Am I the only American that believes that GW Bush is being a complete wimp (just like dear ol’ Dad) and hasn’t done shit about Bin Laden or anything else in the terrorist arena? I am as patriotic as the next guy, but dammit George you made a speech giving an ultimatum to the Taliban and you aren’t following up on it. You are making the USA look like a nation of wimps!
The fuckers responsible for orchestrating the attack on our country need to pay and PAY BIG. I don’t want to hear about mamby pampy freezing of assets. They killed thousands of my countrymen and I want the bastards to bathe in their own blood!
Every day I turn on CNN expecting to see that we have blasted the Taliban HQ and ruined their precious drug crops. Nope, we haven’t struck out at anybody yet. We just have fleets of ships in the water and plenty of planes standing by… AND DOING NOTHING!
GW, were you serious about your speech? Are you really going to hold Afghanistan responsible for harboring terrorists? If so, stop shitting and get off the pot and do something damn it!
I was supportive of GW’s handling of the tragedy and impressed by his speech. However, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.
Also GW, if you want to prove to me that air travel in the US is safe, get on a commercial jetliner yourself rather than AF 1.
I must admin, I would feel better if he would do something…anything…drop a bomb, launch a cruise missle, anything. I want instant gratification damnit.
Jesus. It’s only been a couple of weeks, and you expect to have an army in place in Afghanistan by now? I know you are young and impatient, but please… Even WWII had some pretty big lulls in it. It takes time to mobilize forces, gather intelligence, formulate plans, and build a coalition.
I remember the whining along the same lines that went on in Desert Storm. Before the air war broke out, there was the same carping from people who demanded that *something be done immediately. Then once the air war started, people started whining that we weren’t putting troops on the ground fast enough.
Then we smashed the enemy into bits with almost no casualties, and everyone shut up.
I certainly hope that you are the only American who is silly enough to think that running around blowing things up and killing people without sufficient intelligence to know who and what we are destoying is a good thing.
Sadly, I fear you are not.
Bush announced in his second public address that this was going to be a long, drawn out process. We need to bring in as many nations as possible to support us so that a year from now or two years from now, when this has not yet been fully resolved, we don’t have various countries pointing to the hospitals, schools, markets, and innocent bystanders that we wiped out in haste and saying “The U.S. is simply killing people it does not like and we withdraw our support.”
As an additional benefit for those whose view of the future is measured in nanoseconds: Every person will kill who can be proved to have been an actual participant in terrorist activity reduces the number of people on the sidelines who will join the next generation of terrorists because we killed an innocent friend of theirs.
The strongly believed rumor in Pakistan, right now, is that the WTC attack was carried out by Mossad or some Jewish group to incite the U.S. to attack Islam and Arabs. The more information we can present that we are actually targeting genuinely guilty people, the fewer moderates will be encouraged to shift to the radical stance.
Will we persuade every person that we are doing the right thing? Of course, not. However, the more people who see that our actions are tempered and correct, the fewer terrorists we create in a few years.
Despite what many here seem to think, Rainbow, I can tell you that the U.S. does not intend --and never did intend – to carpet-bomb anyone or to scorch Afghanistan’s barren earth.
While the effort to extract retribution is partly military, it will in no way resemble either the Gulf War or Vietnam – if the U.S. pays its cards right and Colin Powell has his way.
I’ll put it another way – Afghan refugees need not have evacuated their nation en masse, regardless of what falsehoods the Taliban has told them about American military intent. Afghan civilians are statistically in practically no danger from American military action, excepting the unfortunate few who the terorist leaders may use as unwitting pawns or human shields.
Militarily, this is largely an extraction mission, targeting specific individuals. Additionally, known terrorist training bases in Afghanistan will be destroyed. Striking out militarily against the Taliban itself was always a very last resort – rather, the U.S. is currently applying pressure on the Taliban diplomatically (witness the retraction of Taliban recognition by Saudi Arabis & the UAE).
