Slashdot Mirror
Afghanistan Is Like Nothing You've Ever Seen
DaHuNt writes: "A well written article about Afghan experiences by the Soviets... Food for thought... 'When Igor Lisinenko entered what he was told was an Afghan rebel base in 1982, he wasn't sure what to expect. It was, after all, his first assignment...'" Very good article. Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes.
that the only option is a massive Desert Storm type of invasion? What I hear military people talking about is using special ops people for small targeted operations. At most we would have a division, the 82nd probably, sieze a small easily secured area to use as, in effect, a large firebase. Or possibly use the Northern Alliance areas. Anyone who thinks we are going to try and conquer Afghanistan is an idiot.
Best Slashdot Co
Beneath the veil is a special on CNN. It shows just what an oppresive regime the Taliban is. It airs at 11:00pm eastern tonight and I think 7:00 tomorrow.
--Joey
Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes.
How do you know we (U.S.) haven't learned?
After all, we haven't done anything terribly rash and stupid in Afghanistan in the last 10 days.
Colin Powell was in Vietnam, and learned a thing or two, and remembers. Bush of course was not, but he seems (so far) to have the sense to listen to his betters.
--S
"I used to be a dilettante. Then I thought I'd try something else for a while."
The implications of a war on Afghanistan are, as this article raises, quite scary. Even if, in a sustained bombing campaign or a land war victory, we "win", what next?
Afghanistan will need a government to replace the Taliban... The Afghanis will doubtless harbor a deep hatred for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others who might aid us in such a war. This could easily lead to a much larger scope Middle East conflict.
It's just amazing to me how little perspective the average American has in situations like this (even our leaders), and how short and selective our memories are.
The Russians remind us that a war in Afghanistan is largely unwinnable by US standards. Our own history in Vietnam should clue us in as well. Will we never learn?
If yo uwant an unjaundiced and somewhat approachign abalnced view my advice is don't watch CNN or network news, or for that matyter listen to NPR. They all have prety severe slants oenw ay or the other.
The only vaugely balanced POV I've seen so far is the BBC. Among other reports they did an excellent report on the hsitory of AlQeda and OSama Bin Laden called "Behind the terror."
One thing they explianed was that the core of AlQaeda are merecenaries with no other modern job skill that **we** trained to fight a modern guerilla war ebcause we needed them to defeat the soviets., After the soviets were puished out of Afghanistan we lost interest.
With out us paying them its only natural they found someone new to pay them to keep fighting.
People angst all the tiem abotu left over cold war weapons-- the most DANGEROUS left over weapons are the human ones we made. We need to be VERY careful not to do the same thing all over again...
There has been no evidence whatsoever (beside urban legends) that Chechens ever engaged in terririst activities. KGB and the Russian media did what was in their power to tarnish their name in the public opinion. The truth is however, that Russia desperately tries to hold on to Chechnya as they have their eyes set on "reunification" with Georgia.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
"Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes."
How do we know that the United States military isn't learning from British and Soviet mistakes?
The British attempted to take Afghanistan over 100 years ago, and you can not compare an army before aviation, remote sensing and mechnization to a modern army.
Same goes for the Soviets. The Soviets were an army of conscripts and as Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam show you, a conscript army isn't the same as a volunteer army. Also, the Soviets hadn't fought since WW2 or 1959-60 against the Chinese, albeit in Bridgade sized clashes. And like the Americans in Vietnam, an army that rusty will have problems.
Micheal should look to the SAS's exploits in Iraq in '91 and the Desert Rats in '40-'41 for examples of what a small cadre of highly trained and motivated fighters can do againt increadable odds. Or even look at Blackhawk Down for an indication of what Rangers and Delta Force can accomplish in a poorly planned mission. I'm sure that all the lessons learned in Afghanistan in the 80s by Delta Force and CIA as well as those lessons learned in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Sierra Leone by the Rangers, Delta, SAS, Force Recon and SEALs will be taken to heart.
Back when Desert Storm was still Desert Storm, all you heard were bags o' wind talking about how the United States Military was a paper tiger and couldn't invade Iraq because Iran couldn't invade Iraq in 8 years of fighting. Then when it turned into Desert Storm, they told us how many thousands of men would die because the M-1 used too much gas and was too complicated to use or because it was designed for Europe. Same thing is going on now, people are declaring the United States and United Kingdom beaten before they've had a chance to fire a shot back in anger. It's FUD.
All those soldiers are volunteers, give them a chance to prove themselves or be beaten.
Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes.
This is the sort of nonsense comment that really turns me off slashdot at times. As best as I can tell we have not repeated any of the Russian or British mistakes in Afganistan, nor is it likely that we are going to try to make Afganistan a colony or territory like the Russians and British tried.
Sure, nobody said this is going to be an easy job. But it is quite clear that it is not going to be done solely through military means, nor would it even be possible to do solely through military means.
First, give their women a better lot in life.
Gain territory. Then make the territory safe. Then give the people within that territory everything their hearts desire. Food. Clothing. Shelter. Jewelry. Television. McDonald's.
Build them a beautiful mosque. Allow them to pray. Give them a world where they need not fear, where they are defended by the United States military.
When the Taliban tries to assert itself, it will find itself against its own population, who will have found the security and freedom we Americans usually tend to take for granted, and will sacrifice all to defend.
You'll have difficulty keeping the defectors to your side out -- just as the USA today has difficulty accepting everyone who wants to immigrate here.
You win by conquering the way Rome did. You make the conquered territory more blessed than your opponents' territory.
Those few who infiltrate will grow accustomed to the softness of the new lifestyle, and be unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to fight their cause.
You ask them what they want, and then give them more than they asked for.
I posted a MLP to Kuro5hin earlier this year with an excellent photo-report from Chechnya made by a Polish journalist. Here is the story. Unfortunately the main link no longer works but I posted a comment which has direct links to all images. The body of the story contains the picture titles.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Anyone seen a carrot? $40 billion in war chest funds could buy a lot of carrots. That is about $1,500 per Arab in Afganistan or about 6 times their GNP per capita. Twice the total value of everything in the country. Lots of carrots. A trust fund would instantly tripple their standard of living. Lots of tractors, roads and telephones or 80 million sheep. 3 sheep for every man woman and child in Afganistan. All we have are sticks. I guess we could start by killing all their sheep. They each have one now. We might have to give carrots to everyone who threatened terrorism against us though.. Yes, blasting them to glass is a much better solution than being held hostage to terrorist.. Something to think about.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
This email has been making the rounds, and happened to meander my way:
Dear Colleagues,
As we reflect upon the tragic events of this week and an appropriate
"response," I thought you might like to see this letter from my college
roommate, Tamim Ansary, who grew up in Afghanistan. I think he offers an
interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan.
Toivo Kallas
Department of Biology & Microbiology
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio 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," and he asked,
"What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard a
TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about these issues 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 been going on over there. So I want to share a few
thoughts with anyone who will listen.
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 fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
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 captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in
bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master
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 love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and
clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
I guarantee it.
Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow
the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted,
damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations
estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a
country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the
approximately two million men killed during the war with the
Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for being women
and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil
of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have
been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban.
They haven't been able to.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took
care of it . 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? There is no infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine
and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only land in 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. (They have already, I hear.) 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 be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the
people they've been raping all this time
So what else 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. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what
needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly
to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral
qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill
that's actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get
Bin Laden. 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. 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. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between
Islam and the West.
And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he
did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right
there. AT the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There
are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity
as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can
constitute this entity and he'd be running it. 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 Muslim lands, that's a
billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's
point of view. He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west
would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the
war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?
I don't have a solution. But 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. We
can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.
Tamim Ansary
That would be nice if there were anything other than a ghost of an abstract noun to go to war with.
Find a real enemy, find a real target, find an opponent.
Don't show me ghosts.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
For another excellent, and far more detailed summary, an Iranian filmmaker has written about his experiences in Afghanistan. The site does not always seem to be up, and if you have problems, there is a mirror of the article available as well.
I think the US goverment is getting ample warning about the problems of fighting in Afghanistan, we'll have to see what they make of them. Clearly, the poverty and horrible living conditions there suggest that sending food rather than bombs might be far more effective with regard to the general populace. Catching the terrorist is likely be better done by spies and intelligence than simply sending in the Marines.
Not that war should *ever* be commonplace, everyday, or mundane... but if this article is correct, if we are facing warriors that live in homes with very little to lose...
It seems that the counter to terrorism then is hope. While it seems... stupid... to those screaming for blood and violence, helping the country rebuild and strengthen itself may work to our advantage on several fronts. 'Occupy' the territory and help them build infrastructure (in the name of troop facilities and such, perhaps?)
Such as power facilities, communications channels, transport infrastructure, buildings, etc. Pour money into the country in such a way that the people are no longer hopeless and no longer believe the have nothing to lose?
Educate the people. Not indoctrinate them, but give them the tools necessary to change their own lot, rather than forcing change upon them. Reading, science, math, communication. More hope.
It sounds a whole lot better than fighting with guns and tanks, doesn't? Fighting terrorism with hope and life.
GPL Deconstructed
...is the constant chime of the news media that "the US is preparing their military strike against terrorism" (translated quote from German radio news, just minutes ago).
The US is acting like a big, very angered 900 pound gorilla, screaming out "whoever did that, come out and show yourself so that I can beat you up!" Yet, nobody showed up so far. And the investigation has shown quite a few false leads so far, including publishing a list with suspected kamikaze terrorists who are still alive and just happen to have had their passports stolen...
Of course, something must be done. But who is the enemy, really? Bush promised that he would give proof in his (hollywood-taylored *) speech, he didn't. I still don't know who the US and their allies are going to fight and how troops in Afghanistan will help fighting terrorism.
Everybody agrees that "terrorism" is a bad thing and that we should fight it. But isn't it just a catchphrase to drum up the support for this military campaign? (Oh, sorry, it's "America's new war", of course, as trademarked and repeated again and again by CNN.)
