How could we work up a good Two Minutes’ Hate, unless Goldstein was allowed to remain on the loose?
What the, I see you are up to 31 OP’s out of 112 total posts. Most of them seem to follow the same pattern - lob some right-wing talking point up there and then slink away.
I’m going to ask you to man up and answer SteveG1’s well sourced and comprehensive savaging of your implications that we could not have or should not have gotten bin Laden.
Otherwise, I am seriously questioning your value here. We don’t need someone to make a full quarter of their posts as OP’s airing out Bush talking points, particularly when you do not appear to be interested in any sort of dialogue or discussion, in my opinion. Of course, I am but a humble member here, in no sort of position to moderate anyone else. It’s just that I’m also sick of the nonsense.
I’m of the belief that the Bush Administration would have attacked Iraq on 9/13/01 if they thought they could get the American public to swallow it. Unfortunately for them, the meme of “the Al-Qaeda terrorists are from Afghanistan” took hold, which meant they had to spend a few months(!) on a token war with Afghanistan before they could move on to their real order of business.
at an April meeting of deputies Clarke urged a focus on Al Qaeda. Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz responded, “No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al-Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.”
Very appropriate link, since it comes directly from the Neocon Home Page as it were.
OK, who is Goldstein??
In the novel 1984, by George Orwell, Goldstein is a person that the Party, the ruling class of Oceania, presents as being a dangerous revolutionary. He is an old and distinctly Jewish man who is claimed to have been some sort of a Judas to Big Brother at some unspecified point in the past, and who allegedly escaped justice and is now working with the enomies of Oceania to sabotage it. He is the main subject of the Two Minutes Hate, a daily team-building exercise from hell where the rank and file are encouraged to work up a wild, screaming hate against Goldstein and various other offensive images. Whether or not Goldstein was ever a real person is - like any other historical fact in Oceania - not really all that clear. He’s simply used as Something To Unite The Masses Against. Hence the comparison to Osama bin Laden.
You might as well go ahead and point it out for us. Your credibility could use the boost.
Yes, let us in on it.
Well, my own googling abilities are weak so I have no cites. Therefore my arguements can be safely ignored, as this board thrives on cites. I remember a few years ago seeing an assessment of what it would have taken to actually invade Afghanistan to the point we could have put a serious ground force in position to assault Tora Bora and capture Bin Laden (in theory…realistically it would only have increased the probability of capturing him). I know such things as logistics support are meaningless here, but myself I can certainly picture what it would take to land a large ground force in a hostile country (and one that had tossed out the Soviets a few decades earlier) with sufficient force to not only defend the build up areas but to supply the forces in the field. And all that by air as we couldn’t have staged up from any countries bordering Afghanistan, nor are there any sea ports to allow for naval support. The only realitively flat places in the country are in the south IIRC…and Tora Bora is in the north (in some extremely rugged mountain regions).
Maybe we could have simply landed a few light divisions of our mountain troops in the Tora Bora region? Perhaps, but again, how would you support them (med-evac, beans and bullets, etc)? And could a few US divisions have made that much of a difference in that region? Looking at maps of Afghanistan, especially the whole Hindu Kush/Tora Bora region I’m doubtful despite the fine cites from various news sources. Thats a VERY nasty region, and I’m not sure how our Northern Alliance buddies would have reacted to a large scale US invasion…or how other factions might have felt about it, let alone the Taliban and their AQ buddies. Definitely not a good place to have our ass hanging in the breeze with a precarious logistic tail and only support via air in what could be VERY hostile territory. I recall what these same folks did to the Soviets for years and shudder to think what might have happened if we had put the kind of force necessary to actually have a good shot at getting Bin Laden into the field. And really, would it have been worth it to get one guy? Really? Our casualties in Afghanistan have been pretty light…but putting major forces there they wouldn’t have stayed that way.
Anyway, no cites as I can’t find that assessment and my googlefu is weak. When I do a search I just get pages of folks saying how we could have gotten the guy…but none of them actually take into account any of the real world problems the US military would have faced if we’d tried. Nor do they count the costs of doing it.
-XT
But xtisme, we invaded the entire country on the premise that we wanted to get bin Laden. Why is there any excuse for not having the resources available to actually get bin Laden? And this at a time when our allies were providing all the resources that they could, especially… France! :eek:
And you’re not sure how our Northern Alliance buddies would have reacted to a large scale invasion? What the hell do you mean? Didn’t we engage in a large scale invasion that dramatically shifted the balance of power in their favor? Yes, you can cast aspersions all you like as to how well we might or might not comprehend concepts like “logistics support.”
Therefore, even without cites, your excuse is weak on its premise. It’s also quite scary, because it simply means that if you want to perpetrate the greatest crime against America ever, all you need to do to escape justice is climb up a mountain in Tora Bora, because we lack the will and the guts to finish our stated job. I hope desperately that you don’t really feel this about our country or our military.
Slinking back for a second … I challenge your assesment that I implied that we couldn’t or shouldn’t have gotten Bin Laden. If you read my original post I asked a number of questions.
Here’s an implication you’d be correct on … that the people who say we blew it by not getting him would be the first to say that we lost too many soldiers, killed too many innocents and destabilized things iin Pakistan too much even if we did get him. Especially if he was incinerated at the botttom of a cave in Tora Bora.
