The attacks have begun

Great Debates
81

Just out of curiosity, jshore, what is your solution to this mess? I don’t recall you positing any grand scheme. Poking holes is much easier than formulating reasonable constructs. I can see no viable alternative to making every Taleban participant pay with their life. Be it by execution or lifetime confinement. There must be a penalty for their actions. To not demand one is to literally condone their crimes and, what’s more, invite further attack. There is no confiscation of wealth or demotion in social standing that can be applied to these thugs. Consequently, I see no alternative to outright forfeiture of their lives.

We are already hated. There is barely anything within reason that we can do that will increase that hatred beyond its already stratospheric levels. We must extract a penalty from the perpetrators and it must be extracted while the crime is still fresh in the mind of humanity. There is no alternative. Violence of this nature respects only one thing and that is payment in kind. If there is sufficient suffering for advocacy of such heinous deeds, then the point will get across.

The more Taleban we eliminate, the fewer sons they will have. Those that remain after the war will pose a limited threat but the near total extermination of the Taleban will reduce its propagation to a point whereby less violent persuasion might be applied. To leave the Taleban intact merely sows the seeds for more slaughter. This is not allowable.

82

So, your sense of justice doesn’t go beyond your borders. Lets give up justice for destruction because that’s all they understand. Turn the corner to adopt violence as an absolute means to an end. I just don’t understand you at all.

These people are being bombed in retaliation for their actions. Some will die, or have died. Those which survive should be put on trial, and tried fairly. Let them have thier fate meted out to them by part of the system which they wish to destroy.

There is no such thing as “complete and utter destruction” of the Taleban. Destroy the Taleban and thier children, and they’ll gain the sympathies of 1 billion Muslims. That is not to say that all Muslims endorse the horrific events of 11 Sept. But, if you eliminate the Taleban and their families, you will create martyrs for Islamic fundamentalism. One billion people always remember that you burned women and children to death in callous revenge.

The current conduct of the US shows some measure. They are attacking terrorist targets. They are careful to ensure that this is not seen as a Christain pogrom against Muslims. There is restraint. A month has passed of diplomacy and cajoling. The month passed, and the US is now acting on its words, trying to preserve life, and strike only those targets that it must. The US restraint thus far is commendable. It has allowed those Islamic countries who are its allies to remain its allies. It is also commendable because it is the sign of a mature, fair and reasoning government.

Americans should be crying out for justice, not revenge. You should be better than that, and better than them.

83

May I offer an opinion on the food drops? In addition to the reasons others have given, I believe one reason for those drops (which, I understand, also contain ‘propaganda leaflets’ stating our position) is to convince the Afghani populace that, if the Taliban and bin Laden are ousted, we are willing to come in and take massive steps to relieve their suffering and help rebuild the country. Japan and Germany seem to have rebounded quite well from WWII - and are certainly not our puppets.

And a question for those who are opposed to our current actions - if, as a result, Afghanistan becomes sort of a ‘Middle Eastern Japan’ will you consider it justified? If we can, by conducting this war today, enable Afghanistan to become a peaceful and prosperous country, are we not greater criminals if we ignore them and leave them floundering in a stone-age society?

84

Although this is dangerously close to cultural imperialism, the sheer vileness of the Taleban put paid to the falseness of such worries. If we are to play the world’s policeman, I can think of few better places to clean up than the social cesspool the Taleban have made of Afghanistan.

All in all, a splendid question, coosa. Our obligation to humanity in performing this noxious task is both manifest and manifold.

85

I think you may be missing my point though. I’m saying that their effect will be minimal at best. More than likely, they will not reach the intended recipients.

I don’t think that is good as it sounds. Also, Japan is not immersed in a religion which frowns upon most material possessions.

Well, maybe it would be criminal to make them something they don’t want to be.
I’m not opposed to the US helping them set up a democracy, or at the very least be a part of an international effort to ensure domestic security while some sort of an election takes place.
But to industrialize them? Or as you were suggesting, help them potentially become a financial world power like Japan? That can very easily be seen as hegemony by the extremists.
If there are efforts to rebuild infrastructure, I would certainly hope that it would be lead internationally.

86

I’m pretty sure they have radios; the situation isn’t quite that bad for them yet. I didn’t mean that they were broadcasting themselves; the BBC World Service at least broadcast in a variety of different languages, and I’ve no doubt the people will be listening to our side of things as well as the Taliban’s. There are probably far fewer TVs, but I’ve seen pictures of large groups sitting round a single TV watching what was going on.

**

I think it’s a matter of showing that the strikes are not aimed at them, but against the Taliban (who are not particularly popular anyway). The airdrops show that the people aren’t going to be left up the proverbial creek if they make some kind of stand…whether the reality matches this remains to be seen.

