Today, I read Charles Krauthammer’s columns in both Time and The Washington Post, and what he said is important.
We are pussyfooting in this war and it is costing us credibility with the enemy.
We are limiting our fighting to suit Muslim sensitivities.
Why on earth should we call a halt to fighting for Ramadan? The Arabs had no problems launching the 1973 war against Israel during Ramadan. We never stopped wars before for religious holidays, so why should we stop now?
2Why are we being so defensive that we are making war on Islam?
We didn’t start this war. OBL and his murderous goons did when they crashed planes into the WTC, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. We should not allow this thug and his evil band to take the high road of piety. We don’t want to harm civilians, but the Taliban are hiding behind mosques and schools. If civilians are hurt, it’s the Taliban’s fault, not ours.
3.We are restraining our troops from attacking the Taliban front lines. Why? They are OBL’s allies, and they have put themselves in the way between us and him. OBL and the Taliban have declared total war on the US, but we are fighting a limited war. We risk seeming weak and ineffectual to our enemies. If we do not swiftly and mercilessly hunt down and kill our enemies, we risk even greater catastrophe to our nation.
Listen, this whole war is not being disclosed to the world or the American public. We have no way of knowing what’s really going on-we could be planning a massive airstrike on Tehran as we speak. But, yeah, it does seem like we aren’t making a whole lot of progress.
But it’s not guts I’m worried about, it’s propaganda. One of the reasons we are ‘pussyfooting’ around is that we don’t want tp play into OBL’s hands and spark a huge Islamic uprising. Meanwhile, the country of Wall Street and Hollywood can’t sell a convincing argument to the Mid-East on why we’re bombing Afghans.
And we aren’t making ‘war on Islam’. Maybe you are, but the rest of us understand that, just as ‘Ned Flanders’ type christians in America stand back and let the extremists hijack their religion, so do the majority of islamics. We’re only opposed to probably 25% of them, not the religion in general.
I got no good reason why we aren’t attacking the front lines. Seems kind of stupid to have come all that way and not mop up the Taliban. Maybe we figure it looks better if the natural enemies of the Taliban bring them down.
Anyway, may we assume by your impatience and eagerness that you’ll be signing up soon to fight in the Mid-East? If so, then good luck.
You misunderstand. No, we are not making war on Islam, nor should we, but we are terrified of being accused of that, and we shouldn’t be.
I tried to join the Marines out of high school, but they wouldn’t take me, nor would the Navy. I have a back deformity that shows up on X-rays, even though it’s never given me any trouble. I would have been a damn good soldier. Plus I had to lie and say I wasn’t gay. If they want to take me now at 40, I’m willing to go.
How about you, pal?
Yes, the conduct of the war is being influenced by Muslim sensitivities. Where’s the problem? The US does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum, so if you want other countries to support – or even just keep quiet – it doesn’t do to piss their governments or populations off. Middle Eastern perceptions of US involvement in world affairs have an awful lot to do with the current situation (the key word being perceptions); trampling your tentative allies’ religious sensibilities isn’t going to help stabilise the situation.
Second:
Absolute rubbish. The Taliban did not force the US and allies into their current course of action. Of course, some form of retaliation/revenge/justice (delete as applicable) was always on the cards, but nobody is forcing the US and allies to bomb targets. To declaim responsibility for casualties seems to me to imply that you had no choice in the matter.
More saliently, this goes back to the first point. If the current situation has been influenced by people’s perception of your actions, then the last thing you should be doing is giving hardliners and extremists in other counties more ammunition for their perceptions.
[Yeah, I know, someone will want me to offer a better course of action. I don’t have one. But I wouldn’t claim that civilian casualties are the sole responsibility of the Taliban, either.]
Lastly: back to point one. Bomb front lines, increased risk of civilian casualties, more ammunition for anti-American protestors in other countries whose support is wavering.
Hey gobear, who’s “we”? Are you asking whether the gov’t/military has the willpower, the nation, or both?
Either way, I have the same question.
I have no doubt, none, that our military is fully prepared to execute any war asked of them. Perhaps the most sincere patriots are these.
I have some doubt that our government is, in fact, executing this war in the manner I would believe to be to our best long term advantage, safety, and ,ultimately, survival.
I have serious concerns that our nation as a whole has tiny huevos, and will not support a long term war effort. As Lucifer12 pointed out, our enemies are putting forward propaganda daily on all cable channels. And this list includes the Saudi newspapers, Iraqi ‘sources’, pro Taliban Pakistani papers, etc. Toss in the less than supportive comments by some erstwhile allies and cracks are appearing in our magnificent coalition. With the U.N. making cautionary statements about the need to restrain ourselves to minimize civilian casualties, the Red Cross concerns about food depots hit by weaponry, the reporters in country being shepherded to photo ops by the Taliban, well, it’s clear we’re not presenting a strong picture to the world of our actions.
