suicide cult we're up against, you'll understand that this isn't about vengence nor anti-Islamic rhetoric.
It's about dealing with a confederation of hate cults. A network of people who hold in disdain to the lives of those outside their cult. And treat any and all disagreement with violence and jihad.
The purpose of taking bin Laden out, guilty or not will serve two useful purposes. First, it puts a kink in their death-machine-network, both financially and with regards to the adhesion of their confederation (causing internal strife is one sure way to get them off our backs). Second, it conveys to them a message in their preferred language.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
In today's army the average soldier would probably be 'fighting' for a cheap education. He probably hoped he would never even see a battle, much less give his life for anyone.
We paid the Taliban US$43,000,000 just this June 2001, die-rectly to Kabul so the Afghanis could help us fight the War on Drugs. It was specifically released by John Ashcroft, AG for George the Shrub.
And Afghanistan is not 'harboring' bin Ladin, bin Ladin runs Afghanistan. So basically we deposited this check right into bin Ladin's personal accounts.
Read it here.
Mr. Driver, whoever you are, I salute you. Mr. Katz, you could learn a thing or two from this guy. Actually, we all could.
Another neat trick is to get them to turn on each other, either by killing off their food supply or by getting them to fight over who's the boss.
They will be using the new Land Warrior system for soldiers which includes a weapon called an OIWC and night vision googles.
Check out the game "Delta Force 3: Land Warrior" for what this system includes and for first hand experience using it.
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
So anyone who really wants to fight terrorism must fight that fear and that hate. Weapons and the threat of war are the wrong means for that. Careful diplomacy, propaganda and seeking for cooperation are the right means. Also Bush is using the wrong religious references. He shouldn't speak of sending terrorists to hell, thus only helping them to kindle the religious war they so obviously want. Instead he should ask the Leaders, and more importantly the people of that countries, if Allah could have wanted that. He should show those nations not the picture of a lone cowboy seeking revenge (a reference they probably don't understand anyway), but the pictures of the hurt and wrongful death of innocents this attack brought, and make those people understand, what the attack did to people and families very much like them.
If Bush thinks he must bomb afghanistan, he better bomb it with TV-sets and radio broadcasts. If he wants to rely on intelligence he should have his advisors teach him, how to talk to those people, how to show them the moral wrong the terrorists did. The aim must be, not to take revenge on a nation of mostly innocents, or to use those civillians as hostages much like terrorists use civillians as hostages, but to turn the opinion of those people against the terrorists, thus deprieving the terrorists of support.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I attempt to amuse myself as a diversion from the crushing and opressive mood "the attack" and it's fallout and ramifications has put me into.
I'm not saying that the US somehow masterminded or perpetrated "the attack". (as some have said). I'm sure everyone knew that something like this was inevitable. All the terrorist groups have been trying to do something like this, or wishing they could do something like this for decades.
I think what makes me feel WORST is that when I stand back and look at this attack - it was fucking beautiful. It was brilliant. It could have been executed in a far more deadly fashion.
1. The terrorists could have waited another hour, more people in the buildings than at 8:45.
2. The terrorists could have more carefully coordinated the crashes. They would not have lost the fourth plane.
3. They could have collected cell-phones from the passengers, and prevented them from finding out what was going to happen.
4. If both WTC planes had struck within a closer time-frame, and if both had struck LOWER in the buildings, many, many, many more deaths would have occurred.
5. I don't believe most of what I hear about this on the news, but a later report says that it's possible that 5 or 6 planes were planned, but at least one didn't fly due to a mechanical problem.
This could have been MUCH worse.
6. It could have been coordinated with a biological or chemical attack (killing ALL of the firemen, instead of only half) - or a car-bomb at the base of the tower, hindering the escape of people from the buildings. It could have been coordinated with an attack on the bridges or tunnels leading to/from that area, as people tried to escape.
7. Other tall buildings in other cities could have been involved.
8. Cyberwarfare could have been involved.
- - - - -
I have been wracked with insomnia this past week - thinking these things, how terrible and immoral they are. Yet, to protect yourself from a monster, you sometimes must become like that monster, you must understand that monster.
I grieve for the dead. I am apalled at the evil of the attack. I in no way sympathize with the cause or the people that spawned it. I desperately hope and pray that those responsible for it including those that assisted in any way, including funding, will be found and brought to brutal, bloody, vengeful justice.
Then, after listening to "the other side", hearing all the propaganda, anti-US sentiment, whining and complaining about how we hate arabs, we're out to exterminate muslims, we're a bunch of Zionist puppets. And I think of how the terrorist attack might have played into the hands of US policy, foreign and domestic.
1. The US law enforcement has been clamoring for YEARS to get better wiretap capabilities. Now they have them. We now live in a police state. Welcome to 1984.
2. It may not be obvious what the objective is. It looks like bin Laden, the manufactured villain of the day. But it's not. Whether he's responsible for the Trade Center destruction or not. He's now a very convenient excuse to play out a plan.
3a. What is the #1 scary monster for the US? Nuclear weapons. We've got them, and ever since then, we've been fighting like mad to keep control - make sure we're the only ones who have them, or that the ones who have them are our allies in the "New World Order".
3b. "Missile Defense" justification. Primarily, the goal of the "Military Industrial Complex" is to force consumers to spend as much money on their products as possible (thru taxation) - hence, all the arms sales around the world, etc. "Missile Defense" is a HUGE shot in the arm for sagging defense contractors. As will be the resulting conflict(s), and their consequences. (although, the hole in this deal is that - how does it serve anyone to annihilate stock prices and destroy the economy?)
3c. After reading that very long article (linked on slashdot yesterday) about Afghanistan - I'm quite certain that nobody in the whole world gives a rat's ass about that country, not even it's own people. The only people who care about Afghanistan are Pakistan, and the puppet government Pakistan installed there, the Taliban.
Therefore: Pakistan is the target here. A nuclear power, with a large number of Islamic fundamentalists. The US's worst nightmare. The recent military coup there was driven by what? A MORAL backlash against the previous civilian government. Their president was accused of corruption. This guy was accused of taking bribes and things like that.
You see, the "western way" of capitalism wouldn't be able to get along in a holier-than-thou land like Pakistan. Corruption is an integral part of capitalism. If a Microsoft programmer got his hands chopped off every time the Government thought Microsoft was cheating someone with it's opressive licensing scheme, that wouldn't be good for the industry. Or the economy. Or consumers. Or jobs. Or tax revenues (not that Microsoft pays any taxes, mind you. They don't).
I think that Pakistan will initially cooperate, but they'll change their tune in the middle, and the US will be forced to take action in "self-defense" as Pakistan starts hurling nukes at our troops as they commit "attrocities" in Afghanistan.
India: A very populous nation, on the brink of becoming a world superpower. They have nuclear weapons. They have a huge population of very intelligent, well-educated people. In fact, they figure in VERY importantly into the US economy's future, as a supply for cheap tech labor (H1-B visas, etc.). However, India has problems with internal turmoil and strife amongst minority religious zealots. Islamic fundamentalists, Sikhs, even Buddhists are bombing and slaughtering others in India. What is Pakistan? Essentially a rogue province of India that split-off because of a large percentage of Islamic people who didn't want to be a part of Modern secular India.
So - if this whole thing was playing into some supposed conspiracy's hands; the end-goal is to destabilize the region, possibly resulting in a small-scale nuclear war, and the annexation of Pakistan by India. This will settle Kashmir, for sure. Pakistani radicals will flood into Afghanistan, or Iran, further destabilizing that country.
The US gets a strong(er) economic and military ally in the region in India. The US gets it's own population under control. India gets Pakistan back, and hopefully a more secure Western frontier, Iran becomes a bit less stable and influential in the region. Islam as a whole bites a pillow. And the New World Order is that much more established. All because of those big-bad terrorists.
This conspiracy theory was brought to you by;
No sleep. Lots of caffeine. All the radical wacko web sites I've read in the past 5 years. All the terrorism apologists posting on slashdot in the past week. CNN. The FOX network. And Lockheed (TM), makers of the ExoAtmospheric Kill Vehicle (coming to a theatre near you).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I believe that we're seeing the start of some changes in our freedom and the "new kind of war" is the catalyst that some people will use to modify many of the rights we enjoy right here at home. I just heard that some legislation is being passed that will allow wire taps to be attached to people rather than phone lines, in other words the tap is good for any phone that the person mentioned in the legal docs is on. Right now the taps are only good for specific lines and separate taps are required for additional phones. I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing but it underscores the fact that this tragedy will signal the start of a new way of thinking by the lawmakers.
well spoken!!!
(i would myself, but hey, i've only got -4 karma, and so arent likely to ever really have any mod points. the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.)
Although that may be true, I can't see it making any difference now. How are Sherriff "Dead or Alive" Bush and Deputy Chaney going to back down if it turns out bin Laden wasn't responsible?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
The way they die is NOT as much important as for what they die or whom killed them. Bereing killed by a CIA agent with a silent bullet would as much make them a martyr than being hit by a rain 500 Pounds bombs.
Now if you really want to assassinate such elader , you have to make it look so that it comes from INSIDE their movement, like intern struggle. That would be the best way for this "new" war.
I think that's a pretty realistic assessment of the way things are *now*. I mean, domestic terrorism is quite different than international terrorism. Conflicts that are internal in nature generally only show up on everyone else's radar screens when they spill over into the international arena.
One reason for this is that most nation-states have zero interest in airing their dirty laundry in front of the rest of the world. Spain hasn't asked for assistance in combatting the Basques because they don't want to admit that the Basques are even a problem. Why ruin your tourist revenue by talking about Basques running around in the hills killing people?
Essentially what we're talking about are tacit rules of engagement. The long-accepted view of terrorism has been that the best way to deal with it is at home. If you're a particularly weak government, you ask for money from the United States, and you beef up your internal security.
Notice that client states such as the Phillipines get money to combat terrorist movements, but major western powers don't. That's because until now, those powers have felt confident in their ability to either squash the terrorists or at least put up with them, limiting their attacks to a car bomb here, an assasination there.
My guess is that a lot of those more powerful nations will start to re-evaluate their own relationships with their internal enemies. For example, we may see much more scrutiny of financial relationships between terrorist organizations and donors, even for example IRA donors from the United States.
If any real war on terrorism is going to win, that sort of re-examination of the rules of engagement will have to occur.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Is it just me, or does anyone else think the real problem in the months/years ahead is that we're running full-tilt into the next Red Scare?
We're starting a "war" against a group of individuals who are more or less evenly spread throughout the entire world. They don't look like anything special. They don't act like anything special (until it's too late). Heck, *anybody* could be one of those terrorists we're trying to nail!
I'm afraid we are exactly one Senator McCarthy away from turning on our neighbors just like we did when Communism was the invisible enemy.
Hey, did that guy piss you off? Call up the super-priority, well-publicized FBI tip line and tell them you have evidence he might be a terrorist. Suddenly, he loses his job, gets "blacklisted" from his profession, can't go out in public, and his life is over for about 10 years while he tries to prove his innocence.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I'm not convinced.
This thread dwells on the worry that the Taliban may declare a "jihad" against the USA. On this side of the fence, I notice that President Bush has declared his response to the WTC terrorist attack to be a "crusade." Isn't a "crusade" almost the same thing as a "jihad?" A religiously motivated war, just different religions. I think we have to be careful here...
-John
No fussy and cumbersome war procedures, no large-scale military operations, no pointless delays with diplomatic BS; just a few elite troops of trained assassins, quiet, accurate and deadly.
You mean Anti-terrorist terrorists?"BSD is about people pissing each other.." (Moid Vallat)
The World Trade Center specifically, and lower Manhatten in general, is the center of United States economic power. He didn't strike at Capitalism symbolically, he aimmed a plane at its center.
Crippling the economy of your enemy is part of a military act. The FBI supposedly intercepted bombs aimed at the George Washington Bridge (connects New Jersey to NYC) and other bridges. He aimmed to take out New York City.
This was an atteck on the US.
Some of his training manuals, when translated, stated that attacking economic targets are part of a military campaign.
When the US hits a city, realize what we hit.
Step 1: take out the power plants
Step 2: take out the bridges
Well, because of the US power grid, you can't take out the power plants, we'll redirect the power.
I think every member of our society should have to watch this movie.
There is no new war, nothing good can come from this kind of rhetoric. No new device or ID system is going to make anything better. In fact it will almost certainly make things worse.
We need to ask ourselves some really hard questions if there is to truly be an end to this sort of thing. Has anyone bothered to ask why there are groups now dedicated to hurting the U.S. population at large? People are not born hating us, they learn to hate the U.S.. And we give them very little reason to learn otherwise.
We are a greedy and excessive culture. Think about where the oil and cheep labor came from to provide the designer shoes we wear or the SUVs we drive. I do everytime I choke down the CO2 while standing on the street corner.
And in the end our only answer to these problems is to turn our society into one the fears itself. With everyone watching everyone.
More mistakes will be made and more innocent lives will be lost. I know no one wants to hear this right now, right now it is time for vengeance right? But blood only begets blood as out military will soon prove.
Afghanistan has virtually no air force, but I keep on thinking about all the shoulder-launched SAMs and anti-tank missiles that we gave to the Mujaheddin during the Soviet invasion. We gave them a lot of those things, and they are of pretty recent design. The SAMs were lethal against Soviet Hind helicopters, and the Afghanis are experts in how to use them. They may not be useful for hitting high-altitude aircraft, but helicopters, and the venerable F-117s and A-10s fly at low altitudes, and the missiles have IR seekers, so even the stealth aircraft are vulnerable. The Iraqis have 1970s era radar guided SAMs, but the Afghanis have US-made anti-aircraft equipment that they obtained as recently as 1989.
Anyone out there have more relevant data regarding this issue?
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Hey friends, it just dawned on me how stupid we are. Why are we allowing our government to send us to war when there is an easier, better, and cheaper solution to this... Yeah we won't get to throw our big balls around while perpetrating the "don't tread on me" principle, but who cares? Here's the tip, I realized this when I started thinking about the costs we'll incur:
Do you know why Pakistan has agreed to lend support to the US in their retaliation efforts? Do you know why Bush is asking us to start working hard? think $$$$ that's right, its not really out of deference for us or to help us out in a time of need... Its because we will be throwing dollars at them for years to come... Does the 40 billion appropriation for "cleanup" include a fat check to Pakistan (where will that money go, exactly?) or is that to be added to the final tab?... In a way, the terrorists are succeeding in suppressing our freedom by shackling us to our desks just so we can purchase retribution... I don't see much sense in spending so much of our wealth when all it will ensure is that we'll have to work more to pay off the costs (in lives and money)... Instead of going to war, why not spend a fraction of that money on the Afghani people through relief efforts, which would go a long way towards rebuilding their country? Personally, if we are wealthy enough to afford a sustained war, I would rather buy international POPULARITY with my tax dollars... If we could do this, watch how fast support for terrorism within the "rogue Arab nations" will dwindle...Hell, give the Taliban a few billions (the question whether they should rule in Afghanistan is not addressed here) and watch them hand BL over on a silver tray... Everyone's happy, no more deaths. We could be spending money on killing the cause, but we prefer to spend it on killing the symptom of the illness that is terrorism...
Our powers that be want to spend the fruits of our labor on waging war... Is that because we are clamoring for war, or did they really make the decision for us? I know that we all believe there is a democratic political process here, but who in the end benefits from this? Not the families who will pay more taxes for a sustained war, not the Americans who will lose their lives, not the target regions who will be cluster-bombed... The only true winners in the end will be: the terrorists, who will have caused us much more grief indirectly through our sustained retaliation efforts; and our republican administration, flush with war cash, and the big industries that finance them (military complex, OIL)... THEY come out the winners, NOT YOU... Now if we were to spend a few billions here and there in aid to different Arab countries, we could greatly reduce the general resentment against America... Why don't we do that? We can toss billions over to Israel, why not Syria, Iran, Tunisia, or Afghanistan? Personally, I don't give a rats ass if my money goes to Egypt rather than to Israel... At least it might work towards making MY country a safer place to live in... that's what all the hubbub is about, right?
I know you haven't missed out on all this brouhaha over hate-crime legislation. Now in many (most? all?) of the US it is MORE illegal to hate someone against whom you are committing a crime than it is to simply commit the crime.
:(
Notice what is happening. The legislators are telling us what we can and can't be thinking, and are penalizing us (meaning extra jail time) if we happen to be thinking the "wrong" thing (note that I am not advocating hatred).
If you think we have freedom of thought, you're already, sadly, mistaken
Regards
James
There seemed to be a number of different viewpoints coming out of Washington this weekend, each pointing in a different direction.
I found this pull-together and analysis (originally written for the Christian Science Monitor) over at Nando.net . I strongly recommend the full article -- I just hope that she is right in her conclusions, that voices for extreme carefulness are prevailing, in deciding the US response.
PS (OT) Does anyone still use Nando ? It must have been just about the first mainstream news website on the net, and still (IMHO) has an excellent balance of wire stories. But it seemed hardly slashdotted at all a week ago. Does anyone still go there ?this isnt iraq.
in iraq, you can go in, roll your tanks, troops and planes. navy warships were effective ecause they could fire on the country from the water.
there are actual cities, and a fairly easy environment to go find and destroy opposition.
you cant use tanks in the mountains of afghanistan.
you cant use your ships guns to shell them.
bombs arent effective - they just dig deep into their mountains.
which leaves a ground war with troops and little armour support.
ugly.
... hi bingo
... is to execute (in the words of my chinese-american colleague) 9 generations: 3 generations past, 3 generations forward, and 3 generations side-to-side. Yup, that's right: parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, first, second, and third cousins. Buh-bye.
The strategy (which was successful for hundreds of years) was simple: eliminate anyone who might wish to avenge or follow in the shoes of the perpetrator, and provide damn good incentive to families to turn in traitors amongst themselves (only in the case of a family member turning in the perp was the family spared).
While harsh and brutal, it sure beats dropping nukes indiscriminantly and would probably prove to be most effective. Imagine the bin-Laden wealth being used to hunt down their own fugutive son/brother, for example (either by the family, or by confiscation following their executions).
As to the notion, "what about when they do that to your family" I would argue the are intending to do exactly just that to my family, indiscrimently and without any reasonable provocation whatsoever. That is what mass attacks like the one last Tuesday are all about, not to mention the future bio/chemical/and nuclear attacks the media is quietly preparing us to endure right now. By adopting harsh measures the danger to me and my family is in no way increased, indeed quite likely the opposite.
This is war. That means harsh measures, harsh actions, and doing whatever is necessary to win, no matter how distasteful. We didn't ask for this and we didn't start it, but by god we're going to finish it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Since we're dealing with ultra-right-wing-fanatics here, it seems to make more sense to erode get our enemies to defeat themselves by exporting good old-fashioned western liberalism. The U.S. did it to the Japanese some 12 years ago, and look how well that worked.
My opinion is that we're vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of two things:
1) We invested too much in technology and not enough in human intelligence
2) We're strong enough in a conventional military sense there's no way for anyone to attack us that way, so we got complacent...
We're wary now, but it's interesting how much of the talk is centered around technical intelligence again. It's like we can't get over our own obsession with technology. I can agree that some measure of surveillance tech can help analysts do their work better, but my bet is that the real beef we need in law enforcement and intelligence is more and better human informants and analysts. Write your congressmen and encourage them to invest in that.
As for #2... well, it will take some doing, but the US and the world will likely start thinking more closely about what needs to be done to protect civil targets in these kind of situations, and how to affect the cultural change necessary to eliminate terrorism.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
- Disclaimer - I am not an operative or employee of the US Government. They pay people to forget more about this sort of thing than I will ever know. I harbor no sympathy for Bin Laden, hope to see him die painfully, and am not defending his actions.
/. posters are using the term jihad incorrectly, in reference to a holy war. Holy war is a bastardization of the word jihad by the American Government and media. A jihad is actually a purging of dangerous or unclean external influences. The point of a jihad is not to destroy the source of the influence, but to get such influences out of islamic society. An attack against American targets within the USA far oversteps the bounds of jihad.
/. posters who keep stating that the Afghan clerics have declared jihad upon the USA, that is untrue. The Afghans have stated that the will declare a jihad if we invade them, at which point the United States would face the full wrath of the world's greatest guerrilla army, lead by some of the CIA's best students. These people defeated the British three times, and the Soviets once, and anyone who thinks that invading Afghanistan is a good idea needs to realize that such a war would make Vietnam look like a walk in the park.
Did Osama Bin Laden really mastermind the terrorist attacks on New York? While it seems that he has the capability, it does not seem all too likely to me.
First off, this is not Bin Laden's MO. Bin Laden is engaged in a jihad against the USA. Many
Bin laden has refrained from attacking civilians before, and even publicly stated that to do so would be against the tenets of his faith. (Recent reports state that he has encouraged the killings of all Americans, but I have only seen such reports from the mainstream American press and do not put much stock in them.). It seems unlikely that he would suddenly shift stance and do so with an attack that far outstrips all other attacks he has admitted to or is suspected of. Attacks such as this could easily be responsible for a world war with the Afghanistani people, and even the middle east in general as a target. It seems unlikely that even Bin Laden would take such a risk of destroying the land and culture that he holds so dear and has spent so many years "protecting."
It seems to me that the US is likely dealing with something far greater than Bin Laden. His network of terrorists, "Al Quaeda" may be involved, but "Al Quaeda" is actually a network of reportedly 40-50 muslim terrorists groups that Bin Laden funds. The United States has repeatedly stated that another nation, likely Iraq was involved, which seems far more likely, given the obvious madness of Saddam Hussein and the devotion of his followers.
And to the
None of us want to see American blood spilled stupidly. (hopefully)
/. And smack the side of their head and say, "hey! Colin! did you know that the Mongolians and Alexander got handed their asses in Afghanistan! oh Shit!". No.
As much as I'm amused and addicted to the frenetic angry passion of slashdot members, none of us are writing policy. No one that affects the forces involved in this is going to read
We have to stop reacting to non action. The fact of the matter is the only official pontificating on our armed response is being done by politicos. Guys that have to appeal to the patience of the more passionate of their constituents (who are used the the Clinton admins policy of responding to all acts of aggression by flinging missiles into the void from the side of destroyers or bombing Iraqi SAM sites. And declaring the matter "resolved". Bed time.)
We have really smart, really capable people, in both the State and War departments. People that also know the history of the region. People with really good education. People that sweat this stuff for a living rather then as a hobby. People with better intelligence and resources then Google and CNN. People that have absolutely no desire to send an entire American exploratory army into a slaughter house like so much cattle.
