How did you figure out that the product was full of GPL code and such? From the looks of things, it appears you had to reverse engineer binary code and hack out a root passwd. IANAL, but chances are good xStore put in the license agreement that you werent allowed to do those two things. You may run into trouble with that should everything turn out legit. Yes, they may have breached the GPL, but their agreement probably restricted you from those activities.
And under the DCMA, that gives them the right to sue you.
All I know is that my hacker friends are hoping the government succeeds at getting backdoors in all the protocols, especially database ones, so they can run rampant through still more systems.
when it blows out and kills you. You also indemnify our tire company from any deaths, injuries, destruction, and you and all your heirs swear fealty and vassalage unto our feudal kingdom.
If we do go in, we should replace governments, raise the standard of living, and hook people on western culture while squashing religion. In a generation we can hand control off to local government under UN control, and hopefully they'll forget completely about their past wars.
I can see raising the standard of living, just as we should be feeding the victims of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which will help assuage feelings, but trying to control which government is elected is a very bad idea and is half of why we have people hating us. We arrange for free and fair elections and then get the hell out, making it obvious that we mean to do so.
If we turn bits of their country radioactive, they're going to take longer to forget.
Not a bad idea, if used judiciously. We don't want them to forget that we do have swords and will use them if we are attacked.
Our main mistakes with regard to puppet governments have been that we didn't want them to appear to be US protectorates, and that we left them alone too soon. Here, we want them to be seen as protectorates. It's a carrot and stick. For the people, it's a carrot, higher standard of living, etc. For the old rulers, a stick. When we move in, we won't keep any locals in power, so the only way to stay in power is not piss us off... Then we don't simply set up the first locals we see as government, we wait a generation and slowly introduce a democratic government after the population is educated and the old rulers have been erradicated.
Our main problem is that we want puppet governments. We should never have them, they almost always go bad. Let them choose their government, we care more about the threat on our country, not about exactly what form they choose.
Mary and I were thinking about how we felt about getting a gerbil recently. She heard that you have some experience with small pets, and so our minds naturally turned to you.
What do you say? Should we get a gerbil? Would a hamster be better? Hamsters are easier to feed, of course.
Notice the cool picture we took when we were on the ferry in NYC - I really like the view, it's one of my faves from this trip.
See you when we get back!
Nick
oh, make sure none of those kids are messing in our garden, ok?
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
There's no reason we can't set clear limits. Nukes horrify people because they can render the area uninhabitable for millenia (depending on type of nuke, etc). To use one is to open up a nasty can of worms. If we want to, we could fight this without using nukes as easily as we could fight without nerve gas, hollow-point bullets, or any other outlawed military technology.
Hmm. Nukes render the area uninhabitable for millenia - sounds like another reason why we need to keep nukes on the table. A lasting impression, so long as it's in mountainous terrain (complicated reasons why, but it minimizes certain effects). I mean tactical nukes, of course.
You mention fuel-air explosives. In many ways, these are a superior choice to nukes. They reach where nukes can't by killing with a firestorm as well as concussion, they don't kill survivors who move through the area later, they don't horrify our allies, and they don't polute nearly as much. They are more awkward to use, afaik, but I think we can afford to use them... This isn't the WW3 battlefield we feared, where we'd leapfrog our tanks forward a mile at a time, while clearing the heavily-armed enemy out with tac-nukes. It's a guerilla war, where the enemies are lightly armed and can be hidden in caves and other highly sheltered areas.
They don't work against massive underground bunkers with their own air supply and baffle shielding, however, which nukes will. And I'm not betting Osama has a couple of those - I think he does. At least that's the rumors I'm hearing.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
It worked pretty well back in the late 1700s for the United States.
It might be interesting to try and extract a promise from the opposing side to institute freedom and Democracy. Perhaps even to adopt a draft constitution.
And that promise would be worthless within a year or two. One of our problems is we try to mold our allies into our own image, instead of letting them be who they are. Sure, we should try to instill democracy, but it's the changing of other societies that provokes this very backlash against us. Like when we plant trees in Africa, not understanding that the chief owns the trees, so the people have no incentive. If we gave them skills instead, education, they could use what works best for them, instead of us forcing them into an image like ourselves.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
Personally, I think if we want to win a war in Afghanistan, we need to massively arm the opposing side who know the terrain and how to win.
We did that. Where do you think the Taliban and bin Laden came from? Who do you think trained and equipped them, using Pakistan as our base?
We have, as a nation, got to get out of this bad habit of using mercenaries to do our own dirty work. It killed Rome, and it will get us too, if we continue in this vein.
I've got a simple solution to the Afghan population. For the most part, they're too busy starving to death to worry about who's in charge (other than the fact that if they step out of line, the Taliban will kill them quicker than starvation will).
