I could’ve sworn that I’d posted a link to this video before, but damned if I can find it. Anyway, this is to my mind just about the most powerful “9-11 YouTube” videos I’ve ever seen. If you can sit through it – especially the conversation from 2:50 to 3:01 – and not be moved, there’s something wrong with you.
I believe that the greatest failure of the Bush administration was not the bailouts or the prescription drugs travesties… it was the lack of use of nuclear weapons in the Tora Bora region. When bin Laden was confirmed there, we should *not* have done the diplomatic thing and let our Afghani “allies” try to take the region. We should not have sent in the Marines. We should not have sent in B-52’s with Daisy Cutters. We should have sent in the Peacekeepers and the Tridents, and reduced that mountainous region to fricken’ rubble. America’s response should have been massive enough that, 5,000 years from now, after civilization has fallen and risen and fallen and risen again, people on the Asian continent will still sit around campfires and tell whispered tales of how the foolish imps known as the “taliban” once taunted the great sky-god “America,” and how America struck down with the power of the gods, destroying the taliban utterly… and leaving the area filled with the scattered, broken remnants of the talibans dark evil magic, and that’s why anyone who ventures into that realm of blackened glass gets a sickness.
But instead, we went the “tepid” route. And as a result, the Taliban was never fully wiped out, and is resurgent, and moving into Pakistan in force. The reports are that the Pakistani nuclear program is being closely monitored by the US military, perhaps even having US Special Forces on site, ready to carry off the Pakinukes if the Paki government or military falls. So rather than exterminating the ideological garbage that is the Taliban, we now have to worry about *them* getting nukes.
If you think that nuking a thinly populated mountainous region would be a horrible over-reaction to 9-11… imagine what the US response will be if the Taliban gets nukes and takes out an American city. Or imgaine what the Indian reaction will be if Paki nukes are used on, say, New Delhi.
23 Responses to “Never forget, never forgive”
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Lest we ‘forget’ the administration was already working on ‘stabilizing’ the region under the white paper published about 4-5 years earlier. Afghanistan was only a ‘target-of-opportunity’ and not seen as the main show. Our target was Iraq the subdual of which and re-building of into a functional democracy would cut the “legs” out from under extremist groups in the region and set the stage for democratic ‘uprisings’ in the surrounding nations.
All laid out in black-and-white and Afghanistan wasn’t part of the package. Once we hit a certain ‘point’ with the military operations we left everything else up to our allies to settle.
As for the Taliban getting their hands on Pakistan’s nukes: India will no doubt take its own ‘preventive’ measures to keep nuclear weapons out of their hands. I would not at all be surprised if they take such an “opportunity” to try and again erradicate Pakistan as a nation. This time with probably more world and United States ‘support’ than the last time.
India has been projecting a national “feeling” of the 21st Century being “India’s Century” and they have been looking for reasons to get heavily involved in neighboring affairs in particular, and playing on the world stage as much as possible. India won’t let the possibility of the Pakistani nukes falling into the “wrong” hands happen and with the lessining of the ‘restraint’ of possible escelation that was a check during the Cold War I would be highly surprised if a “First/Preventive” strike plan wasn’t very close to the top of the list of possible options the Indian government and military are studying.
Randy
This one brings home the shock, incomprehension and sadness, and the music is infinitely superior.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMz8fKkG2g
Mike
> the music is infinitely superior.
Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is one of those few essentially *perfect* bits of music. Cannot be improved upon. And yes, it’s perfect to describe the sadness of that day.
Had history gone properly, the follow-up to that video would have been best done using Holst’s “Mars: The Bringer of War” and video shot from U-2’s and SR-71s watching nuclear explosions going off in Tora Bora, followed by scenes of panic in the middle east, with cities emptying and governments toppling.
Bah.
When all else fails: http://nukeitfromorbit.com/ š
I am sure the 1 billion plus people downwind of Tora Bora would have greatly appreciated accepting your gift of fallout.
Much better than using nukes there would have been not pulling the US military off onto a wild-goose chase in Iraq for WMDs which did not exist. President Bush might have felt it was a matter of personal honour to eliminate Saddam Hussein because he attempted to assassinate his “daddy” but the rest of the world wasn’t that silly. Taking its eye off “the ball”, the US allowed bin Laden to escape, the Taleban to become resurgent and failed to secure victory in Afghanistan.
