This, from an AC:) Ahh, well, such is the nature of man. If the guy wants to cast this as a religious war he actually has the freedom to do that, regardless of how wrong or foolish he may be about it.
They were extremists already, we just toaught them to be more efficient and effective during a time (the Cold War era) when "the enemy of my enemy" was my friend. Shortly after the WTC/Pentagon attacks one of the previous administration's policy men (sorry, I don't remember who) hit the nail on the head when he said (paraphrasing here) that walking away from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal was clearly one of the worst mistakes the west had ever made.
Given the evidence being collected/presented by the Government (with all the caveats that implies) the US response ought to be something along the lines of this:
"You will produce Osama BinLaden within 48 hours or face the gravest possible consequences."
It is time to stop pussy-footing around with regimes that shelter or support terrorists. Yes, I know that Afghanistan has broken the will of two great empires (the British and the USSR), but we realistically have no choice here.
It all goes back to the basic definition of the purpose of military units in the field of combat- kill people and break their stuff. If we can easily modify our weaponry so that the after-effects on the environment and local populations can be ameliorated, I'm all for it. Just so long as when GI Jane launches that shoulder-fired Dragon anti-tank missile it streaks off to it's target and lays serious hurt-em on it.
One thing that always irked me about the debate on the neutron bomb was that the peaceniks always cast it as a weapon used to kill populations while leaving cities intact. The neutron bomb was developed as a tank-killing weapon back in the days when the Warsaw Pact had virtual tank armies which were designed to crash through NATO lines and wreak havoc in the event of a war (we won't bother discussing who might have started the fighting).
NATO policy was (and probably still is) to use nuclear weapons in this kind of situation, but in Western Europe there are not very many open spaces where you can chuck even kiloton yield tactical weapons about without wiping out a village or three. The Neutron bomb was a compromise- it would kill the tanks while causing substatially less blast damage. Anyone underground or at any reasonable distance from the blast theoretically had a decent chance of survival.
Of course the catch was who really believed that such an exchange would be limited to a tactical exchange only?
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This, from an AC:) Ahh, well, such is the nature of man. If the guy wants to cast this as a religious war he actually has the freedom to do that, regardless of how wrong or foolish he may be about it.
They were extremists already, we just toaught them to be more efficient and effective during a time (the Cold War era) when "the enemy of my enemy" was my friend. Shortly after the WTC/Pentagon attacks one of the previous administration's policy men (sorry, I don't remember who) hit the nail on the head when he said (paraphrasing here) that walking away from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal was clearly one of the worst mistakes the west had ever made.
One would hope we learn from this...
Given the evidence being collected/presented by the Government (with all the caveats that implies) the US response ought to be something along the lines of this:
"You will produce Osama BinLaden within 48 hours or face the gravest possible consequences."
It is time to stop pussy-footing around with regimes that shelter or support terrorists. Yes, I know that Afghanistan has broken the will of two great empires (the British and the USSR), but we realistically have no choice here.
It all goes back to the basic definition of the purpose of military units in the field of combat- kill people and break their stuff. If we can easily modify our weaponry so that the after-effects on the environment and local populations can be ameliorated, I'm all for it. Just so long as when GI Jane launches that shoulder-fired Dragon anti-tank missile it streaks off to it's target and lays serious hurt-em on it.
One thing that always irked me about the debate on the neutron bomb was that the peaceniks always cast it as a weapon used to kill populations while leaving cities intact. The neutron bomb was developed as a tank-killing weapon back in the days when the Warsaw Pact had virtual tank armies which were designed to crash through NATO lines and wreak havoc in the event of a war (we won't bother discussing who might have started the fighting).
NATO policy was (and probably still is) to use nuclear weapons in this kind of situation, but in Western Europe there are not very many open spaces where you can chuck even kiloton yield tactical weapons about without wiping out a village or three. The Neutron bomb was a compromise- it would kill the tanks while causing substatially less blast damage. Anyone underground or at any reasonable distance from the blast theoretically had a decent chance of survival.
Of course the catch was who really believed that such an exchange would be limited to a tactical exchange only?