Oh, and what Rhythmdvl said. :slight_smile:

87

Communications in Afghanistan

http://worldfacts.educationamerica.net/af/af6.html
Since this report, TVs have been outlawed by the Taliban. I also suspect that this report is seriously underestimating the number of radios in Afghanistan. NPR has reported that almost every household has one. Bicycle run generators are used to recharge them. Voice of America is broadcasting into Afghanistan as well as US airborne radio aircraft.

88

Dave Stewart, you and I are not too terribly far separated in our opinions, with one glaring exception. You apparently seem to think that the rest of the world, and especially the Islamic world, will miraculously learn our sense of justice. They will not.

From what I understand, their religious teachings reject our concept of justice. Instead, they are locked into a seventh-century concept of law that bears very little resemblance to our own. But the United States has a contingency plan, and that contingency is war. That’s when the gloves come off and we do what has to be done, not what is legal or just in peacetime.

There are two notable examples in history where the region that is now Afghanistan (or very near to it) was successfully subjugated for a time. The first time was when Alexander the Great advanced on Kabul in 329 B.C.E. The second was when the Mongols took over the region.

Both invaders kept their holdings by example. When a city revolted, both the Macedonians and the Mongols would surround the city, starve it into submission, breach the walls, loot the town, kill every single male and sell the women and children into slavery. As far as I can tell, this was the only way that the people of this region were quelled. I believe that attitude of defiance has spread throughout most of North Africa and southern Asia.

The particulars are abhorrent, but we should not lose the lesson in the distasteful details. Overwhelming violence works, and it may be the only thing that works. We now have the ability to focus our overwhelming violence against the small number of people whom we seek, sparing most of those who are not closely associated with them. Yes, we should minimize collateral damage, but we should terminate our enemies with extreme, public, personal prejudice in a most fear-inspiring way. This is what war is, and we must show that we fight wars for keeps–and the losers lose badly.

To do this, we need the support of the sane part of the world, of course. But we also need to teach the Islamic world, which may or may not meet my definition of sane, that when we are attacked, our enemies are not safe anywhere, and anyone who gives them solace is endangered.

This is, in my opinion, the only way to reduce the viability of terrorism. Anything we do beyond this point is going to reinforce the hatred for America that the Islamic world already harbors unless we can make them respect us. The only way I can see to earn that respect is to hold forth the promise that engaging the United States will result in a radical reversal of fortune. Only then will the niceties of diplomacy and trade hold any weight.

We have been pursuing a half-assed response to this form of warfare since the Carter administration. It hasn’t worked at all, and in fact it may be responsible for the pickle we’re in now. If you folks out there can’t see and understand that, then we are all in a lot of trouble.

89

Sofa. that would sound better in German.

90

Oh, for Christ’s sake!

What would you have us do, elucidator?

91

True enough, Zenster. But see, the difference between you and me seems to be that when I don’t have a viable solution (or don’t have enough information to be sure of what a viable solution might be), I don’t go and propose one anyway. (And particularly one that involves summarily executing of a whole group of people [the Taliban], even if that group subscribes to an ideology that I find totally fucked.) You don’t seem bound by such concerns.

On the other hand, you will note that my criticism is reserved for those whose solutions are out of the range of what I think might be a viable approach. Hence, I have not directly criticized the current actions that we are taking even though I am not sure they are the right thing to do because I am also not sure that they are not.

If we were in high school and there was a brutal bully beating people up and you decided to get your father’s gun and shoot him, wouldn’t I have an obligation to speak up and say that is a stupid idea even if I couldn’t necessarily come up with another solution that would solve the problem?

By the way, the closest thing I have read that comes to describing what I think might be a sensible policy is the editorial “Rules of Engagement” in the October 15 issue of The Nation. Unfortunately, that editorial is not available online but to summarize very briefly:
(1) “an all-out but carefully targeted effort to neutralize identified terrorist networks. This may involve a limited military response, like attacks on terrorist bases, but primarily will rely on such nonmilitary means as exchanges of intelligence among nations, coordinated investigations by law-enforcement agencies in affected countries and pressure on financial institutions and governments to cooperate in cutting off terrorist-group funding.”
(2) Adopt a more internationalist approach and align our foreign policy in ways that will make it harder for the terrorists to find recruits. [This is a real short summary of a broad topic.]
(3) Enhanced homeland defense with better security, coordination, and emergency response.

92

Well, Sofa, if we follow your reasoning, of overwhelming fear and retribution, why not one step further? Public torture, for instance. We could turn into a socko game show, “Who Doesn’t Want to Have His Leg Boiled Off?” Russia’s an ally now, we can count on KGB expertise.

How many times must this be stressed before you catch on? This is precisely the scenario that OBL is counting on! The more we behave like the Great Satan, the more we make his case for him. I assume you realise that this is, how shall I put this, counterproductive.

