Of course Bush’s demands were outrageous and unacceptable to the Taliban. That’s because the Taliban subscribes to the outrageous and unacceptable policy of harboring terrorists, as well as a thousand other vile practices.
Hmmm…
The PLO harbors terrorists. The Republic of Ireland harbors terrorists. Why no categorical denunciation of these soverign entities? Why no ‘with us or against us’ sabre-rattling and troop build-ups on their borders? Granted, neither has attacked US interests, but if this is a global “War on Terrorism”, why not make the same demands of Ireland, or demand the extradition of Yasser Arafat? Or the Israeli leadership? Or any other country that contains dissident factions?
Beautiful generalization.
That is precisely the type of closed-minded, uninformed blanket assumption that leads to these quasi-religious crusades against others who are not ‘like us’. The followers of bin Laden decry the US as a godless state (read non-Islamic state) that is the haven of all that is evil, depraved and offensive to Allah - including democracy.
Is the Taliban repressive? Seems so by Western standards. But remember that the moment we begin to judge other cultures by the standards of our own, we become open to the worst views, practises and excesses of colonial attitudes.
And there are still cultures on this planet that haven’t recovered from previous brushes with Western Supremacy.
Z
Zoony: And you’re a perfect example of an extreme form of moral relativism that leads to moral paralysis.
Have we really come so far in our ‘tolerance’ of any and all beliefs and actions that the worst thing we can say about a regime that tolerates NO diversity, NO freedom, NO self-expression, and which has murdered so many people that there are millions of refugees clamoring to leave, is that it only ‘seems’ repressive by Western Standards?
I hear a lot of this relativistic crap, and it quite frankly sickens me. I am very happy that my parents didn’t ‘tolerate’ the Nazis. There are times when you have to stand up and say, “THIS we will not tolerate”.
The Taliban stand for everything that is evil in the world. Religious persecution, oppression of women, murder of innocents, political totalitarianism. Now granted, there have been a lot of other countries on this planet just as bad, but the big difference is that the Taliban has been pursuing a course of action that has led to an attack on a sovereign nation. They are unrepentant, will not close their terrorist camps, and are calling for a holy war. They have lost all claim to sovereignity, which means that we have every right to bring the full weight of our militaries upon them.
The difference between them and countries like the Republic of Ireland is that A) they are not actively training and funding their terrorists, and B) their terrorists do not pose a threat to anyone’s national security other than the countries directly involved in that conflict. They do not have ‘global reach’. The same can be said for the PLO, which restricts its terrorist activities to the Middle East. Therefore, the U.S. itself has no right to step into the affairs of the nations involved, other than to conduct intelligence to make sure that they DON’T start expanding their reach.
But I guarantee you that if U.S. intelligence discovers even a shred of evidence that the IRA or the PLO are developing any weapons of mass destruction, or moving operatives into other countries not directly involved in the conflict, they will put them on the hit list as well, and bring immense pressure to bear on the nations involved to get their people under control.
There isn’t really a moral distinction here, but a practical one. If the U.S. didn’t limit themselves to global terrorism, they’d never be able to build a coalition as wide-ranging as they want.
Zoony, my wish for you is that you encounter the Taliban, and be judged by their standards.
It has also been judged so by every other Islamic-oriented nation. The Taliban stand alone.
I don’t know what you’d find ironic. I’ve already mentioned I find the attack on civilians in the US inexcusable. My point has been, always, that it’s equally wrong to make the Afghanis suffer the same fate, simply because their unelected government is harboring a known terrorist who may be responsible for this attack.
I find far more ironic that we’re considering launching an attack on – and let’s be honest with ourselves – civilians because we don’t like the policies of their government, which is precisely the same atrocity committed against the US. It’s not a matter of “they did it to us first.” The Afghanis didn’t do anything to anyone. Maybe the Taliban is responsible for something, but nothing’s proven yet. But surely the population can’t be sentenced to death for a dictatorship they want no part of anyway.
Good for you. I’ve never been a fan of moral relativism. In fact, I tend to hold to hold to strict moral standards.
And from my point of view, you don’t attack already-oppressed civilians because their government is protecting someone who could possibly have attacked you. Even if we had solid proof against bin Laden, I would still be against a direct air strike, which is guaranteed to hit the innocent.