> I am sure the 1 billion plus people downwind of Tora Bora would have greatly appreciated accepting your gift of fallout.
Yeah, like they’d notice. Somewhewre over a *thousand* nukes have been set off aboveground in testing. Dropping a few nukes into the mountains of Tora Bora are hardly going to increase the fallout levels noticably.
> Much better than using nukes there would have been not pulling the US military off onto a wild-goose chase in Iraq…
Wow. Do you even think about these things before you type them? The failure in Tora Bora was in December 2001. The re-invasion of Iraq was in 2003.
That’s a question for our dear leader, what would it take to turn hippy liberals into stone-face killer conservatives? losing any of the top 50 cities or watching family members die of hemorrhagic fever? I can see turning to genocide if people close to me died horribly in an attack.
unlike 1898 or 1941, 2001 wasn’t utilized right, we were not asked to do our part. So if say next week the words “the city of_____ has been destroyed!” are the news. Then B.H.O. steps up and gets pissed-off mad then mean and says “those fuckers will Pay!” to this nation. Ain’t no more halal aid packages getting dropped, till Ragnarƶk.
“No man will have mercy on another.”
Scott:
How much thinking do you do before you dismiss things you don’t agree with? No matter how true they might actually be?
We “failed” in more than Tora Bora when the administration REFUSED a military request for more troops on the ground in Afghanistan. We FAILED to destroy the Taliban OR Al-Quaida because the military was STOPPED from moving into areas near the Pakistani border where the groups had gone to ground. We missed Bin-Ladin because the special forces units were withdrawn from Afghanistan instead of being dropped behind the Taliban/Al-Quaida forces as planned by the military commanders in theater. Troop levels were then cut back on the ground to the point where the cities could barely be covered let alone the outlying areas where the Taliban has ALWAYS enjoyed local support.
All these decisions came from Washington, the Bush administration not the DoD. The administration then spent the next two years “justifying” a case to invade Iraq because Saddam “might” give any WMDs he developed to Al-Quaida. (Let’s just ignore the fact they hate HIM more than they do us shall we?)
Meanwhile we have inadaquate numbers of troops making token efforts to “find” bin-Laden in Afghanistan, (even though all intel we have says he’s relaxing at home in Saudi for most of that time) while the pretty much everyone in the administration (except Bush) is hinting that we have conclusive evidence that Saddam was involved in 9/11, to try and tap American outrage.
(As of December of 2008 by the way, 1 in 12 Americans STILL believe that Saddam was in some way involved with 9/11 according to a Gallup poll. Strangely enough Dick Cheney also still believes there is a connection going so far as to say during an interview less than an HOUR after President Bush had held a press conference to announce that there was officially NO evidence of a link, that the American government had “definate proof” that Saddam had been involved with 9/11!)
A large majority of the Bush administration had made their views on the need for regime change in Iraq as THE paramount requirment for stabilization in the Middle-East early in the Clinton presidency. The ‘road-map’ had already been planned and Afghanistan wasn’t on it. Iraq was considered THE key, 9/11 the catalyst, and the war on terror the justifcation.
We missed our best opptunity to get bin-Laden, seriously cripple if not destroy Al-Quaida and ensure the Taliban would never regain power in Afghanistan BECAUSE the administration was not interested in Afghanistan, OR bin-Laden, OR even the war on terror itself! They were more concerned on finding ways to turn American outrage at 9/11 into support for invading Iraq and setting up a more conveinent government than in actually capturing bin-Laden or crippling Al-Quaida.
And they succeded, in a way. Saddam was brought down, captured and hanged.
(Personally, I was part of Gulf-War 1 and was more than a little peeved at being stopped short of THAT goal the FIRST time around, but that was a decision made in Washington and way above MY pay-grade so like the majority I did as I was told. The President and Congress THEN deciding that they would not support nor allow the CIA to support any of the homegrown Iraq resistance movements seemed REALLY stupid to me at the time. However as they say hind-sight is 20/20 or better. Knowing now what the assesments were at the time that the most likely ‘winner’ in replacing Saddam would be one or most likely a coalition of “Taliban-like” extremist groups rather than the more democratic/US-friendly groups, even WITH U.S. support makes the decision a bit more understandable. No less un-palletable, but definatly more understandable)
Iraq has been turned into a democracy that if not as freindly and supportive as we’d like at least is HUGELY better than Saddam.