Listen to the language they are using, they are preparing the American people for a war that unlike what we are used to. They are preparing us to expect small squad actions on many fronts in many nations. Covert ops that we might not be privy to. Unconventional warfare is the only way meet unconventional warfare. There will (probably) be no Peter Arnett holding vigil before pool footage of mech divisions gliding effortlessly into the shattered remains of the enemy's front line troops. There will (probably) be no Wolf Blitzer atop of a hotel roof ranting over footage of cruise missile contrails as they criss-cross the sky.
How about we cut them some slack, and only attack the intellect of our military after we have some idea how this war is going to be prosecuted.
I for one am pleased that the government would even consider a new kind of warfare. Here's why: if we engage in the spy vs. spy methods suggested by the talking heads then we may reduce the collateral damage to civilians populations both here and abroad. It has been our policy to approach war in a symmetrical, tit for tat way. It's been wholly ineffectual with terrorism as the terrorist is often dead already. Terrorism is an asymmetrical type of aggression. Our knee jerk reaction has been to find someone to bomb. But whom do we bomb? If we do what good will it do? The perpetrators will very likely live to strike again anyway (or they don't care if they're killed). Historically, it's the innocent sucker living in that country by an accident of birth that'll get screwed. My hope is that the goal will be for the perpetrators to be brought to an international tribunal for prosecution. It's been suggested recently that some familiar Americans leaders, such as Henry Kissinger, be tried as war criminals. We certainly need to be subject to the same justice as the rest of the world or risk being perceived as an international bully and be further targeted.
I worry, on the other hand, because this kind of warfare most threatens our civil liberties. Our civil liberty is already a causality in terms of coming and going; our privacy will certainly be (has been?) compromised as well. This is necessary to monitory terrorist tools (e-mail, cell, and encrypted files) and get close to terrorist "cells." New laws and better technologies to monitor them are required. This is so because of the nature of the intelligence community whose strong focus it is to gather information. I can live with this (for awhile) if it will save some lives. The bottom line here is that we have to learn to live with terrorism and the inconveniences that that brings with it. With respect to these inconveniences we need to be tolerant. The truncation of my privacy is a short-term sacrifice I'm willing to make. (In fact, if I had to choose between being a causality of some terrorist action or having my boring E-mail examined; I'd choose the later.) I imagine that many people reading this have much more clandestine activities who might best consider suspending these for awhile (or dealing with it). If they get arrested they should get a good lawyer and trust the system; (a sketchy proposition at best!) They probably would have a good case if their privacy were violated under the auspices of the Feds looking for terrorist anyway.
What will likely happen is that we will find someone to bomb the shit out of, as well as truncate our civil rights here at home. Neither will be very effective. The world community will remain involved until they begin to question our foreign policy, then will do whatever we want regardless of world opinion. (Might makes right.) Our war on terrorism will be about as effective as our war on drugs has been.
language is a virus from outerspace (and hearing your name is better than seeing your face)
I would like to coment that if you enjoyed the film MATRIX you should love the e-book that I have published for free distribution. It is authored by a contemporary Indian thinker called Jiddu Krishnamurti. And it is called Book of Life.a mu rti.htm
I was learning XML and so, tried to experiment with this translation to XML source file and JAVA. You should read this book and recomend it to others.
get it for free at:
http://armamuros.virtualave.net/download_krishn
hope you like it.
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
Hi, ;)) this in USA (I'm from Czech)...
I've many friends Israelis - you don't know one main thing - Israel men goes to army for 4 years, women for 3 and then until 50 (I think) they go every year for 2 weeks for military service. Thats why they can afford to have so many soldiers everywhere. Image (Beowulf?
Terrain is only one factor in a war, and guerilla wars have been successful in practically every type of terrain. The fact that the Soviets and the British were defeated in Afghanistan does not indicate that the terrain is intrinsically impossible to invade, after all the Taleban managed to do so successfully.
There is considerable evidence that the vast bulk of the Afgahn people do not support the Taleban but are prepared to tolerate them as a better alternative to instability. In fact the Taleban are almost exclusively from a single ethnic group that comprises only 35% of the population, there is considerable evidence of widespread attrocities by the Taleban against the other ethnic groups.
The key difference between this war and previous wars is that in all previous guerilla wars the objective of the invading power has been to hold the population centers and territory against the guerillas. In this case however the objective is quite different, the US could care less about controlling Kabul, what it wants to do is to deny Taleban control.
The other point is that most guerilla campaigns fail without the support of a major power that is at least comparable in power to the opponent. In the Spanish peninsular war the Guerillas were supported by the British (and vice versa), but the Guerillas could never have succeeded alone, the Spanish simply could not train troops to meet Napoleon in open battles. Equally the Vietnamese could not have beaten the US without Chineese support.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Gangsters have tried this sort of defense time and time again. "Gee, your honor, I didn't actually threaten him, I just said something bad might happen to him! I meant he might get a heart attack if he didn't give me money. Honest!"
Sorry, but the real world doesn't work that way. Bin Laden and the Taliban have declared Jihad - holy war - against America, and have openly recruited, trained, harbored, armed, coordinated, and financed their terrorists to make their barbarous attacks against us.
Despite your juvenile sophistry, these are not "THOUGHT CRIMES". They are not "thoughts" but actions. Nor are they even crimes, furtive acts committed by civilians for personal reasons. They are Acts Of War.
In wartime there are no "fair trials" that require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. An enemy soldier sitting in a machine gun nest gets no "trial" at all even if he never manages to fire off a shot. Even if he wouldn't have.
War is of course a very scary thing. But the U.S. and its allies did not choose this. The Taliban did.
You sound like a teenager still enamored with how well you could twist your parent's rules into a convenient excuse for something bad you or your friends did. What you may not realize is that your parents weren't fooled by this kind of behavior. They were just waiting for you to grow up. As am I.
Original story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A410 15-2001Sep16.html
Disconnect the Dots
By Joel Garreau
The essence of this first war of the 21st century is that it's not like the old ones.
That's why, as $40 billion is voted for the new war on terrorism, 35,000 reservists are called up and two aircraft carrier battle groups hover near Afghanistan, some warriors and analysts have questions:
In the Information Age, they ask, how do you attack, degrade or destroy a small, shadowy, globally distributed, stateless network of intensely loyal partisans with few fixed assets or addresses?
If bombers are not the right hammer for this nail, what is?
Bombers worked well in wars in which one Industrial Age military threw steel at another. World War II, for instance, was a matchup of roughly symmetrical forces.
This is not true today.
That's why people who think about these things call this new conflict "asymmetric warfare." The terrorist side is different: different organization, different methods of attack -- and of defense.
"It takes a tank to fight a tank. It takes a network to fight a network," says John Arquilla, senior consultant to the international security group Rand and co-author of the forthcoming "Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy."
He asks: "How do you attack a trust structure -- which is what a network is? You're not going to do this with Tomahawk missiles or strategic bombardment."
"It's a whole new playing field. You're not attacking a nation, but a network," says Karen Stephenson, who studies everything from corporations to the U.S. Navy as if they were tribes. Trained as a chemist and anthropologist, she now teaches at Harvard and the University of London. "You have to understand what holds those networks in place, what makes them strong and where the leverage points are. They're not random connections," she says.
Human networks are distinct from electronic ones. They are not the Internet. They are political and emotional connections among people who must trust each other in order to function, like Colombian drug cartels and Basque separatists and the Irish Republican Army. Not to mention high-seas pirates, smugglers of illegal immigrants, and rogue brokers of weapons of mass destruction.
But how to establish a target list in a network?
The good news is that in the last decade we have developed a whole new set of weapons to figure that out.
An industry has arisen to help corporations build new networks and junk old hierarchical bureaucracies in the age of merging and emerging companies, says Kathleen Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. New tools have been developed that analyze how an organization interacts, yielding a kind of X-ray that shows where the key links are.
There is a general set of principles to any network, says Stephenson, whose company, NetForm, has developed software that mathematically analyzes networks.
She points out that typically a network is made up of different kinds of nodes -- pivotal people.
The critical ones are "hubs," "gatekeepers" and "pulsetakers," she believes. Hubs are the people who are directly connected to the most people; they know where the best resources are and they act as clearinghouses of information and ideas, although they often are not aware of their own importance. Gatekeepers are those connected to the "right" people. They are the powers around the throne, and often they know their own importance. Pulsetakers are indirectly connected to a lot of people who know the right people. They are "friends of a friend" to vast numbers of people across widely divergent groups and interests.
The classic example of how to use this analysis is "finding the critical employee in the company -- the lone expert who knows how to fix the machine," Carley says. Ironically, without network analysis, managers frequently don't recognize who that is and the nature of his importance.
"But there's no reason it can't be turned around in the opposite way," she says. There's no reason organizational glitches, screw-ups, jealousies and distrust that slow and degrade performance can't be intentionally introduced." A network's ability to adapt to new challenges can be degraded.
Carley says: "One of the things that leads to the ability to adapt is who knows who and who knows what. The higher that is, the better the group's flexibility. But you can reduce the number of times the group can communicate or congregate. Or you can rotate personnel rapidly." And in war, this may have to be done by capturing or killing them. "You can also segregate the things people are doing, so they learn only on a need-to-know basis. The more isolated the tasks are, the more you inhibit their ability to function as a team.
"Imagine in your office if you knew who went to whom for advice," Carley says. "If you found a set of people who gave out more advice than anyone else and then removed them from the network, so they can't communicate with others, you would infringe on the ability of the network to operate."
In the case of terror networks, people are linked by family ties, marriage ties and shared principles, interests and goals. They thus can be all of one mind, even though they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. They "know what they have to do" without needing a single-central leadership, command or headquarters.
There is no precise heart or head that can be targeted, Arquilla says. Even if you take out an Osama bin Laden, his organization, al Qaeda ("The Base"), still has the resilience of a classic human network. Bin Laden's, for instance, is made up of an estimated two dozen separate militant Islamic groups in the Philippines, Lebanon, Egypt, Kashmir, Algeria, Indonesia and elsewhere, with hundreds of cells, some of them located in Western Europe and even the United States, as we've discovered in the past week.
On the other hand, depending on the structure of the network, removing a few key nodes can sometimes do a lot of good, says Frank Fukuyama, author of the seminal work "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" and now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
"Some are so tightly bound to each other that they are not embedded in other networks. Kill a few nodes, and the whole thing collapses. Take the case of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] in Peru. It couldn't have been that hierarchical. It was designed for the mountains of Peru. It couldn't have been terribly centralized. It had a scattered cell structure. It was hard to infiltrate. It was dispersed. And yet when you got [Shining Path founder and leader Abimael] Guzman and a few top aides, the entire thing fell apart.
"The idea that there is no end of terorrists, no way to stamp them all out, that if you kill a hundred, another hundred will spring up -- I would be very careful of that assumption. The network of people who are willing to blow themselves up has to be limited. Sure, there are sympathizers and bagmen and drivers. But the actual core network of suicide bombers is probably a much smaller population. It is also tightknit and hard to infiltrate. But it is limited. It is not obvious to me that there is an endless supply."
Another tactic: advancing the cause of the weakest link.
"Suppose I've got a really powerful pulsetaker," says Stephenson, "vying for a position of dominance. But I also know that a member of the blood kin group is moving forward who is weaker. If you arrange an accident to eliminate the pulsetaker, and let the weaker family member come in, you've helped corrupt the network."
The beauty of seeding weakness into an organization is that you can degrade its effectiveness while still monitoring it, and not causing a new and potentially more efficient organization to replace it. "You don't want to blow away the organization. You want to keep some fraudulent activity going on so you can monitor it. If you blow them away, you lose your leads," says Stephenson. "Better the devil you know. Like [Moammar] Gaddafi. Keep him alive, because you know him. Who knows what sort of clever mastermind might replace him."
Intelligence is crucial to analyze the network's weak links so you can destroy it.
"You're talking about what amounts to a clan or a tribe or brotherhood of blood and spilled blood. That is really tough to crack. Trying to infiltrate it -- we're talking years," says David Ronfeldt, a senior social scientist at Rand. However, from outside the network you can also look for patterns that stand out from the norm, like who talks to whom, e-mail exchanges, telephone records, bank records and who uses whose credit card, says Ronfeldt.
"I would attack on the basis of their trust in the command and control structures by which they operate," says Arquilla. "If they believe they are being listened to, they will be inhibited. If we were to reduce their trust in their infrastructure, it would drive them to non-technical means -- force them to keep their heads down more. A courier carrying a disk has a hell of a long way to go to communicate worldwide. If you slow them down, interception is more likely."
Human networks are distinct from electronic networks. But technology is the sea in which they swim.
"What made nets vulnerable historically is their inability to coordinate their purpose," says Manuel Castells, author of "The Rise of the Network Society," the first volume of his trilogy, "The Information Age."
"But at this point," he says, "they have this ability to be both decentralized and highly focused. That's what's new. And that's technology. Not just electronic. It's their ability to travel everywhere. Their ability to be informed everywhere. Their ability to receive money from everywhere."
This is why Arquilla is dubious about some traditional intelligence-gathering techniques, and enthusiastic about new ones. For instance: You can talk about turning one of the network members over to your side, but "that's problematic," he says. "You don't know if they're playing you as a double agent or are simply psychotic." He is also dubious about the value of satellite reconnaissance in determining what we need to know about these networks.
However, Arquilla likes the idea of understanding how the network works by using clandestine technical collection. For instance, he says, when any computer user surfs on the Web -- looking for travel tickets, say -- more often than not a piece of software, called a cookie, is transmitted to his computer. The device monitors his every move and reports back to some database what he's done.
Now, Arquilla says, "think of something much more powerful than cookies." They exist, he says. One way to use them is by creating "honey pots." This involves identifying Web sites used by activists or setting up a Web site that will attract them, and seeding them with these intelligent software agents. When the activists check in, they can't leave without taking with them a piece of software that allows you to backtrack, getting into at least one part of the enemy network. "That likely gives you his/her all-channel connections, and maybe even some hints about hubs or the direction of some links," says Arquilla.
There are other possibilities.
"You know those little cameras that some people have on top of their monitors? Let me just say that it is entirely possible to activate those and operate them and look through them without the machine being turned on," he says.
Software also exists that "allows you to reconstruct every single keystroke. One after the other. Why is that important? If you do find the right machine, you can reconstruct everything that happens. Even with unbreakable encryption, you have all the keystrokes."
Much of this is hardly new, of course. Divide and conquer has worked for a long time. Whenever the police got a Mafia wiseguy -- Joe Valachi, for instance -- to betray the others, no Mafiosi could trust another one as much anymore. Machiavelli, in "The Prince" of 1505, wrote about the strategic deployment of betrayal to undermine trust.
What's different is our technological ability to track groups in real time and see patterns that may be invisible on the surface. "Our technology is sufficient that you can now handle realistic-ized groups. We can deal with 30 to several thousand," says Carley. "You couldn't do that before."
In 1996, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote a slim but highly prescient volume called "The Advent of Netwar" for the National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense agencies.
It predicts that in a war between human networks, the side with superior intelligence wins. It also makes some tactical suggestions about countering human networks with counter-networks that actually have been used to combat computer hackers.
They include:
Find a member of the enemy group who is clearly a harmless idiot; treat him as if he were the most important figure and the only one worthy of being taken seriously.
Single out competent and genuinely dangerous figures; write them off or call their loyalty to the cause into question.
Control the stories people tell each other to define their reason for living and acting as they do. The terrorist story, says Ronfeldt, "gives these people common cause -- us versus them. Right now the U.S. would seem to have the edge at the worldwide level. But within the region, there was the dancing in the streets in Palestine. Part of the story is that America's evil, and that America's presence is to blame for so many of the problems in the Middle East. We have to attack that part."
Find the list of demands extorted by the network; grant some that make no sense and/or disturb and divide their political aims.
Paint the enemy with PR ugly paint so that they seem beyond the pale, ridiculous, alien, maniacal, inexplicable.
Destroy their social support networks by using "helpful" but differently valued groups that are not perceived as aggressive.
Divide and conquer; identify parts of the network that can be pacified and play them against former allies.
Intensify the human counter-networks in one's own civil society.
Adds Manuel Castells: "We should be organizing our own networks, posing as Islamic terrorist networks. We should then demand to join one of these networks and then destroy the trust structures. Only way to infiltrate. Oldest technique in the world."
Few of these ideas involve flattening Kabul, all of these analysts note.
Stephenson worries that massing the Navy near Afghanistan is "a symbolic show of old-fashioned strength. It's not about that anymore. This whole playing ground has shifted."
"In order to do anything, you cannot be blind," says Castells. "The most extraordinary vulnerability of the American military is it looks like they do not have many informants inside Afghanistan. It also looks like the majority of the components of this network do not relate directly or essentially to nation-states. That is new. Unless we have a fundamental rethinking of strategic matters, it's going to be literally, literally exhausting and impossible. It will be desperate missile attacks at the wrong targets with a lot of suffering. Massive bombardments turn around the opinion in many ways."
"Basically," says Ronfeldt, "you have to find somebody to wipe out."
No matter what technology is used, or what methods of information gathering is used. Bottom line. A war is going to take a soldier or marine armed with a weapon to do the bidding of the commander-in-chief. Those that have enlisted have made the decision that they will uphold and defend the United States and her constitution. While I enjoy debates as much as the next ./'er as a veteran I would recommend that everyone support the troops, and our country as best we can during this "new" war. I remember coming home from the gulf only to be called a war monger by a bunch of tree hugging teens at a mall while doing some recruiting work.
Remember guys... because of our armed forces you have the freedom to sit in your comfy Aeron chair and talk about how you don't like the military or US policies.
Sorry didn't put the url2 001Sep14.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/crime/A33994-
Fear leads to Anger,
Anger leads to Hate,
Hate leads to Violence,
Violence leads to Suffering.
Katz makes some interesting points that you don't address, like the fact that terrorist cells are decentralized. We have terrorist cells active in the US now, and if you believe otherwise, you're blind or stupid. How is going to war with Afghanistan going to solve that problem?
It won't. But we are at war and we must attack, not only defend. And we almost always try to use the strategy and tactics of the last war - luckily we did have some mountain ops in Kosovo, but not ground troops. We aren't at war with Afghanistan, we're at war with the Pakistani-supplied and originated Taliban who has little local support, and the only weapons and vehicles, in most (2/3) of the country.
Technology can be used as an intelligence gathering maneuver that will aid in the placement of troops and other resources. Personally, I think that you're brute force position will fail ultimately, and the reason for this is because of what I know about computing and technology.
We are going to use it, but it can only aid and assist in such ground. I spent most of my service in mountain troops and mountain engineering, and while intel can assist, it's not like a desert war.
Decentralized processing can process much greater loads of information than can a single CPU. This trend and logic seems to be something that terrorist cells have been able to use to their advantage.
Yes, and some of our forces have similar capabilities. And this will also make us hard to "find" the enemy, but it's not as hard as it appears, if you think it through. Basically, if it's got weapons or vehicles, it's not friendly, and it's Taliban. It's only when they dismount that this becomes a problem. If we try to invade and hold it, we lose. If we seek to destroy and disrupt, but leave when done, we win.
Now, as far as how to combat that? We have to redefine our out dated military strategies and put into effect some sort of mechanism that can combat a distributed, non-centralized attack. It's sort of like combatting a DDOS in a way. You gather intelligence, not from the source itself, but the metadata that you recieve from the attack, then you resond accordingly by dropping certain packets. Likewise, in defense of this sort of attack, and indeed, taking an offensive position as well, we have to gather as much information as is humanly possible, use a distributed method of analysing it, and respond in a very pointed, targeted method. No broad sweeping attack plan will work in this or any other case where national boundaries are non existant, and politics are beyond the scope of international diplomacy.
The other thing is it's not just Afghanistan, it's 20 countries last time I checked. Some we can have booted out by the local governments, some we have to attack, some the local supporters will defend, some they will stand aside.
It's a war. With different battles, in different places, and different problems for each.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If Osama Bin Laden was assasinated tomorrow, what country would be assumed to be responsible? The U.S. of course. Hell, if the Israelis did it we'd still get blamed. The people who think Bin Laden might have a point are just going to get further evidence that maybe he's right after witnessing further agression by the U.S. Furthermore, since it's not like he was even given a trial, we haven't really presented proof that he really is behind this. If he doesn't get a chance to defend himself against accusations, how do we know he isn't just a scape goat?
:).
Political dissidents, you say? Nonsense. We would be going after *known* terrorists, people with quite a few claimed terrorist attacks on their records, not some guy who just opposes his country's government.
We'd be going after *known* terrorists? How do they become *known*? By killing people. So by then it is too late. So then how do we stop them from getting to that point? We have to infiltrate organizations who *might* harbor terrorists. And hey, while we are there, why don't we do a bit to keep them quiet. It's a very slippery slope when the government starts lashing out secretly. If there's no oversight, no judge, what's to stop them from infiltrating more benign organizations?
Well, I guess you *could* try them and put them in prison. But what do you do when, a few months later, 10 guys carrying concealed plastic containers walk into the Empire State building and threaten to release Serin gas (or Anthrax or whatever) all over Manhattan unless you let bin Laden or whoever is currently in jail walk away free? Not much you can do, eh?
So we kill him. And then 10 guys carrying concealed plastic contaners walk into the empire state build and release serin gas (or antrhax or whatever) all over Manhattan. The only way to defuse their fanaticism is to show to the world in a fair way what he has done and how it is truely a blight on humanity. The most fanatical won't be convinced by this, but then shooting him won't convince them either (and it may convince less radical elements that the United States is just a VERY large rogue nation).
No, these guys *must* die. And they must die in such a way as to discourage others from becoming terrorists: quietly and anonymously.
Yes because we all know that people who aren't afraid to die are likey to be afraid that we will kill them.... uh, okay, sure
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Read up on your history of Afghanistan and the wars that have been waged there. The Russians have tried and lost several times. The British have tried and lost. Hundreds of years of history is being ignored here.
Afghanistan is, at this point, dirt and stone. 5 years of drought and famine piled on top of hundreds of years of fighting and infighting have brought the place about as close as you can get to hell while still walking the planet.
Here's the image that keeps flying through my head:
Old-school B-52 bombers appear over Afghanistan
People run for whatever cover is possibly left at this point in Afghanistan's history
Food, clothing and medical supplies start falling, parachuting to the ground.
