Every time some poster or other comes up with some new tidbit of idiocy, we can count on Clothahump, Our Stupidest Doper, to come along and re-establish the bar and show us what being truly dense is really about. Kudos!
Wait a minute, Stupidest Doper?. Surely you’ve heard of a little doper called Scott Plaid?
Okay, then the stupidest right-wing Doper, to counterbalance Scott.
Just because we gave the Taliban a chance to hand over OBL, doesn’t mean that we didn’t realize they were providing support and comfort for OBL and al Qaeda. Policy makers realized that, “Hey look, the Taliban and al Qaeda are brothers-in-arms and heavily intertwined. To get one or the other, we have to get both”.
“Getting OBL” was the popular media-driven [sub]and justly so[/sub] thought on the mind of every American that fall. The overall strategic aim of Op Enduring Freedom was to stop terrorist training/activities (which necessitated the removal of the Taliban), and to capture key leadership in/dismantle al Qaeda.
Nope. Like I said earlier, they’re brothers and had multiple connections with each other. The Taliban was a repressive governmental fixture, not really recognized by any of the world’s legitimate governments–save three (and I can’t remember which countries those were). Al Qaeda was a terrorist organization that assisted the Taliban where it needed firepower and muscle, in exchange for support, in order to take its fight against the West. They both used each other and one would sanction the other.
One man does not make a terrorist organization–just a lone nut. We’ve gotten quite a few higher leaders from al Q, but OBL would again simply be “icing on the cake”. Cut off his communication, leadership, and support mechanisms, and you’ve essentially cut off his means to strike. Granted, nabbing OBL would serve a good blow to al Q, but the organization would still function.
Tripler
Ain’t anti-terrorism fun?
You probably didn’t make it all the way through the multi-page trainwreck about Mr. Plaid (how many did?), but I gave my impression near the end that he is not in command of his faculties, and thus cannot be entirely held responsible for his vacuousness. The 'humpster, on the other hand, appears to be of sound mind, and nevertheless persists in posting flannel-headed jabber of startling intellectual ineptitude. To me, there’s no contest.
Dude, lekatt outdoes them both.
I take offense! 
Does lekatt have a wing? I thought he staggered along on a club foot, a tentacle, and a collection of flagella that curl up to spell “love” when they aren’t waving him along.
Or maybe that’s just back hair.
Sorry, duffer, but sometimes you’re cute, and I don’t kick puppies.
I’m not sure I agree. I thought the goal of the invasion was to overthrow the Taliban who were complicit with Bin Laden in the 9/11 and get Bin Laden (not to mention freeing the Afghanis and bringing them to Democracy so they could buy Big Macs and shop at Walmart)
If you agree with me that the invasion was more than just “get Osama” than I guess we did have to conquer the whole country. Given that, I’m really not qualified to say whether it’s better to put people on the ground fast or fight from the air first. Nor, would I suspect, are you (but I might be wrong.)
That being said, the current military doctrine seems to be that the best way to conduct a war is to use your air superiority if you have it. That way you can take out hardened targets, artillery, C&C , armor, air, and other concentrations of military power so that when you do put men on the ground they suffer fewer casualties as the men on the ground won’t have to deal with these things (or at least at full strength.)
I can find no flaw with this strategy, but I’d be willing to listen as to why you military doctrine is wrong and it’s better to put men on the ground, in harms way, against stronger forces sooner, rather than soften the opposition from the air first.
A larger part of my reservation was that such a strategy would have less likelihood for success, would be more likely result in a situation where we couldn’t know for sure if he had really been in the smoking crater before it was a smoking crater, and just seemed like we were too afraid to risk lives to get the guy who attacked us on 9/11.
I’ll be honest with you. I really don’t care too much whether we actually catch him, shoot him, or have a body to display or a person to put on trial. What’s most important to me is that he be rendered powerless. Putting him on trial, or kicking his body is a distant second in my book. If he’s dead in a crater and we never identify him, that’s almost as good as hanging him from the Capitol building.