I’d LIKE to think that invading Iraq and fighting the foreign backed ‘insurgency’ there instead of in the mountains and valley’s of Afghanistan was actually part of the ‘plan’ to draw Al-Quaida out into an area where they had less support and were more vulnerable in order to actually destory them, but alas that’s not even close to what happened. Al-Quaida in Iraq WAS destroyed and their end-game tactics of trying to ignite a civil war back-fired on them but while all that was going on they were quitly re-building their main forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan while our lack of troop strength and government attention gave the Taliban time to re-group and re-build.
The truely ‘sad’ part is while we may have ‘won’ in Iraq the outcome is not going to be the “Pax-Americana” that was envisioned as the ‘enemy’ that was never anticipated in the ‘plan’ for the Middle-East may not even face us at all but may turn on one of our ‘allies’ and take it over from within leading to even MORE instability in the region and negating ANY good we have done in Iraq shows why arm-chair ‘generals’ and ‘polticians’ tend to fail so much more often than they suceed.
You can find the basics of the idea of “Iraq” being the “key” to the middle east by reading the papers, open letters, and other information presented here:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
Frontline did a rather in-depth report on the various Iraq arguments that turned the war on terror from hunting bin-Laden and destroying Al-Quaida into a mission of regime change in Iraq:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/#morelink
(I and many in the military find it rather ‘funny’ in a sad way that while blaming Clinton for reductions in the military that lead to this organization to publish this paper calling for increased spending: http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf, and preparedness, which blueprinted the reasons for the swift withdrawel and redeployment of troops once Afghanistan was declared ‘pacified’ by the administration by the way, the FACT that it was the Republican controlled Congress that DEMANDED a “Peace-Dividend” for the American people who developed and implemented a program of military drawdown to achieve that goal :o)
Lastly lets address “nuking” Tora-Bora; Never would/could of happened no matter how much it would have been ‘worth’ it in the long run. For many of the same reasons we never carpet bombed the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon even though we new it was a major drug production center (war on drugs) and has numerous terrorist training camps (war on terror) of for that matter nuked it.
The actual ‘damage’ we’d do to the intended target would be very small in comparison to the down-line damage that would be done to U.S. interests as the incident was used a recruiting and funding tool and the amount of public sympathy for the ‘victims’ and anger at the U.S. would increase both overt and covert support of terrorism as a means to ‘strike-back’ against an obvious foe whom is militarily superior, but “proven” to be morally inferior.
You yourself have already provided the MAIN reason that such an attack wouldn’t work: “mountains”! The terrain is especially unsuitable for blast effect attacks, this is one of the reasons we “trained” the Taliban to USE those mountains when fighting the USSR there. (The other being the proximity to Pakistan for running in supplies, both reasons still VERY valid for the Taliban and Al-Quida)
http://www.joelertola.com/grfx/grfx_img/ToraBora.gif
Randy
The Partial Test Ban Treaty was enacted because of what, dear Admin?
Certainly the fallout from those “thousands of nuclear tests” alarmed enough people to force your nation, amongst others to sign that treaty. You really think that India and China are going to sit quietly by and not protest about your nation’s stupidity in using nuclear weapons to rearrange some real estate on their borders?
As for your time line, you appear not to realise the long-term effects that the foolish invasion of Iraq had on the war effort in Afghanistan. Those neo-Con idiots in the White House and Pentagon thought that they could do war on the cheap and of course it didn’t work. Rather like thinking dropping a few nukes will solve all your problems. %-)
> You really think that India and China are going to sit quietly by and not protest about your nationās stupidity in using nuclear weapons to rearrange some real estate on their borders?
Who can say?
> As for your time line, you appear not to realise the long-term effects that the foolish invasion of Iraq had on the war effort in Afghanistan.
Once again: bin Laden escaped in 2001.
> How much thinking do you do before you dismiss things you donāt agree with?
Depends greatly on the situation. Someone come sup to me and suggests that I buy into the latest psychic spoonbender, I need put very little thought into it before laughing and saying “no,” because I’ve *already* doen a great deal of thinking on the topic. Same with the war… had more than seven years to ponder.
> The actual ādamageā weād do to the intended target would be very small in comparison to the down-line damage that would be done to U.S. interests as the incident was used a recruiting and funding tool and the amount of public sympathy for the āvictimsā and anger at the U.S. would increase both overt and covert support of terrorism as a means to āstrike-backā against an obvious foe whom is militarily superior, but āprovenā to be morally inferior.