Oh, its also evil. By the by.

Realpolitik? Offer a Kalashnikov and a green card to anybody who will fight on our side. Then we dump them. We did it to the Kurds, what the heck.

93

What do you call the atrocity in New York? Was it not a form of summary execution? You better believe it was. “You don’t seem bound by such concerns.” You better be-fricking-lieve it. I’m bound by a concern for the rest of civilized society, not a bunch of murdering thugs. They are already threatening to fly more airplanes full of people into more buildings. What is your solution to that? Stronger doors on cockpits? I say such efforts are not enough. They will find ways to defeat such paltry countermeasures. I happen to place a higher value on peace loving people’s safety than the well-being of a band of violent criminals. In a fire, which building do you evacuate first, the orphanage or the death-row penitentiary next door? We are obliged to eliminate the Taleban from the world equation. THEY, NOT US, HAVE MADE IT A LIFE OR DEATH STRUGGLE. Would you have us waggle a finger at them in admonishment? I would sooner waggle the end of a gun’s barrel in their direction (preferably with it set on full-auto).

Fine then, what is the right thing to do? You say you do not know. Then how is it possible that you know WHAT IS NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO? Your moral convictions are neither convincing nor very viable in this particular situation. Yes, it is pretty easy to rule out nuclear response, but after that there still remains a vast decision tree that you seem willing to criticize without providing any sound alternative. This is simply not enough. If this were some sort of armchair mental exercise, we might have the luxury of your sort of vacillation. In this case, WE DO NOT! This is a life and death struggle against madmen who have no compunctions about annihilating millions of people given half a chance. What is this “viable approach” you allude to without bothering to define? Please elaborate.

Your comparison does not hold water. This is not high school, and the bully is not merely taking student’s lunch money. The bully you speak of is committing genocide within their own borders and fomenting mass murder outside of them. Let’s bring your example into proper focus. If there was a bully coming to school and strangling students in the stairwells between classes and the dean’s office did not act promptly and vigorously to put an end to it what should I do? Allow myself to become the next victim? Be dissuaded by your pleas to give it more thought? Wait for more people to die while you waste time dithering about?

I don’t think so!

(Bolding mine)

And what exactly do you think they’re going to do with the intelligence they gather? Put their names on a blacklist so these terrorists can’t get jobs in Hollywood? No, they’re going to use special forces and go out and kill them. Are you so naive as to think that they will just attempt to contain them in one region? Containment does not work. The last twenty years of counter-terrorism has proved that in spades. I do not wish to bring hostility to our difference of opinion, but at the same time, you still do not provide any cogent solution to the problem at hand. This renders many of your observations without much merit. I am concerned that you do not entirely grasp the magnitude of the situation. However gruesome my own propositions might seem, they sure as Hades will result in a sharp decline of threats to America’s security (and the world’s). This is what we must aim for in the near term. Elimination of terrorist threats and their ability to act against us * by whatever means we have at our disposal.* Once that threat is neutralized, we can concern ourselves with the rebuilding, education and redevelopment that will help to avert the conditions which breed terrorism. But until then, swift and overwhelming countermeasures are the order of the day.

94

Zenster, absolutely. It was the summary execution of innocent people by some completely-fucked-up, crazy, murderous and heinous criminals. However, my standard is not going to be, “Well since these ‘pleasant’ people did these things, we can too.”

What particularly worries me is your talk of “exterminating” the Taliban. The Taliban, as I understand it, is a political / social movement in Afghanistan some of who currently hold the reins of power. I find their principles and philosophy to be fucked up beyond belief and the fact that those in power have aided and abetted people who have committed murderous acts on our soil makes those people (at least the ones actually in power) culpable. However, as much as I despise the Taliban, I don’t think we have the right to simply exterminate them. Yes, I think we have the right to prevent them from continuing to aid and abet terrorists…and that even some of them might die in the process of us doing this (when we strike their military targets). But, extermination (or even mass internment) of a whole movement of people? I just don’t see how that can be justified.

95

I don’t really have the time now to respond to your whole post, but I did also mean to respond to this part. I don’t completely disagree with your statement here as worded (except for the “by whatever means…” which even surely you cannot mean since you have said you are against the use of nuclear weapons). It’s when you get more specific about what those measures are that we seem to start to diverge.

Also, I think it is too facile to separate the two parts of the equation and say “first we neutralize the threat, then we concern with averting the conditions that breed terrorism.” The problem is that if we totally separate the two pieces then we may find that what we did in the first stage has made what we want to do in the second stage much harder, if not damn near impossible. The current Administration even seems to recognize this fact.