You may be right. This might have been a big mistake, or maybe we simply didn’t have the resources to do all things at once or follow all leads. I really don’t know, but I do agree with you that it certainly seems stupid to delegate such an important task.
Well… I agree with you, at least to a certain extent. Bush is responsible for what happens on his watch and, assuming the sources cited are accurate in their statements this is certainly a serious tactical failing.
But, is this kind of thing that you blame on Bush in a personal way, or more of a “commander in chief taking the blame for the failing of underlings.” It looks to me like it’s more of the former. For that to be valid I think that it’s necessary that Bush had been making the day to day tactical military decisions.
I would be surprised if Bush actually personally knew about Tora Bora and planned and executed the action himself or made any of the decisions about how to proceed there. My understanding is that the President delegates these things to the military and the military handles the tactics and execution.
As such I feel that the failing is that of commander in chief being responsible for the military’s failure rather than it being a specific personal failing of Bush’s judgement as you seem to think.
Does that sound reasonable?
What I meant to say was “It looks to me like you think it’s more of the former.”
Sorry about the typo.
raises hand But I was the OP, I had to.
Your post is thoughtful and I will address it more completely tomorrow. I have to get off to bed now, but I wanted to address this point, since you’ve raised it (and others as well, e.g. Tripler and xtisme, IIRC).
I thought maybe my memory had gone, but it seems more the case of another example of revisionist history on the right (no offense intended).
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/20/ret.afghan.bush/
None of Bush’s ultimatum suggests that the Taliban will be removed from power if they do not comply. Perhaps you can argue that behind the scenes, Bush knew that the Taliban couldn’t or wouldn’t comply, and would therefore be removed from power, but the stated “job number one” was to get bin Laden, pure and simple. Had the Taliban actually complied, it seems to me, they would have remained in power, if Bush were a man of his word.
Don’t you remember this? It wasn’t that long ago. What am I missing?
Well, if the Talibs had actually handed over Osama son of Laden and the rest of the Al Qaeda leadership, it would have been very difficult to justify invading Afghanistan. Yes, Bush gave them the option of handing over “the terrorists”, but I don’t think anyone seriously thought they would, since Al Qaeda and the Taliban were so intertwined. If they were the kind of people who would hand over Osama just because he’d masterminded the most deadly terrorist attack in US history, they probably wouldn’t be the kind of people to host him in the first place.
I don’t think the Taliban thought we had much of a chance to do anything except drop a few bombs on Kabul, make some speeches in the UN and then go home and sulk. After all, irregulars had chased out the USSR, the USA was even softer and more decadent, we didn’t have the stomach for actual fighting, they could fade away to the hillsides, etc etc. The biggest reason we won was convincing the local warlords to stop supporting the Taliban and switch to the Northern Alliance instead. And the Taliban suddenly realized that nobody liked them anymore, and their former allies were now on the side of the US.
I’ll respectfully disagree, because I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture. I don’t remember that particular speech, but I do remember some (and some of my own briefs) that indicated the overarching purpose into invading was to stop all terrorist activities. Threatening the Taliban publicly was a move to put political pressure on the them, even though we knew we would have to go in and put military pressure on them. Afghanistan has been known for years to harbor multiple terrorist agencies, mainly al Qaeda, Hizbollah, and a handful of others.
The American people wanted justice, and OBL was the primary target–publicly. The White House realized that asking the Taliban to hand over all the terrorist group leaders wouldn’t wash, so they asked for the one guy. When that didn’t work, the NCA implemented their already drawn-up plans to overthrow the Taliban.
Invading a country for one man isn’t a wise strategic move. It costs way too much money and resources. For that sort of undertaking, there’s a much larger goal in mind.
Tripler
Just don’t get me started on Iraq.
Disavowed the Big Dog Theory of International Relations now, have you, **Scylla[/b? Forgotten Bush’s “Wanted, dead or alive” too, speaking of “taking the blame for the failing of underlings”, as if there’s a difference that matters?
Sheesh. We’ve got warhawks coming out of the woodwork all over the place to claim themselves new histories. I believe the word is “Orwellian”.