And by going the weak route, we’ve done precisely the same. Sometimes in war, the massive hammerblow is required. The War of Southern Aggressionw as won by Sherman burnign his way to the sea. WWII was won in Europe by throwing a bgraillion pissed-off Russians at the Germans and grinding the German military and associated infrastructure into powder. The war in the Pacific was won with nukes.
> You yourself have already provided the MAIN reason that such an attack wouldnāt work: āmountainsā! The terrain is especially unsuitable for blast effect attacks,
Depends on your target. We apparently knew where bin Laden was to within a few thousand feet. A few deep-penetrator bombs could have leveled the mountains right there. Might have left him alive in some hole, but he’d never dig himself out.
>> You really think that India and China are going to sit quietly by and not protest about your nationās stupidity in using nuclear weapons to rearrange some real estate on their borders?
>Who can say?
Anybody with half a brain who isn’t a chauvinist can say. You appear to think that the US can act in isolation and not escape the consequences. I’d have thought that 11 September had finally dispelled that belief.
>> As for your time line, you appear not to realise the long-term effects that the foolish invasion of Iraq had on the war effort in Afghanistan.
>Once again: bin Laden escaped in 2001.
He did indeed. He did so because Washington’s interest was already directed elsewhere. Where you aware that the US Military had been planning an invasion of Iraq since the election of President Doubya? They were actually rather peeved to have to drop all those detailed plans and start all over to try and salvage something out of the mess that Doubya’s decision to attack Afghanistan had created.
> Anybody with half a brain who isnāt a chauvinist can say.
Ah. So it’s your view that had the United States, after having been wrongly attacked and our citizens murdered, responded with massive, overwhelming and truly terrifying force, that the Indians and Chinese would ahve thought it best to just sit down, shut up, and wait for the US to finish what it was doing. Seems fair. If you poke a bear long enough, eventually it will try to tear your head off. And if you’re a bystander, and the poke-er is no friend of yours, you just quietly whistle to yourself and make yourself scarce.
> Where you aware that the US Military had been planning an invasion of Iraq since the election of President Doubya?
Were you aware that those plans came from the *Clinton* administration? That “regime change” in Iraq at the point of an M-1 tank was Clinton administration policty, ca. 1997?
If you can’t even keep up with decade-old news, there’s not much point in trying to enlighten you on more recent events.
Me being sarcastic (thank you Scott for taking it non-offensivly as it could have been :o)
>>How much thinking do you do before you dismiss things you donāt
>> agree with?
Scott replied:
>Depends greatly on the situation. Someone come sup to me and
>suggests that I buy into the latest psychic spoonbender, I need
>put very little thought into it before laughing and saying āno,ā
>because Iāve *already* doen a great deal of thinking on the topic.
>Same with the warā¦ had more than seven years to ponder.
Well just for an FYI, some of us have been doing a great deal of thinking on the OVER-ALL subject of Middle Eastern war and politics for a decade BEFORE 9/11, and a great deal more than that afterwards :o)
The reason bin-Ladden “slipped” away from us in 2001 was simply because while the military and people of America wanted his ass, the Administration and Congressional majority were indifferent at best in capturing or killing him. This was reflected in the support and control given during the Afghanistan campaign, and later in Iraq. Afghanistan was “supported” up to a point where victory was pretty much assured and then the majority of forces were withdrawn and sent into re-supply/retraining for “later” operations that were not defined at the time but was clearly a build up for Iraq. The Administration wanted “Iraq” not Afghanistan and clearly would have prefered to link 9/11 with Iraq. Even before our forces began to move on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan the Administration and Congressional supporters were pushing rumors of links to Iraq with Al-Qaeda as facts and trying to get more media exposure on Saddam’s supposed backing and help to Al-Qaeda.
Those of us who have been watching events in the Middle East since GW-1 had already noted that Al-Qaeda and especially bin-Laden were very publiclly aimed at killing Saddam and toppling his regime, Saddam on the other hand hated bin-Ladden as wanted Al-Qaeda destroyed both because they were a danger to him and because they were taking world attention away from his propaganda efforts against the U.S.
Any sort of ‘cooperation’ between them against the United States was impossible.
