Reuters reports:
“But tribal leaders in Kandahar, quoted by a source across the border in Pakistan, said that forces loyal to the opposition had taken control of the airport there.
Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television carried a similar report.”
If this is actually happening, it must be defections.
Bloody hell.
That’s some quick work.
Only yesterday they were reported as approaching Kabul.
Kabul has totally fallen? Wow, that’s frighteningly fast. It seems clear to me that the Taliban are now on the run and not, as some news pundits are saying, pulling back to strategic strongholds. As far as I knew their most strategic strongholds were Mazar-e sharif, Kabul and Kandahar and in the space of 72 hours they’ve lost 2 of them. In light of this it seems clear to me that there is no real need to continue the bombing as we were doing. In fact it is now more advantageous to restrict it as per Collounsbury & Tomndebb’s suggestions (which were blatantly apparent at the beginning of the thread, don’t know how I got the idea they were advocating total cessation, I feel silly now 
)so that we can consolidate all we’ve gained. At the moment we risk seriously overstretching ourselves.
In short, at this point we can scale down the bombing and consolidate our positions without fear of exposing ourselves to undue risk.
From my (admittedly limited) understanding of the situation, the Taleban started in the Kandahar area and have now retreated back to that area. Reports that I’ve read (and, since I do not have experience with the languages of that region, they are all translated) is that the Taleban left Kabul without a fight - I’m guessing, from looking at the map, they decided that retreat was better than being surrounded and besieged.
We should not underestimate the resolve of the remaining Taleban - these would be the hard core types, in their native territory. No doubt there are some fanatics among them who would prefer death to surrender.
However, there is much to be said for consolidating our gains and reopening supply routes to the population now in non-Taleban areas. We’ll still need to conduct some sort of military operations, if only to make sure the Al-Qaeda types aren’t sneaking off in the night, but there is now much less reason to keep bombing the hell out of the landscape.
Again, I am no expert on Afghanistan, but I believe the southern territory around Kandahar is less mountainous and rugged - perhaps more amenable to the use of ground forces. A review of tactics would seem appropriate while we organize the locals and get food, medicine, and clothing to the Afghanis. Hmm… this seems a good opportunity to win hearts and minds and not just territory.
As I said in an earlier post - so much depends upon context.
In other words, military strides are being made towards removing the Taliban from Afghanistan, at least in part because of U.S. bombing.
Seems a fairly straightforward reason to continue the bombing in hopes of making similar advances during Ramadan.
And I am not missing anyone’s points; I am dismissing them. Genuine military advances are to be preferred to trying to curry favor with those on the fence.
In other words, it is easier to get people to say “For Allah’s sake, don’t piss the US off or they will bomb the crap out of you” than it is to get them to say “I used to hate the US, but they took a break from bombing during Ramadan, so now I want to kill bin Laden for them”.
This whole discussion sounds way too Viet Nam War-ish for my tastes. Wasn’t Nixon always sending all kinds of delicately nuanced messages by pausing or stepping up bombing - not to gain military objectives, but to bring them to the negotiating table, or as part of a struggle for “the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people”.
And now we should buddy up to the Northern Alliance instead of relying on our own military. Vietnamization, anyone?
Once again, military action is only good for military objectives. If you want to send messages, call Western Union.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, maybe if we ask nicely, the entire Muslim world would cancel Ramadan. 
Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!
~So I get drunk and stoned, every time you come around… -Better Than Ezra
Well, let me first observe that in order to dismiss an argument one first has to understand it. That’s always helpful. Insofar as your straw men don’t match the actual argument advanced, one has to ask whether this is lack of understanding or dishonesty.
Indeed, and it was due to tactical support to the NA, which as you will not upon actually reading what was written, was precisely what Tom and I hypothesized continuing (in a scenario that the NA did not get lucky as it did and have the Taleban begin defections as they did).
Well, that all depended on the facts on the ground.
(a) Of course both Tom and I had hypothesized continued tactical air support to NA front lines while scaling back other attacks: those deemed likely to produce civilian casualties far front the front lines.
(b) The hypothesis at the time was the possibility that the NA were not going to break through before Ramadan. Insofar as big Ramadan moves may not be expected by the ground folks, some PR spin while continuing tactical air support to the NA was a reasonable hypothesis.
Well, insofar as you don’t appear to have actually engaged the points (as opposed to your total cessation straw man), it does rather look like a missing of the points.
