A respected national daily newspaper in the UK, The Guardian, has reported today that the US warned the Taliban a couple of months ago that it was going to bomb Kabul.
So was this a pre-emptive strike rather than a strike out of the blue as we all thought?
This is the link: The Guardian.
I recommend y’all read it.
My own personal instant summary of the article: the US warned Afghanistan two months ago that if the Taliban or OBL did something stupid, the US would have no choice but to use force. Apparently the Taliban and OBL just couldn’t resist the temptation to do something stupid anyway.
Someone at the Guardian needs to look up the definition of the term “pre-emptive strike.” See, in miltary terms, a pre-emptive strike is an early decisive attack that prevents the enemy from attacking you, as was (almost) the case with Pearl Harbor … not an attack against a civilian target that instantly galvanizes the enemy against you, while at the same time putting all the world’s other major military powers either explicitly or implicitly on the enemy’s side. The WTC attack didn’t pre-empt a thing militarily; it incited plenty.
Absolutely. In fact, September 22nd was the date when the World Trade Center planned on declaring war on Afghanistan.
From the article:
Interesting stuff. I agree that it doesn’t sound as much like a pre-emptive strike as a morbid urge to provide all the rope necessary for their own hanging.
That may be exactly what the terrorists wanted.
Provoke a response. A big jeezus response. And help foment outrage among certain elements in the big nasty world that have gripes against the US/West in general, milk that outrage financially, and recruit a new generation of suicide bombers from the refugee camps and internally displaced.
A reaction is defintely what they wanted. But if the West were to surprise the (non-terrorist, average) people there with generosity after the inevitable military action, say a new kind of Marshall Plan, it might take the wind out of the sails of the terrorists. Winning the “minds of hearts” is surely the only long-term solution.