The United States partially, and the Saudi government in particular was the actual REASON behind this state of affairs. When Iraq invaded and conquored Kuwait the Saudi government was justifably nervous that they could be the “next” target. The United States had already offered to move forces into the area to defend Saudi if needed but the official government position was that their forces would be sufficient.
(As a point of fact I’ll note that it was only a day after the invasion started that the U.S. military did in fact dispatch hundreds of military personnel to Saudi Arabia. I was stationed at Tinker AFB at the time and we sent 30 people plus support equipment to Riyadh all with the same purpose: fix the American purchased equipment that was supposed to defend the Saudi’s! Only about a third of which was in any way operational :o)
At this point bin-Ladden contacted the Saudi government and offered Al-Qaeda as a defensive force to repel Iraq should they invade. He argued that while they would be outnumbered, his ‘army-of-the-faithful’ would be more effective against the Iraq military and would keep ‘infidel-feet’ off of holy Saudi soil. Despite the obvious danger of depending on an outnumbered force of fanatics to fend of the worlds third largets army, the REAL dangers the Saudi’s worried about was two fold: IF they “accepted” help from Al-Qaeda they would be seen as giving legitimacy to an organization that in the end was aimed at the transfer of power in Saudia Arabia from royal rule to clerical rule. If by chance Iraq did NOT invade bin-Ladden would have been able to claim victory for propaganda purposes. If Iraq DID invade and Al-Qaeda ‘lost’ they would continue to attract zelots to fight as insurgents just as had happened in Afghanistan against the Russians. This was the second and probably the most worrisome danger of accepting “help” from Al-Qaeda, which would have given them an opening to recruit, train and build a “Taliban-Like” army in the middle of Saudi Arabia which the Saudi government would be hard-pressed to do anything about because of their dependence on “infidels” to maintain and often operate their foregin made “high-tech” equipment. (At one point in time getting a job with a company that had the Saudi support contracts was THE after-retirment military dream job. 90% of the time you went to ‘work’ and sat around playng cards because the Saudi’s wouldn’t purchase the spare’s you need to actually ‘repair’ the equipment so you had little ‘real’ work to do for quite a good tax-free salary :o)
In any case accepting bin-Laddens offer would have given him legitimet power within the Saudi power structure and that was unacceptable. In the end the Saudi government called on U.S. support and troops to protect it’s borders.
Which needless to say was ANOTHER reason for bin-Ladden to want to hurt us :o)
Scott & Rickshaw:
The United States military has detailed PLANS to “invade” (most likely) every nation in the world. It’s part of our reserve operations planning. We tend to take them out, dust them off, and update them with current world situational, political, and force level factors every 10 years or so.
The “military” plan to invade (re-invade actually) Iraq was first put together during the first Gulf War cease-fire and has/had been constantly updated since then. Kinda funny about the “Clinton” regime-change-at-gun-point “policy” is that it was constantly and delibritly blocked by the Republican Congressional majority. I personally enjoyed Bush’s little “I won’t waste a cruise missile blowing up a camel” talk since the photo-op of his Congressional “supporters” were the exact same people who forced the Clintons administration to being able to ONLY take those actions. Then having the same folks turn around in Congress and tell the Democrats “We have to take action now, you can’t wait until YOUR President is in charge”
Pot… meet Kettle… Ah politics.
As to world reaction to nuking Tora Bora; Nice thought, lousy way to fight a war. Nuclear weapons are effective when used correctly, unfortunatly when NOT used effectivly they can be both a political and tactical nightmare. (Yes, politics counts in weapons deployment)
In this case we’d have managed to accomplish what few nations have ever done: Unite the various tribes and clans of mountain people in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in a deep and utter hatered of all things “American” and motivated them to come down in force. We’d have lost Pakistan for sure, probably Afghanistan and they would have turned into a ready made army for bin-Ladden (or his successor) along with handing the Jihadists a ‘million-martyrs’ to rally around. Not what we wanted to acomplish. (Then there is the ‘little’ problem of never really knowing if we actually GOT bin-Ladden or not :o)
Deep penatrator nukes: Nice idea, but we only have a few and they are mounted on ICBMs AND (key point here) they are NOT designed for the geology of the Tora Bora mountains. They are actually designed and built for specific geologies in the Ural mountains and a few other spots in the ex-USSR where we thought it likely that the Soviets had set up deep command and control posts. There is no such thing as a ‘generic’ deep penatration nuclear warhead.