As it happens, luck flowed the right way and break-throughs
occured. Side-switching that dear Afghan habit.
since the rest of your “argument” depends on a straw man and doesn’t manage to actually engage the argument, I think I shall simply snip it.
But then there is this:
Not one whit.
Nixon was trying to extract the US from a failed strategy. There were no military things to achieve. I already covered this. We were not going to do North Korea P II with a nuclear China this time. The first one didn’t work so bloody well, a second one, with more Soviet support would hardly have been better for the world.
Our Vietnamese partner, the southern government, was too weak to stand on its own, even with massive help from us. Our presence turned out to be worse than aid, it plugged right into the old anti-colonialist matrix.
Gaining military struggles to lose the larger war is called a phyrric victory. An old concept.
No, the opposite. Apparently we learned a good lesson, as you clearly have not. Send in the foreign troops, your friends on the ground lose their street cred. Look at the comments of the Taleban switching sides --well I don’t know that you’d be able to read them-- a lot of things about well since no foreign troops were showing up…
Add in a lot of white and black boys and you get bad chemistry. Rely largely on local allies and your guys keep their street cred.
Even their thumbing their noses at us is probably good. Makes it harder to call them American puppets. So long as some moderately stable government comes out of this and we can pressure them behind the scenes not to commit too many massacres and share power with the Pashtuns we get the best deal possible. Ability to operate on the ground with special forces and a government that is anti-Al-Qaeda without losing its Afghan cred.
Military objective are only useful if they achieve your long-run political goals. If they do not, then you’ve actually lost in the long run. Conquest is not security, winning battles is not security. Winning the politics and the war, if not the battles, that’s security.
Keep the slogans for yourself, they’re about that useful.
Good point. Hadn’t thought of it before…
Put in our culture terms. There’s a difference between a friend and a sycophant. A friend is respected by others when he or she agrees with you as that person walks their own way too, but a sycophant, the butt-kisser…
Too many Americans forget about this kind of dynamic leading to some plain stupid ideas about how foreign relations should and will work.
Collounsbury -
If you think the moderate Muslims you want to impress with our humanity are able to draw distinctions between bombing during Ramadan in tactical support of the Northern Alliance and bombing during Ramadan to destroy the Taliban, you have a much higher opinion of the ability of B-52s to send messages than I.
This is exactly what I objected to with the Viet Nam bombing. Delicately nuanced messages meant to convey that we were only trying to be decent.
That was the message sent. The message received was “we are beating the Americans. Keep it up.”
It appears the bombing will continue. Fortunately, I expect the fall of Kabul to send a far clearer message about American determination to combat terrorism than a strategy that says “Aren’t we great? We aren’t bombing your friends as much as we usually do, seeing as how it is Ramadan!”
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, with the fall of Kabul and the fall of the Taliban we no longer need to bomb. We can use the time to consolidate out positions and capitalise on the good publicity. What on earth can be wrong with that?
No, I have an understanding of the dynamics of the situation in the Middle East based on my personal experience and my ability to speak Arabic.
It’s not a fucking question of B-52s sending messages, it’s a question of the capacity of those using the b-52’s to construct a good message.
However, I will note once more that one of my main concerns was the Pashtun connection (in the pre-Taleban collapse period) and how to get them on our side while not causing excessive problems for our moderate friends.
For that, based on the reporting that the Pashtun in the south had come to see the bombing as against them and in the context of tactical strikes against the front line, it struck and strikes me that laying off strategic bombing was a good thing.
Rhetoric, motherfucking political rhetoric. The period of messages was after the war had long been lost and Nixon was throwing around for a way out. Of course that did not work. That is not at all the same as this situation.
Rather the contrary, from what I am hearing there are simply tactical air support against identified targets, no strategic strikes. A different game entirely and precisely what Tom and I had argued for.
Whatever. It was Afghans who moved into the city, its Afghans dieing. In any case, you’ve simply repeated your simpled-minded straw-man which I’ve already pointed out does not at all ressemble the actual proposition.
Well, how nice for you. I have a different understanding, based on my personal experience and abilities.
Congratulations on your linguistic achievement. Don’t expect it to raise your opinions beyond question.
Which they then send via B-52s, or the lack thereof. So I guess it is the fucking question.
As for the rest of your post - whatever.
Have a lovely Thanksgiving, or Ramadan, or something.
Regards,
Shodan