Bring in massive amounts of material aid to the refugee camps that are already forming. Food, decent shelter, medical care, education, and above all, physical security from our armed forces. It's going to take billions of dollars, but in the end, anyone who doesn't take advantage of the camps is in all probability an enemy, and can be dealt with as such.
The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies. Hunger and poverty are our enemies. I'm sure ObL has gotten thousands of recruits because he can afford to feed people more than once a week. The people that we need to take on are not starving to death, but using starvation and poverty to keep control. Yes folks, crippling poverty and hunger has in fact become a matter of National Security, and should be dealt with the same way we deal with other threats. Deal with it.
I think you've got part of a kernel of an idea of how we can successfully take on the Taliban and bin Laden.
Actions such as you describe would be very much a good thing, especially if we made it clear that, after we take out the Taliban and bin Laden that we're leaving, that we are not their enemies and we're not invading them to conquer, but to remove a threat to us.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
Now hopefully we can avoid this half and half situations.
If a war happens, "we" need to decide what the goal is, then up-front, tell the military what we're willing to accept (no nukes, etc) and let them go from there, without any back-seat driving.
Well, you just described back seat driving. No nukes, for example. The use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to chemical, biological, or nuclear attacks is part of military doctrine.
The fact that we might use nukes against dug-in fundamentalist terrorists is part of why some of them are fleeing away from the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. To say, as we sometimes do, "you can't use nukes, you can't use ground troops, you can't do the job you have to do" is sheer insanity. It looks good on paper, but in the end my enemy is no happier dying with his lungs burning up from an air-fuel explosion than if I killed him with a neutron bomb.
And I do think we, the American people, need to have opinions on this, and talk about it, but I'm not so sure the military should take everything we say as if it were an order. Because we will blame them when it's not enough.
Just like we blame them for not sacking Baghdad, taking out the last Presidential guard units in Iraq, and killing Saddam (oops, collateral damage, I meant to say).
You seem to think we can pretend that it's going to be a nice engagement with clear rules. It's not going to be.
"War is too important to be left to the generals," is the classic reply made by France's premier in World War I, Georges Clemenceau [encyclopedia.com]
I didn't say we needed the generals. I'm just a sargeant, anyway. And it's not like I don't think we (the posters) shouldn't have opinions, in fact I hope we have lots of differing opinions. For there is where our true strength lies, IMHO.
In any case, the new kind of war that the pundits are talking about is not going to be fought in the mountains. The military has selected bin Laden's hideout because it can be attacked with old-kind-of-war weapons. Some people might argue that as long as the terrorists are up in the mountains, leave them there. They're only dangerous when they come down into the lowlands.
I think that's shortsighted. By the time they come down we'll have been distracted by something else, and they'll merrily go on about their regrouping for the next series of attacks.
By "new kind of war", the pundits are referring to a new kind of war for the United States. It has been fought in Israel and Britian for sometime. America's first mistake will be to repeat all the errors those countries made until they reach the same position those countries have arrived at: lots of security personnel, large, secret intelligence agencies, detention without trial within specified limits, and a list of banned organizations, among other measures.
Sadly, you may be right. I too, worry about such things, especially as used against American citizens.
At the moment the new kind of war is shapping up to be an old fashion seige and war of attrition. The terrorist have laid seige to the U.S. The U.S. will begin using its world-wide alliances and allies to put relentless pressure on the terrorist networks. These tactics are used when one side realizes that none of it's weapons and tactics will lead directly to victory.
In the meantime, new weapons and tactics will be invented. In World War I, the tank broke the static defenses of the Germans. But tanks arrived when the war of attrition had so weakened the German's ability to fight that it only hastened the inevitable.
So I would expect the new kind of war to look like a seige in the short-term while the U.S. wears down the terrorists as best it can. The U.S. happens to be particularly good at wars of attrition. Every one of America's enemies from Robert E. Lee to Yamamoto expected the U.S. to tire quickly and look for a negotiated way out. They were always surprised at America's resilience and at the ferocity of it's counterattack.
But this is not a war that we will only win by economic means, although it is one of our chief weapons. We will have to remain focussed for quite a long time, maybe even years.
You don't need to have military experience to know about war. There are plenty of civilians in the war business, including strategy. Considering that GW Bush appears to have spent most of his National Guard days doing political (not military) stuff, you could argue that our Commander in Chief has no military experience -- but then I guess I should admit I don't think he knows anything about war. Dang, there goes my point.
And sadly, it shows. Glad his wife gave him a good talking to.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
Traditional warfare in Afghanistan has essentially been ruled out. Airstrikes will be extremely limited because their are so few targets other than the civilian population. Ground troops may not be used at all. And if they are, they will be extremely limited in number. Economic sanctions will do no good against a country with no economy. Yet despite all these restrictions, the taliban is marked for removal. Doesn't this seem just a little bit strange to anyone else? Jon noticed it and is just making an attempt to understand. In this case, if the Bush adiministration is telling the truth, you have no better idea of what is being planned than anyone else.
