posted 09-14-2001 07:13         

Keep in mind our NATO allies have a vested interest in working WITH us during the assaults. This will not be a 2 month operation, rather our presence will may be required for multiple years. The assaults will be executed by small elite teams who are highly trained and extremely mission results oriented (seals, rangers…etc) these are the only guys who will be successful in flushing the roaches from their dens.

Success will depend largely on rapid response to incoming intelligence. We need to hit hard and get out, hit hard and get out (repeat as necessary). A defensive posture should never be assumed. We should avoid occupying territory at all costs.

posted 09-14-2001 14:07            

Just warning you ahead of time.

Thought it was interesting though.

Tamim Ansary:
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."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am
from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've
never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will
listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no
doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New
York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the
government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant
psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal
with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden,
think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews
in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had
nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the
perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban
and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their
country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The
answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering.
A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000
disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are
millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive
in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all
destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan
people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make
the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Don. Turn
their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals?
Done.

Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health
care?

Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at
least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban
eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide.
Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too
fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and
dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this
horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the
Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this
time So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with
true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with
ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs
to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing
innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually
on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would
die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's
much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd
have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of
Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand
by?

You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam
and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he
wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all
right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem
ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and
the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in
those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even
better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the
west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years
and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for
that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

posted 09-14-2001 21:02            

I also got as far as the Pakistan angle, although I don't think it's necessarily true that it would turn into "Islam vs the West" - I think it would be more along the lines of WWIII, with some of the random third-world middle eastern countries and China playing the Axis, and the NATO powers, Russia, and and assortment of other powers playing Allies.

Controlling Pakistan militarily probably wouldn't be too difficult; the terrain's not too bad and there's plenty of seafront to give us access via the Navy for both military assault and logistics / supply lines. It's the actual final mile in Afghanistan that's a bitch - you ever looked at a topo map of that fucking place?

I'm not entirely sure you could just quickly "depose" the Afghani government - you would probably have to occupy the damn country for a few years while you starved 'em out and won their citizens' loyalty by treating them better.

posted 09-14-2001 22:39            

I got this one question.(Now, I ain't no war statician, but...):

posted 09-15-2001 08:41            

1. mobilize
2. effectively arm
3. effectively train
4. maintain supply lines to

Basically, they'd have the same logistical problems that we would - compounded by a LOT less in the way of monetary resources and technological capability to offset them.

Keep in mind that while high-altitude bombing sucks for attempting to take out hardened targets, it works WONDERS for fucking up supply lines.

For those of you not familiar with the concept of "supply lines": the single biggest problem inherent in keeping a standing army in the field is feeding them, keeping them in ammunition, fuel, etc etc etc. And if you haven't looked at a topo map of Afghanistan recently, I highly suggest it - 1. there ain't a whole lot of extra food just lying around to be taken, and II(b). organizing supply routes through all that mountainous shit would be a bitch.

(edited because of monkeys. communist monkeys.)

posted 09-15-2001 10:30            

Are there '674 billion of them, and only 12 of us'? Well, sort of, yeah.

Do they have enough weapons and training for all of them? No, I don't think so.

Personally, I don't think China wants a conflict with the West anymore than the West does, simply because they know they would be soundly thrashed. (Even though 50 years from now, we'd all be buying chinese cars, vcrs, and tvs if it DID happen.)

posted 09-15-2001 13:23         

1) Pakistan is cooperating with U.S. demands.

2) Iran is closing off its border and is locking down hard, and cooperating with U.S. demands.

China and India are pledgeing their full cooperation, granted, "whatever that means..." hehe.

posted 09-15-2001 14:00            

Is the Taliban fucking nuts? They're threatening any boarding countries that harbor a US Assault? Are they fucking crazy? Do they realize that it's not the US attacking, it's 70% of the world?

posted 09-15-2001 16:17            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Snag:
Is the Taliban fucking nuts?