If we can’t remove a third rate tryanny such as the Taliban with a minimum of fuss and muss, what does that say about our military strength? How does that persuade those nations on the fence to support our ongoing efforts in other areas around the world?
We need a strong, take no prisoners war. Get in, get it done, and get the hell out. On to Iraq. Second verse…
From what I understand (through various reports; no single site I can point to), the reason we have not been bombing the Taliban front was because we didn’t want the United Front in Kabul until we had an idea what the heck we were going to do with respect to establishing a government. To my knowledge, we still don’t have that figured out.
Also, it appears that there were two erronious assumptions made by The Powers That Be going into this: 1) dropping bombs on Afghanistan would lower the moral of the Taliban troops, causing mass defections. 2) Once we started hitting the Taliban forces, the United Front would begin capturing territory, acting, essentially, as our ground troops in the war.
Neither of these has happened. That the first item didn’t turn out as planned is probably due to lack of intelligence in the area. Given a moment’s thought, one might realize that these are effectively religious zealots, not conscripts. We shouldn’t expect them to crumble in the face of a few bombs; that they are digging in is to be expected. Rule #1: Never underestimate the enemy.
The second item is not really surprising, either. The Northern Alliance has been battling it out with Taliban forces for several years, not making much headway. Why do we expect that they would start now? Rule #2: Never overestimate your allies.
Now that we have started hitting the front lines, we may see the NA pick up the tempo a bit, but I still don’t think we have a plan for what to do when/if the Taliban fall. And I suspect this may be causing some hesitation on our part with respect to going all out. The NA, for their part, are undoubtedly waiting until they can be assured of a decisive victory (it would not look good for the “good guys” in this war if the NA and and the Taliban forces had a major set-piece battle, only to have the NA wiped out).
All of this leads to what is essentially a stalemate for now. And, of course, we wind up with a fair amount of frustration. I think we need to step back, recognize that the Taliban forces aren’t as weak-willed as we may have first thought, that the NA may not be as useful in the ground war as we first thought, and proceed accordingly.
(By “accordingly”, I mean that we need to reformulate a strategy that does not involve a] the opposing forces spontaneously collapsing under our military might and b] overdependence on the NA to achieve military objectives on the ground.)
As I pointed out in the OP, our allies’ religious sensiblities are largely illusory. If the Arabs had no problem launching a war during Ramadan, why should we?
To use your words, absolute rubbish. The Taliban are hiding behind civilians. Either we let them use the population as hostages and go home, or we wade in and kill the Taliban anyway, and count the cost after. we have to remeber that the ultimate goal is to find and kill OBL and al-Quaeda. If the Taliban continue to shield him, let them pay the price.
Give our boys a little bit of time here. It takes a while to gather intel, deploy whatever amount of troops and blow up everything you can from the air.
We have zero patience here. It’s all those damn 24 news channels!
Because we’re trying not to piss them off. Certain individuals or groups may be being absolute hypocrites, but it’s everyone else I’m worried about. Every action seen to harm ‘non-terrorists’ or insult a religion could fuel more terrorism. I know we can’t pussy-foot around everyone, but there’s still a fine line between assertiveness and risking more problems elsewhere. Me, I wouldn’t be surprised (or bothered) if low-key and covert operations continue, but I don’t want to alienate wavering states by rubbing their face in their religious beliefs (or even their hypocrisy).
Only it’s not just the Taliban paying the price. It’s also civilians (who may or may not support the Taliban, but I doubt they support them enough to be willing to face allied attacks). My point was not that we can prevent every civilian casualty, but that to say ‘it’s the Taliban’s fault’ is to imply that there was absolutely no other possible course of action open. Of course there was: some admittedly unrealistic, but long-term covert action (for example) may have been an alternative.
I’m not trying to dismiss all of your points. I can see why it may seem that the war is being fought with hands tied. But I can also see that every action, real or perceived, fuels someone’s opinion of the US. A decision has to be made as to where to say ‘tough shit’ and continue regardless and when discretion is the better part of valour.
Well, I’m not sure there’s much of a leap to say we’re not afraid of being accused of starting a crusade, and then starting one.
And as far as signing up to fight in the Mid-East, no thanks. I’d be a terrible soldier-always questioning orders. I need to be the one giving orders.
Besides, you can get killed in a proper war!
But you won’t hear me urging our participation in a ground war for that very reason-I’m not the one who’ll be getting shot at, so I don’t feel comfortable saying ‘Hey ho let’s go’.
