The airdrops are for Western civilians, not for Afghans. They are to make us feel ok about the military strikes. Rwanda showed the ineffectiveness of airdrops of food. The food cannot be properly distributed, and ends up being horded by the individuals who find the drop.
I never said that it would tip the scales in their favor. But your reply just reaffirms my point. More than likely, the food that is being dropped is going to wind up in the wrong hands. So then why is the US continuing it?
Not sure I follow your logic there. If the US objective is to 1) capture or kill Bin Laden and destroy the training camps and 2) (bit of an assumption so far) to remove the Taliban, how are the air drops beneficial to those ends?
If you agree that most if not all food will wind up in the wrong hands, then aren’t the airdrops actually prolonging the accomplishment of the objectives?
OK !I hear you Wabbit!
My idea is this: We bomb them with trillions of water balloons. It’s already cold there and after it freezes we bomb them again, with hockey sticks and pucks. OK so maybe they can use the food rations for pucks… Anyway the US, the Canadians and the Russians should have no problem teaching the Afghanis to play hockey. And we find out the Afghanis are naturals. Problems solved… Guaranteed long term playing contracts, good will, big money going back home, lots of fun.
Before you tell me I’m flippant, please consider this, baseball season is nearly over and I’m looking for someplace other than the drawing board to spend my time…
I realize the necessity of US action, but I agree with Dave’s assessment. If we’re honest about wanting to help the Afghan people, we need to have well-guarded people on the ground, in-country, distributing food and medicine and medical expertise. This is an enormous undertaking, and will probably end up being far more expensive than the military portion of the war.
That’s exactly the scenario I was recalling. And yes, I think the air drops will serve more as a Western pacifier than anything else.
Oh CRAP!!! My mistake. Yeah, never mind.
:o
If we enact your plan you’ll turn them into, into, CANADIANS!!! And gawd knows we don’t want any more of them around… 
Apparently the brunt of the attack was on the Taliban’s HQ in Kandahar.
The first attack was on the airport which was, interestingly, orignally built by the US as a commercial airport and refueling stop before the Boeing 747 was put into service but turned recently into a housing complex for al-Qaida terrorist network.
The second wave hit the Taliban’s military HQ and was very precise according to sources within Afghanistan…Taliban sources said the sun-baked mud homes and high-walled compounds on the same road as the military headquarters apparently escaped damage.
As mentioned above, how in Hades are we supposed to prosecute this war without any bombing? Critical strategic ground based assets (SAM installations, airstrips, ordnance dumps), must be neutralized prior to any of our troops touching down in numbers. The precision of our guided munitions is nothing short of marvelous. Almost any other country’s technology being used would result in an order of magnitude more civilian deaths.
Well beyond this, the Taleban must go. Not just Osama bin Laden and his network. The entire Taleban government and their pseudo-religious organization needs to be eradicated to ensure any hope of peace in Afghanistan. I think one of the primary questions that has gone largely unaddressed in these discussions is how to achieve this. How can we eliminate the Taleban from active participation in post-war Afghanistan? I see little alternative to confining these vermin in internment camps until they all die of old age. Either that or outright execution. Given half a chance, these scum will merely breed up another bin Laden for our dining and dancing pleasure.
Both Beagle and Sam Stone have routinely posed the tough questions and given the tough answers to these problems here (with another nod to John Corrado). There are few if any solutions available that do not involve some civilian casualties. Increasing our own loss of life to mitigate this is not much of an option in my book. We need our military personnel to do what they do best, bring peace and lawful structure. NOT get themselves blown away or beheaded due to unrealistic notions of engaging the enemy on their own terms.
I have seen very few people protesting this war provide any viable alternatives to the situation. There is no negotiating with the mullahs. What they want from us is the realization of Hitler’s dream with the annihilation of Israel plus a complete abandonment of our military position in the Middle East. Few people have bothered to recognize the fact that Muslim violence aginst other Muslims claims many more lives on a routine basis than this war or even the Israeli conflict does. The Taleban have willingly signed their own death warrant by refusing to hand over bin Laden. Now the gloves come off and we have to fulfill the promise of that position for them.
Again, I’d really be interested to see some suggestions about what to do with the Taleban remnants after everything is mopped up. This will remain one of the thorniest issues of all. The violation of women’s rights alone completely invalidates their claim to moral authority. Their complicity and flagrant support of the atrocity in New York marks them for death as surely as if they had planned the event themselves.