I'd rather read links to summaries of those Meet the Press news speeches then, not some commentary with no links. Which is what Jon gave us.
And I can't help but have a damned good idea of exactly what we can do, and what forces we have, just as I knew how many terrorists were on each plane (my estimate was 3-4 about 6 hours before it was announced) and how large the internal organization was (20-60 in the US). We had a very large amount of counter-terrorism operations, and I'm not happy that I'm forced to think of them, cause I try to forget that part of my past.
Katz makes some interesting points that you don't address, like the fact that terrorist cells are decentralized. We have terrorist cells active in the US now, and if you believe otherwise, you're blind or stupid. How is going to war with Afghanistan going to solve that problem?
It won't. But we are at war and we must attack, not only defend. And we almost always try to use the strategy and tactics of the last war - luckily we did have some mountain ops in Kosovo, but not ground troops. We aren't at war with Afghanistan, we're at war with the Pakistani-supplied and originated Taliban who has little local support, and the only weapons and vehicles, in most (2/3) of the country.
Technology can be used as an intelligence gathering maneuver that will aid in the placement of troops and other resources. Personally, I think that you're brute force position will fail ultimately, and the reason for this is because of what I know about computing and technology.
We are going to use it, but it can only aid and assist in such ground. I spent most of my service in mountain troops and mountain engineering, and while intel can assist, it's not like a desert war.
Decentralized processing can process much greater loads of information than can a single CPU. This trend and logic seems to be something that terrorist cells have been able to use to their advantage.
Yes, and some of our forces have similar capabilities. And this will also make us hard to "find" the enemy, but it's not as hard as it appears, if you think it through. Basically, if it's got weapons or vehicles, it's not friendly, and it's Taliban. It's only when they dismount that this becomes a problem. If we try to invade and hold it, we lose. If we seek to destroy and disrupt, but leave when done, we win.
Now, as far as how to combat that? We have to redefine our out dated military strategies and put into effect some sort of mechanism that can combat a distributed, non-centralized attack. It's sort of like combatting a DDOS in a way. You gather intelligence, not from the source itself, but the metadata that you recieve from the attack, then you resond accordingly by dropping certain packets. Likewise, in defense of this sort of attack, and indeed, taking an offensive position as well, we have to gather as much information as is humanly possible, use a distributed method of analysing it, and respond in a very pointed, targeted method. No broad sweeping attack plan will work in this or any other case where national boundaries are non existant, and politics are beyond the scope of international diplomacy.
The other thing is it's not just Afghanistan, it's 20 countries last time I checked. Some we can have booted out by the local governments, some we have to attack, some the local supporters will defend, some they will stand aside.
It's a war. With different battles, in different places, and different problems for each.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
I think I speak for the whole community when you correct Jon on the proper tactics for invading Afganistan. I am sure the DOD will greatly value your advice, which must have been gleaned by watching CNN Afganistan maps for a whole two hours, reading combat/fantasy books, and perhaps spending two weeks doing your National Guard duty in the heavy ground combat that took place in Iraq.
DND, Department of National Defense, in Canada actually, and I spent most of a decade in service, sometimes doing things I'd rather forget, but nowadays I can't avoid thinking about them. And I'm now on secondary reserve, since I left the military as a Sargeant, and worried I'll be activated, since it looks like a NATO op.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
I agree with a lot of what Will has said in his post. Especially the opening: Just where does Jon Katz's expertise extend to? He seems able to come up with the most meally-mouthed wishy-washy articles about everything under the sun.
He ideas are like a bad Hollywood scriptwriter's leftovers
Another poster pointed out that Jon's just regurgitating what you could get by watching some of the Sunday morning talk shows. I personally would rather see a good collection of links to such relevant articles (not a bad idea, kind of a/. way of digesting the news), than an ill-informed main post by someone who's never seen the business end of a rifle.
I'm not a general, or colonel, although my grandfather was, and my grand-uncle. My dad was a Sargeant, and I was a Sargeant. I'm hoping I don't get called up, since I'm not as young now, but I'll serve again if I have to.
We can win in Afghanistan, but it's not going to be something easy. If we prepare well, target primarily the Taliban and their direct supporters, get local intel, and use our brains, we can acheive miracles. If we don't we'll miss our targets.
I notice I got a lot of troll and flamebait moderations - I'm not trying to flame, but we need a decent main article and someone who's at least seen a fight or two. There are other people on/. who do know about this - why not ask one of them to post some relevant links and a brief commentary?
Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Seriously, Jon, what credentials do you have for war? There are many people on/. who have military experience, and you're not one of them.