So far, a military campaign against the state of Afghanistan is still on a shaky ground. "Bomb these bastards to oblivion," says the general public, but I can't help that I feel bad about it.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
The NVA fought with rifles. The farmers and villagers had antiquated handguns and knives. The VC had a few grenades and bombs. The few large factories and power plants and other traditional targets of war were always located in or near civilian centers, which, for political reasons, were deemed off-limits. So for 10 years the US bombed the hell out of bamboo bridges, huts, and broken-down trucks. It had no effect because the Vietnamese are resourceful, clever people and were determined to win. They were the ultimate distributed network - take out one part, and another will step up to replace it while a small crew repairs the damaged area.
Contrast this with the US - large, highly visible targets of obvious importance. Choke points and centers of strength. With a few million dollars' worth of bombs you could easily lower Americans' standard of living by half. The US is well-equipped to fight a war against a similar enemy - like the Soviet Union of yesteryear. It is ill-equipped and inexperienced to fight a lengthy guerilla war, on foreign soil, against people who are at once civilian and military, against people with radically different values and standards than our own. The Geneva convention is likewise unable to cope with this reality - killing civilians is illegal, but who qualifies for this protection? If a man shoots at enemy aircraft from his home while his unarmed wife and children are present, how can the pilot justify shooting back? How can the pilot justify *not* shooting back?
This, I believe, was the fundamental question during Vietnam. And as we're thankfully starting to see, it will be the fundamental question in Afghanistan and wherever else the US may elect to demonstrate its might. In guerilla and terrorist warfare it is difficult or impossible to distinghuish innocents from combatants. Even the Israelis, who have dealt with this problem for many years, have never found a solution that permits both humanity and security. The US, in 10 years in Vietnam, never did either.
But philosophical discussions aside, if I honestly believed that dropping bombs on Afghanistan until 6,333 people died would cure forever the prospect of terrorist attacks, I would suck it up, pray a lot, and give my government the green light. It wouldn't be right, but at least it would be equitable and most importantly effective.
Of course, killing people, even killing the right people (and there's no real way to be sure who are the right people), has yet to solve anything. Executing the Nazi war criminals did nothing to prevent the atrocities committed by Pol Pot, Stalin, and others. Killing a few VC guerillas did nothing to prevent the fall of Saigon. And killing every Afghani in all the world, and parading bin Laden's head on a platter, will not assure Americans or anyone else of their security.
And that, my friends and countrymen, is why going to war over this is pointless. War is a great evil, a last desperate measure when there is simply no alternative. If a nation is to make the decision to go to war, then there must be a clearly-defined objective, and the actions of war must be suitable for reaching it. This situation, like Vietnam, fails both tests. The government has never made clear any specific objective for action against Afghanistan - to get bin Laden? (We won't present any evidence against him, so what right do we have to demand his extradition?) - to punish the Taliban for being naughty? - to simply exhaust some grief and rage against some people unloved by many and mostly unable to retaliate? In no case has anyone actually pretended that even a 100% successful war against Afghanistan would prevent terrorism, but then one would really have to wonder why do it at all. In any case, even if we were to settle on one of these objectives, there is no clear evidence that even a successful war would achieve any of them. It's difficult enough to support killing when it's truly deserved. Witness the debates over capital punishment. It's even difficult, though perhaps less so, to support killing when it's truly necessary. But senseless killing to achieve no defined goals, with no clear purpose, of people who cannot be clearly identified as "enemies" is entirely unacceptable in a civilized society. And we are one, right? Right?
Note the mention of groups of guerrilla soldiers, including Osama Binladen, being funded by the CIA. I know that the CIA was later prohibited from hiring terrorists, and I have to wonder whether section 815 of the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001 isn't exploiting the emotional response after a terrorist attack to weaken or completely remove restrictions on funding the type of people who hijacked these planes; to supposedly combat a terrorist leader who was apparently trained and strengthened by the same funding. The only discrepancy I see is that 815 allows this practice for 'intelligence' purposes, but forgive me for thinking it could easily be abused as a loophole to fund terrorists for any purpose. If it were, you can bet it'd be 25 years later before an FOIA request had the CIA's activities declassified.
Now, there are those who will say "remember, they don't want matterial comforts the way Westerners do" or some such. But I think they are missing the point. True, they may not want Linux PDAs or whatever, but I'll bet good shoes would be appreciated.
Those few who infiltrate will grow accustomed to the softness of the new lifestyle, and be unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to fight their cause.
There is some evidence of this already, in that it now appears that there may have been other hijackings planned that didn't happen because the hijackers backed out.
Build them a beautiful mosque. Allow them to pray. Give them a world where they need not fear, where they are defended by the United States military.
And most importantly, what we really have to offer isn't material comforts, it's freedom. This is the kind of thinking--using American strengths rather than letting the opposition choose the terms of engagement--that might really get us somewhere.
-- MarkusQ
Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes.
Yes, a whole sale invasion of Afghani soil with the purpose of controlling the countryside either without [1] air support or precision guided munitions or [2] while fighting an army backed with money and training from another super-power would be stupid. But unless I've been in a coma for a couple of weeks and its not really the 22nd of September, no one has suggested that yet.
Not like I've ever been known to just go off, but one of these days I'm seriously going to have an aneurysm or hemmorage or something if people don't stop assuming that there are only two sides to any story. Our options are not "invade Afghanastan" or "stay at home and be safe". Its not that easy. Not doing anything doesn't make you safe, and doing something doesn't mean sending thousands of people to needless deaths. The issue is a little bit more complex, especially since no military action and millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to most of the Middle East up to September 11 sure did a lot of good at stopping terroism.
As long as there are *governments* that sponsor terrorism, monetarily, with training, or with physical protection, you will not be safe.
I trust the leaders of my country. I trust our military. And if my country calls me to service, you can bet your ass I'll be at the recruiting station in 15 minutes. I'm not willing to sacrifice my freedom so that you can be self-righteous about how much you love peace or how you are so smart since you passed a few history classes and managed to watch CNN. I will sacrifice my life so that we call live free from fear in the liberty our grandparents died for.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
The Taliban doesn't let anyone else go armed. Therefore, if they're in Southern Afghanistan and carrying weapons, they're Taliban. Simple and easy.
Recently, civilian Afghanis have reported wholesale armed robberies. As the conflict with the republican forces in the North incurred casualties, the Taliban have recruited anyone they could: "The Taliban have not become thieves, but thieves have become Taliban" according to one local Afghani.
The U.S. doesn't want to invade and occupy Afghanistan... the British and Soviets did. The U.S. wants to go in, get their man (or men), and "deal" with them... whether be by trial or shot to the back of the head. This is the fundamental difference.
;)
Our technology is also greater than it was 20 years ago (when the Soviets tried). We have stealth, night vision, heat vision, etc... such things change the balance of odds. This is why we were able to take out Iraq so fast. Technology allowed us to be a few steps better, given that their troops were just as equipped, trained and skilled as our troops (which probably isn't the case)... and I'm sure isn't the case here.
On a similar note, the Taliban has about 50,000 men. Currently, the U.S. military consists of 3.5 million men and 3.5 million reservists. Obviously, we outnumber their forces significantly... I don't think we'd have a problem wiping them out if we wanted. I think if they even took out like 250,000 of our troops we'd just turn it into a parking lot and wipe our hands of it.
This is NOT going to be a traditional war, like Desert Storm, nor is it going to be a police action, like what the USA went through in Vietnam (or the Soviets in Afganistan)
The Israeli Mosaad have been killing the al Qaeda people for quite some time, using covert activities like car bombs, etc.--but they have limited resources to track them down, and the planning must be meticulous, and the target really is rather ephemeral.
It's important to remember who we are, and what we are up against.Our goal must be supporting and protecting the innocent, while (literally) killing the guilty.
That means the Saudi, Iraq, Iran, Afganistan radical islamic strongholds will, over time, have to be identified and...sterilized...with the help of moderate elements in those nations.
It's hard to beleive we might need the help of Saddam Hussein's secret police, perhaps while he looks the other way, this time around, but think about it:
If the moderate muslims don't ante up, now that they have said that those responsible for the tragedy are not true muslims, then next time it might be gas, bio or nukes on our soil, or the soil of israel.
I think we have policies in place...that state a nuclear attack on israel or the USA will result in nuclear retaliation against the most likely agressor, period. It would be a shame to see tens or hundreds of thousands of moderate muslims get nuked because of a few hundred radicals. They say we would never do it, don't bet on that, ever.
Bush is right on this one...the Arab world needs to decide whether they want these radicals around in the future, and they better decide to give them up...covertly or overtly..because this needs to be taken care of now.
The leaders in the muslim world are politicians like elsewhere. There are moderates and radicals in their governments. Let's hope the thousands dead died for nothing, that the moderates help us clean house, and when it's over the more hateful elements of islam end up a historical footnote.
We need the moderates to help us, or we're doomed.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
From the referenced story, Afghanistan Is Like Nothing You've Ever Seen, Soviet Vets Say:
First, there are no real "bases" for terrorists, they say. Fighters live in ordinary villages. Air or artillery strikes against them will invariably kill civilians.
Moreover, there are few targets other than villages, the veterans warn. There are few bridges, no factories. Most of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed in decades of civil war.
"Even in Iraq you had something to bomb," Lisinenko said. "But there are no targets in Afghanistan. There's nothing there to bomb."
I'm very happy that Slashdot is covering this. If the U.S. government starts a huge war, it will affect our computer jobs. Not only that, if I did not read Slashdot, I would never have seen the article.
The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Discussion overheard between two nations:
USA: Since you've refused to stop supporting Mr. Laden, we're going to attack you. We're thinking about an all-out invasion with ground troops.
Taliban: Oh, you'll regret that. You'll lose just like the Russians and the British. No ground invasion works here.
USA: Damn! OK, then we'll fly over and carpet bomb you. Ha!
Taliban: Oh, didn't we tell you, we live in very deep caves that are not affected by bombs.
USA: Damn again! What if we fight a long, protracted war with special forces, spys and other sneaky things?
Taliban: Your college students will revolt and your people will not like you. You will be very, very unpopular and the United Nations will make fun of you. Hollywood will make movies describing you as bloodthirsty Nazis. Even your children will spit on you.
USA: Damn it again! You've got me stumped. Hmm... well I guess there's only one thing left... (click... poof... boom!) Hello? Get me India. Tell them I've just made a nice big parking lot for them to their north.
