-----Original Message-----
From: Stan's Computer [mailto:vze2txm3@verizon.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 9:24 PM
In reply to article by Tamim Ansary, starting with the following paragraph:
> I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
> Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would
> mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this
> atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What
> else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing
> whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
My reaction:
Then we will prevail. Let me explain.
The basic premise is that the US or the world will respond by levelling
Afganistan. That doesn't make sense, and history doesn't bear this out.
The US government is well-aware of that situation. So far the US is
starting out with getting cooperation from countries like Pakistan, and
even Iran closed its border.
There is really no reason to believe that the US will be going after
civilians who aren't part of the Taliban operation. As you mention, it
would be bad strategy. It's also bad military tactics.
OBL (and the rest of the cockroaches) made the mistake of believing that
the US or the rest of the world will retaliate on his terms. We don't
have to, and once one turns away from the rhetoric we are essentially
unable to retaliate on his terms.
Look at America's reactions during the cold war. Hollywood will do, to a
limited extent. If we wanted to depict evil, we depicted Nazis. If we
wanted to depict ruthless militarism, we still depicted WWII. I can't
think of a single depiction of the Russian people as a military or moral
target. In other words, there was never any popular inclination to
"destroy" the Soviet peoples.
What did our government do during those times? Mutual Assured
Destruction (MAD). Our military convinced their military to modify each
of our the philosophies of "protect the homeland".
Iraq was fought as a conventional war. There was major bombing, but this
was targeted at direct military targets, infrastructure, and specific
industries. Like facilities whos purpose was to "advance medical
research". The western powers were there at the invitation of Saudi
Arabia and a number of other countries in that region.
Did the US have the belly to do what was needed? Overrunning Iraq would
have been easy. We even had a temporary government in the form of the
Gulf states. Instead of overrunning Iraq, the US let Saadam have the
country and more pointedly let Iraq have Saadam. So instead of
rebuilding now that the war is over, Iraq gets essentially what they
either wanted or more likely weren't willing to get rid of. The US was
willing to risk Iraq retaining a few nukes and come strains of anthrax
and smallpox. Is that resolve or what? I say the US, but the world and
regional powers had to go along with that one.
There was even a bit of tit-for-tat (getting-even) during the Cold War.
But do OBL and the others really think that the US or the rest of the
world will respond in that manner? Maybe we'll just go around trying to
get rid of those cockroaches.
OBL isn't the first to make this mistake. Adm. Yamamoto knew that his
attack on Pearl Harbour would be the end of the Japanese Empire, but the
government believed their stereotype image of America. The Japanese
analysts figured that if they could destroy the entire US military, it
would take about 2 years for the US to rebuild to a strength which
exceeded that if Japanese Empire. The idea was that the US would just
run scared. Sure, go ahead and have your stereotype about the enemy, but
if you act on them, you had better be right.
It wasn't even an original idea. Charles Mansion was a mass murderer
who assembled a "commune" of people to kill people in Beverly Hills.
His idea was that he could start a race war of some sort. Nobody was
interested. Will someone please, please tell these people to give it up.
In the end, if we are able to do something about Afganistan, then the
Afgani people will come out ahead along with us. They have also suffered
from the Taliban for too long.
Mr. Ansary, one more thing about America. Don't listen to AM radio. It
will warp your mind.
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