On the question of morals, there is one thing that sickens me more than relativism – complete rationalization. Why do we speak of the people in the WTC as “victims” and the potential innocent victims in Afghanistan as “collateral damage.” Do we simply not want to face the fact we’re considering the same evil we accuse our enemies of? Or do we genuinely consider the Afghanis sub-human, and not worth our time?
See, from my point of view, it’s less like we’re going in to fight the Nazis, and more like we’re planning to bomb the concentration camps. These people’s lives are hard and brutal enough already. Bombing’s not going to help them.
The Taliban is the only group there capable of protecting itself when the bombs start dropping. All this campaign is an attempt to spill innocent blood as a payment for the innocent blood spilled already.
How could that possibly be morally defensible?
How did Tonto (Lone Ranger’s sidekick) turn into Toto (Dorothy’s little pooch)? 
Hamish - So what exactly would you have us do? What sort of retaliation is acceptable to you? Obviously, no one wants to see innocents killed, and the US gov. has repeatedly said that the people of Afghanistan and Muslims in general are NOT the enemy. The enemy are the terrorists and the govs. that harbor them. Should there be no consequences for these acts?
And while you have every right to your opinion, I’m certainly glad the people in charge do not share it.
Frankly, wait.
I realize this isn’t a satisfying solution to anyone, but from a moral standpoint, we can’t commit the same crime the terrorists did. And attacking isn’t any kind of self-defence because it’s probably not going to succeed in killing suspect #1, and certainly won’t knock out any international networks, just give them a reason for revenge.
So if it’s not about justice, and not about defence, then we should simply wait until the situation changes. Work on stopping the terrorist activity in our countries, from keeping his influence from spilling across borders. Isolate him. In short, what I’m suggesting is we take practical action in the places where we can have an effect.
For now, revenge the only thing possible would be the most pointless form of revenge. Not justice, and not protection. Revenge, right now, comes at too high a price.
Absolutely no carte blanche. I wouldn’t even give my own (Canadian) government carte blanche to address something like this.
Now that I’ve had a chance to read a little…
I think the point here is that absolutely there will be consequences… there always are. But in terms of a decisive retribution, there ought to be considerably more circumspection. Ya just can’t go starting a world war without being sure of what you’re doing. Because you can be that that absolutely there will be consequences.
Absolutely. What I find unappetizing is that the only time the US can be bothered to swing into action to persecute the unrighteous is when their interests are threatened. The Taliban has been in power since the mid-90s, yet the US has not picked up the banner of anti-totalitarianism until now. Is injustice only injustice when it affects you directly?
Until a decade ago, the Soviet Union practiced all of these abuses. They also ironically enough attempted to add Afghanistan to their empire by conquest. While the world was certainly indignant, I don’t recall the US or anyone else mobilizing multi-national task forces to stand against the Soviets.
Sorry to introduce more ‘relativistic crap’, but AFAIK, the only evidence of the Taliban’s “course of action” is that they have provided refuge to Osama bin Laden. This, and the jihad schools have also been a reality since the mid 90s. Only now, after this attack, is this sufficient grounds for their loss of sovereignty? Why were the Libyan terrorists responsible for blowing up airliners in the late 80’s not able to sufficiently raise the ire of the US - beyond a few dozen airstrikes. Qadaffi is still kicking in the desert.
Well, isn’t that a tidy rationalization. Should we call that ‘soft terrorism’? Or does it fit better into the category of Injustices Not Affecting Us? Terrorism is terrorism, no matter who it affects or what it’s scope. Victims of terrorist acts in these and other countries do not make this sort of distinction, I can promise you.
Don’t get me wrong - there needs to be retributive justice for what occurred Sept. 11. And for this retribution to be just, what is called for is not the jingoistic “with us or against us” rhetoric of Dubya, but deliberate and careful consideration of what sort of military pressure is to be brought to bear, and on whom.
While I am happy to observe that - to this point - the US has done nothing rash, I also note (in the Globe and Mail, sorry no direct cites) that many Afghani citizens who have no love for the Taliban have publicly stated that they will fight against American-led incursions into their country. This is the kind of polarization that is born of blanket indictments such as “with us or against us.”
My overriding concern is for clarity of thought, and consequently action. We’d better be damn careful of who we accuse, who we target, and why. This is not the sort of cognitive or operational sobriety that is engendered when the world’s most powerful nation is afforded carte blanche by its neighbors.
Z
And, Wumpus? My thanks for your kind wishes. It’s heartening to note that the Taliban is not alone in its disdain for the opinions of others.
z
My apologies, zoony, but some opinions need disdaining if one is to avoid moral nihilism. As the poet said, my mind ain’t so open that anything can crawl right in.