Look, it's going to be nasty, brutish, bloody, not fun. War sucks. Killing, noise, fire, confusion, being tired constantly, on edge, it's not a game.
There are many ways we can do it. The smartest would be to get some local intel of terrain and people (many of whom have fled, maybe some assistance from Afghanis who fled the Taliban to Iran would work, since the Pakistanis support and arm the Taliban, and half their intel would be designed to trap us). Land on mountain tops and passes, set up defensive perimeters with mines and mortars, anti-tank and ATA, put spread out artillery in gun pits, and blast any vehicle or concentration that moves. Because only the Taliban moves in 2/3 of Afghanistan, the local population that they control (who don't support them) don't have mobility.
But we'll probably do something dumb instead.
Some of us have combat experience in mountains, Jon. And you're not one of them. Your techie toys won't work in mountains - a defender has a 20:1 or 10:1 advantage if he knows the terrain and the opponent is vaguely unfamiliar with it. A few people can hold off battalions, when placed right, we'll be lucky to move 2 miles in a day.
And cruise missiles are economically ineffective - JATO-assisted dumb bombs have a 98 percent kill rate, while a cruise missile there has at best an 80 percent kill rate, and you just need a dug-in position and nothing short of a nuke will affect you (and even those have to get the angle right).
This isn't a war game. This is a war. We will lose people, we need sound strategy and tactics, not people with ideas about fire-and-forget missiles that get confused in mountain terrain, or using MBTs in mountains (which are easy to kill with mines and vertical attacks with anti-tank).
We are Americans (sorry other/. from other countries, but mostly it's true).
We must not give in on this. Our freedoms, our right to privacy, we must fight for this. It's like air travel - we must not stop taking planes, we must not stop investing, for if we do, we have let the terrorists win.
We are not Israel, we are not France, we are not England. Yes, we fight amongst ourselves constantly, but we now have a deadly purpose to wreak long and total vengeance on all those who caused this.
Perhaps we may acquiess and allow the placing of Carnivore to track terrorists a bit more than we did yesterday, but this is only for the duration of the War. I thought of getting friends to do new posters for WWIII based on the old WWII posters - We Did It Before, We Can Do It Again; Loose Lips Sink Ships; and so on.
But we must not give up our right to privacy, even though some of us will assist voluntarily where yesterday we would not - but this is for the War Effort. It is not something to set in stone, to legislate permanently.
That would be surrender to the terrorists.
And we shall never surrender.
There will be no raids - this is War
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
Once again the terrorists and their allies and supporters fail to understand how badly they have misjudged us. This is not a time for punitive actions, this is not a time for air raids, this is not a time for selective strikes.
This is War. Break out the guns, load the artillery, move the main battle tanks into the cargo holds. Arm the nuclear missiles. Position the chemical weapons.
We are at war, we are determined in this respect. We want no "justifiable" or "reciprocal" reactions - we will unleash a terrible vengeance, a horror that will make all that came before it seem like a dream.
This was the mistake of the Japanese - they thought us weak, unresolved, diffuse, scattered. But we are not those things - and we are very determined that it is now war.
When did it happen? Was it the first plane hitting the first building? Was it the second plane? Was it when the Pentagon was attacked, when they planned for the White House? Was it when the first building collapsed in fire and fury? Was it the second, or the third?
Somewhere betwixt those we, the American people, moved from being a peaceful people concerned about terrorism who would use legal and ordinary means to arrest them, to our current state when we became at war with all those who planned or assisted in this, and all who shelter them or stop us from our frightful vengeance which shall know no limit.
For have no illusions, those in the rest of the world - we are at War. Putin, your offer is accepted, as are all offers of aid and assistance by all nations - but know that we are not going to stop where you would wish us to - for we are at War - and shall not be dissuaded.
Sheesh, you're not even a vet. I am, I'm subject to callup as a Sargeant.
And, in case you missed the news: no technology was used in this attack.
Yup. That's right. It wasn't cyberterrorists, or geek crackers, or script kiddies. They didn't use sophisticated technology.
They
Just
Flew
Planes
Into
Buildings
How low tech do you need to be? This is WWII tactics!
Now, would you stop posting and let someone who knows what he's talking about post? Someone with real experience? I don't mean me, I mean anyone but you.
Slashdot Mirror
How did you figure out that the product was full of GPL code and such? From the looks of things, it appears you had to reverse engineer binary code and hack out a root passwd. IANAL, but chances are good xStore put in the license agreement that you werent allowed to do those two things. You may run into trouble with that should everything turn out legit. Yes, they may have breached the GPL, but their agreement probably restricted you from those activities.
And under the DCMA, that gives them the right to sue you.
Catch 22.
So, in other words, they're lying.
It's one thing to document it in the manual, but not provide support. It's another thing to pretend you wrote the code and own it, which they don't.