Also, Rainbow, know that the media will be behind the curve considerably in reporting our military response, as breeches of security cannot be tolerated regarding Special Ops extaction missions. Remeber when CNN cameras were already on the beach in Somalia when U.S. forces landed there? That was an embarrasment to our armed forces, and it seems reasonable to me that our military is now far less forthcoming with the press than they were, say, during the Gulf War.
Still in all, Tom Brokaw, on this morning’s Today Show, reported that they were aware that American Special Ops teams were already in Pakistan, and MAY already be in Afghanistan. I’d add that it’s likely they’ve been there for quite some time (more than a week). So don’t think that the U.S. has been sitting on its hands all this time just because CNN doesn’t have the 411.
Just read on one of the news wires (Look at yahoo news for one of the stories)… We ARE doing something. Green Berets, SEAL units and British SAS units are in country as we speak. We want to put bin Laden and his cronies in cross hairs so that we know that they are dead. As Bush said, much of what is being done we will never know. So calm down, take an airline flight, go see a show, send some money to the Red Cross, give some blood.
As satisfying as it would be to see the Taliban erased from the planet as blodily as possible, we must remember that life is not an action movie. We cannot risk turning the hunt for bin Laden into a pan-Islamic war against the US if we are seen to be a pack of triggerhappy goons. (Mind, that’s what the world thinks we are anyway.) Our stated goal is the capture of bin Laden and the destruction of his terror network. We need to exert diplomatic pressure on the Taliban and keep the other Muslim states on our side. We also want to convince the average Ahmed in the street that the USA is not the enemy of Islam.
Rainbow, bdgr – have a look. Plenty is going on concerning the U.S.'s multi-pronged retribution effort:
MILITARY – from http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010928/3493001s.htm : PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Elite troops from U.S. special operations forces have been inside Afghanistan the past 2 weeks looking for Osama bin Laden, but they’re having difficulty locating him and are asking other nations for additional intelligence help, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials have confirmed privately.
MILITARY – from http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/Breaking/Saudi_Arabia : Saudi Arabia will allow its ally the United States to launch military action from a U.S. base on its territory against Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and his protectors in Afghanistan, a source familiar with Saudi foreign policy said on Friday. ``In order to meet American requests and to comply with U.N. requirements, yes,’’ said the Saudi source.
DIPLOMATIC EFFORT – from http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010928/ts/attacks_afghanistan_110.html : ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - In a new bid to break the deadlock over Osama bin Laden, Pakistani religious leaders and government officials traveled to Afghanistan on Friday to try to press the ruling Taliban to surrender bin Laden or force him to leave the country.
LAW ENFORCEMENT – from http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010928/ts/britain_arrest_4.html :
**LONDON (AP) - An Algerian pilot arrested in London instructed four of the hijackers involved in terror attacks in the United States, prosecutors said Friday at an extradition hearing.
Lotfi Raissi, 27, appeared in Bow Street Magistrates Court on a U.S. warrant seeking his extradition.
Prosecutors said that Raissi was wanted in the United States on charges of giving false information in connection with his application for a pilot’s license. They said he qualified in the United States as a pilot in 1997, attending the same flight school as four of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.**
…
Sorry if these efforts aren’t as juicy as the Gulf War was.
One piece of damning evidence against SS is that his fingerprints were found in the room where his wife was murdered – which happened to be his own bedroom.
RainbowDragon, you will never find out about half the shit our military does. Sorry if that spoils your bloodlust.
The Special Operations community specializes in stealth. Seeing everything live on CNN might fuck that up, don’t you think? We know for a fact that most of the world watches American news broadcasts, because we put a ton of information out in public compared to other nations, especially about our military.
I know that we have become a nation that requires instant gratification, but that’s not the way these things work. Go ahead and blame Bush for not doing anything “constructive” (meaning- not destroying anything publicly today), but you’ll sound silly.
