Don’t we already have enough evidence against him for the USS Cole and the embassy bombings? Do we really need more?
Well for one thing, it’d be nice to know where he is first.
Another thing, if we could get the Taliban to figure out that they may be able to keep themselves in power by turning him over to the West, they just might do it.
Agreed, but the consensus (what I’ve seen in news coverage, at any rate) or at least the impression I’m getting, seems to be that we want to prove that OBL was involved before we take any action. Of course, the CIA could already be involved in covert action…
Considering the guy’s M.O., he may just duck out of Afghanistan before anyone can get to him. It’s not impossible that he could slip across the border into, say, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan where he would link up with cells who would be sympathetic. He’s even said to have allies in the wilds of western China where he could hole up. Central Asia is a vast area with lots of space.
…and many inaccessable mountainous areas which absolutely negate the possibility of sending in either airplanes or ground troops.
One reason to wait is to be able to display the evidence to the world. Sure, “everyone knows” that it was bin Laden, but the evidence that has been presented, so far, is that bin Laden predicted a terrorist attack a few weeks agao and the U.S. government claims to have intercepted electronic congratulatory messages among members of al-Qaeda.
In this first week of stunned reaction, that is enough to twist the arm of Pakistan to agree to “help.” Will it be enough to ensure Pakistan’s support (with their own internal Islamic Fundamentalists threatening revolution because of that support)? Will it be enough to keep China from throwing covert aid to either bin Laden or the Taleban?
This is not going to be a quickly settled struggle. Going in with overwhelming (independently confirmable) evidence is going to make it easier to keep third parties out of the mess until we can finish the job.
In addition, consider this possibility:
While the Taleban’s claim that bin Laden “didn’t have the resources” (money, electronic communications, etc.) is almost certainly ass-covering rhetoric, several reports seem to indicate that they may have a point–that there was support at a governmental level. The obvious suspect for that scenario is Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but I would not want to rule out Syria as a suspect and there could be others. Suppose we do find and destroy bin Laden? (He will not come back to New York in manacles; when he is found, he will almost inevitably force his own destruction.) So with a swift destruction of bin Laden, rather than a careful assembly of his contacts while he survives, we have a serious possibility of losing the trail to any government that did support him. Then, in a few months or another year, that same government finds some other puppet terrorist to earn the enmity of the U.S. and does it all over again.
And while few people will mourn if we take out the Taleban, there are a lot of countries that would be willing to believe that we manufactured evidence to link Iraq (or, especially, Syria). We need to be able to have overwhelming evidence of the sources of this disaster and take them all out while the world will support us, rather than allowing hasty action to enable China to win over supporters for the Second Cold War.
I’d add that while it may, in time, be proven the Bin Ladin did play an important role in the recent events, it’s by no means certain he played the role. FWIW, I tend to think of him as a key ‘facilitator’ (especially in a recruitment / initial training / picking the ‘team’ way) and if that is even close to the reality, it would be short sighted to lose a vital lead now.
In the Intelligence gathering sense, all potential leads need nurturing in a variety of ways.
Even though there are all sorts of reasons not to go after OBL just yet, it appears to me that there are just as many reasons to go after him now, along with all of the other terrorists groups. We already have proof that OBL killed Americans and others in several bombings, so, in my opinion, why wait any longer? The Taliban is already posturing against the US over a pending invasion, so we might as well mop them up also.
One guy on TV said that if we go in, we might meet defeat just as Russia did and some other nation did in past invasions because of the lay of the land. He suggested just bombing the places OBL might be hiding, and I’m wondering if it might not be time to bring out the nuclear bombs and just kick the hell out of the whole place.
It doesn’t matter all that much which terrorist group gets incinerated, so long as we turn them into nuclear glass because they’ve been killing people too long with impunity as it is.
Nuking Afghanistan or anyone else is the worst possible thing we could do! Setting aside the fact that we’d be killing millions of innocent people, (as opposed to hopefully only a few hundred with reasoned air strikes), there is the issue of retribution. If you think that the Middle East hates us now, what do you think they’ll be saying if we launch a nuke at them? Most of these countries are developing nuclear weapons, and Iraq might have them right now. The WTC attack will seem like a mild slap in the face if they set off a nuke in Washington DC in revenge for us nuking them…
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Where is he?
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U.S. does not want to be seen acting unilaterally when they clearly have the sympathy of most major governments.
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The States have had very little success in going after bin Laden and have spent considerable money and energy doing so.