We ‘knew’ where bin-Ladden WAS at any given time, the problem was and is that by the time an attack could be launched he wouldn’t BE there anymore. Depending on whose intel you give more credence too he and most of the core Al-Qaeda fighters and command structure weren’t in Tora Bora more than 24 hours before they began moving into Pakistan.
Tora Bora: sealing bin-Ladden in; Again nice idea but REALLY rough to carry out. Even had we HAD the right penatrator nukes they wouldn’t have collapsed whole mountains nor the cave complexs themselves we knew this from our studies of the area when we SUGGESTED the Afghan freedom fighters use them to hide from the Soviets :o)
We could have slagged the surface with a couple of dozen low-detonation air-burst nukes and sealed MOST of the enterences but we (still) don’t know how deep some of those complexs go nor where they connect to or how many enterances there actually are. Ensuring we ‘got’ bin-Ladden would have taken making the Tora-Bora mountains into the Tora-Bora open-pit mine, which would have required more nuclear weapons than we’d want to use from our pretty much ‘fixed’ current inventory :o)
Lastly we DID hit them with an overwhelming force that smashed their defences and scattered them before us. We COULD have carried on clear to the borders of Pakistan and made sure NO ONE got away, easily. But a POLITICAL decision was made to begin a drawdown of American forces in the area. Nothing the Taliban or Al-Qaeda had or could do would have prevented us from destroying utterly both organizations and ensuring they would never be resurected again. We’ve done this several times before, however, it takes a POLITICAL commitment to undertake actions on the ground neccessary to SECURE the area along with SUPPORTING rebuilding, education, and CHANGING the local culture. Some of this we did in Iraq, but ONLY some so I am of the opinion that a majority of the ‘changes’ we engendered won’t “stick” over the long run. We made little or NO attempt to do this in Afghanistan and what little ‘change’ has come has shown to be readily thrown out the window the minute the Taliban shows their faces in an area. This isn’t surprising since the average Afghani feels that there is not commitment from the United States to actually protect them from the Taliban nor any ‘buy-in’ to the changes because it would seem that the U.S. is planning on ‘bailing-out’ of Afghanistan at any moment. We’ve done very little until recently to change this opinion and I don’t think we’re going to be able to do enough to actually get the citizens to “help” us make the changes permanent. It is much safer for them to ‘enjoy’ the freedom they have now while preparing to ‘hunker-down’ and accept the Taliban back in power since they have little hope that the U.S. would be willing to face off against an “Iraq-like” insurgency war where the insurgents have tactical and support advantages vastly superior to those we faced in Iraq.
Can’t say as I blame them for feeling that way either, WE dropped the ball because our government was ‘focused’ on Iraq rather than Afghanistan. And you CAN’T do that in THAT country, history has shown it time and time again that no nation, no matter how powerful can “hold” Afghanistan without the FULL support AND FULL attention of that nation being focused ON Afghanistan. You need to fully gain the support of both the low-land and mountain people’s to fully intergrate an effort at nation building and we certainly don’t have that. Given the current state of affairs in Pakistan what we do or do not do in Afghanistan at this point is probably moot and pouring forces and money into the area at this point probably a wasted effort. However we don’t really have much choice because if we DON’T at least try to “finish” the job we started there we not only risk Afghanistan but Pakistan and most of the bordering areas of India going to hell in a hand basket. Whith both Pakistan and India having nuclear weapons and (unlike ourselves and the former Soviet Union) a cultural blindspot for each other a very firm policy of commiting those weapons to use the area could easily get VERY ugly VERY fast.