The Soviets and the British were fighting wars of occupation and control. The Soviets wanted a stable satellite state. The British wanted to expand their empire and control the land routes from India (already controlled) back to Europe.
We don't want control. We are not looking to occupy. We don't give a shit if the Afghans harass the Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, Tajiks, Russians, etc. We are going in to kill some people and destroy some military equipment & training camps.
No, Afghanistand does not have major infrastructure -- no television, radio or internet; no major roads; no centralized anything.
They DO have airports (a couple), tanks and planes that are used to fight the "Northern Alliance". They encourage locals to grow and export poppy products (heroin & opium) to the point that Afghanistan is the #1 supplier of those drugs worldwide. Only 10% of their land is arable, and 90% of that is used for poppy production. This results in the vast majority of the gov't income.
Destroy what military we can find, and let the freshly supplied Northern Alliance fight on the ground. (It IS their land, after all.) Destroy a few crops of poppies; freeze all their remaining assets and seal the borders as much as possible and their income will dry up. Can't afford bullets, guns or bombs.
Funnel aid (actual food & medicine, not money) through the Northern Alliance.
Yes, people are going to die. Yes, civilians are going to die. They entire damn country was starving before (over 2 million refugees in Pakistan and 1 million in Iran before all this started -- that's 15% of Afghanistan's reported population). Maybe once the Taliban is gone something can be done. It sure as hell wasn't when they were in power.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Afghanistan is nothing compared to what we had to deal with in WW-II. It is a small festering boil on the ass of the world. It has a primitive culture with the people oppressed by a vicious minority - many of whom are foreigners (arabs).
When a nation has been hit with a massive attack such as we took, the rules change dramatically. A massive attack reques an equally powerful reaction. Retaliation, in a situation like this, is not vengeance and is not done for satisfaction, although it may provide that. It is deterrence. It is to make it too painful for our enemies to use these tactics again. A nation must unsheath "a terrible, swift sword" after this kind of attack, or forever lose the trust and respect of its citizens and its enemies.
It was no accident that The Battle Hymn of the Republic was plaid at the first memorial service. That song is symbolic of America wreaking vengeance in the name of freedom. And we shall do so again.
Given the modern world of asymmetric warfare, it doesn't mean we go out and bomb their civilians the way we did in WW-II. We have moved beyond that, thank goodness. But it does mean we take a lot of action. We kill or capture a lot of people. We destroy a number of hostile governments, or we allow them to castrate themselves if they wish to survive.
Few are alive today who previously experienced a situation of this magnitude, and thus few have come within an order of magnitude of appreciating the situation. For example, compare Afghanistan to our first major military action of WW-II (our = US): Guadalcanal. Read up on that horrible fight, and realize it was just one relatively small part of just the US part of that war. And there, we were fighting a much better armed, much larger and at least equally suicidal enemy. And we lost thousands - on that one little island. And we kept going and did it again and again. (I say we, but really my parents generation).
And our allies did the same sort of thing. Churchill had to sacrifice the civilians of Coventry to protect one cryptographic secret.
The citizens of London suffered through the blitz, which killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Today we are used to thinking of war as little police actions like Kosovo, or constrained theatre operations like the Gulf War I, or at worst cold war proxy fights like Korea, Vietnam or (for the USSR) Afghanistan-I. Today, there is no cold war which allies nuclear powers with our enemies. Today, we have been struck as badly as with weapons of mass destruction, and will probably avoid using nuclear weapons only because we don't need to But if they were needed to win this war, I have no doubt they would be used, and should be. This is some serious stuff.
What has been done to us (and all free nations of the world), unprovoked, gives us a motive far different than what we had in Vietnam or Korea or Iraq. It is more like what the British had in World War II: war leading to unconditional surrender or destruction of organized enemies of ours who were responsible for this or who have provided sanction either to those who did this or those who could have done it.
This means that if, for example, Syria doesn't allow us to take out, by air AND ground, the terrorist bases they support, the current Syrian government will be replaced - at whatever the cost! This is just one example. War is hell, and we have just experienced a taste of it. Now we must give it to those despots and psychopaths who have been preying on innocent civilians for too long.
Another thing war means: if the press discovers a military or intelligence secret, they keep it a damned secret. If they don't, at the least the citizens should be outraged enough to make the reporter and organization very sorry.
It also means that acts of domestic terrorist such as those carried out by Earth First! or McVeigh be treated as acts of sabotage in war, with appropriate penalties.
Give up a few freedoms? We don't have a choice. We just had them taken from us by a bunch of vicious thugs supported by evil despots who oppress their own populace, spread hate against us and what we stand for, and support those whose goal is to take innocent human life. We just lost the freedom to travel freely. We just lost the freedom to feel secure in our country. We just lost the first battle of World War III.
And even with all of this, I suspect that most Americans, no matter how much they whine about it, will lose far fewer freedoms than were lost in WW-II. Most Americans will not be drafted, but in WW-II, 30,000,000 of the men of the US were in the armed services. Think about that! That is the sort of sacrifice that had to be made then, and the sort of power we could generate today. Thank goodness most of us won't have to. And thank goodness there are still a few among our number who volunteer to put their lives at risk to keep this from happening again, and to punish those responsible.
The only good weather is bad weather.
to be thinking so fuzzily about such matters.
What sets us apart from the Islamic "fundamentalists" (i.e., lunatic fringe is more like it) that apparantly perpetrated these horrible cowardly attacks?
Might it be that we make a distinction between innocent civilians and combatants in time of war? That we seek out those individuals and groups actually responsible for such crimes, rather than blaming and oppressing entire ethnicities and countries full of innocents? Surely this is the case.
I understand your pain and outrage, but throwing our weight around while abandoning our civilized values will only play into bin Ladin's hands - that's what he wants! For us to overreact in an oppressive and bloodthirsty way. Then, we'll have the entire Islamic world rightly howling to dismantle our so-called civilzation and drink our blood. Congratulations - go have about six more drinks instead of posting more of your bloody jingoistic drunken ravings here to expose your lack of either strategic understanding or basic humanitarianism. Or better yet, just go sleep it off, you gargantuan fool!
Try here and here for more information of this sort. Both are good CNN articles about the difficulties of an Afghanistan war.
Ok, lets look this one over:
The british failed because the british troops had no real reason to fight other than the glory of england. (let me tell ya, that does not get you very far against anybody who is fighting for their homeland).
The russians failed because the US saw an excellent opportunity to accelerate the collapse of the soviet empire. After all, do you really think that the afghans found that many AK-47's on the battlefield? Didn't think so. The US gave the resistance lots of weapons. This is the same group that would become the taliban a few years later. We also gave them billion US dollars in aid to make sure that they had the supplies that they needed.
Of course, the big error made by the US. After the war, we just got up and walked away. We created a vacuum, the taliban filled that vacuum. And now that you have a country of folks who only know how to do one thing well (other shoot a US made stinger missile), it is hard to get them to suddenly do something else (like rebuild a nation).
Had the US poured a few of those billion into the country in the form of humanitarian aid, we would not have this problem today. Then again, we expected the local countries to do their part in assisting the afghans. (lesson #2, The Saudi's don't give a shit about the afghans)
So, how do we get out of this mess?
We can start by using special ops to get at a few of the more popular targets (bin laden, a few of the camps). However, the real victories will not be shown on CNN in an arcade like display: finding the money trail, arresting folks before they get a chance to carry out their plans, etc, etc. The last thing that we should do is launch a land war and try and occupy the country. Unless we want to throw a few million americans at the problem, we don't have a chance in hell of making it work.
In the end, the US will have to take a long term view of the area, something that we have never done and try and get ourselves out of the area as soon as possible. After all, we judge a company based on their quarterly results, what makes you think that we will start to ask the question "but what happens in 10 years"
Lets hope that the US gets a clue this time and takes care of the problem and not just the symptom. After all, I'm a capitalist pig who likes all of the things that a healthy economy can get me and that economy does not like having large buildings blown up.
Why are you posting as an AC? Are you ashamed of what you are saying here? Yes, that must be it.
Yeah, let's nuke Afghanistan. That'll teach them. Never mind that most of bin Ladin's operatives are in other countries far from there (Middle East, but also Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America). Many aren't even Afghani, but from other Islamic countries (Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Sudan.).
Afghanistan is a very poor country with no infrastructure remaining to speak of, where 95% of the area is controlled by a fanatical organized banditry that comprises at best only 5% of the population. And you're willing to drop nuclear bombs on 100% of the country and people just to wipe out that 5%? Unbelievable. You still need five more stiff drinks to wanker off into babbling unconsiousness. Thank God they'll never let you anywhere near a US weapons system - you're far too unstable.
The reason we've had an unprecedented 55 years peace in europe since WW2 is not because of the bomb, not because of the cold war, not because we beat Hitler, certainly it had nothing to do with Ronald Regan .... it's because we followed up with the Marshall plan .... we made it so that the germans and japanese citizens had comfortable lives and have too much to lose by going to war again - we need to do the same all over the world - it's very simple: middle class people don't start wars - that's the real key to world peace
I'm currently reading a book that includes some history of the conflict in Chechnya, which apparently started when the Russians invaded about 250 years ago. Yeah, that's right - 250 years worth of conflict.
Shortly after WWII, Stalin finally got sick of the mess in Chechnya and ordered the entire population of Chechnya moved. So they loaded 400,000 people into boxcars and hauled them out to the middle of nowhere in Soviet middle Asia. He moved the whole freakin' country. Several years later, when the people were allowed to return, apparently they weren't any less pissed off, because at the next opportunity (1990 or so) they started to make their attempted break from Russian control. At some point - and the rumors are, the decision involved lots of alcohol - the Russians decided to make Chechnya see the error of its ways by force. Again. With the same results they've always gotten. You'd think they'd try some different tactics after 250 years.
The example of Chechnya should be compared and contrasted with, say, the Marshall plan. Not saying the Marshall plan would work in Chechnya, the point is, trying to change a population's mind using only applied force does not tend to work.
That's a lesson we should all be considering these days.
Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes.
What an ignorant comment! We have not sent in a single troop yet, and yet you feel you have a basis for making this claim?
