Also, I realize that utter ruthlessness isn’t an option if we are going to retain our moral fibre in the midst of all this ugliness. That’s why I put that little “in theory” in parenthesis.
Actually, no. Even Al Qaeda wasn’t trying to kill as many people as possible; they went for symbolic targets, not, say, a football stadium full of people. If we were to “equal their ruthlessness”, we wouldn’t try to kill them all; we’d do something like bomb the Kaaba in Mecca.
Duly noted, with thanks. I might have looked it up myself, but am lazy and easily…hey, do mosquitoes have tits? No, right, not mammals…where was I?
John, we are of one mind on this. Got a nickel says you’re the one who’s the more surprised.
God, man, don’t even think it!
Gotcha.
Gee, a couple gigantic skyscrapers full of people either at or going to work isn’t enough? Symbolic only? Well over 2,000 people didn’t die?
Maybe you are overestimating Al-Quadea’s ability, or underestimating their own brand of ruthless behavior. In any case, you’ll no doubt justify it.
Well, you laid out your position more fully than I did earlier in the thread, so I’m not really surprised since I pretty much already knew where you were coming from.
I’m generally anti-war. It takes a lot for me to drum up support for a war, especially one by the USA-- we’re the big guys on the block, and shouldn’t need to look for fist fights. And, as someone said upthread, war is hell, and if we are unable to stomach lots of bad shit happening, then we shouldn’t go to war.
One other thing… We libertarian-leaning types often side with the lefties on issues of war, just as we often side with the righties on economic issues. I’m all lefty when it comes to going to war! 
Not “symbolic only”; primarily symbolic. They weren’t two random skyscrapers, after all.
My biggest problem with Afghanistan once the cat was out of the bag re: Iraq is our poor level of commitment. That was the war we should have been engaging in with gusto from the beginning.
The lessons supposedly learned from Vietnam, that were then applied to Gulf Wars I: Wars Of My Daddy were then unlearned.
If you’re going to do it…DO IT. Don’t hold back. Have a cause, a reason, a plan an exit strategy, something the people of the republic can rally behind as just and reasonable. Put your resources behind it. Don’t flag or waver in your will. The damn justifiable war became an afterthought once we invaded Iraq.
I have been ashamed of my initial support of the Iraq war, because I believed in the post-9/11 accusations of WMD. That has generally been proven false, and I am chagrined.
Afghanistan, on the other hand…we need to get this one right. If we can. We have the just cause…but do we have the will after years of depletion in Iraq?
This is not to mention the logistical nightmare that is fighting a limited-engagement “war” against a loosely-unified group of tribes in the most hostile terrain imaginable on Earth…the Soviets couldn’t get it right with overwhelmng force, but maybe we can…with technology and an urban-assault approach that “take and hold” works for.
McChyrstal is a motherfucker. He may well craft a successful campaign. I certainly wouldn’t underestimate him.
Eradicating lots of heroin producing opium fields would be a nice bonus.
9-11-01 Sept, 11 ,2001 . That is a long time ago. Are you people actually pretending this foray into Afghanistan is about that attack. Everybody involved is dead or out of El -Queda. This is not about 911. We ended that attack when we went into Iraq. By leaving them outside our radar for so long, we sent clear signals that they were not important enemies. Now they suddenly have to pay again ? This is about establishing military bases in the middle east. We never seem to have enough of those.
That doesn’t make much sense. We have been in Kuwait and Bahrain for some time - without much stress to the locals or our defense budget.
Why would we want to establish bases in hostile territory when we have them relatively close by in friendly territory?
I don’t think this is about bases. Of all of the strange conspiracy theories offered, this is the least convincing one.
OK, assuming you are correct (and you aren’t, at least, not totally…the war in Afghanistan has continued apace before, during and will continue after the Iraq War…and yes, our involvement there due to the 9/11 attacks is a primary factor in going over there, and NO, not everyone from Al-Qaueda is dead from 2001, that was only a mere eight years ago, they were never outside our radar, we always maintained that they were important enemies…), even if it was all about military bases in the ME, I’m about convinced we need them now.
If we are going to remain the world’s superpower and maintain our “way of life” (however you want to interpret that statement, good or bad), we WILL need them, because the ME is the newly fomented battleground of tomorrow due to resource allocation.
I am under no illusion that America doesn’t attempt to subjugate countries and their leaders by use of veiled threats, political persuasion, America-centric alliances, NATO, or whatever.
By that token, I suppose that I (and we) have to accept a certain level of that, as there is these kinds of intruige going on at every level within every country on earth.
Turning Iraq into a place to establish bases was part of the reason we invaded. We built huge elaborate “enduring bases” and a huge embassy under the assumption that we’d be there indefinitely. Iraq wasn’t SUPPOSED to be hostile territory; they were supposed to love us.
While establishing bases that are permanent is underhanded, it also serves a valuable purpose if we are going to retain our hegemony over our need for oil.
Not saying it’s right, because it isn’t, but…it is existent.