(Rickshaw IS very correct that the military was highly ‘peeved’ at the Bush decision to go into Afghanistan but more because of the “mess” that decision made with regards to fighting a ‘legal’ war. I love it when folks complain that the status “Enemy Combatent” was given to Afghan prisoners of war because it ‘denies’ them “protections” of the Geneva Conventions. I get the strangest looks {or confused emails} when I inform them that the granted status of “Enemy Combatant” doesn’t AVOID the “protections” of the Geneva Convention, it PROTECTS them FROM the “legal” ramifications of the Geneva Convention. As we learned every year in our “Laws-of-Armed-Conflict” training in the military, during a war ANYONE who raises arms against a member of a “recognized” military who is NOT a member of a “recognized” military with a “recognized” uniform and rank does NOT recieve the protections of the Geneva Conventions and is subject to summery execution BY soldiers of a “recognized” military involved in the conflict! There are some exceptions regarding formal civil militia’s but those don’t apply as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda “fighters” are not militia’s nor did they even bother to TRY to appear so. Legally all those “EC’s” in Git-Mo could have been shot at any time with no legal ramifications to the United States or any military member who carried out the act. None. By declaring them Enemy Combatants, the Administration FINALLY gave the military on the ground LEGAL options OTHER than placing them in front of fireing squads in batch loads. And that was one of a good half dozen legal and military operational ‘issues’ the Bush administration left hanging when the authorized the invasion of Afghanistan! Ya the military was more than a little pissed about being left to hold the bag on a lot of that stuff)
Randy
> The reason bin-Ladden āslippedā away from us in 2001 was simply because while the military and people of America wanted his ass, the Administration and Congressional majority were indifferent at best in capturing or killing him.
And thus my point *way* back in the original post: “I believe that the greatest failure of the Bush administration…”
>Nice thought, lousy way to fight a war.
Worked well in WWII. The threat of it prevented WWIII from going hot.
> they would have turned into a ready made army for bin-Ladden (or his successor) along with handing the Jihadists a āmillion-martyrsā to rally around.
Oh, I dunno. There are two likely extreme responses to the US nuking the shit out of bin Laden:
1) Sowing fear in the region, such that they want to *not* piss us off
2) Making them go buggo insane.
If 1) is the response… then, great, we’re done. If 2) is the response, then, great, we’ve accelerated the pretty much inevitable Islamist war on the west onto *our* schedule. Get it going before Europe completely falls. Bad enough that the Islamists might grab Pakistans pitiful nukes… imagine what the Islamic Caliphate of Francistan will do with *their* ready-made nuclear stockpile in a generation or two.
> Deep penatrator nukes: Nice idea, but we only have a few
OK, then take one Ohio class boomer and unload every Trident it has onto the same target, spread out over a 24 hour period. That’s be, what, around 240 nuclear warheads? One for every six minutes of a day? That’d do the trick. Star with a few air bursts to wipe out anyone on the surface, then do ground impacts to shake down the mountains like Jessie Jackson shaking down a small business.
> pretty much āfixedā current inventory
Make more. Lots more. Orion-mission-to Saturn more.
> This isnāt surprising since the average Afghani feels that there is not commitment from the United States to actually protect them from the Taliban…
Tom Tancredo had a solution to that, way back: pull the US troops out of Afghanistan. But send in outright mercenaries. Say, $50K per scalp, with video evidence that the scalpee was actual Taliban.
Imagine flooding Afghanistan with a hundred thousand Hutus or Tutsis with machetes and dreams of avarice. Use United Nations troops to evacuate villages and town in advance of the mercs; relocate the refugees in the Yukon.
My own idea at the time was a massive invasion, with the mission *not* to kill and destroy, but to kidnap. Take every child that it is possible to find in Afghanistan below the age of 13 or so. Bring them to the States. Raise them in our culture… but a *mutant* version of our culture. Sort of the sitcom stereotype of our culture. Addict them to Backstreet Boys, Bratz dolls, staggering materialism, vapid trends. Turn them into a hollow generation. Teach them to *hate* and *despise* the culture they came from. then, after five years, return them home.
> no nation, no matter how powerful can āholdā Afghanistan without the FULL support AND FULL attention of that nation being focused ON Afghanistan
Yeah, but who wants to hold Afghanistan? Seems to me the realistic choices there were to either convert it into a stable country on it’s own, or send in bombers and snipers every now and then to stir things up to keep them killing each other.
The US, despite what the rapid anti-Americans at home and abroad like to bleat loudly, is not an imperialst nation.
Which is sometimes a bit of a pity. If we were, we could have simply sent our German and Japanese divisions into Afghanistan.
> Whith both Pakistan and India having nuclear weapons and (unlike ourselves and the former Soviet Union) a cultural blindspot for each other a very firm policy of commiting those weapons to use the area could easily get VERY ugly VERY fast.
Any nuclear war between Pakistan and India would very likely be quite one sided and quite brief. I suspect, especially after Mumbai, the Indians really don;t have a whole ot of patience anymore. If Pakistan decides to nuke India, India will simply steamroll ’em, and then Pakistan is done.