Guess what? We have Russian advisors assisting us in our military planning. Just because the English and Soviets failed does not mean the lesson is "Don't touch Afghanistan". It certainly is not "Don't touch Afghanistan even if they harbor terrorists who kill 5,000 of your citizens."
If you haven't yet listened to or read President Bush's speech to Congress, I highly recommend doing so.
I'm getting the distinct impression that Bush is planning on liberating Afghanistan. There are even reports that this is the case. Combine that with the ongoing British diplomacy with Iran, Iran's calling for an international fight against terrorism, and unprecedented sympathy towards the terror attack victims. And note how we haven't dropped any bombs yet, 11 days after the WTC mass murder. It looks like we're going to do the job right this time.
Peace with Iran, the liberation and rebuilding of Afghanistan... it's going to be tough to pull off, but if it can be done, wow...
Yes, the Chechens are bandits. They've been bandits for decades, if not centuries. But lately they've tried to expand their influence outside their borders - they've become expansionist bandits.
What the US objected to was the Russians descending to the level of their unscrupulous opponents in that policing operation. Although it was an extremely strenuous and brutal exercise, they didn't need to torture captives or brutalize civilians. But they did, and the US objected to those practices.
Now, what was your point again?
Chechnya was a war against terrorism wasn't it? Its funny because the war was condemned by the US and the UN.
No, the US did not condemn the war in Chechnya. In fact, we supported the war, just not some of the Russian tactics in fighting that war. We specifically took issue with their indiscriminate targetting.
A lot of what I've heard is along the lines of "you can take the cities, but you'll be forever deviled by hordes coming out of the high valleys".
You also hear a lot of stuff like "there is no beach-head" and "this is a different kind of war".
OK, so the proper response to a different kind of war is a different kind of fight. Instead of taking the cities and then trying to "mop up" the notoriously difficult mountains, why not do it in reverse?
I've been thinking that we should check out these valleys and make sure that a small defensible area is clear. Then, you drop troops and supplies in that area to establish a "valley-head". You do this several places. The choices would be based on how much you can see, and what routes you can see. The mission of these forward bases is to shoot anything that carries a weapon, and to gradually explore and secure the area around the base, eventually establishing checkpoints, or "chokepoints" if you prefer. These guys eventually have to come out of their holes, and we can run surveillance on them day and night.
Once this is accomplished, then, and only then you invade the cities. If they are in the cities it is not so bad because urban fighting is historicly our strength. Once a city is captured, it is secured by house-to-house search for any and all weapons and contraband.
Once the country is controlled, it then becomes a matter of figuring out what government to install and/or how to partition the country. That is a more difficult problem. Expanding the former Soviet republics might not be such a bad idea since there are many ethnic Tadziks, Uzbeks, etc. already there. However, there would probably still have to be some kind of Afghanistan and we may not want to expand Pakistan or Iran.
Imagine a "United States of Islam" or "Islamic Union". That could be much, much worse, especially if it took on the characteristics of a quasi-fascist megapower like China. Then again, it might also be tranquilized by the desire for trade. That is a tough call.
The other worry is that if we stay there too long we could end up building infrastructure that might later be used by China to move troops into the oil fields of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Remember, this is the old "silk road" we are talking about here. As China becomes more and more industrial we have to be wary of what they are going to do when they have the same thirst for oil that we have. So, regardless of what plan we execute we should be careful not to build a modern silk road.
To a great extent this whole mess all started with the US fighting the Soviet Union by proxy. So much for the Cold War being over.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Russians and Brits were trying to hold together control of the native population, while the US won't really care if the population is under control or not, so long as they're not in the way of us getting Bin Laden.
What evidence do you have for this amazingly speculative comment? So far, no one has suggested any such thing. In fact, such an attitude would run counter to everything Bush has been claiming.
Yeah, except that the "rebel" faction in this case controls 90% of the country, and with an iron fist no less.
You realize this is actually a weakness, right?
Guerilla warfare has the advantage of not having to hold territory. The Taliban are no longer in the position of being guerilla fighters, but instead an established army holding territory.
As someone who's been in the military, and now does programming for a defense contractor, I see how uninformed the media can be.
Best Slashdot Co
"I have no problem destroying villages..."
Perhaps the war is easier for you because you are thinking of watching it on television while you drink a beer.
Bush's education improvements were
The government of Washington, D.C. doesn't let anyone else go armed. Therefore, if there's in D.C. and carrying weapons, they're cops. Simple and easy - and completely wrong.
Legal or illegal, if I were in a war zone (Kabul or some parts of D.C.), acquring a firearm to defend myself and my family would definitely be a priority.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If we use military force against Afghanistan, we might end up using Pakistan as a base for some of our operations. This article, altho a bit dated, has interesting information about Pakistan and the 'Jihad Schools' located there. It helps shed some light on how our troops might be thought of and treated if they were stationed in Pakistan. Sounds like it would be a pretty hostile environment
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Who's shown to be giving quarter to the Taliban. Do we nuke them? Can they nuke us back?
I know what you are trying to say, that all life is precious and has the same potential. And I agree. But, and I qualify this heavily, a person filled with ideas of equality and freedom is worth more to the future of this planet than someone who is filled with hate and authoritarinism. Hopefully we can subvert their evil culture and replace it with somting better without 'killing them all.'
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Maybe it might be a good idea to send some EOD specialists and start clearing out the old landmines in the area.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Sure, we were soooo great during the Gulf War. That's probably why Saddam Hussein is still alive and governing Iraq.
Besides, as the name indicates, Desert Storm took place in a desert. Flat land, few landscape features. Afghanistan is a country of freaking mountains. The natives know the landscape, and we don't. A little troop of snipers can hold a valley against a company. They can hide in caves you don't know of. They can take those mountain paths you don't know of.
Before you go all "we're great and strong and we're gonna kick their ass", just ponder this: Switzerland was never invaded, and even the Taliban didn't make it into the most mountainous parts of Afghanistan.
Sorry for being harsh, but it's really not the right time to brag about how great we are. It's not FUD. It's war. War is about not underestimating what we're undertaking. Not about bragging around.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
With modern technology and an open world the only way civilized societies can be safe is if the punishment for acts of terror goes far enough to make them unthinkable to the possible terrorists. That's not done by occassionally arresting someone and putting them on trial. Instead it's done by making clear that anyone in their neighborhood who doesn't help in eradicating them will go down with them; while neighbors who turn them in will be richly rewarded. Even if the terrorists themselves are irrational, most human beings everywhere care enough for their future to respond to a good combination of bribes and threats.
Our government is neither ignorant nor divided. Never heard of good-cop-bad-cop? Watch this go down. Pakistan will make out very well indeed by selling out the Taliban - who were becoming dangerous to Pakistan too. And Pakistan has had military advisors in all the Taliban campaigns - they can completely betray them. Afghanistan didn't want to be part of the Soviet empire, so resisted that thoroughly. Most Afghans would be happy to have their country rebuilt on a UN/US model - these people are starving, their women being stoned to death for religious violations. And we're not trying to continue colonial administration like we did in Nam - they know they'll be free after we restore the country. Hell, even the Vietnamese like Americans now.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Agreeed. Thats the truly hard part - I hope we live up to our own ideals. I hope our democracy dosen't get caught in a feed-back cycle - were we elect jerks and slowly become jerks, then we elsect evil and become evil. But right now, in general, and in my own dumb opinion, the life of a free citizen is more precious and treasured than that of an enslaved subject. The world could use some more free people.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I just got back from a dinner conversation from an antrhopologist from India (just came to the US three weeks ago to visit). He talked about Packistan and the dictator (Musharraf) there and about how the elected official (who was ousted?) is in Saudi Arabia. He talked about how easy it would be for this regime to topple, especially if he bends too far to the US.
Then my guest explained how this gets worse. There is real tention between India and Packistan. And the Kasmir border distpute is just one part of it. And with both India and Packistan having nukes, if one side gets twichy there could be some serious fallout. Things are already tence enough my guest underscored.
The U.S. government has heavily influenced Saudi politics in favor of the house of al Saud. There are Saudis who would like a more representational government. There has been a lot of U.S. government meddling in Saudi politics that does not appear in the news.
The CIA trained Osama bin Laden: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
They were ambushed by the troops of rebel leader Mohammed Farah Aidid and members of Al Qaeda. They were led into the trap by a informer that was also on bin Laden's payroll. It also didn't hurt that bin Laden's and Aidid's officers had the US codes and other information leaked by the local UN office. If you are rapelling onto a rooftop surrounded by people waiting to open up a crossfire, it doesn't matter how elite you are. The Somalian operation was also notoriously hamstrung by operational conditions placed on it by Washington.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Sorry Mike, but you're just plain wrong.
/.ers) know about. I was bullied a long time in school. I never did anything about it. Why? I don't like to fight.
The Soviets wanted to conqurer Afghanistan, the US has no intention of doing this. The US on the otherhand simply plans to destoy as many terrorist bases as possible. Once their dead, we move on.
Secondly, the motivation of the armies completely different as well. The US has one of the strongest motivations that exists: revenge. The Soviet army went because of the Greater Glory of the Soviet Union; not really something that rallys the troops.
The circumstances around the military actions are completely different.
And now for something completely different...
I've heard alot of talk about "We need peace now!" or "We should attack. Violence only leads to more violence!" and whatnot. As proud liberal let me say, this is utter bullshit.
Economic-political actions (ie sanctions) simply don't work. Can anyone honestly name one regime that sanctions alone brought down? So you're left with military action.
Now with that said, does this mean I like war? No, I don't. I'd much rather not fight. I don't like having to fight, but there comes a time when you have no other choice. And when that choice is made, you fight hard, and you fight win. Unfortunately this is one of those times.
Terrorism is nothing more than a scaled up version of bulliing. Bullying is something that I (and sadly too many other
There was this guy that set next to me in english class, and evey day when the teacher would leave he would take something off my desk. It didn't matter what it was, he'd just do it to screw with me.
Eventually I had it. I stood up in the middle of class coldcocked son of a bitch. I quite literally knocked him out of his chair on to his ass.
You know what, no one messed with me after that.