Confession … my Clinton vs. Bush post was based on the allegations that Sudan offered him up, etc. I now see there is more to that story. That Clinton denies it doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight but I do tend to believe the commission/committee that said it wasn’t as cut and dried as that. Which group was that by the way? Do you all believe every conclusion they made?
I would still say that getting Bin Laden when he was first identified as a problem (1996?) is different than getting him in Tora Bora while on the run with 1000 or more of his best fighters and many other sympathisers in the area. At least the lawyers weren’t calling the shots by then anymore.
Slinking away again for a while. Please forward me the GD Mission Plan if you get a chance so I can be sure I start contributing better.
Yes, just honest questions seeking a thorough discussion. With next to no follow up from yourself. And now with obfuscation about the OP, where you are trying to shift from whether Bush blew it to whether it was worse for Bush or Clinton to blow it, even though you now aren’t sure if the bullshit about Clinton was accurate.
This is further bullshit that is not only incorrect, but an attempt to divert from a straightforward, intellectually honest response to the responses people here have put forward for your question.
It should be pretty self-evident. You post something with the purpose of opening up a debate, in which you are actually interested in hearing and responding to other’s comments or observations.
Starting a ton of rightwardly slanted OP’s with next to no further participation in them seems like just trying to stir things up.
I thought we invaded to get rid of the Taliban because of their support for AQ and refusal to turn over AQ personnel (including Bin Laden) who were hiding out in their country.
Let me ask a serious question Hentor…HOW would get get a massive enough force into Afghanistan? Where would we stage such a force from? How would we transport it from which ever country we staged from into hostile territory? How would we supply such a force? How much force would such an opperation take? How long would it have taken to do all that BEFORE we could go into Tora Bora and hunt for Bin Laden directly? How many US lives would such a plan have cost?
As for France (and many other countries) you are quite right…but how would THEY have gotten there since they would have had much the same problem as we would.
If we were sending in only light troops that could be air lifted and dropped and then pretty much taken care of themselves (like Special Forces) then thats one thing. But when you are talking about putting divisions in there, presumably with things like tanks and artillary…thats a whole other ball game.
No, we didn’t invade Afghanistan on a large scale initially. We sent in Special Forces and a few light divisions to provide liason with local forces (coordinate air strikes, etc). As for the Northern Alliance, I don’t know how they would have reacted to a large scale US invasion. More importantly I don’t know how a lot of the tribal factions that weren’t really aligned with the Taliban directly but were no friend to us either would have reacted. I shudder to think how they might have reacted in light of how they reacted to the Soviet invasion.
As for casting aspersions, perhaps thats true. When folks say how easy it would have been to walk into Afghanistan with a large force but without bothering to actually look at the problems of doing so in a nation where we had no ally to stage out of then its kind of hard for me to take it seriously. Especially when its these same folks who are generally anti-war. Its a bit ironic (to me) to see folks who are pretty vocally against war call for a massive force in Afghanistan (after the fact) and want to hang Bush for not going in forcefully enough to take out one guy no matter what the cost in money or US lives would have been. Because you know I can picture how this debate would be shaping up had Bush done just that and the cost been high. Something like ‘Bush lost us X thousand American lives and cost us Y hundreds of millions of dollars…and all just to get one (unimportant) terrorist!’. Much chest beating would ensue I’m sure.
No, it simply means that I don’t believe the US military COULD have done this job…and even if they could I don’t believe the cost would have been worth it to simply get Bin Laden. Nor do I actually believe you or others in this thread would have been willing to pay the costs it would have taken (both monetary or in US lives) to do that one thing. I think this is just an excuse to bash on Bush. Make this an Iraq war thread and I’ll join in…Iraq was stupid. Afghanistan though…that I totally disagree with you on. I think this is one of the (very) few things this administration has gotten right. YMMV and all that.
-XT
Don’t worry, I’ll come back for more … AFTER you take a deep breath and read my OP again. Then you might look back to see who started the Clinton v Bush issue.
And then … take another deep breath and try to explain that this statement of mine is “incorrect” (your word) :
"that the people who say we blew it by not getting him would be the first to say that we lost too many soldiers, killed too many innocents and destabilized things iin Pakistan too much even if we did get him. Especially if he was incinerated at the botttom of a cave in Tora Bora. "
I have more thoughts on your post, but at the moment I have only time to strongly request that you show me anywhere that I expressed disagreement with the invasion of Afghanistan. Please, if you are going to make such claims about my opinions, you must have an iota of evidence to support them.
I think you’ll find that I have consistently criticized the Bush administration’s efforts in Afghanistan for being too tepid, failing to get ground troops in fast enough, and relying far too heavily on aerial bombardment as a method to take out bin Laden.
So, perhaps by totally disagreeing with me, you mean to suggest that you were happy with the half-measures and failure to get the job done. But you can cease and desist with the implication that I would not have supported the full measure required to capture bin Laden. I think your blinders are a bit too tight.
“What the…” indeed.
Here’s your OP, cut and pasted in its entirety:
You are presuming a response to something that never happened, and suggesting that all people who criticize Bush for blowing it would criticize him if he had gotten it right. Pure bullshit.
You’re attributing comments to people and then asking them to prove they wouldn’t have made them? That’s just pointless.
Would I be right in my understanding then, that this is a way of saying
“By their actions and the results you shall know their intentions” ?
Perhaps pointless but not incorrect as was stated by Hentor.