96

In this thread’s preceding posts nowhere have I mentioned willfully killing thousands of innocent people for no sound reason at all. There is no, “Well, since these ‘pleasant’ people did these things, we can too” mentioned whatsoever. Exterminating the Taleban is not the slaughter of innocent people. It is the elimination of a threat to this entire world’s security. I do not know how to make this clear enough to you. The Taleban are not a “political / social movement”, they are a genocidal bunch of criminals who have attempted to disguise themselves in religious trappings so as to give their gang of thugs a modicum of respectability (which you seem to have bought into hook, line and sinker). In a somewhat disturbing fashion, you seem able to separate their murderous persecution of women from their outright complicity in the World Trade Center atrocity. All of this is one in the same mentality. Namely, a callous disregard for human life in pursuing the ruthless imposition of their perverted will upon all who fall within their purview.

Bearing in mind what you have just said, I can only surmise that you think we have no right to depose the Taleban from their rule of Afghanistan and if we are so fortunate as to capture or kill bin Laden, then we should just back out and allow the them to resume their murderous campaign of savagery against women and the Western world. You have got to be kidding! How do you “prevent them from continuing to aid and abet terrorists”? Please explain this. Are we to place radio transponders on all of them to make sure that they no longer go shopping at “Bombs-R-Us”? There is absolutely no viable way to prevent their further collusion in mass murder and genocide save by internment or execution. Please explain how you would go about it without resorting to either of the preceding? You are being naive beyond belief.

The Taleban have, for once and all, disqualified themselves as any sort of valid sociopolitical entity. They have firmly cast their movement as one of vastly criminal intent and worthy only of immediate extinction. I cannot comprehend how or why you are willing to assign any credibility whatsoever to these homicidal thugs. It is precisely your sort of dithering that makes possible additional opportunities for them to kill even more innocents all over again. Quite simply, after ticketing a drunken sot for driving under the influence you do not allow him to take the wheel again and drive the rest of the way home. You arrest and confine the party immediately to prevent them from killing anyone. Is this clear? The Taleban are drunk with power and in their debauched excess they have abetted one of the most horrific crimes against humanity in all history. Would you trust them with a second chance at holding the reins of power? If you would, it is hard to believe that you are not somehow mentally deficient. That you are somehow able to draw a distinction between the Taleban and bin Laden’s network is simply flabbergasting.

Please remember that bin Laden is the Inspector General of the Taleban military. It is bin Laden’s millions that prop up the doddering Taleban government. It is bin Laden’s own daughter that has married mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taleban. The son of bin Laden has married the daughter of the head of Egypt’s terror network. Does this help you to see that these two organizations are one in the same with identical goals and methods? I do not think that I can possibly put it any more clearly.

Will you kindly stop grasping at straw men to support your ill conceived arguments against me? I have vehemently dismissed the use of nuclear weapons over and over again at these boards from the very onset of this crisis. If you are not familiar with this then I advise you to do a search here using the keywords “nuclear” and “Zenster”.

You seem blissfully unaware that the most urgent requirement of the current situation is the elimination of the Taleban’s threat to the rest of the world. You have posited absolutely no method of doing so within the putatively benign parameters of your, yet to be revealed, “viable alternative”. If we allow the Taleban one whit of breathing room in this current campaign against them, it will only serve as a window of opportunity for them to perpetrate but another atrocity. You do not seem to grasp the maniacal aspect of these pseudo-religious felons.

Relentless military prosecution is the only way to suppress such a virulent strain of psychotic killers. If the second stage of reeducation and rebuilding is that much harder, so be it. But we must first excise this cancer from the body of humanity. You have as much credibility as a doctor who would start a patient’s rehabilitation before even beginning to excise a life threatening melanoma. If you have a potentially fatal tumor, do you cut only half of it away? This is what you are prescribing by even suggesting that the Taleban be allowed to remain in power after the apprehension of bin Laden and his network. Even when the most skilled surgeon cuts away a malignancy he also removes some of the healthy flesh surrounding it. This “healthy flesh” is the collateral civilian deaths that will inevitably result in our eradication of the Taleban from Afghanistan. The surgeon most certainly removes all of the lesion and then some to ensure a complete restoration of health. If you were my doctor and prescribed the sort of treatment mentioned, I for one, would certainly seek a second and third opinion!

97

Zenster, breathe. You’re about to blow a gasket. Breathe.
Think about what you are saying and tell the world where your version of control and misery will end? the Taliban will collaspse and be replaced, the Northern Alliance MAY be the better for all of this, but the whole situation needs a new level of thinking.
Did we go around killing and containing the Michigan Militia just becasue of a couple of their cohorts? Did the world demand the blood of everyone compliant in the deaths of so many in Europe after WWII? Once the Taliban is weakened, the people of Afghanistan will not support that power structure any longer.
Breathe, relax, breathe. If your own health is suffering from this stress, please, go out for a long walk and take it easy for a while.