Except for that yaffa portion, which might be proprietary.
NO, not another IPO!
Aaahhh!
Sheesh, you get a good firm and you just want to ruin it by making it go all bonkers with greed and quarterly returns.
All I know is that my hacker friends are hoping the government succeeds at getting backdoors in all the protocols, especially database ones, so they can run rampant through still more systems.
when it blows out and kills you. You also indemnify our tire company from any deaths, injuries, destruction, and you and all your heirs swear fealty and vassalage unto our feudal kingdom.
...
... in small print on the inner side of a tire
If we do go in, we should replace governments, raise the standard of living, and hook people on western culture while squashing religion. In a generation we can hand control off to local government under UN control, and hopefully they'll forget completely about their past wars.
I can see raising the standard of living, just as we should be feeding the victims of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which will help assuage feelings, but trying to control which government is elected is a very bad idea and is half of why we have people hating us. We arrange for free and fair elections and then get the hell out, making it obvious that we mean to do so.
If we turn bits of their country radioactive, they're going to take longer to forget.
Not a bad idea, if used judiciously. We don't want them to forget that we do have swords and will use them if we are attacked.
Our main mistakes with regard to puppet governments have been that we didn't want them to appear to be US protectorates, and that we left them alone too soon. Here, we want them to be seen as protectorates. It's a carrot and stick. For the people, it's a carrot, higher standard of living, etc. For the old rulers, a stick. When we move in, we won't keep any locals in power, so the only way to stay in power is not piss us off... Then we don't simply set up the first locals we see as government, we wait a generation and slowly introduce a democratic government after the population is educated and the old rulers have been erradicated.
Our main problem is that we want puppet governments. We should never have them, they almost always go bad. Let them choose their government, we care more about the threat on our country, not about exactly what form they choose.
George,
Mary and I were thinking about how we felt about getting a gerbil recently. She heard that you have some experience with small pets, and so our minds naturally turned to you.
What do you say? Should we get a gerbil? Would a hamster be better? Hamsters are easier to feed, of course.
Notice the cool picture we took when we were on the ferry in NYC - I really like the view, it's one of my faves from this trip.
See you when we get back!
Nick
oh, make sure none of those kids are messing in our garden, ok?
There's no reason we can't set clear limits. Nukes horrify people because they can render the area uninhabitable for millenia (depending on type of nuke, etc). To use one is to open up a nasty can of worms. If we want to, we could fight this without using nukes as easily as we could fight without nerve gas, hollow-point bullets, or any other outlawed military technology.
Hmm. Nukes render the area uninhabitable for millenia - sounds like another reason why we need to keep nukes on the table. A lasting impression, so long as it's in mountainous terrain (complicated reasons why, but it minimizes certain effects). I mean tactical nukes, of course.
You mention fuel-air explosives. In many ways, these are a superior choice to nukes. They reach where nukes can't by killing with a firestorm as well as concussion, they don't kill survivors who move through the area later, they don't horrify our allies, and they don't polute nearly as much. They are more awkward to use, afaik, but I think we can afford to use them... This isn't the WW3 battlefield we feared, where we'd leapfrog our tanks forward a mile at a time, while clearing the heavily-armed enemy out with tac-nukes. It's a guerilla war, where the enemies are lightly armed and can be hidden in caves and other highly sheltered areas.
They don't work against massive underground bunkers with their own air supply and baffle shielding, however, which nukes will. And I'm not betting Osama has a couple of those - I think he does. At least that's the rumors I'm hearing.
It worked pretty well back in the late 1700s for the United States.
It might be interesting to try and extract a promise from the opposing side to institute freedom and Democracy. Perhaps even to adopt a draft constitution.
And that promise would be worthless within a year or two. One of our problems is we try to mold our allies into our own image, instead of letting them be who they are. Sure, we should try to instill democracy, but it's the changing of other societies that provokes this very backlash against us. Like when we plant trees in Africa, not understanding that the chief owns the trees, so the people have no incentive. If we gave them skills instead, education, they could use what works best for them, instead of us forcing them into an image like ourselves.
Personally, I think if we want to win a war in Afghanistan, we need to massively arm the opposing side who know the terrain and how to win.
We did that. Where do you think the Taliban and bin Laden came from? Who do you think trained and equipped them, using Pakistan as our base?
We have, as a nation, got to get out of this bad habit of using mercenaries to do our own dirty work. It killed Rome, and it will get us too, if we continue in this vein.
I've got a simple solution to the Afghan population. For the most part, they're too busy starving to death to worry about who's in charge (other than the fact that if they step out of line, the Taliban will kill them quicker than starvation will).