So yes, violence does sometimes solve problems.
Maybe some military intervention is justified. Some isn't. If I want to support the IRA against the UK, the Taliban against the USSR, Saddam against Iran, Israel against Arafat, East Timor against Indonesia, so on, so forth, I'll write a check - I won't force you to take part.
grep -ri 'should work'
Michael may be afraid, and think we should let the terrorists off, but I don't think the world should be so easily intimidated. It is mostly British troops already there, and ready for action. They are by a long way the best trained army in the world. Much as I don't trust Bush, I trust our military leaders (we, the British, lost hundreds in the terrible attack). All my support, and best wishes, are with them no matter how long this may take. Anyway, how can he criticise our actions before we've taken any?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Come off it. There are films of bin Laden calling for exactly this sort of action. There are films of his camps training soldiers for this sort of action. There are training manuals he's published. His own country, Saudi Arabia, where his family is quite close to the royals, has kicked him out because they acknowledge he's been involved in this stuff for years.
What do you figure, bin Laden and his friends will be converted if we just shower them with Christian tolerance and forgiveness? When there are well-armed psychopaths who want to kill you, have announced they want to kill you, and then 6000 are killed, you don't just try to get the right psychopaths, you try to get all the psychopaths.
And the very nature of a successful cell-based terrorist action is that you don't leave full proof of who did it, the way a normal military campaign does. Does this mean we surrender on a legalism? Like, someone is out raping and killing women, your sister has just been raped and killed, someone - who may or may not be the same person - is bragging about raping and killing women, the pleasure of it, and teaching others how to do it successfully. Now, what do you do? Leave him free because you can't prove by the standards of a court of law in some particular jurisdiction that this is the who's guilty?
Or do you think you Germans will be left alone by the terrorists if you just continue to be nice about hosting them? Bullshit, man, you'll just be blackmailed forever if you take that sorry path.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
i don't know why.. maybe because somehow
frank herbert used arabic words adjacent to the desert freiman warriors.. the freiman warriors
sound exactly like the afghans..
" they will throw your babies at you and fight till their deaths " ??? remember this ??
You forget that there are people in Afghanistan who are fighting the Taliban. Many Afghans don't like the Taliban and want to kick the Arabs out of the country too. The Taliban have turned Afghanistan into an absolute madhouse and are carrying on their own scorched earth campaign against the population. The BBC has a good summary here and here. The anticipated US strikes are only one reason people are trying to flee.
The South Vietnamese government was corrupt and weren't liked by the citizens of that country. The probjem with Afghanistan is the uncertainly of who would fill the power vacuum once the US destroys the Taliban. Many want their exiled king to return, but that's probably a long shot.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The Germans remember to this day when the Quakers came over to feed German children after WWI (Herbert Hoover was in charge of that commission). Okay, so why not send in the Quakers *first* instead of last?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Yeah, but all us more or less Europeans look the same to them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The Afghan war was an example of a small country beating a super power. Vietnam is another, The US in 1776 over Great Britain is yet another. The reason this happens is because of two things, One in these three cases the super powers was not able to use there full military power, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and the US had more important military commitments, when fighting these wars you need very large forces, all three was under maned. Second and most important a small country can beat a super power if the small country has a super power as a friend. This means given weapons, training, and Intel. The US did not beat Great Britain the US, France, and Spain did. North Vietnam did not beat the US North Vietnam, China and the Soviet union did, Afghanistan did not beat the Soviet Union Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US did. The taliban in Afghanistan have no friends to help them and the US can put as many forces it wants there. It may be ugly but eventually the taliban will run out of fuel, bullets, and food. In the end the Northern alliance will defeat them because they will get the supples they need. If we can catch Geranimo it is possible to catch anyone.
Read this and ask yourself if we have enough EOD people to do the job before the turn of the next century.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
First of all, this article must have been written the same week of the attack, because it presumes that we would have to conquer Pakistan first in order to attack Afghanistan. We now know that Pakistan has agreed to every major request we've made, INCLUDING a staging area on Pakistani soil. Face it, Pakistan has been bought off (much to bin Laden's chagrin, I'm sure).
Secondly, what would we get out of killing innocent civilians? Like he says, they already hate the Taliban, just feed them and arm them, and let them take back their country. The Taliban don't even have control of the entire country; about 10% belongs to rebel groups. Our objective is probably going to be to knock the Taliban out of power and help the Afghanistans rebuild, and make an ally out of them. That's our history, anyway. Whenever we beat the living crap out of a country's leadership, we always go back in to help them rebuild.
Third, I don't think we are going to make all of the mistakes that were made in Vietnam by us and Afghanistan by the Russians. Say what you will about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron, but I think that the Gulf War was proof that we have adapted. There's plenty of history on Afghanistan for our military leaders to study, and the fact that we haven't yet fired a shot is good; we're obviously doing our homework first.
There are tall mountains in Afghanistan. They look scary. I guess we should just roll over and let these people continue to murder us, because you know, those mountains are quite rugged.
Antiproliferation can only possibly work through coercion, since "moral authority" means absolutely nothing to immoral regimes such as Iraq and North Korea! The whole silly idea that we can talk our way into a non-violent world has just been thrown on to the ash-heap of history.
The only good weather is bad weather.
This or this BBC story makes it sounds like no one in that country really likes the Taliban either. The people weren't using drugs that much as much as they were producing them. The Taliban only banned the growth of opium poppies after UN pressure. Taxing drug farmers was a major source of income for the Taliban. Most of the production drop is probably due to the drought and even then, Russia is still intercepting drugs along the Afghanistan border. Also, for the last two years, the US was the country that provided the most aid (mostly food) to Afghanistan.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Ah, the utopia.
0 8/image/12.JPG (taken from a French/German programme on geopolitics). The arrows are possible exportation ways for the HUGE gas and oil ressources of Turkmenistan. One is through Russia via Kazhakstan, one is through Iran, and one is through Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is useful to know that the US forbids commerce and investments in Iran. That leaves two ways out, one of which is through Russia. So the 'logical' route for the US to the oil of Turkmenistan is through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, it takes a stable politic situation there, and you can bet your ass that's why the CIA funded the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't work. You want to replace their own old culture with your American ways. It's not going to work. Chances are that'd only help stir that anti-American sentiment, and make us come across as careless imperialists. Which we would indeed be.
Besides, you're leaving out a very, very important side of how people think in Afghanistan: the interethnic rivalry is extremely strong, to the point that even in freaking refugee camps, Ouzbeks won't go anywhere if there are already Pashtoons there, and vice-versa. They won't wait together for the doctor -- the doctors have to schedule a Pashtoon day, then a Tajik day, etc, no matter how serious and urgent a given person's case might be. And there are more than just two tribes in Afghanistan. You can't bring peace to Afghanistan if you fail to give them a government that will please them all. Good luck. No chance that'll happen, unless you dig out the old way they did it themselves, through tribal federalism, where each tribe has its own leaders.
Now, of course, that'd also be leaving out the US' interests in the Great Game. What the US want is, no matter how, a stable political situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Check out this map: http://www.arte-tv.com/hebdo/dessouscartes/199808
So, while I really, really like the way your idea is generous, it will simply not happen. Too many conflict vectors (ethnics, religion, geopolitics) are pointed toward Afghanistan, and I can't see how it couldn't be very ugly there before long. But you can still, and should, pray for them. They're gonna need it.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
The last time the US had a sensible way out of Middle Eastern policy was its backing of the Shah. Since then, affairs in the region have almost always forced a reluctant US to act, and has often softened to appease parties whose interests aren't the US's interests. If you look at the tenor of debate in the Israeli/Palestinian debate, the US was taking a firm middle ground between both parties.
Building them a US Army regulation mosque and a McD's will not endear you to these people. They despise Western culture (yet are also strangely drawn to it), which they see as degenerate, and they would look upon an extnerally imposed rewriting of their culture as the ultimate affront - you would be making war not on terror but on Islamic culture itself, thus drawing in to the conflict many other Islamic nations.
It will be a long time before i will get on an airplane with a towel head on it. You never can tell and the attitude that the US has about "trust everyone" is what got us here in the first place. I had to fly home from Phoenix today and had there been one raghead on that plane, he would have got off or I would. I will not apologize for what is a reasonable concern in this current world atmosphere.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Nope, Chechnya is a war about oil.
Dig out a map of the Caspian Sea and the surrounding country. Chechnya is Russia's road to Azerbaijan's oil (see here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspian.html).
Why we don't hear about it more, is because the US is busy enough dealing with its own oil war -- Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is the US' road toward Turkmenistan's oil.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Watch CNN's special: "Beneath the Veil: Inside the Taliban's Afghanistan". Saira Shah is a freelance journalist who was born in Britain, of an Afghan family. She went back to Afghanistan in order to chronicle the absolute terror that the Taliban is causing. She filmed the story under cover, under pain of death, because the Taliban has forbidden anyone from filming the country. She documents the plight of women who are unable to work or find education or even apply makeup. How do widows survive? They cannot work, so they must beg in an already impoverished nation. Music is banned, and public executions are carried out in the football stadium that the international community built for Afghanistan. Never have I seen such moving footage, and it is deeply disturbing to me that the world community has done nothing about it until now. Unfortunately I can't find a web page on the site that corresponds to this special report, though CNN does have a transcript of a chat she gave in August: click here for the chat. This report is something that everyone must see, and everyone must act on.
uh, hmm, whuh... I don't think you've done much study on the affairs of Israel. The bottom line is that the U.N. (read U.S. and U.K.) created the State of Israel and to this day they receive more aid from the U.S. than any other country by far. To quote the State Department's website:
Aside from the creation of Israel, the U.S. and the U.K. drew up borders for a number of other States in the region, many of which had no cultural or historical basis, i.e. Jordan or Kuwait. Sometimes, they would even invent a monarchy or aristocracy so that the newly minted nations could be more easily controlled. Standing up for democracy... right.I'm sure you read my post, but I'm not sure you understand it.