Wait? Wait for what? Wait for another attack? Wait until someone else gets bombed and thousands get killed? If you think that Canada is safe, that no one would do the same to you, you are living in a dream. Just ask an American.
Three weeks ago we would have said the same thing about America. As much as I sincerely hope it never happens, if things continue on as they have, you will get your fair share of innocent dead, much more so than you lost in TWC.
You talk about innocents that will die if America attacks. What about our children, fathers, brothers, sisters, and family members that will die protecting a way of life. I have a 21-year-old son. You think I cherish the idea of having him fight?
If Canada doesn’t want to join with the USA, then stand back and leave it to us to get the job done. You are not required to join in. But remember when you are burying your dead, you also will stand alone in years to come.
I have enough faith and trust in my President and countrymen to know that there will be as little bloodshed as possible to stop these sects of terrorists. You beleive what you may.
I’m living in a dream? Anyone who believes that bombing civilians is going to make the world safe for the rest of us is living a fantasy.
This operation will not directly hurt the Taliban. It may or may not scare them into giving up Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden’s organization will continue without him, and probably be out for revenge.
Pakistan will be destabilized and risk Anti-American revolution. I would hasten to add that Pakistan owns at least one nuclear warhead. A half-dozen other countries besides could also be brought to the edge of collapse. The US’s with-us-or-against-us rhetoric will undoubtedly push some countries that would prefer to remain neutral over to the enemy.
The repurcussion of these retaliations will most likely be further retaliations. If bin Laden’s disciples are responsible for these attacks, then it was probably their belief that they were getting revenge for something the US did. They will probably attack again – and since they are spread out around the world, attacking Afghanistan is as good as useless.
This action-reaction approach to foreign policy is ridiculous. It fails to take into account the complexities of histories and nations, which are in their own way as complicated as eco-systems.
This linear approach works like this: US is attacked. Find out who did it. Attack him. Arrest or kill him at any cost.
In the fool’s version of the scenario, the US is then safe. When the next retaliation inevitably comes, it is treated as a seperate problem, unique in itself.
What I am proposing is this: we wait for the shifting chaos of geo-politics to offer a better opportunity to bring bin Laden to trial, while at the same time trying to cut of the threads of his terrorist organization in our own countries. If the opportunity never arrives, then Afghanistan itself becomes his cage.
I have. Two agree of the ones I asked agree with you. The rest didn’t.
I’m not pretending my circle of friends and acquaintances are a representative sample (whatever that means). But it does prove that Americans are not of completely uniform opinion.
**
I did lose a friend. NYC is not so far from Montreal.
Her name was Kelly, but everyone called her Kai. She was only a teenager. I met her through a mailing list devoted to Japanese animation. She liked to draw. She wasn’t a great artist, but she was getting better.
Kai’s been missing since September 11, 2001, presumed dead in the attack.
And I have no love for the Taliban. I’m gay, and find any country that would give the death penalty for homosexuality beyond abhorrent. I’m also a religious minority, and I have no illusions of being treated by tolerance and respect in that country.
And it would so easy for me to give into mob mentality on this one. To hold the easy, majority opinion that we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, and so we can do no wrong.
There’s only one problem: the Taliban are not Afghanistan, and the Afghanis are not all Taliban. On the contrary, a good many of them want the Taliban out. But it’s these people who will bear the brunt of any assault on the country, not the Taliban.
Even if I supported this war, I would have little confidence in Bush’s ability to lead it.
-- HamishZoony: Hey, I’m with you. I don’t think we should stand by and let oppression happen anywhere. If the Nazis had stayed home and not invaded anyone, but just started exterminating the Jews, should we have stepped in and stopped them? Damned right we should have.
However, there is such a thing as realpolitik. We opposed the Soviets where we could, on the fringes, but we couldn’t take an active stand against their abuses for the simple reason that they had a few thousand nuclear weapons pointed at us, and a huge land-based military in Europe. The same can be said for China today.
Sometimes opportunities come along to rid the world of a specific kind of evil, because events outstrip nationalism and smaller concerns. This is one of those events.
Trust me, we would have LOVED to get rid of the Taliban five years ago, but as has been pointed out repeatedly, air attacks in Afghanistan do little good, because there is almost nothing worth bombing. And the country is almost impossible to occupy and hold, as the British and Soviets discovered.