Vengeance begets vengeance. If only our leaders in America could see objectively how steadfastly they refuse to learn from history. Our presence in the middle east needs to STOP being about war and START being about peace if we EVER expect there to be a cease-fire from the militants that reside there.
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.
I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.
But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time
So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.
And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
So we're planning on having a war on terrorism.
What will it be like?
Well we've never had a war against terrorism before but maybe we can extrapolate a bit from similar experiences.
The "War on Drugs" comes to mind.
In both cases there is no specific enemy. Instead the war is focused on a philosophy. Thus we attempt to eradicate the "enemy" by killing or arresting adherants of the philosophy.
In both cases it is a war which must be fought within our own borders as well as abroad.
In both cases there is no exit condition.It's unlikely that we'll ever be able to eliminate all terrorism but at what point will we have won the war? When we've elliminated 90% of all terrorism? When acts of terrorism fall below a certain acceptable frequency?
Both wars require gigantic expenditures of money over indefinate periods of time.
In my opinion the "War on Drugs" has been a spectacular failiur. We're spending ever increasing amounts and drug use is as high as it ever was. But now it's associated with terrible violence and the drug lords are rich.
Thus by my prediction, in a few years, when we're in the middle of the "War on Terrorism", we'll start to notice that we are spending way too much money without making any progress at all except to draw more attention to terrorists and eroding our own civil liberties.
If the CIA believe that they should all be fired. There are over a million arab americans living in the US. There are a million moslems living in the UK. There are a quarter of a billion of them in the neighbouring states to afghanisan.
Given the fractious nature of Islamic politics it should not be beyond the ability of a moderately competent inteligence agency to recruit people to infiltrate.
Turning insiders is also an option, however turned agents are very different from moles. If you don't have the ability to infiltrate a group you are most unlikely to be able to turn someone inside it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Off the wall -- given their society, I think we should haul the guy to a hospital, give him a sex change and dump him back where he came from.
No messy assasination and he's out of the power picture.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
What war?? Theres nothing much to destroy in Afghanisthan, no infrastructure to talk about, no army, nothing... exept Bin Ladin (whos an asshole wich they should hang!) it would probably bee one of the shortest wars in history.. Afganisthan would be litterally wiped out of the earth...
The only thing that can be fougth in a IT-war is probably the Talban homepage... and this has allready been hacked... The Internet is forbidden over there...
I think firing people on the current CIA hirerarchy is a good start !
...
Here's more on this
Why can't Uncle Sam spy? -
The problem is red tape, turf battles and no spies on the ground, say experts
- sigs are for wimps.
the war of the future will be fought by robots, and it will be our jobs to repair and maintain those robots.
The Taliban does NOT have popular support in Afghanistan. They rule by fear, force, & terror.
If that is where we end up attacking (pretty likely IMHO), and we rid Afghanistan of them, it'll be a great opportunity to help the people (possibly thru some of the opposing groups) start a democratic gov't.
"If encryption is outlawed only outlaws will use encryption"
Seems to me there has been a lot of talk about the government forcing backdoors on encryption and such. There is already encryption out there. I think it would be a hard sell to convince future terrorists to use encryption with back doors. The only people these laws would affect are people who are not committing crimes, or people who are stupid and committing crimes. I don't know about you but I'm not concerned about stupid criminals, the typically they don't build nuclear weapons.
National ID cards with some kind of chip I'm not to worry about. The government can track where I go, I really don't care. If they started tracking every one, they would have way too much data to care about people who were not committing crimes. I find it had to believe some GS-11 would really care that I went to 7 11 last night and bought a Slurpee. As long as they don't sell this info to the evil credit card companies, and significant others, I really couldn't care.
The sophistication of the "codered2" virus - attempting 16 different cracks on IIS, then attacking clients via the browser, cannot be a co-incidence.
People who claim this is done because IIS is an "easy" target, are probably missing the point. The web server usage stats have repeatedly shown that the only place IIS has a majority market share, and in fact, an increasing market share, has been "e-commerce" sites.
If you wanted to smash down on an already struggling market, what better way than to target the most prevalent software platform of small businesses who do online transactions?
Targetting IIS provides a nice, consistent, attack strategy - there's a lot of sites, the destruction method will be the same for each one, and the disruption will be a lot worse than some defaced home page.
If I were paranoid, and I'm getting there, I'd say that codered 1 was simply a tester for what was planned to happen a week after the WTC destruction.
Attacking xxx country will make our enemies want to attack us again
Does anyone think that the people in the world that want to kill Americans are suddenly satisified with the WTC attack? That the WTC attack was the ultimate and final act of these thugs, and they will take no further action?
How many American embassies need to be bombed, ships need to be nearly sunk, and civilian targets destroyed before America gets to take preemptive measures?
European leaders that attempted to appease Hitler thought that by giving him Austria and Czechoslovakia, he would suddenly become peace-loving ("peace in our time"). Boy were they wrong, and 50+ million people paid the price over the next 7 years.
Afghanistan can't be conquered, and therefore military action is stupid.
People seem to not realize what the objective of military (overt or covert) will hopefully be: Kill the terrorists, or otherwise prevent them from orchestrating/conducting further attacks. Killing them would be best, but if the bad guys are holed up in the mountains, digging in to avoid the next air strike, then they aren't going to have a lot of time to plan the next attack on America. Problem solved.
Military action will cost American lives.
That may be true, but that's what we have a military for: to sacrifice their lives if necessary to defend the Constitution, and Americans.
New technologies, yes. New enemies, yes. A somewhat different operational environment, yes.
But what is this, really? Low-intensity conflict - a counter-insurgency campaign. We've done it before (against Muslims, too), in the Phillipines. Quite frankly, we won that one. We lost the second time we tried, in Vietnam (actually, we won the counterinsurgency phase, but lost the guerilla/conventional forces phase). Other countries have, too. Militarily, nobody's ever done a good job of running a COIN campaign in Afghanistan - the people, the culture, the terrain, and the environment are more conducive to the insurgents than just about any other place on earth.
Bombing Afghanistan won't do much good, either, for two reasons:
- It leaves us very vulnerable to bad intel. The 1998 cruise missile strikes are a great example of that. It's not well publicized, but that was an intel op that we came out on the wrong end of. We were supposed to be hitting a meeting of terrorist leaders, at least according to intercepted cell phone calls. What we actually hit was a religious retreat of Pakistani physicians. All we accomplished was demonstrating very clearly that we were listening in on cell phone calls.
- There really isn't much left to bomb. The last 22 years of combat in Afghanistan has pretty much destroyed the national infrastructure - there just aren't any good targets left. All bombing would do right now is move the rubble around some.
Want to win this war? Hearts and minds - we're going to have to go in, occupy the area, and change the society.
The Russians sent a bunch of heroin addicts and alcoholic draftees to Afghanistan to fight the CIA-by-proxy. The Russian army today is no better - look at Chechnya.
I'm not saying that Afghanistan would be a cakewalk for the US Army, but the terrain is similar to terrain they train on in the US, and they are a much better equipped and better disciplined force. There is no comparison.
What defence is there against people who are ready to die to achieve their goal. We all know than "if we set our minds to it", we can do anything. In this case it has indeed focused our attention on a entirely new problem. There are those who build their countries on a concept of freedom under responsability, where the laws are designed to protect other from their evil doings and not to protect them against themself. But our problem is that we have countries with people that feels that in the whole, they are doing good and there are countries with people that feel that they have nothing to loose and that a act that will require them to sacrifice their own life in order to change their image of the world for the greater good of their people, it will be allright.
While the attack we saw did a lot of damage and in our eyes was the worst thing that could happen, I can think of a lot of installations that would cause a lot more damage if they were attacked in the same way. The towers was a landmark and a symbol of the western culture and becuse of that, a good target to hit if you really wanted to make a statement. But if you really wanted to make damage then you would want to take out the backbone of the country. The US and other has done this already. Attacking powerplants to remove the much needed power to keep the country running. Just think about how the US today having problems keeping up with the demand for power in some places. So take out a powerplant and make it a nuclear one, and you have really done damage. Today most westeren nuclear plants are encapsuled in a strong shell, that enables it to take a lot of punishment, even a aircraft. But what if there were two aircrafts, and these two just had taken of with their wings full of fuel. Then the outlook is not so good anymore. Something you don't even want to think about.
It's clear that we have been forced to wake up now and smell the coffee, even if we dont really want to. So what is freedom to you now? Is freedom that you limit your country/goverment in the ways of tracking you and others or monitoring that tries to keep a track of those that threatens your freedom. I don't have the answer, I guess there must be a "happy" middle. Of course this week has been a great chance for those who seeks total control and monitoring to step forward and get their agenda through.
This violates the common precept of equal treatment - which was tossed out of our law decades ago, unfortunately.
That'd fix the problem
The only effective way I can see of getting rid of them is infiltrating their organizations, gathering as much intelligence about them as possible, then assasinating them one by one.
You have a valid point, but this is only part of the job. You can chase after terrorists forever, and more will crawl out from under the rocks of religeous fanatism. The point in going after Afganistan, is to stom them and other countries from providing these terrorists with a safe place to train and finacial resources. If govenments are supporting these terrorist activities, then they need to be stopped.
The problem is that even as we take out one terrorist cell, another will pop up. This could easily end up as unending as the "war on drugs". The real question is why do these people hate the US so much. One reason I've heard a lot lately is that the freedoms that the US stands for fly in the face of their strict religeous beliefs. They see the freedom and democracy that the US preaches as a horrible affront to their morality. They're attacking us because our way of life, and the fact that we are prosperous while living that way, is disolving the strict religeous fanatism of their countries. They see Western influence as being a horrible corruption that they must stamp out before it destroys what they believe in.
I don't see the US changin it's ways. I see us continueing to stick up for individual freedoms. I see us continuing to condem the atrocities like what the Taliban has done to the women of their own country in the name of Islam. This leads us to an impass. They are willing to kill to defend their beliefs, they've proven that. We are being force to kill to protect ours. It's important to note that it's not the religeon of Islam itself. It is the interpretation of it by some fanatics that is incompatible with our way of life. I don't see a peaceful solution when two groups are so diametrically opposed.
It's a war on the american people's freedom.
> What is it good for?
> Absolutely nothing.
[insert obvious WWII statement here about
the usefullness of military action against Germany and Japan]
You do not seem to have realised that this time around the US does *not* face a country that could be defeated.
Such is the nature of terrorism.
The US may well flatten another country or two, noone disputes the fact that they have the military power to do so. However, will that do anything to prevent more terrorist attacks in the future? Of course it won't.
Instead, such an act would further fuel the hate that this came from to begin with. If anything, we should investigate where this came from and try to remedy that. Take away the cause, research just *why* this could have happened and try to take away the causes of terrorism instead of just fight the effects. If we do not that (and the Bush Administration seems incapable of it) then this is only the beginning, no matter how many countries the US would nuke away for the purpose of retaliation.
If we want world peace (or at least an abcense of horrible terrorist attacks like this one), we *must* find out and take away the root causes of it.
I pray for world peace, even though I am not religious. At the same time, I feel we need to do more than just praying. What happened last week is too serious to not engage our collective brains on. Together, we should be able to come up with something better than just flattening a few more countries without hope that will change anything...
The link in the parent tried to get me to download readme.eml. Yay. See the article about the new worm if you want to know why this is bad. NO ONE using Internet Explorer should click through that link.
Well bust my buttons! Thank you very much. I needed that promotion!
Seriously, please Note that I am NOT Harry Reddington. Careful reading of the post would reveal this.
The Historical note for Item #1 is fact. I am sorry that you disagree with documented history. Of course, I must have been a moron to post something to this forum that I found interesting. This is okay. I like spirited discussions.
are these people going to hell according to jerry falwell or pat robertson?
Ah I see, you are not familiar with the doctrine of being defiled or being unclean. Christianity does away with this concept, as being saved by Jesus is the ultimate cleansing in that faith.
Please read up on other religions. You will find certain dietary and behavior restrictions, which if violated, do send the person to the hell of their faith if they do not get themselves cleansed. Certain strict factions of Islam have this. Really!
I understand that you may have been too busy foaming at the mouth to read up on this, but you really should.
Knowledge is power.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Why don't we give all the innocent afghani people those li'l paper cell phones and have them call us whenever they encounter a muslim terrorist plotting to hurt people or blow up shit. Then we can pinpoint their call and bomb the hell out of that place, or... maybe police-like action with hum-Vs and full-auto swat teams, kinda like the DEA, but for terrorists instead of potheads. :)
I haven't seen these "recent news reports" that you cite. Could you post a link to them? Or at least tell me where you saw them?
Evil is the money of root.
But in a few weeks and months we'll have a massive conventional war on our hands, with the tools for this "new kind of war" typically used on civilians at home.
It might take a while to reinstitute the draft, but did you notice the sharp increase of ads for joining the military during shows where they were not typically found at all before? I mean, how many potential army men would be watching Queer As Folk, anyway?
In the end this is going to be a long, drawn out land war against an entire region, not a short flash war against a single country or small group of countries. Bush keeps saying that the States is gonna get any country which harbours terrorists. I think that sums up the popular view of the mideast, and the region has a bunch of mutual defense treaties kicking around already.
While the public is being fuelled into bloodlust so strong that the majority is okay with the use of nuclear arms against a single country, GWB is playing word games. I think I liked it better when politicians didn't tell the truth.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
During the cold war we were given the impression that Soviet forces were the equal of their NATO adversaries, but now we know better.
The Russians sent a bunch of heroin addicts and alcoholic draftees to Afghanistan to fight the CIA-by-proxy. The Russian army today is no better - look at Chechnya.
The Russians managed to kill more than 1 million of the Afghan population w/ only about 15,000 of their own dead over the
course of 10 years. Still, the Afghans where unrelenting with their defense. Reports of Afghan soldiers mortally wounded firing
their weapons until death. Suicide bomber and Ambush tactics, etc. etc.
To say the Russians were incompetent, is completely ridiculous. A 100:1.5 kill ratio is nothing to sneeze at. A more accurate
description is to say that the Afghans are a very strong, tenacious warrior w/ the the major advantage of knowing the terrain
better than any of our Intelligence community could hope to prep our soldiers for.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
1. Can we precisely define "terrorism", please? Is it something that can only be done by our enemies, or are there things that our friends or even our own government might do that would fit the definition? Is Greenpeace a terrorist group? What if the petroleum industry thinks so?
2. Everyone talks about trading liberty for safety, and most Americans seem willing to make this bargain. Exactly how does the loss of our civil rights make us safe, and who will guarantee that it indeed does? Is it possible that we might actually be less safe?
3. We assume that by greatly expanding the powers of the police, FBI, CIA, etc., we enhance their ability to make us safe. Can we be sure that this will forever be their only agenda, or is it conceivable that they might sometimes use these powers for other purposes? Who will guarantee that they don't?
4. Much of this "new kind of war" will be fought in secret. How will we know when it's over, and our rights can be restored? Will we know who the targets are? Can we trust those in government not to target groups and individuals that displease them for reasons unrelated to terrorist threats? How will we know if they do?
5. Will all political dissent be seen as a precursor to terrorism? If so, how will we ensure free, fair elections during this "war"? Will democrats try to use elections to topple the current government? Do we trust the current administration not to use its new powers to stifle political opposition? Should we trust Bush more than Nixon in this regard?
Just askin'...
Instead, such an act would further fuel the hate that this came from to begin with. If anything, we should investigate where this came from and try to remedy that. Take away the cause, research just *why* this could have happened and try to take away the causes of terrorism instead of just fight the effects.
The main cause of terrorism in this case has already been mouthed by Bin Laden over and over again. He's upset we set foot on Saudi Arabia, and his orginzation is interested in replacing infidel govts like ours with radical Islamic fundamentalism.
The main problem here is radicals that pervert the Islamic religion, and governments that use this religion to opress their citizenry and fund terrorist to do their dirty work.
We might not be dealing with a "traditional army", but if you train, feed, harbor and encourage the terrorist groups that's just another type of army. It's also convienient, because you say "It wasn't me" type of excuses.
If we do not that (and the Bush Administration seems incapable of it) then this is only the beginning, no matter how many countries the US would nuke away for the purpose of retaliation.
Actually, I have all the confidence that they have a good chance of succeding in eliminating at least some of the more dangerous groups.
Bush's team learned from president Clinton, that cruise misseles don't solve the problem at all.
BTW, we're not about to nuke anybody, but feel free to be alarmist and reactionary. Perhaps the studying here should be by you and why don't you place any blame on the Islamic fundamentalist, and at least one of their Theocratic government, which by the way opresses Afghans.
Oh, Afghani foreign policy after we helped them get rid of Russia ? 43 million in drought relief last year, and 9 out of 10 dollars of aid into Afghanistan come from the US.
Maybe the world community , specially Europe should try to help poor countries as well instead of depending on the US to be the one spending all the money ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Our politians are just using this as a convenient excuse to restart the cold war. This is wrong, isn't it obvious to anyone, these hijakers killed 6000 people with nothing more technological than a couple of box openers.. Oh boy, all the electronic survellience in the world is not going stop another attack if those assholes want it that way. The message was "we can take you out without the need for your weapons or tech". These people will go low-tech now, wow so the innocent are going to pay the price of the guilty again. Anyone ever ask themselves if this isn't exactly the reason why this happened in the first place. You better move your moms to another country (if any will be safe)..
Let's see , what's better for the human race;
Democracy or Theocratic Fundamentalism ?
This one is a no brainer, just ask the Hindus in Afghanistan asked to wear a scarlet letter marking them as non-Muslim.
As the women who got their businesses taken away, and that are not allowed to be educated and have to be covered even with masks.
Ask the people who are sick and tired of tribal warfare, and people making up religious laws that give them no freedom.
Democracy or Theocratic Fundamentalism ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Got into? Funny, I didn't think that The History of the Peloponisian(sp) War was written in or about the second half of the 20th century, but hey, who knows....
There have been codes of moral war actions probably as long as there have been wars, and "realistic" thinkers trying to tear them down just as long. It failed in ancient Athens, you aren't going to convince us just by pretending its a new idea you're going against.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I think this is the long war that Bush is talking about. Yeah, there likely will be some overt operations, hopefully something that helps destroy some of the terrorist's resources, but the REAL battle will be spy vs. spy. It will be a long war because infiltration takes time. You need to be trusted enough first to be let in to a terrorist network, then you have to work you way up. You'll have to gain more trust to work your way up the organization - by *being* a terrorist. Think about all that implies in the 'new' war.
One thing is for certain - if the States and the rest of the world are serious about suppressing terrorism (you can't stop it entirely) you will have to pay the price in human lives: On the ground to take out a government that continues to shelter terrorists; as an assasin willing to die to take out an important individual in a terrorist network; as a spy having to kill innocents in order to get high enough in the terrorist chain of command to get the information the assasins and soldiers will need.
This nuke/missle/bomb thing is a bunch of crap - we need information to target them! That particular operation is NOT glamorous, does NOT satisfy people's desire for revenge, and does NOT make for good political browning points as your voter will not know what was done until long after the operations have happened.
Oh, and it doesn't help that the USA is in a terrible state right now for it's overseas intelegence operations. It will improve, but I think it will take ten years at least to get any real indications as to if they will do any of what I'm describing with enough resources to make a difference.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
...someone fingers *nix as a terrorist aid?
I don't mean vague 'the internet is bad' rhetoric, I mean a captured laptop running Red Hat or Mandrake?
Jon, no one gives a fuck what you think. Your writing style is on par with most middle schoolers. Your whining tone makes me think of fingernails scratching across a blackboard. The fact you've been given such a public forum in which to inflict your rantings is a shame. If Slashdot feels that you're asinine viewpoints are worth sharing, then it calls into question to me their whole belief in Linux, and Open Source in general.
If you truly wanted to do the Linux community a favor, you could lay on some traintracks. At the very least you could stop barfing your worthless screeds onto Slashdot.
EggTroll, posting as AC because Taco and Neal are a bunch of flaming cockfondling turd burglars.
Would you just let up on Bush? He hasn't done
anything stupid yet, and the great groundswell
of jingoism has broadbased bi-partisan support along with much of the stuff that is making people
mad at the U.S..
Electronic warfare is cheap and easy when the whole US economy runs on unpatched IIS servers. Even if everyone ran right out and patched the shit out of every server on the planet, the crappy reputation IIS has for security holes would entice lamerz to write worms that simply take up bandwidth by trying every known securith hole from the last few years.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
i am boycotting slashdot i have been using this website for information for 4 years right now and i am disgusted at some of posts that i have been reading directed towards muslims and arabs and middle east what makes Americans any different from the people that caused this tradgedy this past week when they slander and write so much hatred and i did'nt see any condomentation from the people that run slashdot and I am proud to be muslim and i am not going to be persucuted because of my beleifs islam has nothing to do with violence of any nature and i'd think that slashdot people are not ignorent and are very smart people from everywhere telling form some of the posts i saw i was wrong this is my last post and i will personally never visit this website again
Okay now THAT was funny. I'd shower you in moderator points if I had them.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Tackle the starvation problem and control the spread of radical fundamentalist Islam simultaneously. Drop tons of Spam on all Taliban controlled areas.
If we build Spam into the next set of skyscrapers built in NYC, Islamic fundamentalists will not do suicide runs into them.
Use drug sniffing pigs at airports to search for contraband.
Seriously, the above twisted and sadistic humor is meant to trigger a realization as to prejudiced we've already become. What is still needed is a sane and rational process that produces an actual chain of evidenced devloped through basic good police work. This in turn should result in arrests of actual perpetrators.
Bush seems to want to create a militarized crusade, to create a war on something nebulously defined as evil, and festooned with the face of bin Laden as the main 'islamic radical fundamentalist' devil, when what is needed is to carefully investigate, follow basic good procedures of evidence gathering, get extradictions, and prosecution in front of a grand jury of peers.
Understanding this event as a terrorist attack doesn't mean we can do anything effective by sending B-52s to prosecute for justice. We need a jury of our peers to review actual evidence and hand out proper justice. Dropping napalm and cruise missles will be as useless as Spam, although large amounts of Spam might help the starving population get the energy to throw off the Taliban rule.
Until our police or FBI can indict and prove someone as truly guilty to a jury, we are simply fighting our nightmares and jumping after shadows, shadows we imagine as having turbins and sashes... That is true powerlessness--when we lose faith in own system of justice we have already lost America, we don't need anyone else to take it from us if we toss the land of the free, brave and independent away for our own version of Crusade/Jihad. These folks who flew into the towers dressed like us, talked like us, and walked right onto our planes without triggering any further review. The people in the towers came from every ethnic background in the world...muslims included. Keep in mind how our media only showed American whites (and a few blacks) as victims. Little has been said about any brown race. Calls for tolerance and careful rational thinking are shouted down as un-American. Remember how our media and people chased after any arrested middle easterners after the Oklahoma City bombing--only to find out that it was a disgruntled white protestant American male who was responsible...and that the government knew this long before bringing this up? Show me real evidence before sending any military off to fly to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or firing one missle!