Bring in massive amounts of material aid to the refugee camps that are already forming. Food, decent shelter, medical care, education, and above all, physical security from our armed forces. It's going to take billions of dollars, but in the end, anyone who doesn't take advantage of the camps is in all probability an enemy, and can be dealt with as such.
The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies. Hunger and poverty are our enemies. I'm sure ObL has gotten thousands of recruits because he can afford to feed people more than once a week. The people that we need to take on are not starving to death, but using starvation and poverty to keep control. Yes folks, crippling poverty and hunger has in fact become a matter of National Security, and should be dealt with the same way we deal with other threats. Deal with it.
I think you've got part of a kernel of an idea of how we can successfully take on the Taliban and bin Laden.
Actions such as you describe would be very much a good thing, especially if we made it clear that, after we take out the Taliban and bin Laden that we're leaving, that we are not their enemies and we're not invading them to conquer, but to remove a threat to us.
Now hopefully we can avoid this half and half situations.
If a war happens, "we" need to decide what the goal is, then up-front, tell the military what we're willing to accept (no nukes, etc) and let them go from there, without any back-seat driving.
Well, you just described back seat driving. No nukes, for example. The use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to chemical, biological, or nuclear attacks is part of military doctrine.
The fact that we might use nukes against dug-in fundamentalist terrorists is part of why some of them are fleeing away from the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. To say, as we sometimes do, "you can't use nukes, you can't use ground troops, you can't do the job you have to do" is sheer insanity. It looks good on paper, but in the end my enemy is no happier dying with his lungs burning up from an air-fuel explosion than if I killed him with a neutron bomb.
And I do think we, the American people, need to have opinions on this, and talk about it, but I'm not so sure the military should take everything we say as if it were an order. Because we will blame them when it's not enough.
Just like we blame them for not sacking Baghdad, taking out the last Presidential guard units in Iraq, and killing Saddam (oops, collateral damage, I meant to say).
You seem to think we can pretend that it's going to be a nice engagement with clear rules. It's not going to be.
"War is too important to be left to the generals," is the classic reply made by France's premier in World War I, Georges Clemenceau [encyclopedia.com]
I didn't say we needed the generals. I'm just a sargeant, anyway. And it's not like I don't think we (the posters) shouldn't have opinions, in fact I hope we have lots of differing opinions. For there is where our true strength lies, IMHO.
In any case, the new kind of war that the pundits are talking about is not going to be fought in the mountains. The military has selected bin Laden's hideout because it can be attacked with old-kind-of-war weapons. Some people might argue that as long as the terrorists are up in the mountains, leave them there. They're only dangerous when they come down into the lowlands.
I think that's shortsighted. By the time they come down we'll have been distracted by something else, and they'll merrily go on about their regrouping for the next series of attacks.
By "new kind of war", the pundits are referring to a new kind of war for the United States. It has been fought in Israel and Britian for sometime. America's first mistake will be to repeat all the errors those countries made until they reach the same position those countries have arrived at: lots of security personnel, large, secret intelligence agencies, detention without trial within specified limits, and a list of banned organizations, among other measures.
Sadly, you may be right. I too, worry about such things, especially as used against American citizens.
At the moment the new kind of war is shapping up to be an old fashion seige and war of attrition. The terrorist have laid seige to the U.S. The U.S. will begin using its world-wide alliances and allies to put relentless pressure on the terrorist networks. These tactics are used when one side realizes that none of it's weapons and tactics will lead directly to victory.
In the meantime, new weapons and tactics will be invented. In World War I, the tank broke the static defenses of the Germans. But tanks arrived when the war of attrition had so weakened the German's ability to fight that it only hastened the inevitable.
So I would expect the new kind of war to look like a seige in the short-term while the U.S. wears down the terrorists as best it can. The U.S. happens to be particularly good at wars of attrition. Every one of America's enemies from Robert E. Lee to Yamamoto expected the U.S. to tire quickly and look for a negotiated way out. They were always surprised at America's resilience and at the ferocity of it's counterattack.
But this is not a war that we will only win by economic means, although it is one of our chief weapons. We will have to remain focussed for quite a long time, maybe even years.
You don't need to have military experience to know about war. There are plenty of civilians in the war business, including strategy. Considering that GW Bush appears to have spent most of his National Guard days doing political (not military) stuff, you could argue that our Commander in Chief has no military experience -- but then I guess I should admit I don't think he knows anything about war. Dang, there goes my point.
And sadly, it shows. Glad his wife gave him a good talking to.
Traditional warfare in Afghanistan has essentially been ruled out. Airstrikes will be extremely limited because their are so few targets other than the civilian population. Ground troops may not be used at all. And if they are, they will be extremely limited in number. Economic sanctions will do no good against a country with no economy. Yet despite all these restrictions, the taliban is marked for removal. Doesn't this seem just a little bit strange to anyone else? Jon noticed it and is just making an attempt to understand. In this case, if the Bush adiministration is telling the truth, you have no better idea of what is being planned than anyone else.