If the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan with the purpose of simply eliminating the Taliban and installing a progressive democratic government, it would have been condemned all over the world by the same people who are now claiming that the current situation is the U.S.'s fault. And it would have inflamed the Muslim world, and probably led to even more terror and oppression. That’s the real world.
It was the same with Saddam. Sure, we should have taken down his government and killed him or tried him for crimes against humanity. But the reality is that we were operating off of bases in countries that simply wouldn’t tolerate it. The U.S. had to agree to the limited mission of liberating Kuwait just to build that coalition, and without it it would have been very, very difficult to liberate Kuwait. Again, that’s the real world, and the real world is sometimes messy.
But now we have an opportunity to do some good, and the moral justification to do it. Not just in Afghanistan, but in places like the Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other despotic regimes. Let’s get to work.
Your points are well taken, Hamish, and I wish we lived in the perfect world that you describe where we could just sit back and wait for the right time and place. But while we sit and wait, the terrorists continue their missions.
The move of military in the USA right now is more for show than most people probably realize. I’m not in the position to second guess what they plan to do nor will I try to. But it would seem that they will try to find where the target is before they just go in and start dropping bombs. At this point in time they have no idea so it would truly be a waste of man-power and equipment to just start bombing. I don’t believe that this country will purposely try to do that.
Hamish: I really don’t think you have a grasp of what’s going to happen. No one is going to carpet-bomb Afghanistan. There’s no point to it. As Bush said, it makes no sense to fire a million dollar missile to destroy a $10 tent.
This is going to be a slow, surgical, precise, long-term campaign. The Northern Alliance attacked the Taliban again this morning. You *might see the U.S. use them as a spearhead movement and supply them arms and air cover. But most of the ops are going to be special forces, coordinated with satellite and other forms of intelligence, etc. What I expect you’ll see is something like this:
The U.S. spots a terrorist camp on satellite. Or they get intel from Pakistan which tells them where one is hiding. They’ll discover that there are approximately 100 terrorists there, so at midnight one night 200 parachutes will open and a bunch of Delta Force troops will hit the ground. At the same time, some smart bombs will hit the camp, and communications will be jammed. The Delta Force will move in and mop up. If the Taliban tries to send troops in aid, the troop convoy will be hit by air.
Coupled with that you’ll see a lot of highly classified ‘black’ ops aimed at perhaps targeting and assassinating key figures, cutting communications, that sort of of stuff. Not many people know just how many such operations were carried out in Iraq, but there were a lot. On the night of the ground attack, a lot of command-and-control was mysteriously cut, by SEAL teams deep inside Iraq. A lot of the smart bombs were guided precisely to military targets by laser illuminators on the ground. An American special forces soldier would literally be on the roof of a nearby building with a laser illuminator, shining it directly on the center of the target.
THIS is the kind of war it will be. Not tens of thousands of troops fighting on a battlefield, or thousands of tons of bombs dropped on the citizenry. There will be civilian casualties, but I think they will be minimal.
Along the way, you are going to see the same kinds of operations in other countries. Even countries that are openly hostile to the U.S. for political reasons will quietly look the other way while a Special Forces team infiltrates the country, and starts eliminating terrorists. We’ll never hear about those missions, but they will happen. Countries that support terrorism and refuse to play ball will find themselves choked off. The CIA will destabilize the government, the U.N. will pass a resolution forcing an embargo on them, etc. And then they’ll quietly come around, perhaps without changing their public stance, again for political reasons.
It will never end, by the way. This is a permanent change in how the world is going to work, much like the permanent change that happened when the Berlin Wall went up - and eventually came down. Both of those events marked a fundamental shift in the alignment of the world. This was one of those world-changing events.
Do you have an objection to that kind of war?
Before I believe in the existence of a “surgical” operation, I’ll wait to see whether or not the patient dies.
I have memories of months of my teenage years spent watching CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War. I remember the careful explanations of smart bombs and laser-targetting, generals waxing technical on how this war, only military facilities and troops would be targetted. Technology, having reached a level of perfection, freed us from the possibility of any but minimal civilian casualties.
Then, after the war, the questions were asked. The pictures appeared. It seems George the 1st, his pet Quayle, and Stormin’ Norman had been delibarately targetting hospitals and schools. Those images of dead women and children sure looked like civilian casualties to me.