Shouldn’t rebuke someone for changing his mind, Elvis. Rather the whole point of the excercise, no? The clear validity of our arguments have won out, which is as it should be. If one seeks to fudge a bit of history, well, that’s why pencils have erasers, if they hadn’t, self-esteem would be impossible.
I have a contribution form to MoveOn.org all filled out in friend Scylla’s name, only awaiting The Day. I plan to celebrate with a brisk walk with my great-grandchildren to the teleportation center, as we carefully dodge the pig flop falling from the skies.
I think the invasion became more than just “get Osama” when Osama wasn’t handed over, but as I’ve said, Bush’s statements on the matter make me believe that the stated message was always that our primary mission was bin Laden, and the Taliban were a means to that end (“Send him out or we’re coming in after him.”).
By the way, I have never made any claims to expertise on the matter. Given the context of this discussion (an open internet discussion board), I think that comment (about expertise) is a bit disingenuous.
Giving this general comment about conducting a war is fine and all, but it moves well beyond the mission of Afghanistan. Again, I am no expert, but Afghanistan severely lacked armor, air, significant concentrations of military power, and really, artillery of any meaningful sort. Your proposition is also a subtle strawman, since I hardly suggested that we shouldn’t have “softened up” the opposition first. It seems to me our opposition was fairly soft from the beginning; yet I think we spent about a month or so employing solely air power. I would have thought it better to soften up a portion of the country well enough over a few days to introduce ground based forces sufficient to begin the process of taking out al Queda and getting bin Laden. Since the Northern Alliance was already at war against the Taliban, it seems we should have given them support to occupy the Taliban while we pursued our main objective of attacking those who had attacked us.
I agree. Goal number one should be ending him. Whether it satisfies my own or others’ blood lust should be secondary.
In line with what I said above, we shouldn’t have been doing all things at once. Our objective was, or should have been, stopping our sworn enemy. Giving the Northern Alliance a little goose to keep the Taliban from getting in our way, rather than hiring them out to do our job, seems to me a more reasonable strategy.
Why is that? Such a construction seems only to serve the purpose of defending Bush from any possible criticisms. He certainly wanted to strut around like a peacock in a flight suit, taking very personal credit for the “Mission Accomplished.” Why shouldn’t he be subject to personal blame for overseeing the “failing of his underlings”? Tenet can bite the bullet for the CIA, a bunch of privates can eat it for Abu Gharaib, Clinton can be to blame for his economic woes, and so on and so on. At some point, someone has to place a modicum of responsibility where it belongs, even if it means acknowledging that you made a mistake in voting for and defending Bush in the past.
I largely agree, although I think that the president must have been informed that we knew where bin Laden was. Don’t you think even the briefest of the briefings he would have received would have included primary information about our stated number one goal? He surely would have given tacit approval for the course of action (farming out the effort to the Northern Alliance), and he would have been listened to, no doubt, if he had said, “Hey, wait a minnit. Our boys are the best damn fighters in the world, and we cain’t trust them Afghans any futher ‘n we cain throw ‘em. I promised the American people that I wouldn’t just shoot a rocket into a tent and hit a camel in the butt. I promised that we would smoke him out of his hole. We better dadgum do it.”
It sounds unsurprising, and like another attempt to deflect criticism from a man who seems to be at the center of every failing of this administration, but at the periphery of any blame. We need a leader who will take personal responsibility, not just administrative demerits.
Self-esteem has never been an issue for our interlocutor, has it? I’m rebuking him for, shall we say, incomplete forthrightness in expounding his intellectual evolution, if that is indeed what it is, and not the simple bandwagon-hopping it might appear to the more cynical of us who have been through this crap with Sam already.
Seems to me Osama’s power isn’t his tactical skill but his persuasiveness, his ability to convince a fair number of devout Muslims that their faith and their land is under attack by the West and that they have an obligation to fight back. While he lives his power is undiminished. Yes, he has to be “ended”, but it isn’t necessary to posit bloodlust at all to think so. Even that won’t be sufficient anymore, though, as Al Qaeda has been allowed by Bush’s failures to morph and grow from a small cult-of-personality organization into a religious movement that will survive him.