What the Taliban wants is a holy war which drags Islamic countries into war with non-Islamic countries and to provoke God to stand up for them in a finaly blaze of revelation glory. Of course, a good muslim male dying for this cause is rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise. So perhaps we need to ask for volunteer virgins willing to go over clad with chastity belts made of Spam cans and ask the men to chose between Taliban and Spam! (Yes nurse, I forgot my medication...I'll take it now please.)
Great idea.
No thanx. "Wanted dead or dead" is the way to go this time. And let's not forget the lieutenants, suppliers, etc. This is much more than just one guy or one organization. This will be a continuing effort on into the indefinite future. We willl need a permanent Department of Anti-Terrorism, and much of what it does will not be pretty.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
I can understand your anger. In fact, I can understand it very well. Had anything like this happened in my country, had *I* had lost many friends in a strike like this against my country, I would have been fighting to hold on to my sanity.
However, luck has it that I am in the innocent bystander role.
However, if I were in your place *and* had managed to keep sane, I would have reasoned like I did in the post you respond to.
What has happened, has happened, no matter how horrible. Nothing you and I can say or do, we will not be able to give life back to all the innocent people who died in this truely barbaric attack on humanity.
What I feel is even more important than retaliation is prevention. How can we make sure something horrific like this will never happen again? How many more terrorist attacks do you want to get after this one? I am sure that you, like me, don't want it to happen ever again...
To that end, we need to analyse how this one ever happened. Why do people hate the US so much that not only they do not care about all the innocent lifes but are even going to sacrifice their own life doing it?
If we get a good grasp of the why of this attack, we stand a chance of preventing anything similar in the future. If we just try to kill Osama bin Laden, we might end up with dozens more of him, maybe not as rich but much more determined to hurt the Western world. After all, we killed their "hero".
Call me weird, but I'd much rather have a structural solution of the problem itself instead of just killing one or two terrorist leaders and wait for the next terrorist attack.
Jon, you are such a retard. You know that right.
I hope someone mods this up...
I havnt been on slashdot in a long time. Too annoying sometimes, and im a busy sob.
Anyway, I need to respond to this person who says that the Afgani's will be fighting with heart.
Let me tell you, if we go to war, I will be the first person to sign up, even if they are planning on drafting me. You attack my country, my city, my friggin way of life, my security, and Ill be damned if im not going to attack back.
I wonder how many people here have ever stood up for something that they believe in without having the safety and anonymity of email, message boards, or the phone to do it with.
Get some backbone people, or else you dont deserve to live in this country.
I'm going to have an extra beer tonight.
Woot!
You don't need to have military experience to know about war. There are plenty of civilians in the war business, including strategy. Considering that GW Bush appears to have spent most of his National Guard days doing political (not military) stuff, you could argue that our Commander in Chief has no military experience -- but then I guess I should admit I don't think he knows anything about war. Dang, there goes my point.
And sadly, it shows. Glad his wife gave him a good talking to.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Shouldn't motherf$cker be spelled
"motherf$ckero"?
Thanks and have an awe inpsired weekend with
Jon Katz.
The Iraquis had something to lose, ie cities, infrastructure, a standard of living. What do the Afghanis have to lose?
The Iraqui army was organized and dug in - we could *find* them. The Afghani army? In the rocks and caves. The Russian experience *is* relevant.
Maybe the long term solution in Afghanistan is to help the opposition to the Taleban - they know how to fight there. They can't be left looking like Western puppets either.
I think the solution to cracking the terrorist organizations needs to be non-military - at least not in the planes and tanks sense - that would be like using a hammer to deal with a termite infestation. Instead, infiltration, assasination, and exposure - dirty, slow, ugly work.
The Cold War was so much simpler...
My personal opinion is that this is pure propaganda. It's precisely what politicians and the media would want you to believe. Why? Because this approach leads to an emotional response, rather than a rational one. And we all know how easy it is to manipulate people's emotions. This is an incredible opportunity for politicians to push their own agenda, and stirring up people's emotions is the first step in that direction (if you have trouble believing this, look closely at any statement made by any politician during the last week and notice the abundant use of metaphors and symbols, rather than logical reasoning in their speech). The real reason, IMHO, for this display of hatred towards the USA has to do with how SOME of the Middle-Eastern people perceive the interventions of the US in what they call "their own business". They see the US as a country that uses its superior military power to brutally impose its own selfish interests to anyone who might not agree. Whether this perception is accurate or not, it's beyond the scope of my argument. The fact is that it exists and it's leading to despicable acts of terrorism against innocent people like the one last Tuesday.
Now what US politicians seem to be trying to do is feed a constant stream of propaganda to the population, with the apparent purpose of getting the public to identify Afghanistan as "the enemy" and to believe, exactly like you stated, that these people hate the "American way of life itself", which, logically speaking, is nonsense. These people have probably no idea of how American live and what they believe in. How can they hate something they don't know? They're probably manipulated into mindless hostility towards Americans, the same way Americans seem now manipulated into mindless hostility towards Afghans. THIS CANNOT LEAD TO ANYTHING GOOD.
People, both Eastern and Western, need to wake up and realize there's no point in blindly hating each other. They need to see how their own leaders are turning them against each other, for who knows what reasons, and for once step up and put an end to all this. What the heck would be so wrong in Middle Easterners collaborating with the West in an effort to stop terrorism, and the West revising a couple of items on its foreign policy, especially the ones Arabs find the most sensitive?
Oh well. I'm still allowed to dream, aren't I?
"War is too important to be left to the generals," is the classic reply made by France's premier in World War I, Georges Clemenceau [encyclopedia.com]
I didn't say we needed the generals. I'm just a sargeant, anyway. And it's not like I don't think we (the posters) shouldn't have opinions, in fact I hope we have lots of differing opinions. For there is where our true strength lies, IMHO.
In any case, the new kind of war that the pundits are talking about is not going to be fought in the mountains. The military has selected bin Laden's hideout because it can be attacked with old-kind-of-war weapons. Some people might argue that as long as the terrorists are up in the mountains, leave them there. They're only dangerous when they come down into the lowlands.
I think that's shortsighted. By the time they come down we'll have been distracted by something else, and they'll merrily go on about their regrouping for the next series of attacks.
By "new kind of war", the pundits are referring to a new kind of war for the United States. It has been fought in Israel and Britian for sometime. America's first mistake will be to repeat all the errors those countries made until they reach the same position those countries have arrived at: lots of security personnel, large, secret intelligence agencies, detention without trial within specified limits, and a list of banned organizations, among other measures.
Sadly, you may be right. I too, worry about such things, especially as used against American citizens.
At the moment the new kind of war is shapping up to be an old fashion seige and war of attrition. The terrorist have laid seige to the U.S. The U.S. will begin using its world-wide alliances and allies to put relentless pressure on the terrorist networks. These tactics are used when one side realizes that none of it's weapons and tactics will lead directly to victory.
In the meantime, new weapons and tactics will be invented. In World War I, the tank broke the static defenses of the Germans. But tanks arrived when the war of attrition had so weakened the German's ability to fight that it only hastened the inevitable.
So I would expect the new kind of war to look like a seige in the short-term while the U.S. wears down the terrorists as best it can. The U.S. happens to be particularly good at wars of attrition. Every one of America's enemies from Robert E. Lee to Yamamoto expected the U.S. to tire quickly and look for a negotiated way out. They were always surprised at America's resilience and at the ferocity of it's counterattack.
But this is not a war that we will only win by economic means, although it is one of our chief weapons. We will have to remain focussed for quite a long time, maybe even years.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
All that you have said is reasonable and will be done. However, one must beware of changing policy as a reaction to a terrorist act. That's exactly the goal and motivation of most acts of terrorism by definition.
...", "You are afraid to die, we are not", etc)
As for Bin Laden, we have no choice but to bring him to justice. Even if that means others come up. Being passive in the face of evil is evil itself and very impractical.
This has nothing to do with revenge or retribution, this has to do with self preservation. And one or two measures are not the solution, a myriad of options need to be considered.
But to say that capturing and bringing the culprit and others with him to justice is not necessary, is ludicrous. Pay attention to the words of the terrorist, they are counting on that same reaction.
And again, I'll say it, instead of only asking what we've done, go read the motivations from the devil's own mouth. He's said it pretty clear, he's told people to kill "Americans" whenever you can, etc.
We also can't go soft like usual with regimes and terrorist. We've been attack by this particular network before many many times, and we did nothing. The last thing we did was an innefective and dumb cruise missile attack, which that did embolden the terrorist and showed them more of our weakness, which is hesitation to act.
BTW, that one can also be shown easily by paying attention to the terrorist own words (Bin Laden's brother, in CBS interview. "You are cowards sending cruise missiles
As for being from another country ? Well at least 63 nationalities were present in that attack, chances are they killed somebody from your country too.
- sigs are for wimps.
Here's General Clark's view on Military options in a CNN interview..
n na /index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/09/18/clark.c
I've got a simple solution to the Afghan population. For the most part, they're too busy starving to death to worry about who's in charge (other than the fact that if they step out of line, the Taliban will kill them quicker than starvation will).
Bring in massive amounts of material aid to the refugee camps that are already forming. Food, decent shelter, medical care, education, and above all, physical security from our armed forces. It's going to take billions of dollars, but in the end, anyone who doesn't take advantage of the camps is in all probability an enemy, and can be dealt with as such.
The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies. Hunger and poverty are our enemies. I'm sure ObL has gotten thousands of recruits because he can afford to feed people more than once a week. The people that we need to take on are not starving to death, but using starvation and poverty to keep control. Yes folks, crippling poverty and hunger has in fact become a matter of National Security, and should be dealt with the same way we deal with other threats. Deal with it.
I think you've got part of a kernel of an idea of how we can successfully take on the Taliban and bin Laden.
Actions such as you describe would be very much a good thing, especially if we made it clear that, after we take out the Taliban and bin Laden that we're leaving, that we are not their enemies and we're not invading them to conquer, but to remove a threat to us.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Heh, or just figure a way to kill them in a manner that will not allow them to go to their idea of heaven. Inject whiskey into em, until they die of alcohol poisoning. Does that violate their "no drinking" policy?
Could they be a martyr if they are damned by their religious tenants when they are dead?
Bah, too evil if it would work.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
Is secret, unending, requires a lot of money, requires a lot of invasive police action, and shows very little results from year to year. Yet it is a great reason to explain why sugar is being rationed and why War is really Peace.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
The 'New type of War" is Called "Assymetric War".
t nG =Google+Search
Think of it as a sort of Guerilla War ++.
http://www.google.com/search?q=asymmetric+war&b
I was wondering how much of the evidence and "story" dies with the suicide bombers? On a gut level I feel that the Taliban knows that a court case would demonstrate how impotent our form of justice (western courts of law) is. You can't convict someone for being an inspiration to others.
And since he cannot be considered a general of an army of a country then I don't believe that he can be convicted of acts against humanity because he told someone he knows to give someone else he knows some money - his understanding being that he was giving to a good cause - nothing more.
I would love to see our justice system do him in but I'm afraid it ain't going to happen that way.
MOD THIS UP.
It is right on target! The person who put this together has an excellent understanding of information warfare!
I've been advocating "death by pork-chop." Send 'em to Allah with bacon on their breath. Who cares if those remaining see them as martyrs or not as long as they think the death sends them straight to heaven? Let them know that all Islamic terrorists we apprehend will shuffle off this mortal coil with pork in their bellies and be plunked square in the midst of hades. That takes a little of the shiny away from the martyr's death now, doesn't it?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Yeah, well apparently Bush gave the Taliban 43 million dollars last may because they banned all drugs in their country. Way to go.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html
I suggest everyone read what Michael Moore has to say about this:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Are box cutters and red boxes really that expensive? Why wouldn't a person planning and willing to die for a cause be willing to get together with like-minded cohorts and spend his/her money on getting a commercial pilots license, an airplane ticket and a box cutter or red box for the effort? What else would they be saving their life earnings for? Flowers?
I apologize if anyone takes this the wrong way - I do not mean it to make light of the situation. On the contrary I was devastated by everything about these terrorist attacks, have not recovered yet and won't anytime soon. Probably Bin Laden is responsible (maybe), but none-the-less if you believe in freedom and doing the right thing, then it is your duty to question anything and everything when it comes to decisions by anyone (and thus by all of us in the USA) to kill others. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but unless someone proves it to me I don't take life or death decisions for granted.
Any attempts to squelch free speech and to take away basic freedoms such as the right to privacy for which we have (supposedly) fought and died for - and, worse, to do so at a time in which so many of us feel fearful and thus are vulnerable - that is an attack against us too.
This will not be solved by better or more spies. it will not be solved by bombing ten bad men and a camel in afghaninstan. this will not be solved by ocupation ( they kicked the russianes out remember). and it may turn out that /bin/laden was not responsible for this after all. the only true sulution to this is a world war. every contry participating in 0 tolerance terrorist policy. the more i think about it the more i realize that any military action will turn into another korea ( and will still fighting that one) and it would make vietnam look like a playgroung fight. i dont like the idea of servalance . but other than for protection of my code and propretary company information. i really dont need encryption. this is not red dawn or something like that. so i dont thing that america should bomb afganistan and i dont think that we should involve ground troups. give the UN some teeth make it a world war, not just america. and if we do go in there . take the russians along. because these arent a bunch pnsy assed camel jockies they had the full force of the russians againsd them and they kicked the shit out of them. so i would like to say wake up america. killing /bin/laden aint going to do shit. strike terrorisim the only way it can be struck. lets have WWIII against terrorisim.
one last thing. why dont we just let the middle east kick the shit out of isreal. if theres ever a country that really needs to be reamed its isreal. im embarased of americas support for them. they are the evil ones in the middle east.
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html
Newshawk: Terry Liittschwager
Pubdate: Tue, 22 May 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Robert Scheer
Note: Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist.
BUSH'S FAUSTIAN DEAL WITH THE TALIBAN
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women.
At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter.
The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House.
The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms."
Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison.
In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming.
For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy.
As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power.
The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.
I actually find it quite gutsy for the administration to bring this up. This "rule" came about from revelations about the assassination of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier. He was killed by a "terrorist" car bomb in Washington DC. Basically the people responsible were on the CIA payroll.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20000919/
Thirsty yet?
Read the original post. I proposed arming passengers with knives, not guns.
"I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fucking book." -- Sean in "Good Will Hunting"
A new type of war....... like the drug war only with more explosives and less money to the locals.
Take this personaility test.
Maybe thinking a bit outside the military/law enforcement boxes would help. For example:
Instead of curtailing civil liberties, let's pay airport security a living wage and train them appropriately.
Instead of using a lot of law enforcement resources, secret searches, sealed warrants etc to disrupt a terrorist financial network, just pick the first publicly traded bank you find supporting terrorists. Then have GWB make a public statement that the US sees bank X as an accessory to terrorism, have their stock drop through the floor and be amazed how other banks start checking their accounts more carefully.
Offer a couple of billion dollars to Afghanistan if they kick out the Taliban and drop millions of leavlets explaining to Afghanis how much that would mean to each of them. (Say, if you were rid of the Taliban tomorrow, you would have a roof, enough seed and animals to be reasonably wealthy, a TV...)
Air drop 5 million cheap transistor radios, set up your own radio, and jam (bomb) their radio stations.
Set up field hospitals and food distribution sites just outside the borders of poor terrorist supporting countries.
Get more independent of oil. That doesn't require more drilling, but just more efficient use. You would be surprised how little oil the US actually gets out of the Middle East.
Publish a real list of all the terrorists and states you want to go after and declare your intention to ask US companies to boycott anyone that does business with them. Publish a monthly list of companies that do. That won't help in Afghanistan or the Irak, but some other states might still want to have some contact.
And, most importantly, go after the leaders and the infrastructure, not the foot soldiers.
Your comments are way off. They said they were preparing for a holy war. They did NOT declare war.
Secondly, there isn't much left of their country to begin with. There's nothing there to bomb, its already been devestated by years of war.
-- Give pilots 9MM automatics.
-- Put kevlar curtains between the passengers and the pilots
-- Give stewardesses those non-lethal "goo guns" or pepper spray.
-- NO carry on luggage.
-- make everyone empty their pockets into lockers before they get onto the plane.
-- get BinLaden and put him in jail
-- purchase all the nuclear bomb building material from Russia they want to sell us
-- give all people with biological and nuclear weapon making knowledge free American citizenship... and a little "sign-on" bonus
-- put a 500 million dollar bounty on BinLaden
-- give every Palestinian 10,000 dollars and tell them to remember who gave it to them.
-- legalize drugs (pot in particular)
Dark Days A Plenty
...
(shamelessly reprinted without permission)
by Mark Driver
Rotten. Fucking rotten. That's all I'm feeling in the wake. My stomach's the size of a walnut, and my mind is gray and
gooey, like a big dumb oyster. Unresponsive. I haven't felt like doing much of anything since Tuesday. Even smiling
makes me feel guilty. Tuesday was the most horrible day I've ever lived, and days later I'm still not shaking this feeling of
sick. I'm bummed to the core.
I had been up drinking until 4 in the morning before, so when my mom called five times in a row around 7am P.S.T. on
Tuesday, I was not polite or pleasant as my face hit the receiver. "It's fucking seven o'clock in the morning!" I screamed
into the phone, assuming she was the East Coast salesperson from CRW that liked to call at six or seven in the morning
and tell me about exciting deals from the company that I bought an infrared mouse from like three years ago and had
been getting hounded by ever since.
"Well, sorry," my mom said, snippy and pissed, "I just thought you'd want to witness history." She hung up on me. I
rubbed my pulsing head and squinted through dry eyes, trying not to get too awake. I turned on the television just in time
to see the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse. I tried to shake the muck from my skull, tried to comprehend
what was happening. Click. Click. Click. Bang!
"Yo, girl!" I shouted into the bedroom. "Get up! Get yer skinny ass outta bed!"
I've had a really good run of not caring about "Big News Events", because they always seem staged, wrapped in
manipulation, every camera shot teeming with vampires just out of the picture, using whatever tragedy it was to further
whatever cause they were always schlepping around town.
On Tuesday, the initial reporting was black and white, fact-based, straight-up reporting on the awful situation. The eyes
of anchorpeople were grim and frantic. Their guests were speechless. The anti-septic news façade was broken and
everyone looked and sounded just like regular human beings. But as the initial shock wore off, the networks got their
graphics together and the politicians got their agendas in line.
There were some very bizarre things said. The CIA got to go first.
"We need more human resources in our worldwide surveillance networks. We need informants. It's dirty work. This is a
dirty business and in gathering information we are forced to deal with some not so nice people. Congress must
understand and accept this." All fine and well, but do I need thirteen different officials reading the SAME EXACT
WORDS from the memo pulled off their fax machine five minutes before the interview?
Other phrases I heard:
"America is a different country now." Oh, and I suppose we need a new Constitution too.
"America has lost her innocence." Um, I'm not sure if you can call a global superpower, the only country to have ever
dropped nuclear bombs 'innocent', but I'll go along with it for now.
"How many civil liberties are Americans now willing to give up in the wake of these attacks?" Um, well, I'll be willing to
wait in long lines at the airport. That's about it. Thanks for asking.
Then there was the Congressional dipshit who said with a straight face, "this just underscores the need for a national
missile defense system."
"But could a missile defense system have stopped this attack?" asked the interviewer.
"I think it's too early to tell," the Congressman said, keeping that straight face.
A man in a blue suit said, "we must be patriotic. And selling all your stocks when the markets re-open is certainly not
patriotic. All real patriots will know not to dump their holdings out of fear." Um, OK. I thought that patriotism was something
else. Apparently it's a financial term. I stand corrected.
In a brilliant display of foreign policy analysis, Taliban-esque Jerry "Jerk Me Off" Falwell and Pat "I'm a Koala"
Roberson blamed the terrorist attacks on God's displeasure with the ACLU, pro-lifers, feminists, and homosexuals. No
shit. Now I certainly don't have the life experience of a man who has slept with prostitutes, nor do I have the bedrock
ethics of a man who stole a religious broadcasting business from his trusting partner, but I'd imagine these guys would be
hard pressed to find a problem in the U.S. that wasn't directly tied to the homosexual agenda. Budget crisis? Homosexual
agenda. Fall in wheat prices? Homosexual agenda. Scrapped NASA launches? Homosexual agenda. That's quite a sexy
worldview, huh?
And then there was our President who scampered around like a scared chimp all day Tuesday and then tried to explain
his skittishness away on Wednesday. Like yer one friend who hides in the corner during a bar brawl and stands up after
the fighting's over saying something like "I was looking out for the police." Apparently, uh, Air Force One was in threat
of being, er, hit midair by amateur pilots in 757s, so while the entire country wracked itself with spasms of fear and
uncertainty, the leader of the free world was hiding underground, watching Home Alone II, eating imported spumoni, and
getting back massages from his handlers. And when he did finally emerge from the safety of his bunker, he was not
reassuring. I wasn't relieved or impressed. I was nervous he was gonna say something stupid. Luckily he kept to his
platitudes and pronounced his simple words correctly. I suppose that's all we can ask of the guy. (Conspiracy note: Has
anyone actually seen Dick Cheney since it all began?)
Back to the tragedy. Not like you need to hear it from me, but IT'S SO FUCKING AWFUL! Total bullshit. And the stupidest
thing that these terrorists could have done. What a bunch of rednecks.
Yes, rednecks. Think about it. Rural kids, all pumped up about God and Country, easily manipulated by Men With Big
Plans. OK, maybe they're against blue jeans and booze, but they're also against women with jobs and the toleration of
those with outsider beliefs. They site the crumbling of religious values as the basis for the downfall of their society. They
live in isolated, economically poor communities. They are so filled with God's love, they want to kill for him. Provincials
that smell like piss, fed this warped world view that every American is a die-hard supporter of Israel and a ardent hater
of Arabs. You swap some enemies around, and what you've got is a good ol' fashioned redneck.