Smart bombs sometimes miss. Human error is still a factor. And it is still possible to deliberately target civilians in war time, and it is often done if convenient. An image of the US simply bombing “$10 tents” ignores the possibility that those “$10 tents” belong to civilians near a tempting target. I doubt the US military would hesitate too much if civilians got in the way.
Our absolute faith in technology has never ceased to amze me. My Windows 95 couldn’t go more than a few hours without screwing up! Well, the seemingly-perfect technology of modern warfare is far more sophisticated. The more parts a machine has, the more code a piece of software contains, the more that can go wrong with it. Especially when you’re fighting in a desert, making split-second decisions, losing power cables, etc.
Another problem with the idea of a surgical war is that, if things go wrong and the war becomes less-than-surgical, we may never hear about it. During the Vietnam War, I understand, some people believed television might redeem itself as a force for peace. After all, if people saw the horrors of war, they would be less likely to want to participate?
Well, two things short-circuited that dream. The first is that governments learned the medium could be used to their advantage. Sanitized clips, selective editting for “security reasons”, and a CNN packaging of the event that included booming patriotic music and other Leni-Riefenstahl techniques, helped build support for the Gulf War.
And why did CNN help? Because of the other reason TV never became a shield from war. In the last twenty years, financial considerations have usurped journalistic ethics. Don’t tell me this isn’t happening – the reason I left journalism is because I watched this happening from the inside. Wars make money. In the store where I work now – a magazine store which is really a newstand the size of a restaurant – our business has doubled in the last two weeks. For the first time in anyone’s memory, news is out-selling fashion magazines. Even my boss, who’s against the war, is excited about how much we’re making. That kind of temptation must be awful if you’re, say, the editor of Time and stand to rake in millions.
Reading over your last post, several things troubled me greatly. You didn’t seem particularly concerned that we wouldn’t know about the operations in foreign countris, or that the CIA would be destabilizing national governments. There are few nations in the world that are better off with an unstable government. Destabilization of government can bring civil war. I can’t think of any country in the world where civil war would be an improvement.
As for not knowing about the operations, frankly I’d prefer to know. The history of the CIA seems to me a history full of arbitrary evils and bad decisions. They need a leash. And they’re at their worst when they play the role of kingmakers. Just ask anyone in East Timor about that.
But if there’s one undeniable reason why the CIA should have less, not more, say in the matter, it’s this: the Docter Frankensteins in that not-so-intelligent-intelligence bureau are at least partially responsible for the construction of this monster. With a little help from their Igors in British Intelligence, they trained bin Laden, hoping to use him as a tool against the Soviets. And their plan worked – in the short term.
Now we’re planning to fund the Afghani Northern Alliance to overthrow their government. This situation sounds strangely familiar…
If you throw any event into the water of geopolitics, it creates ripples. A friend of mine in Manhatten is missing and presumed dead. She no interest whatsoever in global trade or the WTC. She was not military personel or in any way involved in the American economy, except as consumer.
Half an hour ago, I received word that another friend of mine died because the doctor she needed for her surgery arrived two days two late because his plane was delayed. And who could have forseen that, huh?!
And now I’m lost another friend, because a plane dropped in New York City killed someone in Pennsylvania days later. That plane dropped, in effect, dropped in Pennsylvania as well. And in Ottawa, where my political leaders have pledged full support for the war.
Can we really be so naive as to imagine that a smart bomb dropped on a military target on a military target in Kabul is just a smart bomb dropped on a single target in Kabul? I bet it’ll be felt in Islamabad and Baghdad and Tel Aviv, to say nothing of Arab communities scattered in countries around the world. And in non-Arab communities as well. And when the response from the enemy comes, it will probably be worse than before. And with each iteration of this nightmare, it gets worse.
So you’ll understand why I’m not so prepared to go in for surgery – and why at this precise moment, I’d like to think as little about surgery as possible. At the very least, I have no intention of submitting to the anaesthetic of technophilia and glowing cable-news praise for the President’s “nearly-bloodless” war.
Hamish, that whole ‘analysis’ is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. It is also offensive to our American neighbors. I don’t have time to rebut all of this right now, as my daughter is waiting for me to take her to the playground. But I’d just like to re-iterate the following statement you made:
You had better provide some evidence for this, pronto.
And for the rest of the people reading this, please let me reiterate that Hamish comes from a very small minority of our population - the remnants of our once-popular socialist party, which has almost completely ceased to exist as a force in national politics.
Given that they shared the kind of ideology that Hamish just espoused, it’s not hard to see why.