Seventeen years ago today, a pack of Surt worshippers hijacked four American jetliners and attacked the Holy City of Shanksville, PA, the Holy City of Arlington, VA, and the Okay City of New York, killing nearly 3,000 people better than them. This led to a war in Afghanistan and partially led to finishing the war with Saddam. The results of *those* have hardly been unqualified spectacular successes. Al Queda was never wiped out, nor was the Taliban, and AQ is now arguably stronger than it was before. So with the benefit of hindsight, what might the US have done better?
Assume that, somehow, you could go back to 9/12/2001 and influence the decision makers. Don’t bother with the “how” of any of that, instead… what would you counsel them to do?
It seems to me that there’s no getting around the need to militarily pound Afghanistan. But there are better ways to have done it. Take, for example, perhaps the greatest military blunder of the last few generations: allowing our Afghan “allies” to try to take bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains in December of 2001. Bin Laden slipped through and the US looked like chumps. Instead, with the benefit of hindsight… a constant day and night bombardment campaign. Build factories in the region to do nothing but manufacture high explosives, to be flown in via C-17s and B-52s running day and night. Make “barrel bombs” that are composed of powdered carbon mixed at the last second with liquid oxygen… barrels containing ten tons of the mixture. Bring the mountains down. Set off *at* *least* one high yield thermonuclear device at an altitude sufficient to preclude meaningful fallout, but low enough to shake and scorch the hills. If the US has developed small nukes with good subsurface delivery systems, bunker busters that will release relatively little fallout… employ them. Let the world know that the US is *just* a little PO’ed.
Also: Al Queda was never going to be defeated in the way the Nazis or the CSA or the Imperial Japanese were. They are less a unified government than an ideology. Even if you were to wipe out Al Queda, there would be others who would simply take up the mantle. The problem is that the religious ideology that underpins Al Queda is widespread and deeply entrenched. The Nazis were wiped out because not only was Nazi Germany defeated, but a massive postwar program of “de-Nazification” effectively deprogrammed all the people who *could* have been Nazis. To do the same after 9/11, the program would have required the military conquest and subsequent deprogramming of well over a billion people. That… that ain’t gonna happen. Not without a pretty impressive pandemic to thin out the numbers, anyway.
So, how do you fight a belief system that has survived for centuries and thrives on its adherents living in horrible conditions? Competition. Of course, our culture doesn’t permit such things as forcing other countries to allow a massive influx of missionaries (though it’s entertaining to imagine such places being flooded with Hari Krishnas and Scientologists, all under the watchful eye of ED-209 bodyguards). So, the US should have culturally competed in another way: blatant shows of Just How Awesome We Are. How could the US have done that? Go outside some night. Look up. Chances are fair that you’ll see a great big ol’ Moon up there. With the money the US spent on invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, the US could have dotted the near side of Luna with colonies. Big, shiny, gold-plated colonies with bright lights and giant “Trump Casino” signs on them. Start paving the lunar surface with PV arrays and microwave or laser energy transmitters. This would make the colonies at least marginally practical, and would be a vast “Ha Ha, FU” by actuallychanging the appearance of the Moon. Especially when you announce that the colonies are open for business and tourism… but that those of Certain Ideologies – and those from nations where Certain Ideologies dominate – are not allowed. Let the world know that the US is going to dominate the future of the universe… and that some people will be locked out. Let them have their caves and their dunes and their dust. We’ll have the stars.
Another idea, almost certainly more doable with 2002-era tech: a crash program to develop not just many terawatts of installed nuclear power, but also programs to make thermal deploymerization systems workable, effective, efficient, cheap and *common.* With enough excess electrical power fed into TDP plants, fed with sewage, garbage, excess plastic, biowaste and the like, the US could almost certainly have made itself more than fossil-fuel independent by 2018. Additionally, the technology would make the US vast sums of money by selling it first to our allies, and then to everyone who is not our enemy, and then eventually to those we’re on the fence about. Imagine a world where petroleum is cheap, available, nearly carbon neutral, and provides zero dollars per year to the likes of Iran and Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. A world in which neither NATO nor the Russians give a rats ass about middle eastern oil is a world in which NATO and Russia have no reason to fight in the middle east to procure resources or prop up crappy regimes. A world in which the Russians have no interest in selling tanks and missiles to the Iranians or the Iraqis because they have no money with which to *buy* those weapons. This would be a world with the US in technological and economic ascendance, while those who wish us ill would be experiencing a widespread and permanent economic contraction. To *really* drive the point home, migration out of such places would have to be strictly controlled, greatly limiting the ability of Al Queda and related groups not only to carry out attacks in the wrest but to influence the future of the west. Keeping them bottled up would also drive home to the locals that their situation is only getting worse while things are getting brighter in the west.
Forever sending our troops to go and stir up the dust… this just isn’t really working.