I'd say that most Americans didn't really think about Arab issues at all until Tuesday. Your average factory worker
probably hated Jews and Arabs equally and would have had a hard time forming an opinion as to which one he would
cheer for. Well, those who didn't have an opinion certainly do now. And those who were supporters of the Palestinians
and Arab-rights are suddenly feeling what the Israelis have been feeling forthe past twenty years. Fair or not, guess
how much public support Palestine's getting right about now
This is a truth. One we must face. America is an imperialist nation with economic interests all over the globe, willing to
protect them by any means necessary. American Democracy, arrogantly enough, is only available to Americans. To
protect our "interests" we have a long and depressing history of propping up unpopular dictator creeps all over this
globe to exert control within the region and keep business scooting along as usual. Sound far fetched? Any idiot capable
of locating the public library can look to our policy in Latin America, specifically in the countries of Nicaragua and El
Salvador, and see why more than half the countries south of Florida would shoot an American on sight.
We even pulled this off in Iran with that stooge of a Shah in the1950's. CIA trained officers and British MI6 agents didn't
like the fact that current Iranian president Mosaddeq was going to nationalize the oil industry and pull it from British and
American control. So, they took him out of office and put in the Shah, a tyrannical ruler who clamped down in democratic
Iran with a secret police force equally as repressive as the drooling moose of the Taliban. And then, in 1979, after nearly
25 years of bullshit, religious revolution kicked the Shah in the butt and the U.S. was uncordially shown to the door with
more than a few hurt feelings. So then we gave arms to Iraq to fight Iran. And then Iraq became a formidable regional
power. And then we had to fight Iraq. And now we have huge bases in Saudi Arabia. It all works out quite well. No
wonder we have such high opinions of ourselves.
The main reason we're even involved in any of this Middle East business in the first place is the oil, the only reason
we've cared about Israel from the beginning was because we needed a reliable oil foothold. In gaining that foothold
we've made enemies, half of whom we spent the better part of many years arming with tanks and planes.
Combine this with our insane fear of Soviet Communism, the crazy loathing of the Russians evident even as their empire
groaned and fumbled. Like in the war with Afghanistan that became their own Vietnam. Many of the Afghani solders who
sent the Ruskies a' packin' are now leaders of the ruling Taliban. And where did you think the Taliban learned guerrilla
fighting techniques? Where do you think International Supercrook Osama bin Laden learned to shoot his first AK-47?
Not at the Learning Annex. Like the Contras, the CIA trained many Islamic fundamentalists in the fine art of warfare and
improvised munitions, and then gave them plenty of military equipment to terrorize the Russians with. Well, guess who the
Holy Warriors came after once Russians left? That's right, the U.S., the other world giant taking big, meaty dumps in their
backyard.
We still exert economic influence over the region. This is why we are resented. They are not jealous of our lifestyle. They
do not hate our freedom. They hate us.
What we are feeling now is the cost of doing business worldwide.
And I'm not saying this to kick America while it's down. I'm saying this because before we roll out the tanks, we need to
take an honest look at ourselves, our place in the world, the reality that we are not this insulated happyland of freedom
and success that official press releases say we are. We are a nation that has always struggled to balance commerce
with ideals, a balance that has been completely out of whack of late. The insane quest for insane profit has outspent our
decency, our ethics, our basic humanity. We've become a nation of businesspeople first, and living things second.
But not this week. This week is different. Look around you. People are actually being nice. Quiet. Thoughtful. Helping
each other. Volunteering. Nothing like a war to give you some prospective.
Yes, war. Network hyperbole aside, America was attacked. But the America attacked was not the Government and it was
not the President. As much as the news harped on about how safe the President was, I don't think many viewers cared
that much about him. It was the people on the planes, the victims buried in the wreckage that they cared about. America
is the people who are in New York City and Washington right now, above and below ground, doing whatever they can.
It's the heroes who rushed the cabin of Flight 93 and crashed themselves in Pennsylvania. It's the shopkeepers who
gave survivors and rescuers water and wine and sandwiches free of charge. It's the lines of blood givers, of tent donors,
volunteers from neighboring states working unpaid 12 hour shifts. It is normal people who are pasted to their television
sets, sickened to their stomachs, sad beyond anything they've felt. My best friend missed his own mom's funeral
because of closed airports. Another friend, with two family members on the NYPD, spent all of Tuesday trying the phone,
throwing up and crying. A woman I know living on the Lower East Side had to explain to her six year old kid about
terrorism while trying to shield him from people jumping from 95th floor windows and disappearing into clouds of dust.
This is the America that was attacked. And this is the America that will retaliate.
When the military goes marching off, it will be with nearly the full screaming support of the American public. This has not
been the case for many decades. The Gulf War was nothing more than a business venture and everyone knew it. It was
fought with very limited public support. This war, however, will have across the board support, world wide support.
Americans have been attacked on their soil, and now they want a fight.
Jesus, Afghanistan, do you really want a full-blown war with America? Are you that nuts? Do you know the most widely
held virtue here is winning at all costs? Have you seen the lines of scary people waiting to sign up at the army recruiter?
Do you really want to mess with these folks? Have you ever been to the South? Seen professional football? Do you
know what our murder rate is like? We kill each other for fun in America, and you just gave a whole lot of bored maniacs
something to do with the next four years of their lives. Our regular Armed Forces are scary enough, but it's the
volunteers you're gonna have to look out for. These people play the lottery, eat seventeen pounds of ground beef daily,
crush beer cans on their heads, and don't know there's a difference between Chinese and Japanese people. You really
want them wandering around your country with bazookas?
Oh, man, Afghanistan. Just turn on the TV and see how doomed you are. They're cueing the reels of little kids saying
the pledge of allegiance. A seven year old is holding up a picture of his missing fireman father. A WWII vet is sitting in a
wheelchair with a flag in his hand. The camera is pulling in close on the President singing the Battle Hymn of the
Republic. The Battle Hymn of the Republic! YOU ARE SO FUCKED!
Think about it, it couldn't be more perfect. Here we sit, tottering on a horrible recession. Unemployment is way up. We
have a military who has been begging for a real fight since the Gulf. We have an America who hasn't had a mission in a
long time, an America floundering with the possibility that the last great frontier was to be completely colonized by
multinational corporations. Not anymore. We've got marching orders now. All aboard!
Yes, 20 scrawny guys with patchy beards have just brought a world-sized posse led by Marshall Death into their
remote country campgrounds. People from Moscow to Rome are tired of living in fear, of watching planes go down, of
digging out from body bombs. They are spoiling for a fight too. It seems that Islamic terrorists haven't made too many
friends in international circles over the years. The world is ready to bid them farewell.
And soon, when everything is in place, a warbling call from George W. will be made. "Strategical whooping will
commensurate at once!" he will say, and the machines will proceed to begin killing with surgical accuracy, although I
have a feeling there will be a few unintended targets hit every now and then like, oh, I don't know, every single standing
building in Afghanistan. Yes, for the first time in sixty years, we have right on our side. We will be the good guys. And
with righteousness on our side, there is no limit to the carnage we can create. There will be no restraint. You just wait
and see.
And honestly, I'm all for it. I want blood. I want to see terrorists running through the desert with napalm in their beards. I
want to see them pulling their brothers from the rubble. I want to see them frantically calling everyone they know in Kabul
after a bombing run to see who's still alive. This is not kneejerk, this is not reptile brain, this is not armchair quarterback.
This is revenge pure and simple. Politics and causes and motivations aside, these yahoos brought war to my doorstep.
They are willing to spill my blood and the blood of others not involved in their little fights. These raccoon-eyed rednecks
with a world-view the size of a third prize shoe-box diorama took their tiny ideas of how the world should be and used
them to kill thousands of civilians. Caused real pain. To people I know. To people I don't know. They stabbed
stewardesses to death with razor blades to draw pilots out of the cockpit. They crashed planes full of innocents into
buildings full of more. They were funded and supported by nations who are now looking forward to Holy War with the
U.S. We cannot hide behind 'violence is wrong' or 'give peace a chance' This goes beyond T-shirt ideology. This is for
real. This is war. And like it or not, part of the battle field will be your own village.
And soon, we will be walking their villages. With machine guns. Looking for people to burn. There will be brothers of
firemen, of cops, of janitors, of pilots, roaring into their villages in desert vehicles smelling of diesel fuel and spent oil.
These men will not be worrying about stooping to anyone's level. They will not give peace a chance. They, like me, will
want to see ten thousand times the destruction in New York. And who can blame them?
Hell, I was so drunk and pissed Thursday night that if the Army Reserve Recruitment Office was open 24 hours I'd be
carrying a machine gun right now. And this is coming from someone who opposes nearly every war the U.S. has ever
fought, who thinks the American Way of Life has been co-opted into a shallow shell of embarrassing consumer
selfishness, who would love to see a full Israeli pullout from the occupied territories, and is one hundred percent
sickened by nearly every aspect of U.S. foreign policy for the past 200 years.
But I will not tolerate this shit in my neighborhood. They have brought it to me. I will cheer it back upon them a million
fold.
And yet I hesitate. One thing that keeps me, and a lot of other cynics, from allowing myself to completely be lost in this
mass mind of warfare is the track record of our warrior past. U.S. administrations have called upon our patriotism many
times they shouldn't have, many times that they did not deserve it. They have exploited honest patriotism of American
citizens to further their own political agendas, agendas that did not benefit human freedom or American idealism in any
way. I was too young for Vietnam, but that was not a good war. The invasion of Panama was criminal. I have four
buddies who fought in the Gulf and even they will tell you that they were 'just doing their job'. Yes, they love America
and were proud to be soldiers and would certainly lay their lives down for the Army brother or sister fighting next to them,
but that mission was one that did not hold their hearts.
And now, it finally seems like some patriotism is warranted. But I am so conditioned to the manipulation of good people
towards bad ideas - people who trust too much and just want to do the right thing. And now it appears that right thing
finally has come along, but the same old wolves are at the controls.
In this situation I must remember the ideals that this country were founded on. Freedom of speech. Freedom of action.
Freedom from religion. I do believe in them. I would die for them. These ideals that form the basis of American Democracy
are based in common sense, yet are inspirational beyond words. And even if we have been routinely led away from the
sort of America that these ideals attempt to establish, they are there for us to come back to in times of tragedy.
So I'm in. Let's go get the bastards.
Much of the opinion around the Middle East is that America is a cowardly nation who uses others to fight its wars, that it
has grown soft and passive in its sinful Western decadence. I have a feeling that opinion is going to see a bit of a
revision in the weeks to come.
If you were horrified to see them dancing in the streets, rest assured. Soon, they will have no legs.
PS - Seeing the world give their respects to the victims of this nightmare puts a fist sized lump in my throat. The rest of
the world has been dealing with terrorism for decades that saw America mostly apathetic and untouched. These
countries have compassion. They understand. I hope my fellow Americans will remember these scenes forever, and
recall them whenever they start to say anything stupid about anyone who lives outside of these borders.
PPS - My friend Saiid (or the 'Lebanese Stallion' as we like to call him) has asked that people stop throwing bottles at
him from moving cars. Saiid's not a terrorist, he's a Sagittarius. He has also requested at least a slowdown in the amount
of telephoned death threats being called in to the Mosque his parents attend. His dad is an insane fanatic, but for the
Seattle Mariners baseball team. His mom bakes a mean apple kataifi and serves it with a refreshing Lemon Yogurt-ade. If
you see him, his folks, or any of his brothers, smile and say hi to them, OK? For me?
Can you explain what you mean by the U.S. "revising a couple of items on its foreign policy". Except for Egypt and Jordan, every Arab country is at war with Israel and wants its complete destruction - "pushing them into the sea" is how they put it. Is this one we should go along with.
Many Arab nations want to build a nuclear arsenal to accomplish that - we have backed Israeli operations to slow or stop this effort. Would you like to see Iraq using Kuwaits oil fields to gather the $$$ to build a nuclear capability?
I, for one, am happy we meddled in that particular affair.
I think its easy to speak hypothetically - lets all be friends - lets help eachother - love your neighbor as yourself. But how do you love someone who wants you dead. Wouldn't that be loving your neighbor BETTER then yourself.
If you don't think that our destruction (or conversion) is their ultimate goal - think again - take a look at the Crusades to understand the glory of religous war that they are feeling, and take a look at how the citizens of these nations are treated to understand how our destruction would mean nothing to them.
I think feeling hate for people that relish death and distruction is appropriate, and Bush and co. were not telling us something we weren't already feeling. If he had substituted Iraq, Iran, Syria or a dozen other nations most Americans would have felt the same hatred - why? because these countries DO sponsor terrorism.
No one (except a new born baby) is innocent in this world. We should always be looking at our behavior (and questioning our leadership) always. But a senseless act of cruelty is not going to be my motivation for feeling we need to tweak are foreign policy. I have believed that are economic sanctions are devastating many innocent people and that the average citizen in this country is unaware of the damage they inflict. But is that what this is really about???
People talk about 'assimilating hostile countries' and sometimes that sounds rather disturbing, but this is one context where it makes sense. We have billions dedicated to the cause of beating these terrorists. Let's use some of those billions to dump _lots_ of food and blankets and simple medical supplies, not on the terrorists but on the poor bastards who've been on ground zero for war after war. We _know_ Afghanistan is a wasteland, and we _know_ there are innocents there- and we can also be pretty damned certain that dropping food and blankets isn't going to help the terrorists- _they_ have food, you'd better believe it. They're arranging to get airliner pilot training while the people of Afghanistan starve and die- is it any wonder that there's nobody to boot Bin Laden out? The only ones with food and shelter _are_ the militants.
I hope someone does something with this idea, because it would be so easy, so easy to do.
Go in and conquer the place, if that's even possible, and then rebuild it. Like we did Germany and Japan - now they are very friendly and economically viable. I wonder if that would work, how that would be received by other Arab/Muslim states...
The same thing could be said about sex in prison.
You will get used to it after a while
Personally, I would rather not experince it in the 1st place
The 'NEW' improved White House Click Here
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Fuck the government.
Rich ass fucks own the world. 320 families own like 90% of the world. Mainly they just want to control people to get their own ends.
Rich corporations lobby congress the best, with brainwashing rhetoric and lots of money.
See if innocents didn't die in the bombing, and all the suicide bombers got were rich fucks like Donald Trump, then I'd see it as a happy occasion.
But really it set the world back monetarily a few months, and socially maybe a few decades... Just when we were on the brink of a capitalistic revolution with Microsoft case being the iceberg...
Long live the kings I guess.
God spoke to me
I'm european, specifically Portuguese. I've had very mixed feelings about all of this, and about what is to come. Because I'm not american, I've hesitated in venting my thoughts, because I know how americans are right now. Now I've found this article by Michael Moore, which sums up pretty well my ideas on the attacks and America's responsability.
America is responsible for arming and training terrorist groups, for supporting them and help killing thousands of people, for fueling tyranies, profiting from murders, etc, etc. Is it any wonder you got it back in full force?
shana
Eh? Eh? No, I'm not Canadian.
Obviously not. Because if you were, you first of all wouldn't mind saying eh? once in a sentence, but you sure wouldn't say it twice. And secondly, only a non-Canadian would assume that by merely saying eh? one might think you are.
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
Why not have video wizards come up with pictures and short movies -- complete with sound -- starring bin Laden (and other terrorists) in intimate and compromising pictures with pigs, other unclean animals, and each other? You could make it look absolutely real. Release it anonymously and watch what happens. Sure, it's disgusting, but the reaction would be priceless :)
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
democratic government?
oh, you mean like the democratic governments of vietnam, laos, cambodia, guatemala, burma, cuba?
seems like you americans all blindly aspire to playing god, thinking you're god's gift to the planet.
unfortunately your 'democratic endeavours' around the world have been either complete failures, or [more often] simple covers for repressive regimes designed to open the country up to your megacorporations and suck out its resources while keeping its people out of the loop.
so please: do what you want in your backyard, but stay out of ours.
peace
-p
---
http://www.zmag.org
It's a bit long, about 29K of HTML, but I spent a fair amount of time since Saturday editing it, so it shouldn't be too difficult a read.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
I dont know but the more I think about the more I think that the absolute worst thing we could do to him would be to keep him from meeting his God as long as possible. In fact we should use him for life extension experiments see if we can keep him from dying for 1000 years, now that would be cruel. Killing him is the nicest thing we could do, he thinks we are just helping him get to god faster.
Scanning the Middle East Wire, I ran across this juicy nugget of wisdom.
...
Brute Force or Smart Pressure?
Middle East News Online
Ian Urbina, editor at Middle East Report
Posted Tuesday September 18, 2001 - 05:03:23 PM EDT
Colin Powell has two rules in foreign policy: respond with overwhelming force and always maintain a clear exit strategy. The problem with terrorism is that overwhelming force removes all exit strategies. The more forceful the US military reaction, the greater the increase in enemies, the less the opportunity for withdrawal. Indeed, this is a different type of war. It will be lost with brute force or won with smart pressure.
The US must bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice and take their support networks out of operation permanently. The exact opposite will be achieved by a military response. Bombing or sending in troops may help restore the nation's self- confidence. But it will also increase Bin Laden's recruitment by arming him with images of American aircraft attacking Arab states and killing civilians. At the root of anti- Americanism is the perception of the US as a global bully. The US does what it wants because it can. Bombing or invading will only prove this perception correct, thereby creating more militants willing to sacrifice their lives to show that even the strongest nation in the world can not act without impunity.
The alternative is to employ smart pressure. That means acting through the law not above it. Bring forward the evidence, which surely exists, and indict bin Laden as a mass murderer. As Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, has pointed out, using global law enforcement collaboration plus moral and religious leverage is an approach with twice the effectiveness and half the blowback.
Pursuing the problem as an international criminal investigation, as with other terrorists, will lend the US the ethical and legal credibility it needs to remove Bin Laden rather than merely drive him underground where he will thrive.
If the US drops its war rhetoric, governments in the Middle East will be much more inclined to cooperate with requests for assistance in tracking down and arresting bin Laden and his associates. The deliberate murder of innocents is as much a crime and an abomination in Muslim societies as it is in Christian societies. It would be foolish to forget that it is only a fringe element of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims which has seized upon violence to address their grievances. Unfortunately, the unilateralist rhetoric of the US is quickly alienating many countries in Middle East.
Using military might to intimidate world leaders into unequivocally backing US decisions will only sow instability and popular resentment. Even the Taliban initially stated that they would hand over bin Laden if there was proof of his role. But as the US grew more forceful in its threats, the Taliban became more entrenched in its defensiveness. Now, many Afghani's in the region who have stated that they despise the Taliban are also saying that they will return to fight if the Americans continue their aggressive course.
To win the fight against terrorism, the US must stop approaching it as a war and begin attacking it as a crime.
Ian Urbina is an editor at Middle East Report and is based at the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC.
As a 57 year-old vet whose propeller head son is a US Marine currently in the Med, I have some ideas. /. so I have to save it as a text file, edit the hell out it to get rid of all the crap and then resend as an e-mail. A little pity here - give us an e-mail version for the troops.)
/.ers should be able to crack a lotta pseudo-primes that some terrorist might be using. Course you'll crack some that Aunt Minnie is using too. Your call who's more important.
The Gulf War may have been the first to be seen live on TV but you ain't seen nothin yet. My son is in e-mail contact with us on a daily basis. Yes, he's the company clerk so he has acess to the sat link. If we don't hear from him, we know he's off the ship. If we don't hear from him for a long long time, we'll know he's a casualty.
When I served in the late 60's, mail took a week or more and telephone calls were out of the question - took too long to set up -too expensive etc. Now we can get the latest by e-mai. (By the way, he really misses
There is no enemy state, there are no neutrals and if you are not with us you are against us. But this is still war and will be fought by real people with real guns and bombs and some of them will die. Anyone who thinks they have a clue about war or combat from games, movies or whatever needs a reality check.
There will be no front, no theater of operations, only timetables. Hit A then B then C and then go back and make sure nobody's still moving.
One thing won't change, intelligence is better than bombs. It's one thing to know where the enemy is and what weapons he has (in the case of the Taliban, damn little) but without knowledge of the enemy's INTENTION you're operating blind. The internet, phones, sat commo has never been very secure and you can bet your dinghy that it will become much less secure. If anybody really wants to help, start compiling an atlas of large primes and their multiples. A couple thousnad
There is only one known case of a ground force surrendering to air or naval forces. During the Gulf War, a small Iraqui unit surrendered to a helicopter. The man on the ground will still be the key. You wanna do something? - enlist. In about a year, you'll be an effection soldier, sailor, airman or Marine.
IICat - who is pissed as hell
IICat>>>>>
Fear my quad dildo with gspot tickler and ice cream dispenser attachment!!! Watch as it makes your balls explode through overstimulation!!!
Create goodwill, undermine the fuckers in power. I like it.
The Israeli army has also shelled and bombed a lot of Palestine - the locals seem to regard this as terrorism, as well they might. Also Israeli settlers living in confiscated land have shot a number of Palestinians. Plus a lot of terror attacks have been carried out by Lebanese militants, firing rockets over the northern border, etc. Are the Palestinians to blame there too? Get your facts straight.
piss off, you're not wanted
are right, and we really DO have top secret ultra high tech weapons/surveilence equipment at our disposal...
if the government ever was able to "read a license plate from space" then this is the time to use it!
(as long as they're not pointed this-a-way!)
If I remember right, the test, was, in fact, a test. It didn't work right. They questioned him and never detained or did anything even remotely close to taking action with him. Basically, it is you slime that keeps the police so inactive on trivial "Its against his civil rights to even question him" and "rules of order, I know my Miranda rights" that we are distracted to the point of letting the F*n terrorists operate in daylight WITHOUT aliases.
Even with rolling wiretaps, the only thing that people are going to find out is that most people's lives are REALLY THAT BORING. What the hell are they going to find out about me? That I hate speeding tickets? That the girl in the cube next to me is a total babe? Cheat codes for Dreamcast? Cmon. THEY DON'T WANT YOU. The average citizen is useful only as infantry in the Gov'ts mind. Give it up. All of the stuff our forefathers said was useful in 1776. They had to quarter British troops in their homes. We are just as smart as them. And we can all read and pursue higher education. There is an answer to this... and it has nothing to do with quotations from people who were fighting a sovereign monarch.
1) make drugs legal
2) stop supporting isreal ( their the real terorists).
3) sanction the shit out of every terrorist country.
3) stop supporting isreal
4) stop supporting isreal
5) stop supporting isreal.
6) give the damn country back to the palestinians
7) stop supporting isreal.
8) bomb the shit out of isreal.
The repressive "democratic governments" of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Cuba were established by the USSR despite attempts by the USA to defend them.