In this situation modern weaponry will provide advantages. Airmobile (Helicopter) helicopter forces will make the rugged nature of the geography less of an issue that pundits would have you believe. FLIR/Nightvision and drones will give the Allied forces advantages that the Afghanis do not have, nor did the Soviets or British. The Soviets tried to use Airmobile forces in the 80s, but it was thier first time and they didn't learn from the US in Vietnam. By contrast, the US have used massive helicopter assaults for the last 30 years (Operation Pegasus in Vietnam, Granada, elements of Just Cause in Panama, Desert Storm and bi-annual Bright Star exercises in Egypt.)
Since Vietnam the United States has worked hard on Light Infantry, the 25th Infantry (Light) and the 10th Infantry (Mountain) have considerable experiance in rough terran, operating in Hawaii, Korea, upstate New York, Bosnia and Kosovo. I'll wager that those "Light Fighters" from the 10th can climb mountains with the best of the Taliban, and the British bring the Gurkhas to the table, and those fellas grewup climbing mountains that make Afghanistan look like foothills.
The Gulf War was not a "phony war" Saddam made the same choices he made against Iran, choices that worked against hordes of infantry and American tanks, and I'm sure that he had some leftover Soviet advisors tell him that's the way to beat the Americans. But they didn't understand mobility, navigation with GPS or Nightvision. On the first nights of the War, Iraq did try to contest the air, but he got knocked down, F-15s and F-18s will do that to you, but the Taliban only has some claptrap MiG-21s...not an issue there.
You can always learn from the past. Even operations like Just Cause and Somolia will have taught the United States and Allies many things about mobile warfare and anti-insurgant fighting.
The Soviet experience in Afghanistan isn't entirely relevant. Their presence there was for a different purpose with different requirements. They needed to hold ground and fortify within Afghanistan, which is difficult to do in any classical military fashion there.
Some of what they learned there may be useful if we're going to try charging in there guns ablaze. I doubt there will be any deterrents to taking military action against Afghanistan and maybe other states that we "discover" are in league with the terrorists responsible for the WTC tragedy.
The parable of the well-oiled army machine against the warrior-tribes of the People is fascinating. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves: the Soviets were trying to hold Afghanistan, not blast it to smithereens. While a sustained ground war is likely, I doubt that it will be the primary mode of attack.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
The evil soviets don't have the kind of satellite imagery we have in 2001. There's really no need for surveillance crafts to be sent in like the soviets did and what we did in vietnam. And about that little drone plane we sent in the other day, it was just to see where some of their anti-aircraft missiles are positioned.
You are completely incorrect. Egypt (a one time opponent of Israel) routinely receives the same degree of aid that Israel does, and in the last decade Egypt has more than once been the single largest recipient of US aid. The reasoning is simple - as the only stable Arabic democracy, the status of Egypt is key to the Middle East, and the US wishes to keep it from being turned into an Islamic state.
That said, my initial statement was correct - prior to the WTC incident, the US was taking unprecedented actions to create a plausible support for some Palestinian positions. These are a matter of historical record, they are not subject to your opinion.
Wonder where they're headed.
Thanks lameness filter the world is safe without the ability to link to pictures! bleh.
Richard Schmalensee. More info on him here if anyone is interested.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This post is in response to many posts, and I didn't know what to attach it to. So I've made it a new post.
While I'm inclined to agree with many people that the Taliban isn't the greatest group of guys to be running a country, removing folks from power isn't easy. Therefore, I find it difficult to support such an action. Consider our stellar record of using stuff that comes to mind:
1) Fidel Castro
2) Muammar al-Qaddafi
3) Saddam Husein
4) Slobodan Milosevic
You might argue that we were successful in #4. However, it was the civilian population that forced his removal -- a civilian population that had something to lose if he stayed in power.
It's not clear to me that the million-or-so internally-displaced Afghans care at all what happens to the Taliban. It's not clear that they want prosperity, or that they care much about military conflict.
If you want to find a sympathetic ear in Afghanistan, maybe we should quit terrorizing them with threats of attack, get the aid agencies *back* into the country they were forced to evacuate because of our threats, and make some *friends* in Afghanistan. We have a chance to show them that we are *civilized*, by *helping* them do things like *eat* and *stay warm*. And be sure to leave your bible at home, and hope the Taliban doesn't find any new excuses to jail aid workers.
Once the people like us, we have a chance of the population telling the Taliban to get out of their lives. A government is nothing without a people to govern, and if those people turn against the Taliban, they'll be effective. They don't need guns, they just need a better alternative (which of course means we need to understand their priorities -- I doubt that getting bombed or invaded by special forces is high on their list of priorities).
It has been estimated that half of Afghanistan's population may be internally-displaced at the end of winter if we don't get the aid agencies back into Afghanistan. Think of this as an opportunity to befriend half of Afghanistan's population. A different slicing of their population: It shouldn't be hard to win some friends among the females in Afghanistan, either. The hard part will being doing something to help the females in Afghanistan without being sent to jail.
-Paul Komarek
Osama Bin Laden declared a holy war against the U.S. after we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia in Desert Storm.
He didn't object to us killing Iraqis, but rather western troops on Saudi soil were an affront to Islam.
Thus, contrary to your reasoning, they "justified" the attacks WITHOUT some perceived act of violence against them, merely a trespass.
In short, HE started the violence -- simply because we were there and he didn't want us there. He, as a civilian, took it upon himself to wage war against a Nation.
There is a big damn difference between our reasoning and theirs. Had they attacked any sort of military target, you may have a point. Attacking civilian targets -- loaded with people completely unrelated to anything to do with their "cause" -- is what sets us apart from them. (Yes, "unrelated". Nationals from how many countries? Including muslims, arabs, etc.)
Those types of actions cannot be ignored and cannot go unpunished.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Friends" include gov'ts who supply money, weapons and sanctuary to these terrorists. Gov'ts like Syria, Algeria, Iraq and Afghanistan who provide facilites for training, weapons, instruction, intelligence and the protection of a "sovreign nation" for al Queda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and other violent, extremist organizations.
Unlike the rest of the world, the United States will do it's level best to avoid civilian casualties. Yes, there will be suffering, pain and death of the Afghan people. It is unavoidable. However, odds are there will be less civilian deaths caused by any U.S. attack on Afghanistan than was caused by the terrorist actions in recent days.
Odds are we won't kill as many Afghan civilians as the Taliban have.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
YOU'RE misinformed. The Taleban are NOT a CIA creation. Yes, the CIA funded the Mujhadeen against the Soviets and some of the Taliban are Mujhadeen, but they are NOT one in the same.
Pakistan created and supplied a lot of the Taliban so they wouldn't have to honor the Durbin Agreement made when the British pulled out of the area and give back Pashtookistan (half of Pakistan).
It also provided a wonderful training ground for fighters against India, with whom they have already fought 3 wars regarding a mostly-Islamic Indian border province.
Learn more of history than just the "Americans are to blame for EVERYTHING" part.
And I agree with the CIA operative who was arguing they did the right thing.
I'd damn well rather face a country of 22-million who can help organize an occasional terrorist attack than one that could drop nuclear bombs in every major city in the U.S.
What happened was a great tragedy, but get your damn priorities straight -- a couple of nukes in NYC would have killed MILLIONS, not a few thousand.
Despite your "opinion" of the Soviet threat, they had a real military capable of fighting a major war and were a major threat in their time.
The threat from Afghanistan and that of the old Soviet Union are incomparable.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
When I wrote it, I intended it to sound like a laundry list of foreign military causes one COULD support, but it ended up being mostly causes Uncle Sam supported, so when I threw East Timor in there, it didn't sound right. I didn't mean to say I agreed or disagreed with any of the causes there, or label any party "good guys" or "bad guys". Sorry about the confusion.
grep -ri 'should work'
These are a matter of historical record, they are not subject to your opinion.
Who taught you that the "historical record" is not subject to opinion? Even a little research into the history of history will tell you that's a pretty naive view. Just read any history or geography textbook that's more than thirty years old. And concerning the history of Israel itself, just try to find impartial information on the events that surrounded it's creation. It's pretty hard.
The Sunday Times (of London) has a report of what it is like to fight in Afghanistan by a member of Britain's SAS (special forces). This guy trained the mujaheddin and taught them how to fight the Russians in the 1980s. It's an incredible story. Perhaps the most important thing is that, in his view, fighting once the snow comes--in October--is likely to have one main effect: loss of Western troops.
Invasion of Iraq ? Nobody but the brits will support that. Most other western nations oppose the US policy regarding Iraq and are in favor of lifting sanctions (which, just like Cuba, just kills more civilians than anything else).
US won't do anything against Iraq because everyone knows Saddam is not responsible for what happened, and there would be massive internationnal oposition.
On the other hand, nobody likes the Talibans very much...
A human life is a human life, and an innocent American is not worth more than an innocent Afghani or Iraqi.
Very soon we may be forced to make some hard decisions like that... there's collateral damage in any war. I do not relish the thought of dead innocent civilians, but I WILL spend their lives in the effort to protect ours... because they are ours.
If prefering Dead Brand X to Dead Americans makes me some kind of nationalistic freak -- so be it.
(I am not saying the whole conflict boils down to that, of course. But it is one aspect of it, and I'll support it unflinchingly as long as it's getting results.)
Man, this is gonna be a CRAPPY war, isn't it?
Afghanistan has seen nothing but destruction and fanatism in the last 15 to 20 years. The people growing up there and taking up weapons have learned nothing but war, and they have nothing anymore to lose.
/this/ world.
The key sentences from the article are:
He learned this his first day in Afghanistan when he entered a family's hut. The poverty was more than he could fathom. There was no furniture. No light. The only object inside was a copy of the Koran, tucked into an alcove.
"I asked an old man, 'Why do you live in such conditions? Don't you want to do something to improve your lot?' " Lisinenko said. "But the man replied, 'Don't you understand that the worse we live in this world, the better our lives will be in paradise? We don't want the same things in life that you want.' "
If the US want to win their war in Afghanistan, they should adapt and retry a strategy that has worked before, in my country. It could even work with minimal killings on all sides: Go there, rebuild the country, build schools, hospitals, roads, power plants and factories. Create a local industry, and local people that actually have something to lose in
People who have something to lose in this world will not wage war on their country, and will not tolerate terrorists near their homes. They will instead want the same things in life as you want, they will in parts copy your values and culture, and as time goes by, they will become another and peaceful version of you.