I'd rather read links to summaries of those Meet the Press news speeches then, not some commentary with no links. Which is what Jon gave us.
And I can't help but have a damned good idea of exactly what we can do, and what forces we have, just as I knew how many terrorists were on each plane (my estimate was 3-4 about 6 hours before it was announced) and how large the internal organization was (20-60 in the US). We had a very large amount of counter-terrorism operations, and I'm not happy that I'm forced to think of them, cause I try to forget that part of my past.
Katz makes some interesting points that you don't address, like the fact that terrorist cells are decentralized. We have terrorist cells active in the US now, and if you believe otherwise, you're blind or stupid. How is going to war with Afghanistan going to solve that problem?
It won't. But we are at war and we must attack, not only defend. And we almost always try to use the strategy and tactics of the last war - luckily we did have some mountain ops in Kosovo, but not ground troops. We aren't at war with Afghanistan, we're at war with the Pakistani-supplied and originated Taliban who has little local support, and the only weapons and vehicles, in most (2/3) of the country.
Technology can be used as an intelligence gathering maneuver that will aid in the placement of troops and other resources. Personally, I think that you're brute force position will fail ultimately, and the reason for this is because of what I know about computing and technology.
We are going to use it, but it can only aid and assist in such ground. I spent most of my service in mountain troops and mountain engineering, and while intel can assist, it's not like a desert war.
Decentralized processing can process much greater loads of information than can a single CPU. This trend and logic seems to be something that terrorist cells have been able to use to their advantage.
Yes, and some of our forces have similar capabilities. And this will also make us hard to "find" the enemy, but it's not as hard as it appears, if you think it through. Basically, if it's got weapons or vehicles, it's not friendly, and it's Taliban. It's only when they dismount that this becomes a problem. If we try to invade and hold it, we lose. If we seek to destroy and disrupt, but leave when done, we win.
Now, as far as how to combat that? We have to redefine our out dated military strategies and put into effect some sort of mechanism that can combat a distributed, non-centralized attack. It's sort of like combatting a DDOS in a way. You gather intelligence, not from the source itself, but the metadata that you recieve from the attack, then you resond accordingly by dropping certain packets. Likewise, in defense of this sort of attack, and indeed, taking an offensive position as well, we have to gather as much information as is humanly possible, use a distributed method of analysing it, and respond in a very pointed, targeted method. No broad sweeping attack plan will work in this or any other case where national boundaries are non existant, and politics are beyond the scope of international diplomacy.
The other thing is it's not just Afghanistan, it's 20 countries last time I checked. Some we can have booted out by the local governments, some we have to attack, some the local supporters will defend, some they will stand aside.
It's a war. With different battles, in different places, and different problems for each.
I think I speak for the whole community when you correct Jon on the proper tactics for invading Afganistan. I am sure the DOD will greatly value your advice, which must have been gleaned by watching CNN Afganistan maps for a whole two hours, reading combat/fantasy books, and perhaps spending two weeks doing your National Guard duty in the heavy ground combat that took place in Iraq.
DND, Department of National Defense, in Canada actually, and I spent most of a decade in service, sometimes doing things I'd rather forget, but nowadays I can't avoid thinking about them. And I'm now on secondary reserve, since I left the military as a Sargeant, and worried I'll be activated, since it looks like a NATO op.
I agree with a lot of what Will has said in his post. Especially the opening: Just where does Jon Katz's expertise extend to? He seems able to come up with the most meally-mouthed wishy-washy articles about everything under the sun.
/. way of digesting the news), than an ill-informed main post by someone who's never seen the business end of a rifle.
/. who do know about this - why not ask one of them to post some relevant links and a brief commentary?
He ideas are like a bad Hollywood scriptwriter's leftovers
Another poster pointed out that Jon's just regurgitating what you could get by watching some of the Sunday morning talk shows. I personally would rather see a good collection of links to such relevant articles (not a bad idea, kind of a
I'm not a general, or colonel, although my grandfather was, and my grand-uncle. My dad was a Sargeant, and I was a Sargeant. I'm hoping I don't get called up, since I'm not as young now, but I'll serve again if I have to.
We can win in Afghanistan, but it's not going to be something easy. If we prepare well, target primarily the Taliban and their direct supporters, get local intel, and use our brains, we can acheive miracles. If we don't we'll miss our targets.
I notice I got a lot of troll and flamebait moderations - I'm not trying to flame, but we need a decent main article and someone who's at least seen a fight or two. There are other people on
Seriously, Jon, what credentials do you have for war? There are many people on /. who have military experience, and you're not one of them.
Look, it's going to be nasty, brutish, bloody, not fun. War sucks. Killing, noise, fire, confusion, being tired constantly, on edge, it's not a game.