---

Yes. They are a bunch of lunatics. For example, they have made it effectively impossible for Afghani women to receive health care, and they have banned the education of girls. It seems to me that everyone in the world who's not a radical Moslem wants to see these people gone.

posted 09-15-2001 19:52         

I suggest that we should act upon good and proven inelegance with with a vicious "Bliskerg" mentality.

posted 09-15-2001 20:16         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Snag:
Okay, here's another question.
Is the Taliban fucking nuts? They're threatening any boarding countries that harbor a US Assault? Are they fucking crazy?

---

Nuts, what's nuts?
They truly believe that they are correct in their actions to harbor whom ever they wish. Which in absolutist terms makes sense. It is unfortunate that the overall population will pay a great price for their fundamentalist blind-sightedness. Also, it would be a lot easier to get behind this conflict if the U.S. had not assisted the Talaban to reach power.

The bottom line I think is that the people want blood. The government will provide.
My hope is that it is that it is the vile blood that is shed and not the innocent.

Killing is wrong, period. We must minimize the damage by slipping behind the lines as it were. Fuck the bombs. SLIT THE THROATS OF THE GUILTY and spare the lives of the innocent.
This will be difficult, but not impossible.

posted 09-15-2001 21:46            

quote:

---

Originally posted by marcel:
I suggest that we should act upon good and proven inelegance with with a vicious "Bliskerg" mentality.

...we MUST use trained assassins this is our most effective recourse.

---

EEK!

We dont need trained assasins, we need other governments to take a serious look at terrorism. Until such a time as terrorists cant find immunity in any country, our level of safety will remain low.

Did you mean Blitzkrieg? As in "The Lightning War"?

-Chris

posted 09-16-2001 14:45         

I agree that lightening retaliation is required, but it *must* be compartmentalized. We are in no position for an immediate strike to any specific locale, obviously. That has been an established fact by the military and the administration.

But when we *can* pinpoint an exact target that has housed or contains terrorists within its confines, an immediate strike is required.

In terms of 'assassins', I think marcel is alluding to our special mission units-rangers, seals, etc. Black helicopter shit. No occupation. Get in, clean em out, and get out. No exceptions. No mercy. In that regard, we have to be absolutely sure of who and what we are attacking-hence the delay time in our initial response. That's what we are doing now-gathering intelligence for the coming storm that could last years.

posted 09-16-2001 15:01            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clme:
[B] We dont need trained assasins, we need other governments to take a serious look at terrorism. [\B]

---

Well, I think we need both. But good point anyway.

posted 09-16-2001 18:41            

quote:

---

Originally posted by CapnBiggles:
But when we *can* pinpoint an exact target that has housed or contains terrorists within its confines, an immediate strike is required.

---

No. The problem goes far beyond Bin Laden, the problem extends to the government of the country that's supporting him - and if there's one thing our history in the shittier areas of the world has shown over the past few decades, it's that just trying to eliminate a few key players does NOT, repeat, NOT produce good changes.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If you remove one governmental body, you'd damned well better be ready to step in and regulate until something better is established.

posted 09-16-2001 19:12         

And yes, it would work, and that is what we are going to do (albeit a derivative, most likely, since your point is legitamate and was included in my analysis, even though it was interpreted differently), as I've seen reported.

And I say "black helicopter shit" in semi-jest. Obviously more sensitive tactics would be required. But anyone who doubts that there will be many, many, methodical, surgical strikes is kidding themselves. We certainly wont start carpetbombing.

This will be an 'investigation war' as Powell says. Once we interpret the information required, we'll move in and take what action is necessary. (also his words)

posted 09-16-2001 19:20            

So, we're right in that the Taliban needs to be taken care of, but the assassination of leaders of the Taliban I think might be illegal. I'm not sure, but I think I remember some teacher saying that it was illegal for the United States (in the constitution or it's by-laws or some wacked shit) to go in and systematically eliminate people.