War in the Land of Mountains

Consider if you will the Gulf War and its multiple failings. The elite Iraqi troops let escape while the rank-and-file were slaughtered, their leader never brought to bear for his doings, press censorship rampant, our policies there before, during and since a combination of opportunism, neglect and sheer double-dealing that boggles the mind and has resulted in the deaths of thousands, and so forth. BUT -- one bright spot. Powell and company took months to build everything up to get the alliance all just right on an international level, and when it was all over the amount of American dead compared to the overall commitment of troops was astoundingly miniscule (something like 200 set against tens of thousands of troops, more even), arguably the best proportion of such things in American history by a longshot. Strip aside the monolithic image of the military and realize that a mixed group of American citizens who had agreed to carry out a duty -- regardless of the wisdom behind the decision -- were for almost the entire part brought back safe and sound. If Bush Jr. and company can pull something like *that* off -- and even more so if they never have to commit troops at all, as noted above -- then nobody will be happier than the military as a group. Of course there are some gung-ho types in the services who just want to kill now, but that's not the full picture by a long shot.

The aims presumably will be: 1)the capture of Osama bin Ladin,-a feel-good fillip to a grieving nation.

2) Removal of the Taliban regime.

Bin Ladin is no doubt a nasty piece of work but the notion he is some Islamic Blofeld callously co- ordinating an international army of terrorists is wide-of-the-mark from all the evidence I've read. Attempts at subjugating Afghanistan helped break the Soviet Union, boosted militant Islamic fundamentalism, and helped create (with American support) individuals like Bin Ladin.

More worrying would be the Pakistani repercussions. Heavily in debt, politically unstable, with a rising Islamic fundamentalist movement against a corrupt military dictatorship, and armed with nuclear weapons. Pakistan feels caught between a rock and a hard place.

Yet throw up these reasonable objections and one immediately hears cries of 'what would you do instead then'? As though action, any action however counterproductive, is to be prefered. Counter- terrorism as I understood it involves gathering high-quality intelligence, political manoeuvres to decrease tensions, building alliances, and lots of patience. To quote Richard Ingrams from yesterday’s Observer.

“The Irish situation is not all that different from the Middle East in that terrorism has been a direct outcome of political injustice and lines drawn arbitrarily on maps many years ago. The IRA could never be defeated because there were so many people in Ireland who, while they might disapprove of its methods, sympathised with its political aims. “

Plus at least when the troops went out in Vietnam they were (on the whole) drug virgins, and (on the whole) merely came back addicts. This plan would ship out the reserve arm of the in-shore US drugs, to the world's major sweetshop. They would return to the US more multivalently powerful than Predator II: in retrospect, the Medellin wd look like Dad's Army.

(obvious answer coming from my quarter)

a: russia of course!

so whats makes veryone so damn cock-sure that usa would come in, deck the fuck out of the nasty taliban types then get out of there?

does war against afganistan mean: high altitude bombing and nothing else? if so then i guess this point is invalid, but.... chechnya?

dare i say it, vietnam?

maybe my history isnt too good, but its definite to say the russians repeated their mistakes in afganistan almost to the letter in chechnya now and are getting totally fucked over. 300 russian servicemen dying everyday?

something like that. i think theres a big parallel to be drawn between whats happening in chechnya, and what happened and potentially will happen in afgansitan. i know that america has a much greater equipped army, but wasnt that meant to be the case in 'nam?

i think that these countries forget that however many gunships etcs they have they are still basically unprepared for such fighting.\

so i say that it wont do any good cos

Fundamentalist muslims (and others in the world) are motivated now by fear that the US will destroy their hierarchical (in their case hieratic) structures, and are striking back just as the British did in 1814 when they burnt Washington.

He added that the problem we have now is to get security back in US cities without damaging personal freedom. I really wish the mayor were in the White House right now.

This is a mind-bogglingly huge leap, considering that we can't really divine these populations thoughts via (a) their unelected and largely unsupported governments, (b) their responses to world events, which are pre-filtered for them through largely state-run television, or (c) our media, which isn't exactly packed with Afghan man-on-the- street interviews.

And yes, re: Israeli expansionism -- wtf? We very clearly and openly bankroll and arm that expansionism. And we have the gall to walk out of the Durban conference when it's pointed out (a bit overdramatically, but nonetheless) that seizing previously-occupied land for "Jewish-only" settlements just maybe might be considered to have just the littlest relation to racism.

Some people = The New Republic. By its very definition, "expansionism" goes beyond "preservation." The above argument would be like Canada invading Montana and then saying, "Hey, we're just protecting the border."

re: the assumption that most middle easterners don't want us there...perhaps I was overstating the case, but I was thinking particularly of Saudi Arabia, where it is not at all clear to me that our presence there is appreciated or anything more than barely tolerated, and that we're there solely to protect the oil sheiks from potential Saddam lunacy. Actually, probably the only place where our presence would be appreciated by the majority is in Afghanistan itself (Kuwait too, I guess). My impression is that the Taliban took over basically because the people there had given up, and that if we could return their monarch to them most of the people there would be all for it.

I admit too that I know far more about the smurfs than I do about middle eastern politics, so if I am misinformed about something please let me know.

Funny, on the way home tonight a friend of mine and I were talking about just that. I mean, we froze the Iranian government's assets held in American banks after they took the hostages. Dunno whether ObL has $$$ over here, but he certainly has some in Saudi Arabia, not to mention places like the Caymans and Switzerland. Perhaps that should be at least part of our retaliation against ObL -- freeze or impound any assets he has here, and pressure other countries where he has assets to do the same.

Waging war against Afghanistan = DUD. As someone wiser than me has already said, "how can you bomb back to the Stone Ages a country that's already living in the Stone Ages?" Besides, I fail to see how bombing and killing more innocent people (and a distinction has to be made between the Afghani people and the Taliban) will make amends for what happened on Tuesday.

"Sources said the Pentagon is drawing up "high-end" and "low-end" options for military action.

The "high-end" options include air strikes against countries that support terrorists, while "low-end" plans include the use of special forces to capture or kill terrorist leaders, such as Osama bin Laden, sources said.

The actual plans are under close guard and have not been shared with news agencies. The rationale, according to Pentagon officials: Terrorist organizations lack the intelligence-gathering capacity that nations possess, relying instead on news organizations to find out what their enemies are doing."

Hm.

You DO know WHO fucked that up for the US, right?