It sounds to me like humanitarian colonialism. I suspect the Afghans would recognise it as such too. If you are Muslim, and you’ve had your governmental infrastructure blown away by the same Christians who say they’re now there to help, I think you’d be resenting the creation of an American Christian province.
I’m sorry to be the wet blanket, but I don’t see things getting any better as a result of this. It will be impossible to annihiliate the Taleban to a man, just as it was impossible to do that to the Viet Cong. For every father that’s killed, a son will take arms to avenge him.
I suspect they are to serve more as a morale booster for the Afghan people. Even if they don’t get the food, they do hear on their radios that the airdrops have been made.
The aim is to get the Afghan’s to oppose the Taliban themselves (and, presumably, to support the NA).
Dave,
First off, the food drops are being done in areas not controlled by the Taliban near areas where refugees are known to be. The food will fall in a wide pattern and it’s unlikely that a few individuals will have any luck in gathering all 37,500 parcles so that they can hoard them.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011007/ts/attack_airdrops_dc_1.html
There’s no infrastructure to target. We’re not colonizing anything. And the Taliban have certainly killed more Afghans than we have. You’re fears of the Taliban being impossible to eradicate might apply to the Afghans’ will to resist foreign invaders, but the Taliban itself is a political movement widely seen by Afghans as a foreign intrusion from Pakistan and Arab states. The Taliban have been trying to beef up their numbers recently by forced conscription which shows that few Afghans are willing to fight for it. Defections to the Northern Alliance are increasing at a steady rate.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011007/wl/attack_afghan_fighting_dc_2.html
Occupying Afghanistan may be an impossible task, but toppling the Taliban whose control of the country has never been complete is possible.
One of the themes that keeps recurring in this thread is that “the Taliban has killed more Afghanis that we have”. This is a dangerous way to assess military involvement or to measure the success of this mission.
Granted, civilians are at risk and some will undoubtedly die during this campaign. But the determination of success must be measured in military and political terms – not who killed the most civilians.
The airdrops of aid to the civilians are happening hundreds of miles from the initial bombings. The Pakistan/Afghanistan border, located several hundred miles from the nearing targetted military establishment, is one of the prime drop zones. Earlier this year, refugees.org estimated that 2 million Afghanis had fled into Pakistan. This number has certainly increased in recent days. Dropping 37,500 meals to 2 million homeless refugees, many in Pakistan, will hardly provide much aid to the Taliban forces.
SouthernStyle
Early reports indicate that no pharmaseuticals have been harmed in the initial campaign.
I think there is one other purpose to add- pacification of Islamic nations. There is a very precarious propaganda war accompanying the campaign. The Taliban et al are doing their best to paint this war as a war on Islam, while we are trying our best to convince ourselves and others that this is a war on terrorism. (Somewhat similar to the difference between the Civil War and the War of Northern Aggression. Which one you use tells a little about where you are from) Making a serious effort to get food to the starving Afghanis (and though there has been some decrying of the attempt, I haven’t heard of a better method of delivering food to the people) will go a long way towards demonstrating that our ends are not the subjugation of the Afghani people, but merely the removal of an oppressive, terrorist supporting regime.
So, food drops seem to have three related goals:[ul] [li]Pacification of Western citizens []Moral boosting of the Afghani people []Pacification of Islamic nations [/ul][/li]
So, if a few more days of precision bombing (as precise as we can be- civilian casualties are indeed unfortunate but IMHO impossible to completely avoid. Heck, I am sure at least one person has been critically injured by a falling Twinkie) can neutralize the Taliban’s capability to mount a significant counterattack, why not send ground troops directly towards the areas of refuge. Set up safe, well fed/ watered/ housed areas, and build up as much good will as possible. While this is going on, stage a smaller campaign to root out Bin Laden’s nests. But all the while make it a priority to get as many Afghani people to work with us (by providing for whatever needs they have, helping them regain pre-Taliban freedoms) as we can. Support the NA in their efforts to topple the Taliban (so it is not a Western force doing it per se) and work towards ensuring some sort of tribal-orientated democracy (which wouldn’t necessarily preclude an Islamic theocracy) takes power. Should the transition go relatively smoothly, the people themselves would be our greatest asset in rooting out terrorism in Afghanistan and the rest of the world.
What?!? You want to arm the Afghanis … with hockey sticks???
That’s it, our ground troops won’t have a chance then – because everyone knows that the hocky stick is the most dangerous weapon known to man.
Bush had better pass a bill to draft Wayne Gretzsky if we even hope to have a chance in those conditions.