It worked in Germany before.
You have airplanes, spy satellites, drones and zillions of high-tech stuff to draw a war in Afghanistan and drop them to the Stone Age. Do you think this will help you? Personally I doubt. Because Afghanistan LIVES in the Stone Age.
I heard several stories on the Afghan war. And Soviet Union made a high-tech war there. Much more high-tech than the US in Vietnam. Because only that way they could have some little confidence they could control anything. For the Soviets, Afghan land was something like a mining field. Most of the travel, intelligence, combat, transport was made through the air. Through land you could only travel on columns with tanks and artillery. And, as the soviet war veteran pointed, you could not rely on what afghans told you. Well in fact you could not even rely on official afghan sources. So intel had a very high component of high-tech and satellites.
Afghans didn't have no bases, airfields, not even tanks. A large group of afghans didn't have even modern AK-47s and relied on old weapons, some of which were left behind by the Brittish 100 years ago. And still they managed to turn Afghanistan into a wasp nest. Why? American help? Well that helped them a lot but it was not the crucial factor. The crucial factor were the harsh conditons of Afghanistan.
You go through a mountain in a super-modern high-tech heli, all over you see rocks, sand, more rocks, more sand. There are not even bushes. And suddenly a Stinger kisses you out. You go down and your companion tries to guess where the shot came from. He goes around and around, ready to smash up the hideout with is overpowerful Gatling gun. Nothing. And, in front of your face, a small hole appears and a shotgun blasts your cabin.
Two helis down, a small afghan comes out from a small hole covered with straw and sand, and happily goes down the valley to see if he can get an head for his collection.
In case you don't learn our mistakes, that's the war you will have to fight in Afghan.
Note: Blasting mountains with rockets doesn't do a shit to those mountains. Napalm, powerful vacuum bombs, nukes, the Hell in flames are also helpless. Like in Vietnam, you will just kill a few rats and snakes and, if you are lucky, smoke out one or two warriors.
Add to that that
- bin laden is not an afghani, he is (was) a citizen of Saudi-Arabia. They revoke his citizen status this week btw.
- most (allmost all) afghans hate bin laden and his (non-afghani) minions. The buddha statues were destroyed after bin ladens organisation had that idea, these statues had nearly sanctuary status for the afghans. Same with that leader of the northern coalition, (mussad iirc) was a hero for nearly all afghans, he archieved great admiration by the people for his fight agains the russians - bin laden killed him.
So bin laden is not sitting in his open limousine, driving through kabul while the masses cheer.
What is with the comment "Very good article. Too bad we aren't learning from the British and Soviet mistakes."?
We're not yet in Afghanistan--which means we haven't made any mistakes yet to determine if we have or have not learned from past British and Soviet mistakes in the first place.
Stop crying, please.
/usr/bin/laden is dead, the problem is solved?
What you don't understand is this: terrorism is not something that is taught by the Islam, a disease that is spread by sperm, blood transfusions or food, it's a result of being in a bad situation for a long time. People have the bad habit to find for ANY reason why they are in that bad situation and try to do something about it. Most of the times they choose the wrong cure though... like the terrorists who attacked the US and now the US who is eager to kill every muslim in Afghanistan. Read the damn article! Fighting them is not the answer. In Northen Ireland, the brits are fighting the IRA for what, 30 years? Did it help? No. What DOES help is solve the bad situation the people are in. So there is no BASE for people to find a solution why they are in a bad situation in the first place.
It's a long way, but you don't need 1 gun to succeed. You don't have to kill 1 person, and it brings you the best possible solution for the future. Because do you really think when
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
The debt was from spending, as well as tax cuts.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think there are a couple of things that could favor the US in its fight against bin Laden's forces.
First, we have the ability to monitor all ground movements of bin Laden's fighters around the clock using a combination of Predator UAV's, U-2's fitted with real-time satellite links and the JSTARS plane. That means we have real-time monitoring, and bin Laden's forces will be extremely vulnerable to attack above ground even if they move at night or bad weather.
Second, we can use highly-mobile special forces such as the Rangers, airborne divisions, and SEALS that can operate in very small teams and deliver a very deadly punch. This means bin Laden's forces will have almost nothing to shoot at in terms of return fire. People forget that later in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan they used Spetznaz special forces with deadly efficiency against the Afghan fighters.
Finally, even caves may not be the best place to hide. The US has the GBU-28, a guided bomb powerful enough to collapse many cave systems (think of it as the modern equivalent to the British Tallboy bomb of the 1940's).
I think that the political situation in Pakistan is an even greater danger - not only to the success of the retaliation mission - but to the stability in the whole region.
Remember that the Pakistan government had to be "convinced" by an US ultimatum to join the anti-Taliban coalition and have no reason to particularily like the US because of the (now lifted) sanctions. If inner state opposition - let alone a civil war - causes a change in Pakistan policy, then the US troops who might use the land as a staging area for the upcoming operation - will be in real trouble.
I'm from Europe, and even here - acoording to the latest gallup poll - 80% of the population is against a miltary US punitive expedition (and yes, it is viewed as a punitive expedition as the US didn't even bother to negotiate, get a full UN mandate, or at least show some proof of Bin Laden's guilt, as they would have to do in any proper extradition process) - extrapolate that to a muslimic country and you might get an inpression on how thin the ice really is.
As for my personal opinion: I think that the whole rethoric of war is misguided: Terror is basically organised crime (with the objective of killing people rather than making money) - or does the US really think that the suicide pilots qualify as soldiers? I guess that would do them too much honor.
This should really be a matter of the courts, the police, the CIA and - if necessary - a military police operation to get hold of the suspects after all proof is on the table. This is how crime is handled in a constitutional state and I think the US owes it to itself to play by its own rules here, esp. because - as the only remaining superpower - it can get anway doing otherwise.
Fear is an important factor in all this. For example in WWII Germans who were against Hitler and his whole regime were sent to the conentration camps. When you know the consenquences of admitting your stand you end up keeping very quiet. In Afganistan there is a similar situation, where people are too scared to openly act against the Taliban. There are 'underground' schools and everything, but there would be a price to pay if the Taliban ever found out.
It should also be pointed out that these people do not have access to the weapons and the money that the Taliban has access to. For this reason they probably feel that it is almost better to stay alive than to do anything against the Taliban.
The people who would love to get rid of Osma Ben Laden are not in power and don't have the leverage necessary to reveal his location.
Another point is how do you target someone hiding out in a network of underground caves and where all the houses look the same?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't know if the change was caused by Desert Storm, Clinton Admin's decadence, or the G. W Bush's election/ and getting raked through the media for inaction/stupidity. Most probably all of these issues are used by the taliban as an excuse for drumming up US hatred, Better for them to have an external enemy to focus the peoples attention on rather than their on situation.
Afgan are dirt poor, the only thing holding the country together is a promise of pardise and fear of the taliban reprisals. Anything remotly resemble a middle-class is being systematical destroyed in Afganistan.
GWB seems to have some pretty specific goals for the US Forces in Afganistan, like JFK had in Viet Nam. And if any of you guys are old enough you'll remember that JFK had pretty good sucess in Viet Nam (he used primarily Special Op's), it was Johnson(he moved in mass ground forces) that screwed it up and Nixon that got us out people were pissed mostly that it took 5 years be cause he was hamstrung by the mess that LBJ made of things. Also I think its important to realise that everybody except the gov is thinking old war, the Gov is talking new war. The new war is something that we haven't seen yet.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Michael, you are such an expert, I am truly in awe. You know what mistakes were made from an article. You know what mistakes Americans have and haven't learned from through ESP or fortune telling. You must have some significant security clearance because you apparently know what America is planning to do, because all indications point to us engaging in nothing like what the Russians engaged in, yet you think it will be more of the same.
I wish I could be like you.
"we're going to hold the people who house them accountable."
is not the same as your assetion that the US won't care if it hits innocent civilians or not. In fact, this quote actually directly contradicts your thesis. It says we are going after those who did this and the people who house them. In other words, not innocent civilians.
The soviets had trouble removing them because the US was *helping* them, against the russians.
Read Terror in the Mind of God by Mark Juergensmeyer. Especially chapter 6, which covers the Aum Shinrikyo machinations in the Tokyo subway involving nerve gas. They're an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism.
There's a bit in the text on some Hindi militants, too. (Though I've seen some folks argue that Hinduism isn't pantheistic, but rather multifarious ways of approaching the same thingy...)
Perhaps the monotheistic violence takes center stage due to the prevalence of monotheism in the world?
WTC hardly qualifies as an unprovoked attack. The Americans have been hitting them for the last 50 years now, albeit through proxies such as Israel, The Shah, The house of Saud, Saddam... They've had their houses taken away and demolished, they've been bombed, shelled, gassed, tortured, starved,... It's a wonder they didn't hit back sooner. Yes, they are trying to make it painful for the Americans to impose their greedy, self-serving, brutal, oppressive, and sometimes genocidal "foreign policy" on them. You want to find the real enemy of the American people, look to those so-called leaders who have put Americans in danger by fostering hatred of Americans through their meddling. The name Henry Kissinger is very high on that list. If you really want to end terrorism, you might start with with putting him on trial in the world court for crimes against humanity.
Oh, I forgot. Americans think they should be exempt from such things... Can you say hipocrisy?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Maybe the Russian gentleman should have told us also about the more inventive Soviet strategies employed to break the Afghan spirit: dropping colorful plastic toy mines in the form of little dinosaurs and cars, designed to blow off the hands of (but not kill) children.
So I guess we deserved to have 6000 civilians killed? There are always those who blame the free nations for the atrocities of the brutal dictators that we must put up with. I guess that since our foreign policy isn't to install the governments you approve of, it's okay to have our civilians slaughtered!
To make any sort of moral equivalence between what we have done in our foreign power and what was done to us is beyond ignorant... it is disgusting.
Oh, BTW...
Can you say hipocrisy?
Yeah, and I can spell it too: hypocrisy
The only good weather is bad weather.
Perhaps the most bizarre statement I've seen on /. in three years of reading it.
if you can show it wasn't you, we will acknowledge this,
Ah, so much for innocent until proven guilty.