You can tell which countries are really bastards by the number of folks pooring out of them looking for a new life in the USA.
How about this info...
South London Times reports a Mayor knew of trouble 6 hours prior. Read about it here
usa : israel :: the rest of the world : west bank
There has been a rush by the Bush Administration to call it a 'new kind of war' for a nunber of reasons, but a primary one is to bail out those heavy campaign donors known as the insurance industry. These companies are going to get hammered in this instance unless the events of Sept 11 can be legally termed "war". The fact that this is plainly a terrorist act is problematic for the insurance lobby. Examine just about every insurance policy you've got and you'll notice your insurer gets a free ride if you're fucked over by "force maejure" (act of God - pretty tough for the Bushies to call it that), insurrection (in which case the government isn't necessarily in their pocket and can't invent a reason for them not to pay) or war (bingo). More here
Night
If the US were a democracy, then its people would be responsible for the crimes of its government, surely?
But actually the US is not a democracy, so the point doesn't arise.
I was in the US myself earlier this year and I could see that the US people in general know very little about their government's involvement in the rest of the world. Without knowledge, Americans can have no control over that foreign policy. If they knew what their government was really up to they might be able to put a stop to it. That would be democratic.
It seems to me that the important thing for Americans is to actually study the US Empire - its structure, its economic basis, its operations, its strategy and tactics. Find out why the US is hated - not because it's "democratic" (because it's not; it's run by a tiny wealthy elite), but because it's the centre of a vast empire that sucks wealth from poor people all over the globe, restricts their rights and freedoms, and generally subordinates their interests to the interests of the wealthy elite. Because its military forces are the largest terrorist organisation in the history of the world. Because it operates without any restraint, bombing and invading other countries with impunity.
Someone comes up with an alternate solution that does not require killing or maiming Muslims and the best it gets is a -1 troll?
This just goes to show that the moderators on slashdot are only out to insite rage and promote violence.
Hey guys, its time to turn off quake and deal with the real world.
Killing innocent Muslim women and children will not bring back the people that have died
In the days of WW2, cold war and so forth, there was an identifiable enemy: Germans, Japanese, Russians, Vietcong, &c. So the allied might could be applied against a country, and that the resultant war, bloody as they were, were fairly obvious. If you waved a US flag or a Nazi flag, you were fair game.
What we have now is a situation where one side can only attack units that have attacked. So where in WW2, you could attack the 6th German army because you were attacked by the 4th, this no longer applies.
Of course, this kind of attack is not new. The attack on labor unions over here follows much the same thing.
Another thing that is nearer to home, and less subtle, is Microsoft's legal rangles. You see, each of MS's attacks are carefully isolated before the attack. MS talks of the current case being about "browsers" and nothing to do with "data streaming" or "office applications". So what is being asked is that MS can procede full pace at all things, but the DOJ is being bound by what causes crimes.
In the case of unions, while each battle is between a specific union and company, legislation has prevented the unions from engaging in the supporting tactics that the companies are free to. So the unions, isolated in attacks, can not raise global issues. This does not stop the companies from doing the same.
In the case of terrorists, we are fighting isolated fragments of islam. There may be five, six, seven small operations going on, each with the capacity to attack, and we can not attack until attacked.
The real issue I see, is that we are dealing with a new kind of attack, by isolated parts of the enemy. We need to drain the darkness that these isolated parts operate under, and attack the grand total.
I'm not offering a solution here, but some different view: a crack in the wall to look through.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I think the US is faced with a unique dilema. To strike an enemy, hiding in a populace, without adding to the enemies cause through collateral damage and politcal fallout.
So what do we have? We have an enemy, woh has a distributed structure in many countries, some are cooperative and are actively hunting terrorists in their own countries, which is good, others are obviously unwillling to check their domestic terrorists that pose international threat.
These countries then show a willingness to harbour terorrism. And can be dealt with as extensions of the terrorist network themselves. To this end, one might apply total warfare
The Point of this of course is to cause such disruption and destruction, that your enemy will capitulate readily. In the case of Afghanistan though, you have a country that is already devesated by war with the Soviets, and civil war for a decade. They already live with destruction, and chaos is no stranger. A total war would be only be breaking large rubble into smaller rubble. We also face the real possibility of increasing the strength of the Bin Laden Network through having the local populace rushing to join his cause, as well as other fundamentalist islamic citizens flocking to his banner due to sympathy of his plight(And its likely this is already happening anyway as I type.)
Now I hear many of your right now screaming, so the hell what! We can take em all on, no matter how many people or other countries flock to the bin laden cause. And the truth is, maybe we could, but only in the end with the use of non-conventional weapons, which any administration would be rather careful about the authorization of. Alternatively we are talking about a massive coalition force consisting the rest of the world against the middle east. Sounds good to many people too! But after the anger fades, and resources such as oil start to become a problem for your massive mechanized force and you find the local populace of every village and town is just one more 3 month conflict, it quickly loses velocity as a viable option, as it would be a 100 year war. While these are rare in history though, they do happen.
So a campaign of total warfare would only further his cause(if we werent lucky and dropped a GBU on his head in the first day of air strikes) and might lead us to letting slip the dogs of nuclear / biological warfare or prolonged conflict over generations. And I might mention that many people I know, advocate non conventionals, letting anthrax, ebola, and god knows what else is lying in our biological weapons stock piles, do the work for the US Armed Forces.
Many do not want to open that box though, so what are we left with?
An Low Intensity, paramilitary intelligence war. Which I believe would be long, arduous, but more successful then just letting the missles fly. It does have benefits over brute force, in that we can determine if Bin Laden has nuclear weapons, we can determine information on other terrorist networks he may be associated with. We can determine and thwart future attacks, and of course. Its cheaper in resources and cost compared to total war, which means it can be waged for a longer period. It also enables us to insert psychological warfare(propaganda and such) into the fray in easily digestable chunks, rather then blowing everyone away, and leaving a pamphlet saying it was ok to kill them on each body. We can get close to the great bearded psychopath himself, and either put a 9mm low velocity round into his melon, or strap his ass to a Saturn V for a one way trip to the sun.
Now this kind of war takes years, but we have an edge, the current turmoil will cause great amounts of followers to his side, in which might be, five or twenty gentlemen of talent in the field of information gathering, and disposal of human walking waste. We currently though, are unlikely to have these people on payroll currently, which leaves us in further dilema. Rather a shame.
So where might we get these people from? The Mossad and Israeli Army Intelligence, may have people of this calibre, may even be already on the way, who knows. But options are few, and time is short.
SO whats my point? This, no war is perfect in conception, in planning, in execution or results. We will get a war, be sure, but what kind will be up to which angry guy is loudest in the conference room in the national security council.
I personally dont know which I want, my heart wants fast decisive action against everyone who has even seen the guy, and their pets. My head says that is polically dangerous and expensive in human lives, its not polically correct.
Then my heart says, so what?
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
As they rip up the Bill of Rights and
bend us over to take our wallets they will lose
the nation.
The crooks have left us with a centralized
weak infrastructure system unfit to beat
anybody that can hit us.
Some of our infrastructure and systems make us vulnerable. Large centralized
sky scrapers, energy, communications bottlenecks and
financial systems are easy targets of low tech "distributed denial
of service" (DDoS) type attacks, and these systems will fail catastrophically.
Unfortunately, DDoS attacks are difficult to prevent.
Attacks on one building shut down the financial markets of the
USA and killed 5,000 people. The building failed catastrophically
killing hundreds of rescue workers, other buildings were then destroyed
in a "domino effect." The combination of centralized location and a
centralized finance system shut down the stock market.
The other attack killed a couple hundred people but has no real effect on
the military system. Why?
If the terrorists flew 10 planes into the Pentagon they would have
still killed just a few hundred military plus a lot of passengers. The low
building was quickly evacuated.
Killing some defense contractors and desk warmers is not
going to stop the military system. The US armed forces have a deep
distributed structure. For example, National Guard units are
distributed to 50 separate state commands. Coast Guard, Marines,
Navy, Air Force, Army, Reserves all have command structures, bases and
people distributed world wide.
Which system was the most centralized and vulnerable to catastrophic
failure? Which system will have the same problems even after
spending forty billion dollars to rebuild?
To protect our nation some questions should be asked:
Why can an attack on one building in New York City shut down the
national financial markets? Is power and money so concentrated that
we can be totally controlled not just by terrorists but by others
whose motives do not have our interests at heart? The free
market is supposed to be central to our freedom.
It is too bad our leaders (Bush-Cheney) advocate centralized and
vulnerable systems that can be skimmed for short term profits and
used as choke points on our own people.
Bush-Cheney want more nuke plants, higher concentration of
money, power, centralized infrastructure, fewer rights,
less personal privacy, more state secrecy, more spies, etc.
This is tragically the opposite of what should be done.
How long until the terrorists that we created and trained
(Hussien, Bin Lauden, Taleban, Colombians, whoever) figure out that they
can easily stop this country by switching targets to other centralized
vulnerable systems? Systems such as nuclear plants or other
systems that can fail in catastrophic ways.
For example, send cars or small planes filled with fertilizer/oil
bombs into nuke plant control offices. Twenty terrorists the same day and
how many will succeed? One, five, maybe all twenty. The World Trade
Center would look like a toy roman candle compared to Hiroshima.
Forty mile "Glow Zones" near or in the 20 largest cities. Millions of
people sick or killed, trillions of dollars of infrastructure polluted
and lost. Even if the 20 nuke plants all "contained" any radiation
problems the hit to the power grid would be serious. Do the same to
Japan and Europe and the new super powers of the world will be
Brazil and China.
There is an infrastructure and systems solution to avert national
disasters. It is hard to stop a society that has buildings that
are only 10 stories high, gets power from many distributed
non-catastrophic systems and has flexible dense distributed
communications, transportation and other systems.
We can start to make changes in our infrastructure without waiting
for the next terrorist attack. But the policies of distributing
infrastructure, wealth and power are not the policies of the
system centralists that claimed they won the last national election.
Remember Vietnam? Extensive carpet bombing, massive chemical warfare,
assassinations, state terror, propaganda, political manipulation of
a puppet government. Our mighty distributed military system was
victorious in the field of battle.
Yet we were beaten by an even more distributed infrastructure,
political will, and some smart guys that looked at the long term
view. And the policies of that time created and trained most of
the "enemies" we now face.
Do our leaders and our own systems create the terrorists and at
the same time make us totally vulnerable to the terrorism? What can be
done to make the world safer? Will an anti-missile system do it?
How about locking up or killing all that disagree with Rush Limbaugh?
Or is it time to consider real solutions.
"the only way to get results while dealing with terrorism is to compromise"
Is it possible to an american to accept something like this?
So who is going to remove the madmen from the western countries. Countries that spend so much time and money building new weapons, encouraging new technologies while a large number of people on this planet are starving? Oh sure, they have excuses, like defending our liberties and freedom, economic rationalism... but who real believed these lies anymore than those diseminated by the people you are talking about.
Don't think 1984, think Stand on Zanzibar...
--
Hi. As you may have noticed, the strip promised last week did not actually appear. The reasons for this are obvious, and it may be of some interest for you to know that I was actually putting the finishing touches on the short story which was supposed to run in this space when I heard about what happened. Jack e-mailed me, not soon after, wondering if maybe now was not the time to update the page. I agreed with him fully.
We're living in a scary time, my friends, and not for the reason most people believe. In a MSN Messenger conversation I had with my stepfather, I listened to him express his feeling that the world was now a less 'innocent' place, and that's a sentiment I've heard echoed. I think many people share his view. I do not. The world is no more or less innocent than it was last week or last year or ever. Terrorism and violence are a fact of life for people the world over, and I think North America's exclusion from that could charitably be called willful naivete rather than innocence. Arbitrary, horrific atrocities happen all over. You could say that it's now just America's turn.
It's strange, being as far removed as I am from what's happening, living as I do in Asia and relying on a single English-language TV channel for news from home. Since Tuesday, that television channel has been relaying 24 hour, stateside coverage from American TV, skipping back and forth from the relatively responsible axis of the major networks and CNN to the appalling yellow journalism of Fox News. I've been watching as much of it as I can. During the first few days, I was moved by the images of people leaping from the burning towers, by the tearful faces of people searching for loved ones and the images of two colossal buildings crashing down. I was there, in a sense. I think everyone was. It took until the end of the week before people seemed to accept what happened and start to decide what to do next... and I have to say, that was when I started to get well and truly afraid.
Take a deep breath, clear your head, and look, really *look* at the current media coverage of the disaster and its aftermath. It isn't news anymore, is it? There's no objectivity, nor any distance. There's no rationality. There isn't even a hawkish discussion of how to maximize the effectiveness and practicality of any retaliation that America might take. There's just propaganda. Obvious, vicious, clumsily effective propaganda. On NBC, I saw a former Nixon advisor talk about how, if Bush is going to reverse the decree banning overt assassination as a tool of foreign policy, he'd better do it now before the momentum is lost. The journalist nodded his agreement. On PBS, I saw a journalist ask Colin Powell why anyone would attack America, attack 'the good guys'. Powell said that terrorists hated America because America is free. On CBS, I saw Newt Gingrich talk about his efforts at creating a 'domestic security agency' (which, some would say, is just a euphemism for 'secret police') which would combine FEMA, the INS, and elements of the FBI. He said that nobody had taken his efforts seriously before, but that they would now. I believed him. On Fox News, I saw an anchorman mangle the names of arrested terrorist suspects, then add 'I'm probably saying their names wrong... but I don't care.' I saw all this, and on all the channels, all the networks, I saw little video montages beginning with images of the attack, ominous music, images of Palestinians celebrating and burning American flags. Sudden cut to stirring, patriotic music, George W. Bush talking in steely but ultimately abstract terms about 'punishing good and evil,' and crowds of people chanting 'USA! USA! USA!' Leni Riefenstahl could not have done better herself.
I saw all these things, but nowhere did I see any informed discussion of why so many people hate America so much. Terrorism is never justified, and what happened in New York is truly an atrocity, but to imagine that America did not throw fuel on the fire of international terrorism on many occasions is, again, not innocent. It is frighteningly naive. America did not 'get what it deserved,' because no civilian population could possibly deserve this. Make no mistake, though: America has done bad things. Sometimes out of malice. Sometime out of cluelessness. Sometimes out of the uniquely American desire to solve problems without actually understanding what those problems are with any kind of depth. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad... but America *has* done terrible things. There are people, groups, perhaps entire cultures with legitimate grievances against American foreign policy. Only a small lunatic fringe feel compelled to redress those grievances by violence, but for America to sit there, wondering 'How could anyone hate us so much when we're the good guys?' is dangerous to everyone. Especially if the answer America gives itself is as reductive and false as 'They hate us because we are free.'
Does this mean that America should not strike back? Probably not. The desire to do so is natural and perfectly understandable. My concern is that America will strike back without asking itself hard questions and without even trying to understand in any real way why this has happened at all. I'm afraid that America will strike the wrong target with annihilating force, decimating countless innocent people without even really managing to hurt its targets... no matter even if they manage to get at convenient bad guys like Osama bin Laden or not. I'm afraid that America will further radicalize even moderate Arabs, and open the door for an endless series of attacks on America and the entire western world. I'm afraid that this week's horror will push America to the Right, unleashing the fascism, militarism, and zealotry that's always been latent in the American psyche, usually kept in check by the good American qualities of anti-authoritarianism. I'm afraid that America and the Arab world will end up locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of hatred and violence that will go on and on and on... and all the while, allow the people who would do things like pilot airplanes into the World Trade Centre to sit back and congratulate each other on a job well done.
This is a scary time to be alive. I am worried. You should be worried too.
This week's Parking Lot is Full comic was written and drawn before we all started down this path. It'll be a while before Jack and myself can start reacting artistically to the events which are to come, and when we do, we'll probably alienate a good number of you. I hope that we won't, but that may end up happening. On the other hand, it's occurred to me that our comic has always been, in a sense, an attack on western culture. Will there be any place for us in a world in which others have attacked that culture in ways much more drastic than anything Jack or myself could even imagine? Only time will tell. Judging by the social climate that seems to be developing, satire may become a dangerous business again, especially for the satirists. Even for bad satirists, which we may well be.
This week's comic has nothing to do with any of these concerns, nor will next week's. I'm not sure how long that will last. Enjoy it while you can.
pat
PLIF
I heard a stat earlier tonight that something like 99% of the Afghani people are opposed to the Taliban. In other words bombing the country rather than targeting a few individuals is just killing more innocents.
Way to lift the blinders from these poor, ill-educated imperialist fools and strike a blow for the proletariat! Workers of the world unite!
Read the 1998 ABC News interview. What part of doesn't scare you shitless?
Don't forget to say 'hi' to Neville Chamberlain. His head is in the next ostrich-hole over from you.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Some good links:
u ri ty/news/jdw/jdw010914_1_n.shtml
http://www.janes.com/security/international_sec
http://www.stratfor.com/home/0109162100.htm
Muslims want to kill us, and we want to kill muslims. Sounds like a crusade to me.
The war is over your mind, and it *is* very much political.
They'll make it more convienent to comply than to not comply.
*sigh* you illustrate my point about emotional language perfectly. You see, what for you is "complete destruction of Israel" for Arabs is "regaining our homeland"; what you think is "preventing Iraq from using Kuwait's oil fields to gather the $$$ to build a nuclear capability" they see as "greedy Americans invading our country so that they can have cheap gas for their huge disgusting SUVs" and so on. This only leads to pointless hatred. THIS is how you ended up hating them for bringing death and destruction to your homeland, and this is how they ended up hating you for pretty much the same reason.
The way you want it, the US should probably just erase everyone in the Middle East who "hates the American way of life" from the face of the Earth (along with whoever gets in the way, innocent or not) and be done with it. That would all be fine and dandy, except for the devastating effect it would have on the US society itself. You've already witnessed the racial hatred ignited by the WTC disaster, with Arab-Americans being the targets of violence simply because they look Arabic. If you think people will accept the idea that "Arabs living in the Middle East are bad, but Arab-Americans are good" you're dead wrong. Declaring all-out war on Arabs, or even "some" Arabs is going to unleash a wave of racism in America like you've never seen before. Violence begets violence, people always seem to forget that...
I guess what my whole rant is about is that before being Arabs, Americans, Indians etc. we're all people. And the Arab civilians who have been killed by American bullets and bombs are no less innocent than the Americans who lost their lives in the WTC terrorist attack. If you ignore that, you'll become the victim of your own violence.
$fmthard /usr/bomb | pakistan
$make world
Hell, I'd be willing to pray facing Mecca three times daily, if that's what it takes to save me from his tendentious, pretentious, uninformed pseudo-profundities.
Real power is not adversarial:
What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Of course I'm emotional. I have cried every day since last Tuesday. I cry for a world that has been damaged. Go visit the smoldering crater in NY or Washington, or PA and tell me not to be emotional. But the actions I would like to see our country take has completely to do with stopping terrosism and promoting democracy. And these are not on the agenda of many people in the world. So I respecfully say... wake up or you will be slaughtered in your sleep!
How is "Regaining a homeland" by pushing the people currently living there into the sea not = to destroying Israel? You can't have it both ways (since there is one land). You are mistaken if you think that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran would withdraw their declaration of war on Israel even if the Palastinians were completely at peace with Israel (which, incidentally, is a dream of mine). They are not linked in any way. I don't hate Arab countries and destroying there countries is not on the US agenda last time I checked. But destruction of Israel (not the label of a nation but the actual people living there) is on their agenda as is fostering terrorism, nuclear capability, oppresion of minorities and woman (just to name a few). Given the opportunity, they would LOVE to export these values to the U.S. (and for sure they have to other places) - by force!
You have distorted my distinction between the people I hate and don't hate. I said "I think feeling hate for people that relish death and distruction is appropriate". So please don't exagerate my position to help you make a point that has nothing to do with my statement.
I agree that we are too dependent on oil for our way of life and that we take it for granted. We certainly don't take interest in foreign policy (or national policy - or any policy for that matter). Americans are not politically active compared to other democracies. Certainly we were protecting our economic interests in Kuwait, but what would Iraq's occupation of Kuwait meant for the people that live there? Do you think Iraq would have just realized that they shouldn't invade other countries and withdrawn?
Yes we are all people... but we are not all alike. Thousands of years of recorded history show that people simply do not value the same things. Go up to a terrorist and shake his hand and tell him you love him... and watch in horror when he cuts your throat with a smile on his face. Your love means nothing to him. Your "lets be buddies" approach is naive. Just ask the millions of civilians that were hearded to their death on WWII. They could not imagine the evil involved and neither can you.
I don't want to erase anybody that doesn't want to erase me. I have never hurt anybody on purpose. Sure the U.S. has looked after its own interests. Certainly the rest of the world has reason to resent us. But destabilizing a country with fear and destruction is not the correct way to deal with this. Responding with thought AND force if necessary is appropriate.
It could easily be argued that the loss of life and $$$ in this country in the past week exceeds anything that we could have possibly done to these people. And we can't even hug and make up because they don't want a dialog.
I keep hearing people talking about bombing Afghanistan to the stone age and sending in ground troops to find Bin Laden and take him out. Sounds great on paper but:
Afghanistan is not our enemy. The Taliban is. Your ordinary Afghan is poor, starving, and no enemy of ours. The Taliban has abused them, starved them, raped them. Unfortunately, the Taliban aren't in a building we can bomb. They're hidden, just like Bin Laden.
We're in a position much like Vietnam, if we send in ground forces. Who is the enemy? What does he or she look like? Are we just going to go in and shoot all the Afghanis? I hope not. At the same time, if we go in, we're going to be dealing with people who will drive trucks full of explosives into our bases/camps and kill themselves to kill more of us.
We're really looking at a war unlike any other, unless we take this course. If we take this course, then we're looking at another Vietnam. I hope we're not condemned to repeat history.
We must find a way to defeat the enemy, and how to do that, I can't say. What I can do is offer some ideas on what not to do, which is probably more important.
I really hope people here don't hold bad feelings against Arabs or Muslibs. Islam is a religion of love and understanding, just like any other religion. Let's not forget the Inquisition. Let's not forget the crusades.
Speaking of the crusades, Bush was stupid enough to use the word "crusade" in one of his speeches. The crusades were religion against religion, and let's just say the Christians didn't fare too well, so I don't think it would be (as his father says) "prudent" to use that word in comparison.