There are many ways we can do it. The smartest would be to get some local intel of terrain and people (many of whom have fled, maybe some assistance from Afghanis who fled the Taliban to Iran would work, since the Pakistanis support and arm the Taliban, and half their intel would be designed to trap us). Land on mountain tops and passes, set up defensive perimeters with mines and mortars, anti-tank and ATA, put spread out artillery in gun pits, and blast any vehicle or concentration that moves. Because only the Taliban moves in 2/3 of Afghanistan, the local population that they control (who don't support them) don't have mobility.
But we'll probably do something dumb instead.
Some of us have combat experience in mountains, Jon. And you're not one of them. Your techie toys won't work in mountains - a defender has a 20:1 or 10:1 advantage if he knows the terrain and the opponent is vaguely unfamiliar with it. A few people can hold off battalions, when placed right, we'll be lucky to move 2 miles in a day.
And cruise missiles are economically ineffective - JATO-assisted dumb bombs have a 98 percent kill rate, while a cruise missile there has at best an 80 percent kill rate, and you just need a dug-in position and nothing short of a nuke will affect you (and even those have to get the angle right).
This isn't a war game. This is a war. We will lose people, we need sound strategy and tactics, not people with ideas about fire-and-forget missiles that get confused in mountain terrain, or using MBTs in mountains (which are easy to kill with mines and vertical attacks with anti-tank).
Many in the enforcement community are using the war as an excuse to ask for things they wanted.
And they wish to remove our constitutional rights, for our citizens.
Wiretaps for immigrants or people here on visas - ok, maybe I'll buy that.
But for American citizens - get thee behind me, Hitler!
I personally would suggest in Afghanistan, since we know that only an Islamic court is just, according to the Taliban who shield Osama bin Laden.
The secondary reason for doing this is that the pre-trial phase may prove to be quite explosive, what with all the discoveries and proofs needed.
We are Americans (sorry other /. from other countries, but mostly it's true).
We must not give in on this. Our freedoms, our right to privacy, we must fight for this. It's like air travel - we must not stop taking planes, we must not stop investing, for if we do, we have let the terrorists win.
We are not Israel, we are not France, we are not England. Yes, we fight amongst ourselves constantly, but we now have a deadly purpose to wreak long and total vengeance on all those who caused this.
Perhaps we may acquiess and allow the placing of Carnivore to track terrorists a bit more than we did yesterday, but this is only for the duration of the War. I thought of getting friends to do new posters for WWIII based on the old WWII posters - We Did It Before, We Can Do It Again; Loose Lips Sink Ships; and so on.
But we must not give up our right to privacy, even though some of us will assist voluntarily where yesterday we would not - but this is for the War Effort. It is not something to set in stone, to legislate permanently.
That would be surrender to the terrorists.
And we shall never surrender.
Once again the terrorists and their allies and supporters fail to understand how badly they have misjudged us. This is not a time for punitive actions, this is not a time for air raids, this is not a time for selective strikes.
This is War. Break out the guns, load the artillery, move the main battle tanks into the cargo holds. Arm the nuclear missiles. Position the chemical weapons.
We are at war, we are determined in this respect. We want no "justifiable" or "reciprocal" reactions - we will unleash a terrible vengeance, a horror that will make all that came before it seem like a dream.
This was the mistake of the Japanese - they thought us weak, unresolved, diffuse, scattered. But we are not those things - and we are very determined that it is now war.
When did it happen? Was it the first plane hitting the first building? Was it the second plane? Was it when the Pentagon was attacked, when they planned for the White House? Was it when the first building collapsed in fire and fury? Was it the second, or the third?
Somewhere betwixt those we, the American people, moved from being a peaceful people concerned about terrorism who would use legal and ordinary means to arrest them, to our current state when we became at war with all those who planned or assisted in this, and all who shelter them or stop us from our frightful vengeance which shall know no limit.
For have no illusions, those in the rest of the world - we are at War. Putin, your offer is accepted, as are all offers of aid and assistance by all nations - but know that we are not going to stop where you would wish us to - for we are at War - and shall not be dissuaded.
Will Affleck-Asch
And just in case you think I just want to beat up on Jon for being a d.rk, here's a local story on how low tech the attack was.
How They Did It
Sheesh, you're not even a vet. I am, I'm subject to callup as a Sargeant.
And, in case you missed the news: no technology was used in this attack.
Yup. That's right. It wasn't cyberterrorists, or geek crackers, or script kiddies. They didn't use sophisticated technology.
They
Just
Flew
Planes
Into
Buildings
How low tech do you need to be? This is WWII tactics!
Now, would you stop posting and let someone who knows what he's talking about post? Someone with real experience? I don't mean me, I mean anyone but you.
On this day I don't need your carp, Jon.