Then what was the point of you bringing it up in the first place? And then again only to refute your first usage?
Incorrect in the wide scope intended. Hard as it is to get due to the US’s official policy of refusing to provide numbers of the other side’s casualties (“we don’t do body counts”) there’s proof that Rumsfeld was at the very least, callous, when it came to civilian deaths:
– bolding mine.
As for Afghanistan, I agree with whomever wrote that this might end up being “Obama’s Vietnam.” Though initially I was in favor of the strike I think I’ve read enough on the situation over the years as to conclude that it is a no-win situation. If you tripled your efforts, above and beyond the surge mandated by Obama, odds are still high that you won’t be able to restore any kind of functionality to what is essentially an arbitrary nation composed of feuding tribes. A nation about the size of Somalia with triple the population – and I bet most of us remember how well the efforts of the International community to restore order in that particular chaos went.
Concerning the OP, I think labeling any war as “good” is the definition of a misnomer. At best it can be said that wars are either “just” or not – and even then there’s quite the gray area in many/most of them. After all, for all the talk about technological gains, major conflicts in the past and current century have only trended upwards concerning the ratio of civilian vs military deaths. Of course there is a reason for that – weapons might be “smarter” but the reality of it is that the major concern in their design is to inflict the maximum amount of punishment on the opposing side while keeping the soldiers safer. Add that to the well worn strategy of air raids (safest way to kill the “enemy”) and you get what we have. To wit:
*****Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
All that said, ask me for an aswer as to what to do in Afghanistan and I’ll admit I honestly don’t have one – other than letting sort things out themselves. May or may not be bloodier that way, but again, what we’re doing there remains nebulous at best.
Couple of very good and recent articles on that particular clusterfuck:
In the fog, remember: victory is impossible in Afghanistan
What I found particularly interesting from the latter is the analysis of emphasis in the use of acronyms and military jargon so often applied to describe the situation in Afghanistan – we see it here, in this very thread, with the much trotted “collateral damage” BS. After all, dead is dead no matter what you call it. So yes, they really are as vapid and meaningless as they sound:
– bolding mine.
Indeed.
Big shmeal. I have ancestry in American conflicts dating from WWII back to King Phillip’s War, and a branch that saw service in the armies of Their Royal Majesties Karl XIV Johan, Oscar I, and Karl XV of Sweden. (Never go toe-to-toe with a genealogist when meaningless credentials are on the line.) I’ve just not seen fit to mention them previously in this thread because they have no freaking relevance whatsoever to the subject at hand. Just like your family military tradition.
That’s an excellent post, RedFury.
I agree that my use of the adjective good was ill-advised. Justifiable would perhaps have been better, and that in the inception not in the continued waging of that war.
It’s the aim of the war that troubles me. That aim is, I would presume, a stable and democratic Afghanistan. But is there really any such animal? Is it a country in any meaningful sense, rather than a collection of tribal groups with deep antipathies to each other?
I can see billions being poured into this war, thousands of allied lives lost, (as well as tens of thousands of a mixture of Taliban and civilians - try sorting them out), all ending up with an ignominious withdrawal accompanied by crows of derision from the Afghans themselves.
As for the Western side pursuit of destroying opium cultivation, that will happen when we have total control of Afghanistan and we supply the farmers with an equally profitable crop to raise.
In other words that isn’t going to happen.
There’s also the ethnic divide. Britain drew a line on a map splitting the Pashtun’s. They didn’t like it. they still don’t. And they don’t like the other ethnicities.
Add in the backwards even by fundamentalist Islam standards Islamic fundamentalism that sees even the existence of a girl getting education as a cause for throwing acid in the face and you realise we are not just trying to build a house on sand we are trying to build it from imaginary bricks.
And every wedding we bomb, every family we slaughter because we think there might have been some target in the area creates dozens of new foes.
That’s how societies built around vengeance work. And they are not known for their live and let live attitude. Start a vendetta and it’ll never stop.
Add in the fact they all perceive us as a Xtian army too. Siding with the northern enemies of the Pashtun as we’ve installed the rightly hated and reviled warlords back in power.
Maybe, back in 2001, if we had not allowed ourselves to be diverted it could have been done. But now - the horse has bolted, the boat has sailed and the shit has hit the fan with no do-overs.
This war cannot be won. Not without us becoming monsters.
While that may be true of some particularly nasty Taliban adherents, I think it is highly unfair to paint all Afghanis with such a broad brush. The poll I linked to earlier showed fairly strong (not overwhelming, but still strong) support for women holding jobs, getting an education, holding government office, and voting. And that support has increased over time. (See Q42 at the end of the document.) Advocating withdrawal from Afghanistan because it seems to be an unfixable shithole of fundamentalists is an unfounded and bigoted argument.
(Yes, I noticed the strong support for women wearing the burqa as well; it’s not particularly germane to the arguments around the justification of the war but I would argue that, given the somewhat more liberal attitudes towards women’s positions in society, the burqa is seen as an expression of religious faith rather than a direct attempt at women’s oppression.)