A nation full of pissed-off hockey players… brrrrrrrr…
What if instead of hockey sticks, we dropped pamphlets on curling? They certainly have enough raw materials to make their own stones (which decrease the investment and weight of the operation) and wouldn’t you rather face down a bunch of goofy curling-fans than a hoard of rowdy hockey fanatics? The rocks would probably be too heavy to throw, too slow moving to bowl our troops over, and brooms? “Stop, or I’ll sweep the ground in front of you making it more slippery!” Heck, it may even help them find and remove hidden land mines.
But not nearly as many as hips that have been forever disfigured by eating the damned things.
Bombing should be just the tip of the iceberg.
There appears to be a widespread perception in the region that the United States is impotent to respond to affronts except with “cowardly” technology. The truth of the matter is that this is largely true. We used the New Jersey to shell Lebanon, and then cruise missiles everywhere else. Nobody was impressed, and it has stopped nothing to date.
The real question is whether or not America is willing to use the bombers for the purpose for which they are designed: to gain air supremacy over the enemy in order to send in troops, troops which will pinpoint, terrorize, and execute as many Al Qaeda and Taliban forces as can be found.
They may not have respect for technology yet, but Al Qaeda and the Taliban do have respect for brutality. We need to make the bastards fear the brutality that our technology naturally facilitates.
If we want to really send the message across, we’ll plaster an area with bombs to hold them in place, then send in night-seeing troops by air to silently and invisibly cut the throats of the survivors at their posts, and snipe those who try to recover the bodies the next day. We’ll explode 55 gallon drums of gasoline in their caves, and gun down the survivors as they attempt to escape. We’ll kidnap their brethren and broadcast their drug-induced confessions–and executions, and possibly even renunciations–on the wavelength of their own television stations. They will never see an American or British soldier, but they will find our handiwork everywhere, on the ground, among them, until they’re checking under their beds for the demons who rule their night. And if we actually get our hands on bin Laden, the only people who are going to know about it are his associates as they die, one by one.
And the whole time, we will undermine their support with their own people by sending the message: we do not want to be here, and we do not want to hurt you, and once these bastards are gone, so shall we be, but not before then.
By supporting terrorism, the Taliban has invited terror upon themselves, and we are far better equipped to tailor make our terror for the sonsabitches who supported it alone, while leaving the innocent relatively unscathed. I say open the whole can of whoopass on them until they live like scared cats instead of lions.
I hope that the U.S. military, and especially the u.S. political machine, has the stomach for what they must do.
Bomb a hill into oblivion and send in the troops. Pump gasoline into the cave entrance at the rate of 500 gallons/minute and watch as the Taliban scurries from the cave’s other entrances.
Now that would be a great way to flush them out of their hiding places!
Sofa King and Southern Style:
Let’s think about three weeks from now –the air is ours, and what concretely identifiable targets there are have been destroyed. A squadron stumbles upon a cave of people- for the sake of argument lets say it is only men, armed and supplied men. They offer resistance, and we overwhelm them. Let’s say that after an hour they realize that there is no hope of survival if they continue fighting, and wave the white flag.
What do we do with the survivors? Summarily execute them? Do we put them in a POW camp? For how long? What do we do with them when we let them go? What do we do when they proclaim their innocence re terrorist campaign, and just say they were trying to survive? What if they claim that they were training there merely to support Pakistan’s efforts in Kashmir as soldiers, not as terrorists?
What if in four weeks, we come across a cave full of armed men who give up right away? We may have suspicions that they were formerly stationed at a terrorist camp, but no clear proof. Do we execute them just to be safe? Do we take their guns and move on to the next cave?
What if Bin Laden or his lieutenants publicly give up in a PR coupe? The world knows via his media links (no stretch to imagine a satellite-linked video-phone or some such device) that we have him alive and unresisting. What then? Put him on trial at The Hague? Here? Quickly execute him anyway?
What if the caves don’t just have armed men in there, but women and children too? I can’t imagine a large-scale camp without a support structure. Even non-combatant civilians don’t want to help, they may want to eat, and the Taliban may have the only food available. Or they may very well have been pressed into service. If a commander knows that there are women and children in the cave, does the gas flow anyway? What is to be done with the twelve- thirteen year old children, hiding in the same caves, who claim undying support for Bin Laden and the Taliban?
These and more questions must be plaguing the generals at this moment. Visceral feelings aside, what do you do when you have no choice but to consider the opinion of the rest of the world? Your opinion?