I don't know how things will be in the future. I don't think any of us really knows. It's all a scary and it's going to be a brand new lifestyle for us in the States. It will change slowly, but make no mistake, it will change. Since it will be a slow change, I think we'll all learn to adjust, just as many of our allies who have long been victims of terrorism have.
God Bless America!
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Can you really say that "violence against noncombatant targets" is someone's definition of freedom fighting?
You are right though... it is all about perspective.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Well stated and straight to the point. When you have a "military-industrial complex" (thank you Ike!) continually trying to justify it's continued existence, you need to start thinking in terms of who loses and who gains. And then you begin to see. If resistance arises, they'll talk about jobs and the economy... always the subtle threat.
With the sacrafice of our personal freedoms and rights, this war -- like the war on drugs -- will turn out to be a war on this country's own people. This is nothing new, just the same old shit from a government of which the people have lost control.
Mike
By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.........What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
Note the term used: "primary conduit", not front. There's no evidence provided that CIA operatives ever met with bin Laden face to face. Although the author intends it to support his contention that the CIA is responsible, he clearly states that Pakistan's security services had primary contact. No doubt the ISI supported and nurtured many such organization. Along with the CIA's shift from field operatives to hi tech remote surveillance and the near-impossibility of any Westerner penetrating the inner workings of his organization, it's almost certain the CIA had almost no first hand knowledge of bin Laden at this time.
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
Once again, no evidence to show why he should have been viewed as anything other than a rich boy dilettante. At the time, that's all he was, son of a rich family of 50+ children playing war in Afghanistan, and even at that he was in supply and not on the front lines. Were the CIA to consider every fundraiser in the fight against the Soviets, during the Cold War, a future national threat? Why?
The CIA have done more than their share of evil in the past, but there's no evidence, here at least, to support that they take the credit for creating bin Laden.
The Taliban are a bunch of political opportunists. They saw a long-standing power vacuum after the mujaheddin were unable to settle generations-old clan squabbles and form a government that could clean up the mess that was postwar Afghanistan. They rushed in to fill that vacuum, spouting messages of Islamic purity and promising to purge their country of evil influences. And they're not even clerics. Their name means "students."
They are nothing more than a sham regime propped up by the militant factions in Pakistan and greased by Osama bin Laden's blood-stained millions. The vast majority of Afghans, reeling from the ill-fated Soviet incursion and the tribal wars that followed, are too weary, hungry and disorganized to kick them out. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
If America
1) Removes troops from Saudi Arabia
2) Is more even handed in the Palestine conflict
3) Lifts sanctions on Iraq
then terrorism would drop significantly.
The United States just doesn't get it.
i.e., scramble their calender and mix up the attack dates, maybe slip in an "We Surrender" date!
or.. change their phone numbers to the 900 type (you know what I mean, wink wink) -- they'll be so busy, uh, herding their camel (you know what I mean, wink wink), they'll forget to fight!
clinton gave a pretty good review of this situation in his interview with nbc today... I imagine you can find a transcript somewhere on their site... first time I've heard a defence of it and he covers it quite well.
Of course somebody will say that "crypto with a permit will be okay". Well, that's nice, until you realize that North America is ridden with insecure hosts just waiting to be taken over. Why? Because it's still difficult to make strong cryptography an integral part of any software system -- it's always an add-on. Why is it critical that a bunch of unrelated, unimportant machines, usually owned by universities, home users and corporations, be secured? Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, and Data Theft.
DDoS is an obvious threat. It can take out a anyone on the internet, and there's not much a victim can do to stop it. CodeRed is harmless compared to what a major, well-funded group could create (e.g. as part of a war).
Data theft is another problem, particular when that data is someone's identity. Try locating someone who used a stolen credit card number and a stolen name and a several forged passports to book flights to several major U.S. cities. How did the person get this info? From a student logging into a company machine from a NCD X terminal (no crypto, of course) at the university which is ony flat bridged (i.e. very sniffable) ethernet, rather than using Kerberos . . .
Anyway, I don't have time to finish this argument, but I'm sure other people here can add to it. Feel free to discuss this 'pro-crypto for security' argument and bring up some good points about it. In a few days (weeks?) I'm going to draft a solid case for crypto and security (and submit it for limited review to some newsgroups), then put up a web page and post the link to a bunch of public forums (no, I won't spam or over-cross-post or anything).
Or, if some more-qualified (i.e. more credable in the eyes of the public) security expert (or expert group!) wants to lead this, please let me know so I don't dilute the effort.
Hi there. A few of you out there know me, or at least this pseudonym you now see. I post here from time to time, other places too. I try to contribute a reasoned, most intelligent voice to the conversation, occasionally interspersing it with some silly humor if the need presents itself. I'm a Canadian, for what that's worth, and as for any other details of my race, color, or creed well, I think that information is unimportant right now. I hope for those of you who have enjoyed, or at least read my posts when you come across one, have found my words to convey what it is I believe I am; an intelligent, mature and somewhat wise, but whimsical human being. I am a good person, I know that.
I've always considered myself a pacifist, one detail is that I'm a pretty big guy, but I've always found the need for violence intolerable. The fights that I have walked away from, for the sake of keeping the peace with those who wished to infringe on my behavior... if you only knew. Drunken fools, racist ignorance, mean kids on a playground... it's a part of life and a part of a free society. I have always tried to find a peaceful way.
Now, I live in a wonderfully multi-cultural society. As most people know, Canada is about as peaceful a place as you can find. We really do all get along for the most part here. Sure, we're all a little different in some ways. We argue, we bicker, we tolerate peacefully and willingly those little things about ourselves that are a little different. We know we're only stronger in the long run for being a little diverse. That's what makes life here so grand. I have many friends of all shapes and sizes, coloration's, faiths and persuasions. Never even notice it really. Why? Because we are free here.
There is absolutely zero grey area here as to whether something must be done about what happened. This incident is sourced from the very heart of darkness, know that. For beside all the religion, beside all the politics, beside all the different points of view, at the very base of things, this is all about living in freedom. The democratic way is the right way; it is the fair way. Anyone who experiences it knows that fact with every fiber of his or her being. To be able to pursue your beliefs, your desires in life, your faith, without reprisal from others, is simply the most important thing worth fighting for. I wish for all peoples everywhere to live in peace, I really do. Every last one of my Canadian friends does too. The brown ones, the white ones, the black ones, the native ones, the tall ones and the short ones, the funny and the humorless, the old and the young, the neighbor and the family. The one thing that we all have in common is that we all want to be free to live our lives as we see fit. We wish to hug our kids, shake your hand, be young, feel love, grow old with dignity and comfort, and pass from this earth at peace with the world. We have it good here. We know it. But so do people all over the globe. You know the nations, they are many, even former antagonists are with us this time, so I will refrain from listing them here. But be aware, democratically, the most overwhelming international majority in the history of the world has aligned itself against a very few madmen. Nothing more, nothing less than that.
I contacted my government to lend my services the other day. I don't know in what capacity as of yet, most of you know I'm a pretty bright guy, so I'm hoping I can help in some way. I never, ever, imagined a day when I would do such a thing. Peace to each and every one of you... except to those very few among us who would wish to make me live a different life from that which I would normally choose. You are the tiniest of minorities, and simply must be stopped now. I also simply couldn't live with myself if I didn't assist in some way.
Reason or Chaos, that is the divide. To think otherwise is folly.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
George Orwell was only off by 17 years.
Everyone seems so suddenly concerned with Wall St. getting back on line that they won't even notice The Bushinator taking away their rights to privacy. Well, if you have nothing to hide...
i read /. all the time {i am russian} so u are all hyped up to kill some fundamentalist terrorists whatever, now if anyone heard this but the was in chechnyja started when? hmm 1994, paused, still going on... now. guess what,,, chechens have no army. they go around in groups 5~10 people + WOMEN (usually snipers) + children (to put mines and bombs and sometimes snipers]] at most HIGHLY trained guerrillas, most are afgan vets. they match US and Russian special forces 1:1 + support of population in their advantage :) . u cant bomb things that dont exist... there is nothing to bomb AND the people u wanna kill are highly mobile AKA that missile u paid 200,000$ for is a piece of flying fireworks. hist >>Fashists tried to occupy chechen territory... well did not go too well. afganis were occupied by russian military/sp. forces. and afgan terr. is still there and IS #1 for drugs. hmmm they even improved eh? so who wins? well US/world military cannot do jack. if u read any russian news sites [regarding was in chechnuja] those sweet kids and nice smiley women and nice old men are really cute by day. by night u better hope they'll be able to find ur pieces. oh :) in case u wanna see what's beind done to captured soldiers in chechnuja check Kazaa for war movies/murder/snuff they show how they cut peoples throats + cute gurgling sound a throat makes when person dies, that might stay in ur mind for few secs... but watch some more vids of chechnuja/chechen side.. thy love to show off :) and NO, afganis were never at geneva, so they dont give a shit :) although i should be biased to the russians i see the big picture, u cant win. ever. russian tried it. they are still there. americans will try it for a while [maybe] and then maybe the US public will get few tapes sent over of what US soldiers look like with their heads cut off while they are still alive, then maybe it will be more fun. get ur "Sibirskaja Jazva" antibody shots. cause bio weapons can be smuggled in the tip of a ballpoint pen ;) good luck to u all. GOGA [Tech War] [G.O.G.A. project] [AI Recomb] [Virlance Combinaticus] [Bio-Merge] [BioVir Test] [various combination of airborne virii research projects]
I AM GOGA.
Before any one mod me down for what I am going to say. Please take a moment and think. You may mod me down to hell afterwards. I just want you to think, please.
When Slashdot first started coverage of this tragedy in the aftermath of the bombing. My opinions of you Amercians actually went higher. I am no ignorant sod, mind you. I know Amercians. I lived in the US for 5 years, after all.. but most Amercians I have met were very ignorant when it comes to global politics. (by the way, Afghan women wear veils since a long time ago, they did not suddenly start to wear it once Taliban came to power).
My opinion of you guys at first became higher because I saw a lot of people who were trying to think "WHY" despite the horrendous event that happened. However, as time went, I noticed a decline in those who ask "why" and a rise in those who effectively say "how to nuke those Muslims till they glow".
PEOPLE! WAKE UP! YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED!
Cosider this: Right after the bombing Usama and his people became prime suspects, despite the fact no proof has been found yet.
The FBI announced a list of 19 people, mostly from Saudi Arabia who were thought to have been in the planes to to have been responsible for the hijacking.
How did they select those names? Apparently, they just went through the passenger list looking for Arabic-sounding names.
During the next days, FOUR, yes, FOUR people in this list of 19 proved to be alife and kicking. In fact, they have not even been in the US:
Amir Bukhary. He died more than a year ago!
Abdulaziz Al Omari. He is alife and was not even in the US at the time.
Saeed Al Ghamdi was in Tunisia a the time of the incident. He just came back to Saudi Arabia.
Amir Khanfar. Whose name was announced initially but later striken from the list. Is alife as well.
This is not offically confirmed yet, but Abdullah Al Shahri's father yesterday said that his son is alife and was not in the US according to AFP news.
Now, am I the only one who smells something very fishy here?
As for the Taliban. I am Muslim, yet I do not know the Taliban very well. I read the news reports you all have read about them mistreating women and all that. Yet I do not belive it, not becuase it does not happen in a country like Afghanistan that is torn afetr many years of war, but because such things happen there and around the world because some people mistreat their women for whatever reason. It has happened. It is still happening and it will continue to happen. It happens in a small scale, not on a large scale as the media wants us to believe. Those who mistreat their women (or do any other immoral act)are condemned by Islam. They are representing their culture or themselves. They do not represent Islam.
Yet, in the heat of the moment, you, or most of you, seem to have lost reason. You are condemning a nation of a billion human beings just because a terrorist attack happened on your soil. Heck, it is not even proven that those who did this were Muslims. The 19 list proves it.. and proves beyond doubt that someone is trying very hard to turn global opinions against Muslims. This some one is the real culprit, sirs and ladies. I do not care if they are Jews, Christians, Athiests, Muslims, or something else. These people are ruthless murderers and must be stoppet at all costs. What they did to the WTC was horrendous and unimaginable.
Yet, when, and if, they are caught, punish ONLY them and their soldiers.
Consdier: If they are found to be Muslims, you will punish the whole islamic population for the sins of those murderers. Yet, ask yourself: What if the real perpetuators were found to be Israelis (they are the ones who benefit the most from this, you know), or one of those US White supremacy groups.. are you going to blame all Jews and all christians as well?
Again, YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED. Just a simple proof here: I went to CNN a few hours ago, read the usual "Kill the Muslims" clever propaganda, then tried to post the above opinion in their community site. Since this requires registration, I tried to register. Guess what? It always refuses to register me saying that the name I wanted was already taken despite me trying some really weird and random charachters just to see. I think they are preventing people from M/E domains from voicing their opinions. Seems those who are planning the media brain-wash know that when sane people post sane opinions other sane people (who have different skin color) will read and think.
Now that you have the internet and can directly communicate and get the opinions of people you are trying to attack, I hope you will not fall in the same trap. There are millions of lives at risk here. Contact you representatives please, and ask them at least to prove that Bin Laden and his people did it. Am I asking too much in return for the lives of millions, including probably some one close to you who will be sent to Afghanistan and God knows where else while the actual culprits who did this to you are dying laughing with glee?
Regards,
I think that this situation is rather odd.
I mean here we are trying to crack the bad guys
hard encryption, and using the massive information
gathering resources of the US on this situation.
Now it is well known that the bad guys do use this good stuff and all the technology they can get but what about when the technology is used secondary in favor of the more "primitave" forms.
It would seem that our war is focused on the technology used in communications and other area's
If it was me I'd use the big-bad-technology as a front of communications.
I could email all these horrible and evil ideas and plans to friends and assoc, (all encrypted of course). and then I could piggy back a strong radio signal with other data so that only thoes who knew about it would listen to it. (of couse it is also encrypted)
But the thing is, I know that everyone is looking here and everyone is listening, and everyone has already hacked my encryption, and everyone knows who else these message were sent to.
but what no one else knows is that it was all fake. a wild goose chase.
because the real "bad-message" was sent on a post
card and anything that was secret was written in
lemmon juice with my Cap'n Fantastic Decoder ring
that I found last week in the cereal.
I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I just want people to stop being terrorized. I want people to stop this willing release of personal rights and privacy.
I just want people to stop and think for a moment.
and not let the terrorist shap the way they think and live.
ie, don't change the security for other people on the air planes. simply put a button on the plane, attaced to a computer (seperate from the other computer) that will dump the fuel of the plane and
make an emergency landing somewhere where it will not run into anything else (ie buildings, mountians, things that planes should not touch)
I realize that no such system exists, but with all
the money saved on new scanning machines and
security personel and training and other various
equipment, the system could eaily be developed.
I also realize that is is not the only solution,
but its a start, and in a direction that is
overall better.
Thank You
As an Australian, I like to think I'm (a little) more immune to the US media (propaganda?) saturation than, well, Americans I guess. Something struck me as I heard the emerging military "proposals" or maybe call them "statements of intention" that sounded to me like they were trying to prepare anyone for a "long, hard, dirty war". I do realise that we can't all hear everything and I'm not naive enough to pretend that I understand the codephrasing either, but I think that rather than some hi tech war, it reads like they want to do all the covert dirty tricks stuff they always do, but out in the open.
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" -William Blake.
Well, i think this "war" will go wathever the bussiness say it would go....
I think it's a plain "money" talk, don't bother the death has occurred or will happen in the future. They will use the kind of war that would spent the most high-tech expensive weapons he can, only to fill the weaponry industries.
Now it's time for make money dudes.... You can't make money from peace, it only take a few meetings and being positive. This is clear plain the only war politics of the states years ago.
All your government its just calling your proud for fill their pockets, and you can't note this if you're from the states.
==
That's the time harvesters,that's the time to be care
get back all this people, so ostentatious and arrogan
What about Manson? AFAIK he was prosecuted and is still in prison for being an inspiration to others.
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
According to the WFP (World Food Program), 4 million Afghanis are in danger of death by starvation this winter. Approx. 750,000 people in Kabul are dependent upon foreign food aid for survival.
The USA has now coerced Pakistan to close the borders and block food-relief.
Result: USA is now silently starving millions of innocent Afghanis to death. You won't hear Dubya boasting about it on national TV, nor will you hear about US and European culpability in this deliberate and incredibly cruel act of genocide in western media.
A number of Americans have called for all nations who train and support terrorists to be bombed into the ground. Well, the USA supported and trained Bin Laden, as well as tens of thousands of terrorists throughout Asia and S.America. The delicious irony is that if these wishes were carried-out, the USA would bomb itself out of existence.
But back to the crime at hand: It would be an act of *mercy* if the US were to carpet bomb the Afghani populace. Better than deliberately starving these wretched souls to death.
The curses crowd my mouth. I'm looking at my sandwich and I can't finish it, because i know that I'm a citizen of a democracy that commits such unspeakable acts while cynically posing as the worlds "beacon of freedom and justice and..".
My fast begins now. I call upon all people of the world to cry out against this despicable cruelty against innocent Afghani women, children - and yes, men too.
Your media are manufacturing consent. Fight the empire of lies with words, not bombs. Bombs are exactly what the (state) terrorists want you to throw.
...nuff for now.
"You got to fight the powers that be." -Public Enemy
If the US wasn't in the Middle East, it would have been a lot easier for the people there to take power over their government. Have a look at the CIA-organized coup in Iran in '53, for example.
The problem is that it's a lot cheaper for the US to control dictatorships than democracies. If these countries got democratic - do you think they'd be more or less anti-US?
If you want to know what your government has been up to, here's the perfect start: A brief introduction to US involvement in the Middle East
Micke,
Sweden
the Shiites (sp?), in power in Saudi Arabia and the most predominent sect throughout the world believe it was all right the way things went down
Wrong... The Saudis are Sunni NOT Shiite. Iran is the only Shiite Muslim state of its kind in the region. The Taliban, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestinians, UAE, etc are Sunni. Btw, Sunni Islam is the most predominant Islam in the Middle East. You are correct that the no-fly zone area of Iraq is inhabited by Shiites. It is for this reason that the USA did not take out Saddam Hossein - we wanted to maintain a power balance. We wanted to keep the Southern Iraqi's from aligning with Iran and increasing Iran's power base.
We are going to start a serious war that IMHO will have very little effect on stopping future terrorism from happening again on American soil. Take out Bin Laden and who is left? Tons more...
I read an article by Tamim Ansary where he stated "I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish."
I encourage everyone to read this essay in order to gain some perspective. We need to implement some sort of "marshall plan" to make sure we rebuild Afghanistan and replace the Taliban with a just government, much like we did with Japan in WW2. The Northern Alliance comes to mind as they have been fighting the Taliban for quite some time now. If we don't do this, we are going to create an environment where new terrorists will inevitably grow.
We cannot and should not look at this as a short term solution. We have to work with countries that may not be in our best interests financially. Kuwait made sense financially, but Afghanistan does not, however, we are now seeing the effect of such an environment. If the US government is wise, it will be working out a plan while the conflict is ensuing. We must follow through and rebuild, educate, finance, and empower the Afghan people to be more than drug dealers or victims of the Taliban oppression.
ffffffff uu uu cccccc kk kkk oooooo ffffffff ffffffff
ff uu uu cc cc kk kkk oo oo ff ff
fffffff uu uu cc kkkk oo oo fffffff fffffff
ff uu uu cc kkkk oo oo ff ff
ff uu uu cc cc kk kkk oo oo ff ff
ff uuuuuu cccccc kk kkk oooooo ff ff
kk kkk aaaa tttttttt zzzzzzzz cccccc uu uu nnn nn tttttttt
kk kkk aa aa tt zzz cc cc uu uu nnnn nn tt
kkkk aa aa tt zzz cc uu uu nn nn nn tt
kkkk aaaaaaaa tt zzz cc uu uu nn nnnn tt
kk kkk aa aa tt zzz cc cc uu uu nn nnn tt
kk kkk aa aa tt zzzzzzzz cccccc uuuuuu nn nn tt
Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
...ever seen Brazil? It shows where we're headed with all of this. "Oh, the system can't be wrong, the system is perfect!"
Your friend should visit his local RCMP office and ask those questions to the directly. If he can't get any answers, he should seek asylum with another country.
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?
Please, read this before declaring war. A letter from an Afghani civilian, on the BBC website. Innocent people in Afghanistan have suffered enough, they don't deserve to suffer any more.
It seems to me that American opinion has shifted to declaring war on Afghanistan. Please, American friends, think twice before spilling more innocent blood. Otherwise you'll have to accept that there will be people who will say 'We were minding our own business peacefully and trying to survive and the Americans came and killed our wives and children. We must seek revenge'. It could all get horribly cyclic. Seek justice but be wise and careful in getting the right people and only them.
A New Kind of Warfare
There's no easy and quick answer to this one.
Like many people who have contributed to discussions over the past decade
in places like the Compuserve Military Forum, http://www.stratfor.com,
http://www.strategypage.com and others, I've done some analysis on
Threats, so know a bit about what I speak.
The general consensus had been that Cyberwarfare was going to be the
Next Big Thing. Global Thermonuclear War was passe, terrorism had been
shown to be at best innefectual, at worst counter-productive. Instead,
the threat was going to be vs infrastructure, the weapons anything from
a judiciously placed lump of Semtex, to frame-ups of key personnel or
their relatives, to The Worm From Hell. Few lives if any would be lost,
the hip-pocket nerve would be the target. I thought this myself, based
on the evidence that no terrorist group had ever detonated a nuke or
caused millions or even thousands of casualties in one attack.
But the so-called Nuclear threshold has now been crossed. OK, so they didn't
use Nukes as such - but the effect in terms of damage to property and people
was comparable with a small nuke. What makes a Nuke so terrible? It's the
random, massive destruction, the defencelessness we as a civilised
society have against it. The actual kill mechanism is less important, except
symbolically.
The point is, with Civilisation - the concept of having cities with such
things as sewerage, electricity, internet access, public health - addiction
to that concept leaves you vulnerable. Water supplies can be contaminated,
subways can be filled with poison gas, airliners can be hijacked and sent
crashing into skyscrapers, and there is no defence against this. None.
You can make things harder - for example, I doubt that the next hijackers
will be believed if they say "don't resist any no-one will get hurt." But
for every gap you fill, there are hundreds of others left wide open. A
Police State that covers most of these gaps leaves the facade of Society
intact, while destroying the heart, and still doesn't cover everything.