The Pakis and Indians go to nukewar… I’m dialign up CNN and getting the popcorn, and I’ll probably also upgrade to a better digital camera to really get good shots of the fothcoming really pretty sunsets. I will feel sorry for the Indians who suffer, but I’ll be realistic about it: it’s probably inevitable.
Obviously, Admin you’re a follower of Huntington’s thesis. What a shame you appear to be a war monger. You want conflict, you want war it seems. You a conflict between Islam and “the west” as inevitable, despite the fact that Islam and “the west” has been living quite well, side-by-side for the last 400 years. You appear unable to differentiate an attack by a bunch of wacko extremists who are not representative of the majority of the followers of Islam and what the majority of the followers of Islam actually think about the issue.
Its that sort of fallacious thinking that has got us into the situation we are in today. Perhaps if we’d made an effort to arrest Usama bin Laden rather than invade Afghanistan and then Iraq, our nations would be fighting these stupid wars. However, I suspect that subtle idea might fly over your head.
Only someone who’s never served in the Military and who will never have to put their own lives on the line would welcome the idea of a “clash of civilisations”.
> What a shame you appear to be a war monger. You want conflict,
No. That’s projection on your part. I don’t *want* war; I am just smart enough to recognize that we’ve *got* war.
> Islam and āthe westā has been living quite well, side-by-side for the last 400 years.
Bullshit. After Britain and France, the forces of Islam was the first foreign power to wage war against the United States. From 1786:
“It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.”
As it was then, it is today.
You may choose to ignore reality, to merrily hum to yourself while an evil ideology grows and spreads across the world like a cancer, but the fact that others do not choose to ignore it does not mean that they want conflict. Merely that they *see* conflict.
And they waged war again the US because of? Oh, thats right, the Bey justified it with a quote from the Q’ran. How amazing. Could it rather like how President Bush indicated he believed God told him to invade Iraq?
The reality is that the Pirates waged piracy, rather like the Somali pirates do today, for economic reasons. They didn’t just pick on the US, they also attacked European merchant shipping. And please, don’t try and tell me that the US stopped the Piracy with its rather ineffectual campaign against the North Africans. You’re aware after they’d finished that little tiff, the US went back to paying the Pirates off? It was the French and the British (mainly the French) who put an end to the North African Pirate problem.
As for you claim that “The US, despite what the rapid anti-Americans at home and abroad like to bleat loudly, is not an imperialst nation.”, I wonder if you can really say that with a straight face. You appear to have forgotten all about “manifest destiny” and the “Monroe Doctrine” and all the consequences that have flowed from them. The US may not rule its empire directly – it usually finds more than enough corrupt locals to do that for them – but it definitely rules it and exploits it for its own gains. One only has to look at the list of democratically elected governments which its overthrown or helped overthrow and the bunch of slimy dictators its been willing to jump into bed with.
>And they waged war again the US because of? Oh, thats right, the Bey justified it with a quote from the Qāran.
Same as they’re doing today.
> Could it rather like how President Bush indicated he believed God told him to invade Iraq?
Nope. Not even in the slightest. Clearly you are completely ignorant of how the American govenment works.
> You appear to have forgotten all about āmanifest destinyā and the āMonroe Doctrineā
Those were more than a *century* ago, no longer relevant. Consequently: irrelevant. Like pretty much most of what you write.
I am not talking about “how the American government works” (actually, I’m often amazed that it works at all, considering some of the strange antics it and its citizens get up to), I’m talking about how the American Government, like the Dey of Algiers did, justifies its own actions to itself and its citizens/subjects. Bush claimed God told him to do it. So did the Dey. Hardly surprising really as both used or use religion as a convenient means of justifying almost anything. I am surprised at the rather breathless naivety that you display all to often in your comments on such issues.
>Bush claimed God told him to do it. So did the Dey.
And since you are incapable of understanding – or acknowledging – that there are some pretty substantive differences in the powers that these two men weilded, you only reinforce my opinion that you are nothing but a waste of time.
Admin, it doesn’t matter what powers they “wield”. What matters is how they justified to themselves and their citizens/subjects and the world their actions. For Doubya, it was “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “God told me to do it”. For the Dey it was “Allah told me to do it”, etc. It appears the similarities between the lies both told pass you by.
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