When the towers fell, I said to my girlfriend "The Americans will pin this on Bin Laden whether he did it or not". So far there's been a lot of talk and no evidence as to why it wasn't, for example, Sadaam. Just like Lockerbie the decision is made as to who's guilty and then the evidence is made to fit.
I'll be glad to see the Taliban wiped out, and I'd dance on their graves too. They've been running Afganistan like Nazi's let loose in a synagogue for years, but of course no one ever did anything about 'cause, hey, those are just a bunch of dirty foreigners they're butchering, right? Now it looks like they might have been involved in killing ENGLISH-SPEAKERS and all hell breaks loose.
I'll be glad to see them go but it'll take a lot more for me cheer for "Western Values".
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yeah and you think the terrorists will fight you in Afghanistan?
Doh. They'll fight you in the USA.
If you guys can't keep out tons of illegal immigrants, drugs and contraband what makes you think you can stop terrorists without turning USA into a police/military state?
You guys better not create more terrorists, for your own good.
The Taliban probably had nothing to do with the recent terrorist acts, and they have asked for proof of Osama's complicitness. The US have not given any proof to them. We can suspect Osama for all we want but the US has not provided any proof to them.
A significant number of muslims believe that if they die in a holy war they will go straight to heaven despite all their past evil acts. Remember these guys normally aren't guaranteed a place in heaven - it's a graded kind of thing for them, and there are only a few ways to get automatic top of the class 'A's. Being a syahid/martyr in a holy war is one of them.
Right now most don't hate the US that much, and they don't believe there's a holy war against the US. Many just dislike the US. So they'll just live their lives and get on with it.
But if the US screws things up badly, the number of potential holy warriors could increase drastically.
If just 1 million people all around the world start thinking that fight the USA is a holy war, you guys are in trouble. There are lots of muslims in the world. So it just takes a 1% fringe.
And these guys don't even need to be organised to hurt the USA badly. They just have to get into the USA and do something suicidal. Just one or two a week is enough.
The US might have to change totally. Osama will be laughing.
Also remember you guys still need oil from Arab nations. So banning all Arab looking people from entering the US is going to be a bit difficult eh? Even if you do that Osama has probably got many Indonesians and Filipinos waiting in the queue for martyrdom. If the US handles things badly, there'll be even more muslims of different nationalities filling the queues.
Maybe you guys can take over Afghanistan, but would that stop the terrorists from ruining the USA?
You have to convince most of them that you are not the ultimate bad guys and shrink the "talent pool".
Saying "if you are not for us, you are against us" is sure going to help... Attacking Afghanistan and kicking the Taliban out will sure help too...
Yeah George Bush is helping Osama a lot these days.
Cheerio,
Link.
The last people to starve in a famine are the ones with guns. You could starve out the Talibans, but only after the other 24 million Afghanis died first.
That would be a genocide 4 times as big as the Holocaust. I don't think it would stop people from hating the US.
I think you have been watching a little too much CNN. The US government and our media would like you to believe we are being impartial, but we are not at all. Consider the fact that the US recently suffered the humiliation of being voted out of the UN Human Rights Commission, while even China remains a member. We stand behind Israel when most of the world thinks we should not. That needs to change or we will continue to piss off the rest of the world.
I don't think that Bush could have a better cabinet to wage a war on terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. As for going after Iraq, the only real reason we'd have to do that is if we had credible evidence that it and/or Saddam Hussein were behind this attack or sponsoring terrorists in general. After we are finished with the middle east, terrorism will be nothing but a bad dream, as will the conflict between the Israelis and the rest of the region. After we are done the people of that region are no longer going to be forced to live under regimes such as the taliban. Afghanistan is not going to be the targe of a war against the afghani people, rather we are going to do away with the Taliban and then work to help the afghani people with food and other aid. In the end we are going to rescue that country more than conquer it. I for on couldn't be happier about it.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
To make any sort of moral equivalence between what we have done in our foreign power and what was done to us is beyond ignorant... it is disgusting.
I can see how to a hypocrite, that would be "disgusting". Americans are known for having two standards: one for themselves, and a different one for everyone else.
Actually though, on further reflection, you are right; there is no moral equivalence. What Americans have done and are proposing to do is worse given that have proven false to and are continuing to prove false to the very moral standards they claim to uphold...something at least the terrorists haven't done.
Can you say hipocrisy?
Yeah, and I can spell it too: hypocrisy
It's a shame that though you can say and spell it, you don't know what it means.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Mountains usually have snow and ice on them, so you'd get a million reflections. Not to mention this would kill off all animal and civilian life. Or that this laser would signal very clearly where you are to anyone with hostile intentions.
Okay, it's in the US category, but since this is becoming more of a political web site you might add an Afghanistan category, so the appropriate flag can be used.
sulli
RTFJ.
You'd be thinking wrong, son. The British government repeatedly requested the US government's assitance in these issues. When they asked George Bush Sr, they got told preventing US citizens from funding international terrorism would be "abridging their right to free speech".
It almost appears as if you tend to think that being homosexual is bad. Tsk tsk.
Atrocity is the name of the game in war.
You don't understand the first thing about human psychology if you think this. How can maiming children possibly help in winning a war? It makes your opponent more determined, not less.
You're left wondering because you're an idiot. Note the irony on regarding spelling errors when your spelling is so atrocious that you misspelled a single character word. Thats pretty hard to beat. Looks like the previous AC was correct in his/her assesment. Posting without the +1 bonus 'cause your're a troll or somthing.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
1-) More than %75 percent of land mass is mountain. Means your Abrams's, Bradley's, hummers wont work there.
2-) Altitude is too high. Mean your Cobras, Apaches, Comanches is useless. They like turkey. Easy to shot down.
So? You think the US military won't get as much equipment working as they can? They will make modifications, discard things that don't work, bring in stuff that does. The hummers pretty much go everywhere we want to go.
2-) For most Afghan noting to loose. Look the US troops. They had Families, Homes, Cars, Food, Money etc. Losing USA troops rises the Anti War efforts in USA. Losing Afghans rises the revenge efforts in all Muslim Country's. Day by day Your troops lose their concentrate. They thinks "Whatta hell around here, why I'm fighting here?".
It's called being a PROFESSIONAL soldier. Afghans have nothing to loose, the Americans do, yet they keep on going to far off countries, fighting, and dying there.
They don't do it because God told them to either.
What is the main religion of Iraqi forces again? Didn't they surrender by the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS?
3-) Afghanistan is not paradise area. Everything is enemy. They come in night hit your bases, kill your troops. And retreat.
Then your troops counter attack, but they did not found anything to destroy. Mucahit's hide. Then next night.....
Really? You might look up the concept of "Night Vision" Not only are these "Night raiders" going to be plainly visible, but they are going to be blind in comparison to the US troops. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the drug trade could be shut down completely if they enforce a night curfew.
4-) Sending Elite forces is mean less. Because there are no real Target. No base, near noting.
Yeah, except those terrorists. You know, the whole reason the US is going there to begin with?
The problem is that this country is fertile ground for terrorists. I think the only way to prevent that is to actually go in and BUILD up the area. You were talking about how they have nothing to loose and would fight to the death.
Who knows, maybe the US military will give them something to live for. Teach them how to farm again or something.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Better a few people that are offended at discrimination, than 6000 more innocent people dead.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
...the US military has been characterized by one quality. They are almost completely unpredictable.
But don't just take a US history teacher's word for it. Here's more expert opinion:
"The reason the American Army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis." -- from a postwar debriefing of a German general
"One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine... -- From a Soviet junior lieutenant's notebook
Finally, a personal note: My late father earned a commendation from his artillery battery commander after responding to a shortage of howitzer firing pins (the replacement firing pins had been sent to the bottom by a U-boat). Having worked as a civilian tool-and-die maker manufacturing howitzers at Picatinny Arsenal prior to being conscripted in '43, Dad simply and expediently went to the nearest intact machine shop he could find, broke in, found the right kind of stock, and was busily turning out firing pins on a machine lathe when the gendarmes arrested him -- and a few hours later, the battery commander sent MPs to recover him.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
That's true, but on the other hand, among the embargoed goods are water purifiers and antibiotics. There's no "good guy" here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You can't hack an M1 Abrams for running 40Mph at %75 degree climbing. Or cant pump moore air to better controls for helicopters.
Oh really? Why not? The helicopters I worked on in the Air Force used Jet engines for power. Those are designed to work at certain altitudes. You CAN have them adjusted, or replaced with high altitude versions. If the atmosphere is too thin, what's wrong with replacing the rotor blades with bigger ones? This is the core of Engineering, finding your way around problems to get the results you want.
Afgan Mucahits shotdown more than 400 helicopters. Most of them Hind class
Then we won't send in our helicopters in until we have a countermeasure that works against the missiles they're using. How will they replace their supplies anyway? No one will sell them replacement rockets or guns while the US is there.
If they're smart, they won't fight us at all, just run and hide and wait for us to go away.
This situation is unlike anything we've ever done before. I hope for the best, for everybody.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Yes, I am sure that when we would have flown over Bagdad dropping bombs from our P-52s that their anti-arcraft artillary wouldn't have shot most (if not all) of the aircraft out of the sky. Sure, I mean... those night time images of anti-aircraft missiles and gunfire shooting into the night air at F-117A stealth fighters using laser-guided bombs and nightvision and hitting NOTHING BUT AIR would have been the same result with a bunch of P-52s... yeah... okay.
Kids. Listen up & Grow up. It's about Oil and Opium
Give us a break there, daddy-o. Don't you have a hemp-rally to go to or something?
The 43 million was a mixed bag of humanitarian aid for the Afghan people suffering from a 3 year drought. We did not reward the Taliban with 43 million dollars for burning poppy fields. This aid bypassed the Taliban entirely.
Seeing how effortlessly your self-righteous conspiratorial fragile egg-shell mind wrapped itself around this little nugget of pop counter-cultural 'wisdom', I can only imagine the degree of veracity your other claims hold.
But I've been Duped by the Conspiracy, so what the hell do I know???
; )
43 Million Dollars?
**>>BELCH
I'm Canadian, not American. I used to have that in my sig...