For my own peace of mind I won't say a half-dozen other things that have
been openly discussed as being more destructive, and a lot easier to
pull off than Ground Zero. I'm 99% sure that any Bad Hats reading this will
already have thought of them, but if one happened, the thought that they
might have been in the remaining 1% and got the idea here would destroy me.
I fully expect that some of them will be used, or attempted, against us
no matter what we do or do not do.
All you can do in the way of defence is make things so that random crazies
are very likely to get caught, and do not cause too much immediate damage
or long-term trauma if they get through. Against a wealthy, well-organised
and widespread group with literally millions of dollars to spend on airfares,
equipment, forged documents and so on, there is no credible defence. None.
If they are a bunch of amateurs, their sheer size and communications will
make them detectable long before they're able to do anything. But if they're
smart, recent events have shown that they can evade the system we had in
place before September 11th., and likely will be able to do so for some
years to come.
Until September 11th though, deterrence had worked. The chances of being
able to get through the defences were so small, and the consequences of
a successful strike being so large, that the game wasn't worth the candle.
But now every Xenophobic group who until now has had to watch impotently
as liberal states had run roughshod over their favourite hatreds and
prejudices will have gained heart, and probably more financial support.
OK, so there's no defence. What are our options?
Option a) Give In.
One trouble with this one is that we don't know who to surrender
to. Should we say "Ok, we'll stop going after the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Judea", then the Judean People's Liberation Organisation, their
hated enemy, will attack us even harder until we reverse our course.
Then there's the old saw "He who pays Danegeld is never free of the Danes".
Blackmailers historically require more and more. Should we give the Bad Hats a
reward for their behaviour, they'll naturally repeat it.
At the risk of showing some naivity, there's also a matter to be considered:
we wouldn't have been taking the actions the Bad Hats don't want us to if
we hadn't thought them to be either right at the time, or at least in our best
interests. For example, I'm so much in favour of allowing freedom of political
thought that I wouldn't give it up to save my life.
Finally, there's another issue: some of the Bad Hats don't take prisoners, they
won't accept our surrender. The type of people whose beliefs allow them to
deliberately massacre civilians as a prime objective - rather than do so
accidentally, or as regrettable byproduct of military neccessity - are the
type who won't listen to us if we cry "Uncle!". The mere existence of liberal
states is anathema to them. It's Their Way or No Way, Right is on their
side, and no abomination is unjustifiable if the End is good.
So for a variety of completely practical and cynical reasons, giving up or even
bending a bit is right out. At least this saves us some painful soul-searching.
b) Attack the Enemy's Capabilities.
If the Enemy isn't physically able to harm you, you don't care what they think.
The basic problem we have here is that the Enemy presents few clear-cut targets.
Either they're effectively stealthed, or they're inextricably mixed up with
a lot of innocents, third parties, or ourselves. For example, we could adopt a
policy of shooting down all airliners even remotely suspected of being hijacked.
This would certainly take out all hijackers, but also countless of our own
families.
Still, there are a number of targets, that can be serviced by a number of means.
The targets vary from such obvious ones as military training camps, which can be
neutralised by special forces, conventional invasion, air attacks, nukes or
political pressure to close them, through to financial supporters, who can be
rendered bankrupt via cyberwarfare, have their assets frozen, or just simply
assassinated, by bullet, bomb, frame-up or airstrike. Disinformation causing
their own side to kill them is a particularly neat way of doing things, as
it provides cover for your own infiltrators. Third-party bounty-hunters are
also a way of reducing your own casualties.
Attacking the Enemy's capabilities is something that can be done relatively
quickly, and depending on how much ethical damage we're willing to accept,
could be both thorough and effective. For example, Nuking every state that's
ever disagreed with us publically would be as effective and through and only
marginally less appropriate than cutting off our own heads to cure migraine.
Attacking the Enemy's Capabilities when they're well-defined is something the
military is good at. In this case, the number of appropriate targets is
relatively small, so military action is just a small part of the whole war.
On the other hand, some of those obvious targets are very difficult, so
would require a massive military effort to neutralise, so this difference
may be more apparent than real.
Expect a lot more unconventional but physically destructive warfare, e.g.
tracing down any "insider traders" who have made a (literal) killing on the
stock market recently, and depending on the evidence, rendering them
financially impotent ( a bullet in the brain is one simple way, but may not
be the most appropriate ). Manipulating the stock market might be equally
as effective at causing corporate collapse. Still, the financial "collateral
damage" may mean that a car accident or even sudden fatal illness might be
better. Trouble with such covert attacks is that true accidents in the future
will be blamed on you, so it might be better to just say "Yes, we shot him, so
what?" rather than weep crocadile tears.
c) Attack the Enemy's Will to Fight.
This is the epitome of warfare. You don't have to expend blood and treasure
if the Enemy lacks the will to attack you - he'll do what you want.
There are two ways of doing this, one far more effective than the other. The
easiest and quickest is to instill fear in the heart of the enemy. This has
historically been very popular, both on a large geopolitical scale, to the
smallest personal scale. It ranges from the terror of "Mutually Assured
Destruction" to the terror of provoking a Jihad. It ranges from the threat
to go after Saddam Hussein personally if he used Chemical Warfare in the
Gulf, to the blandishments "Just obey and no-one gets hurt" used every
day by Police forces, and for that matter, by the Hijackers on September 11th.
Note that credibility is the key. If the other side doesn't believe you,
as happened in the flight that impacted in Pennsylvania, even unarmed civilians
can and do fight effectively. If the other side believes that all they'll
get if you kill them is an instant ticket to Paradise, then threats aren't
credible. If you can convince them though that by their actions they've risked
eternal damnation, that's another matter. This is a particularly promissing
avenue of attack in this case. A great effort to convince the Imams and
Islamic Scholars of the world to unreservedly condemn Ground Zero and state
that the perpetrators are now roasting in fire hotter than the H-bomb would
likely be very effective indeed - the people concerned appear to be highly
religious. In recent times, both the USA in Vietnam and the USSR in Afghanistan
gave up and pulled out because they had lost the will to fight what was
perceived to be a losing battle in a dubious cause.
And that last leads to the second, much harder and vastly more effective way
of removing the Enemy's will to fight. The absolute pinnacle of the military
art is to make the Enemy your Friend. And two can play at this game.
In order to resist, we must remain convinced that there is a clear-cut moral
difference between ourselves and the Enemy. Like Pearl Harbor, Ground Zero has
provided us with that.
We allowed Rwanda, and Cambodia, and Bosnia, and many others, sometimes out of
fear of a larger war (The Bogistanis are Russian Allies...), sometimes out of
ignorance (Bogistan? Where's that?), but sometimes out of indifference
(who gives a damn about what happens in Outer Bogistan?) or worse, if they
were our Allies in the "Great Game" ("If they didn't shoot those kids, the
commies would have taken over"). As the result, many of our Enemies call us
hypocrites, and with some (not much, but some) justification.
We (and I do not just mean the USA here, I mean every country that lost citizens
on September 11th for starters) can no longer say "Someone else's problem."
No more "business as usual". We must ratchet the filter of what is acceptable
behaviour by states or organisations a few more notches.
Not enough to make the different but basically decent into enemies or destroy
the ideals we hold dear, but enough so great quantities of the world do not
perceive us as hypocrites. If you want a soundbite "First we've got to get on
God's Side, then he'll be on Our Side."
Finally, as our long-term strategy, we must try to convert at least the children
of our enemies into our friends. Our weapons here are more likely to be solar-
powered radios, food drops (imagine a raid on Baghdad that fought through heavy
defences to drop a few thousand tonnes of baby food), education (so when Baghdad
announces that the baby food is all poisoned and millions have died, it's not
believed), and stern action to counter the Bad Hats. We may not be able to pick
any "Good Guys" to support, but we can sure identify and destroy the torturers of
the Secret Police, the thieves who take the foreign aid money, and those who terrorise
their own populace. For very often there are many who remain silent out of fear.
We must bolster their courage, and give them a reasonable choice of behaviour other
than to join the Enemy camp.
So much self-serving tub-thumping rubbish has been talked about "Moral Re-Armament"
that the phrase is direputable. Yet that is what we have to do. We must no longer
accept the right of any government to starve or massacre its people or any others.
We must also do something about our own internal injustices, racism and perjudice.
Not because it's "right", because it may not be. But to sap the feeling of smug
self-righteousness that is the Enemy's main strength, and take it for ourselves.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
The CIA should have been able to keep a track of OB but that didnt work.
OB should have been killed by cruse missles but he wasn't. Infact one of the main target turned out to be a drug store.
The metal detectior should have been able to detect the knifes being take onto the planes but it didn't four times.
The planes shouldnt have toppled the buildings but they did.,
The cell phone network shouldn't have crashed but it did.
Again and again technology has failed. However this is not the most disturbing development. Alreadly the terrorists are being labeled as cowardilly and fanatic this is the exact same mistake that the english made when dealing with the IRA. This is an Enermy that is as at least intellient and resourcefull as you or me and should be treated as such.
For this war to be won by America only one course of action is really open. The elimination of Islam as a political movement. This means a full scale military invasion with a hugh cost of human life on both sides. This is the reality.
However, if we cope out to merely sending a few missles and beefing up visable security that will do nothing more then limiting liberity, then the terroists have won.
Considering that Powell did not march on baghbad and Bush is a puppet of a man who needs a team of medical experts to keep him alive then it is a war that America could easly lose.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/inferno.html
Is a war on Afghanistan really the answer???
The people who committed the disgraceful acts at the WTC consider their actions to be retribution for America's actions in the Middle East. Do not forget that America has enforced economic sanctions against much of the Muslim world. These people see America as the evil in the world, and their own actions to be just. If America goes into Afghanistan in the way in which it appears they will, this will only ensure that more terrorist actions will ensue. Didnt the WTC teach us that there really is no defense againt this form of asynchronous warfare? Additionally, if America attacks the Afghanis, all they will do is polarise the Muslim nations. Do you think that the Pakistani people are really pleased about being used as a staging point for these pending attacks? I personally think that more American lives will be at risk just being based in Pakistan than being inside Afghanistan itself. The leaders of Afghanistan are simply acquiesing to America's demands. They know full well that to resist would only result in sanctions (or worse) to their country but the people of Pakistan dont necessarily see it this way. Many will go out of their way to hinder America's actions.
Attacking Afghanistan is not the answer. Counter-terrorist measures are far more useful, and by that I dont mean intelligence gathering and infiltration of other nations. The actions of the CIA around the world have been the cause of far more bloodshed and misery than the attack on the WTC. (Dont forget that the CIA was the main reason that the Taliban is currently in power today, rather than the Russians)
The counter-terrorist measures that I think are necessary are the ones that will make the terrorist not want to commit these acts such as;
1) Totally reorganise the UN so that every nation has one equal vote. America proclaims itself the bastion of democracy and yet perpetuates the imbalance of the UN where only 6 nations really have any say. If every nation was equal, the actions of the UN would be truly democratic. This is one of the main gripes of terrorist forces. They perceive (and perhaps rightly) that the Americans are the driving force behind the actions of the UN. If every nation had an equal say, the actions of the UN would at least represent the wishes of the Global community. I mean wWhy the hell should one nation have more of a say than any other?
2) Lift the economic sanctions on the Muslim nations. Surely anyone can see that the sanctions only hurt the innocent of these nations, while the leaders take all that is left. Does Saddam Hussein appear to be suffering from the sanctions on Iraq? ONE of his personal estates is larger than the whole city of Paris (the one in France), has water and sewage treatment plants and is totally self sufficient. Meanwhile, millions of innocent people starve.
These are just 2 acts that would do something to help prevent future terrorist acts.
The answer to violence is never to commit more violence.
(Before you go thinking that I am anti American and have no thought for the people killed in the WTC. I personally lost a very close friend in the collapse of the second tower. He would have agreed with me that further violence is not the answer.)
In what way is this a "new kind of war"? Several countries in the World, including my own (the UK) have been fighting this kind of war against terrorists for decades. Perhaps the USA can learn some lessons from other people's fights.
Firstly, it's going to be a long hard fight. The British Government's fight against the Provisional IRA lasted more than 30 years and although the British had the upper hand when the IRA declared a ceasfire, they were certainly not defeated at that point. Also, the British had home advantage. That is, the IRA's bases were in British territory or in the Republic of Ireland next door. The Republic, while in sympathy with the aims of the IRA definitely disapproved of its methods. The people in the IRA are culturally similar to the people fighting them (i.e. Western European Christian background). This makes it much easier to infiltrate their organisation.
Secondly, traditional military action has to be used very carefully if at all. Any highly publicised military action can be twisted by the terrorists to turn people merely sympathetic to their cause into new recruits.
Thirdly, intelligence is the key, agents on the ground in particular. It's all very well to have satellite surveillance, but how do you tell a suburban house containing a group of dangerous terrorists from a suburban house containing an all-American family with a satellite? Terrists use ordinary society as their cover. You have to get among them.
This is not a new kind of war. Lots of the US's friends have an idea of how it works and what it might look like and I'm sure the US government is talking to them right now.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
No, sorry. You're confusing your apples and oranges here.
True, both Germany and Japan were destroyed, then rebuilt with your help, and now are among the strongest economies.
BUT these countries were among the strongest before. The potential within the population to support all the industries on a level competitive to the global market is as scarce as oil in the ground, and hard to build from scratch. If you wanted to build up a strong economy in Afghanistan, you'd probably have to wait until it could be run entirely by people trained by yourself.
Both Germany and Nippon have a cultural background facilitating industrial growth to a point where leaders thought they could occupy half of the world with their armies, and nearly even succeeded in doing so!
You seem to forget that when the US entered WW2, enormous regions were controlled by these relatively small countries, without hope of shaking them off without outside help.
Fortunately, this is not the case now, and thinking Afghanistan could support that in its present state would be ridiculous.
You are just expecting too much.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
Something weird struck me. A lot of postings that tried to put the war on terrorism in some kind of perspective (like, for example, someone who wrote about the UK situation, where there's a 30 year history of "war on IRA", nothing won, much lost) seemed to get a "0" penalty.
I better not try to put such moderation in perspective, for I will probably be modded down, too. Draw your own conclusions.
(Going to metamoderate right away :)
my other sig is a 500 page novel
This new kind of war is going to result in a plethora of well intentioned laws, which will at some point be abused and end up in a loss of some civil liberties. For example, President Bush is enacting (has enacted?) a policy that will let the government hold legal immigrants indefinitely . Let's hope this doesn't this and future enactments don't get abused.
The new kind of war will be one fought overseas and in our own nation. What airline passenger won't jump a hijacker the next time something like this happens? This attrocity has led us to believe that any future hijacking will lead to the demise of the jet's occupants, but I contend that a plane full of pissed off passengers will be able to stop a hijacking now that we know what we know. So what has this done? It's probably put an end to plane hijackings as we know them.
Instead, we should be looking forward to what the next terrible thing may be. Chemical? Biological? If we're to believe what the news tells us, other countries have the ability to produce weapons of these nature and as terrorist organizations rise to power and associate themselves with these nations, these types of silent attacks should be what we're worrying about and this is where our intelligence should be focused.
WE will lose people! Ho ho ho. I love it when I watch army commanders and politicians telling us that there will be loss of life and casualties and we'll have to accept it. It's fucking easy to say things like this when it's not your life on the line isn't it?! Try telling this shit to the families and friends of soldiers and, god forbid, conscripts.
, 55 4371,00.html
I am a mere civilian, but this man isn't:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300
Good luck in your war.
Human logic: 1) I can't so you mustn't. 2) I can but you mustn't.
It struck me that I have talents and abilities that might be of service to volunteer organizations: I write code, I can configure computers and set up websites. Others can convert old computers to run Linux, upgrade machines, set up networks, Internet sharing for small offices, etc.
Has anyone begun a job pool for Nerds Like Us? Something like, "Local Red Cross chapter needs mail server or CGI script"? One weekend a month would be doable for many of us. Some of us could even get employers to spring for a day off, a'la Habitat for Humanity.
Maybe we should just go back to caves and kill each other with bone clubs eh ?
- sigs are for wimps.
That's something I've been thinking about.... these religious fanatics, the only thing that scares them is messing with their beliefs... This may sound radical, but what about threatening Islam itself? I know, I know, its wrong because of all the sincere believers out there, but damn it, if this is a religious war, then let's answer fire with fire! They target us Westerners because we are mostly Christians and Jews? Then if more terrorism happens, we blow up their holy places... I think Medina is their 2nd holiest city, we give them 48 hours notice to evacuate and then nuke the place... Happens again? Give them 24 hours to evacuate Mecca, their holiest city, then nuke it also!! Then how will they get to heaven if they cant go on their Hajj? (religious pilgrimage to Mecca, required of devout Muslims if possible). We make it known ahead of time this will happen, and emphasize that it is the duty of true, devout Muslims to turn in their radical 'brothers' or they will share the blame morally for the disaster that will befall Islam. Come on, we know even our supposed 'allies', eg Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. have knowledge of these terrorists that they are reluctant to hand over to infidels like the West, though their governments take pains to act otherwise. You may think this is too radical, but does anyone doubt that if terrorists get their hands on nukes or bio or chem weapons they would hesitate to wipe out OUR cities? I really think we need to attack the source of the problems: fanatical Islam. Yes, this will not go over well with innocent Islamic believers, but then we (the West)didnt invent or start this... If you, as a devout Muslim want to avoid this catastrophe, make it a point to oppose the fanaticism with both education and active measures (ie, being alert for and opposing terrorism, including yes ratting out anybody that sounds suspicious ).
LBJ was widely quoted as saying that America should fund a TVA ("Tennessee Valley Authority", a 1930s public utility project) on the Mekong River to win the Vietnamese people over by improving their standard of living.
> People, both Eastern and Western,
Technically Islam is Western.
This is a common mistake made in discussions and posts. The US is a constitutional republic, which is very different from a democracy.
While most of the Americans reading this probably already know the difference and just mis-represent it in discussion, it is possible that many people in the world do not know the difference. The lack of this knowledge could lead to the conclusion of the people being ultimately responsible for the acts of the government.
What we are responsible for is CHOOSING the people that will make the laws. We are generally out of the loop when it comes to actually deciding the laws, at least on a federal level. These laws that we don't directly decide are influenced by and must adhere to a constitution that, while a great guideline for how to live and legislate, is 200+ years old.
This doesn't even touch upon the fact that with the electoral college our votes do not even directly count towards deciding the Presidency.
Just wanted to throw in some clarification for any non-us citizens that needed it.
> The USA has now coerced Pakistan to close the
> borders and block food-relief.
>
> Result: USA is now silently starving millions of
> innocent Afghanis to death.
No, these deaths are at the hands of the Taliban, who refuse to give up a murderous thug and his followers. The Taliban does this because of fanatical religious beliefs. They convince their own population, lacking a free press, that they should be hating the US rather then their own Taliban leaders. Redirect, indeed stir up, the hatred of the masses against anybody but you. It's a tried and true method of politicians for millenia.
This concept guided religion out of superstitious animism. It guides everything from the Taliban to socialist hatred against "businessmen" to the latest rantings of Robertson and Fallwell. "This smaller group of people is hurting you! Authorize me the power to bash them on the head, and I'll make your life better -- I promise!"
If we do go in, we should replace governments, raise the standard of living, and hook people on western culture while squashing religion. In a generation we can hand control off to local government under UN control, and hopefully they'll forget completely about their past wars.
I can see raising the standard of living, just as we should be feeding the victims of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which will help assuage feelings, but trying to control which government is elected is a very bad idea and is half of why we have people hating us. We arrange for free and fair elections and then get the hell out, making it obvious that we mean to do so.
If we turn bits of their country radioactive, they're going to take longer to forget.
Not a bad idea, if used judiciously. We don't want them to forget that we do have swords and will use them if we are attacked.
Our main mistakes with regard to puppet governments have been that we didn't want them to appear to be US protectorates, and that we left them alone too soon. Here, we want them to be seen as protectorates. It's a carrot and stick. For the people, it's a carrot, higher standard of living, etc. For the old rulers, a stick. When we move in, we won't keep any locals in power, so the only way to stay in power is not piss us off... Then we don't simply set up the first locals we see as government, we wait a generation and slowly introduce a democratic government after the population is educated and the old rulers have been erradicated.
Our main problem is that we want puppet governments. We should never have them, they almost always go bad. Let them choose their government, we care more about the threat on our country, not about exactly what form they choose.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I think most Americans are unaware of the ways their economy siphons wealth off other countries, so they tend to see foreign relations in more ideological terms, in terms of "western values" etc. They probably think that the US is some kind of inspiration to the world in terms of human rights etc, a "shining beacon atop a hill" or whatever, and that US military involvement in other peoples' countries is a huge favour that the US military is doing for those countries out of the goodness of Colin Powell's heart. There was an article on this thread decrying the lack of gratitude for the US protecting Saudi Arabia, but the truth is that US troops are really there to protect the oil. If the US could have got the Saudi oil more easily by letting it fall into Saddam Hussein's hands then that's what would've happened (this is what happened with Indonesia's invasion of East Timor isn't it?). It's the oil that counts - it's the material interest of the very rich people who own most of the US economy that are driving that foreign policy.
I'm not excusing these terrorist acts, but I want to point out that they are part of a kind of "national liberation struggle" to overthrow the US/Israeli military dominance of the middle east. Their ideology is religious, and their tactics are terrorist, but they share their anti-imperial orientation with plenty of other groups, nationalists, communists, etc, around the world.
The important thing (and this is where it gets back to the topic of this thread) is that the US govt is going to be waging a propaganda war inside the US precisely to obscure that material basis for the war (oil) and to make the whole thing out to have purely religious justification. I think the religious angle is one of the most significant new features of the "new kind of war". After all, people will sign up for a "moral crusade" for "western values" when they might no be so keen to support a war for "continued occupation of the oil-producing zone".
however, Since President Bush has said they want bin Laden "Dead or Alive" it got me thinking what happened to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I guess that's gone out the window since the attacks.
you know, i am so sick of people claiming that our intelligence service fell through. We have govt officials selling off some of our most advanced crypto gear, nuclear research, and god knows what else. You people who blame our intel boys try to crack a f'ing STU III transmission! You try and intercept and decode messages sent via encrypted channels! And do this while your personnel count decreases, do this while your budget is increaased so it can be spent on some new technology that AT&T or Lucent promises will save the world but hasn't delivered in 10 years! You do this while all of your secrets are sold to foreign nationals before they are even three years old!
try livin in japan - not that it is terrible - it is an experiance i recommend for all us TALL WHITE GUYS.
"War is too important to be left to the generals," -Clemenceau