See this Atlantic Article published in July, 2 months ago.
This was near the edge of a GD from the start, so let’s not push it over by discussing the use of nuclear weapons. There is already a GD thread on that subject, and I invite you to participate in it: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=86837
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Of course, the Afghanis received some $6 billion in aid from the US and the Saudis to fight the Russians. This time, they’ll be pretty much alone, with the Saudis and the Russians (and a lot of other folks) helping us.
My current fantasy is that he is taken alive and tried – not in the US, 'cause many Middle Easterners would see that as illegitimate – but in Saudi Arabia. The Land of the Two Holy Mosques. And a land where defendants – especially those who have declared war on the king – have a much harder time getting a fair trial. True, there are many fanatics who see the Saudis as puppets of the US, but a trial under Islamic law would go a long way toward keeping moderates in our camp.
I caught a snippet of a talk show on Channel 9 where a commentator said that Saddam Hussein might be the culprit for this one.
The best way to go in Afghanistan is through or with the Northern rebels. The Taliban doesn’t represent the civilians. They’re just the strongest rebel group at the moment. Nuking the civilians would be the worst thing to do.
I like that! How exquisitely ironic!
It would also perhaps set a precedent for other cases, as the excuse the Taliban uses for not turning bin Laden over is that it is a tenet of Islam that a Muslim not turn another Muslim over to an infidel. While this is probably mostly unrelated to the real reason for sheltering bin Laden, it does perhaps have some legitimacy among other Islamic nations. Thus, if a workaround was found, it would be easier to put pressure on other Islamic nations to give up terrorists.
I was wondering if there was an equivalent under Islamic law to excommunication. Could bin Laden be declared not to be a Muslim, and thus able to be handed over to the US, where a number of people would like to see him brought to justice?
I see three main ways to go about it, all of them distasteful for one reason or another. All of them take time.
The first way to do it is the traditional way: analyze the evidence, pick your suspects, and apprehend them. This does the least damage to a cell-structure network, for it is designed to survive exactly this sort of response. That’s your immediate response, in an absurdly basic nutshell. It won’t work.
The second way to do it is also traditional: torture and coercion of a few selected people, infiltration of cells if possible, and then a concentrated strike against as many of the cells as possible. Some people are hopefully taken alive and turned, while others are passively watched. Then, as the communication alternatives are narrowed down, you go after the core organization. Timeline: months to years.
There is a third way: ape shit. That method does not bear discussion in this forum. Timeline: well, the Cold War lasted forty-five years, but the Puerto Rican Nationalists aren’t doing too well today, are they?
I would imagine that several of these steps have been taken. We have probably infiltrated various cells of the organizations that may have been involved. We have incredible capabilities in the area of signals intelligence gathering. We can locate primary installations via satellite.
Also, in all likelihood, the cell structure is implemented imperfectly. There are weaknesses to exploit.
It looks as if we are intending to destroy an atmossphere that allows terrorism to prosper. We may miss certain well-concealed cells, but we will be able to drastically interfere with the ability of the organization to exist as any sort of effective structure. The sort of terrorism we are up against here seems to require charismatic leaders such as Osama bin Laden, and seems to flourish when they are beyond the reach of us.
Also, we have to keep in mind that the terrorists will generally not have the discipline to maintain deep cover in territory hostile to their intentions. Such people are rare, and seem to be a different breed than the sort of people that try to instill terror through the slaughter of large numbers of innocents.
I’m by no means educated in such matters, but my feeling is that the type of people most able to work in a hostile environment with a cell structure as impenetrable as can be are revolutionaries, not terrorists. These people would have to be highly devoted to the cause, and very meticulous and deliberate in their actions. Such a group would engage in careful attacks on selected vital targets, and would try like hell to remain alive while doing so.
The terrorists on the other hand are more likely to try to stay out of harm’s way, where they can recruit expendable foot soldiers to die in large attacks on innocent people in an attempt to instill terror in them. By nature, I think such a group would attract a more reckless sort of person than a revolutionary group. It would seem to me that forcing the organization into hiding, and removing visible symbols of its immunity, would vastly decrease its effectiveness.
frogstein, we did do that before & we dropped a special deep bomb on his location but it turned out to not be his location but the location of a lot of civilians!
As Bush is reported to have said yesterday, I dont want to drop a $2M missle on a $10 tent & hit some camel in the ass.
Plus, even if you caught him, what country would want him with those followers of him coming after ya?
Cite?