On CNN’s bottom-screen crawler today, I saw confirmation of something I’ve been suspecting: The US is getting reports from out of Afghanistan that at least Taliban members, and perhaps al-Qaeda members, are avoiding U.S.-led military strikes by hiding in residential areas the U.S. has been reluctant, so far, to bomb.
Some questions for you:
What should be our primary focus: not pissing off Muslims and Middle Easterners, or destroying the organized terrorism network that perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks - and, evidence indicates, has similar attacks in mind?
What do you propose we do about an enemy that hides behind women and children, residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and churches?
Can you explain what you mean by an “admittedly unrealistic, but long-term covert action,” and how, specifically, such an action would deal with the realities of #2 above?
Sadly, and as I’ve already said, I don’t have a better answer than the current action, which is why I don’t have a problem with it. My problem – again – is in blaming any and all civilian casualties solely on the Taliban. Yes, they started it, and yes, they should be brought to justice. I just feel naturally uncomfortable (bleeding heart liberal?) that that implies that we bear no responsibility at all.
Of course the primary objective is to destroy the terrorist network. I don’t see that that is mutually exclusive with the goal of not pissing off other countries. My points have been solely trying to answer gobear’s perfectly understandable question about why we are sensitive to other nations and their (hypocritical or not) beliefs.
I had hoped that there are ways to minimise civilian casulaties through the use of special forces and close-in air support (TF160 etc) rather than long-range missile bombardment or iron bombs. I know that isn’t always an option and that civilian casualties are unavoidable, but I still feel some responsibility for civilian casualties in supporting the actions of my government: if I really felt that strongly about avoiding civilian casualties, I’d join the protestors outside Downing Street.
You’re attacking a straw man. Gobear never said that we were forced to do this.
I do not see how you got that. If I say that I am not responsible for children starving in Africa, am I saying that I have no choice as to whether they starve?
Blame should not be determined by simply looking at who caused something. Blame should be determined by who caused something by acting immorally. The US caused civilian deaths, but they did not act immorally. So we look further back on the chain of cause. Who caused the US to bomb civilians? The Taliban did. And were they acting morally? No. So they are to blame for the civilian deaths.
Gobear disabuse yourself of one romantic notion: winning war has nothing whatever to do with “guts”. A sniveling coward with a shotgun is going to wipe out the most courageous man without one.
The notion of courage in battle is one of the major obscenities of all time. The WW1 French used to yammer on about thier cran and elan endlessly, then threw thier men at ranks of machine guns to get ground into hamburger jello. This isn’t courage. This is psychosis.
If our leaders are stupid enough to send massive numbers of ground troops into insanely hostile terrain and climate, in order to engage an enemy who is fanaticly motivated, knows the terrain, and has no rules then they are…well, I already said stupid, didn’t I.
I apologise for using the word ‘forced’. This was based on my interpretation of the OP and the line:
I understand your point that blame is not something that exists at only one point in time, but that can be traced back to another’s actions. I don’t believe that the US is acting immorally, but that some element of responsibility is tied to everyone involved in the action that causes the negative outcome. If you make a choice, you bear some part of the responsibility for the outcome of that choice. If someone else’s actions have led you to the situation where you had to make that choice, then they too are partly responsible (in this case, even more so).
I think you are introducing this notion, elucidator. I see the questions here as “do we, as a nation, have the patience to win this war?”
That is to say, will our politicians be able to see this thing through if it gets ugly. Our soldiers’ willingness to fight was not in question - nor should it be.
I hope the answer is yes, and so far, there is little reason to doubt that.
He didn’t say that. However, to blame anyone civilian casualties that WE cause on the Taliban is wrong, in my opinion.
This is NOT a traditional war. This something that we’ve never faced yet. We aren’t going to win it the traditional way.
And disregarding the feelings of our allies will only turn them against us-and turn them TO Osama Bin Laden. You’ll be handing him and his followers a MAJOR propaganda sword to use against us, if you will.
I agree with the prescription of the post and Charles Krauthammer, but not the assumptions made on the way there.
I am hoping that the Bush Administration is engaged in non-media exposed activity that is a heck of a lot more forceful than what I am seeing on the news. Anyone with a lick of sense would and I know W has at least a lick. I am not sure of Cheney and Powell, who were two of the fools who couldn’t finish the last war they oversaw, much to our detriment.
I see no difference between Al Queda and the Taliban. If they are gathering in one place, such as a “front line”, there is no excuse not to send our BUFFs for a Halloween party. We should not use biologicals, chemicals or nukes. Everything else is fair game.
Not only are we potentially losing credibility, but we are losing credibility with our allies.
excerpt: "There Is No Substitute for Victory
By John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona.
War is a miserable business. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted, economies are damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that will be lost when war claims its wages from us. Shed a tear, and then get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly as we can, and as ruthlessly as we must."