How many times have you heard someone preface his opposition to the invasion of Iraq by professing his support for attacking Afghanistan? To dodge the charge he's soft on terror, he holds up the earlier offensive as a model for the war on terror.
You may even agree with journalist Mark Bowden of "Black Hawk Down" fame, as expressed in his piece, "The Kabul-ki Dance" (collected in "Road Work," Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004). "The astonishing precision of modern American weaponry," he writes, "deflates. . . outrage" against bombing Afghanistan.
In other words, we supposedly worked the kinks out of precision bombing with the Gulf War and Kosovo.
Bowden's portrait of a squadron of F-15 pilots and "wizzos" (the bombardier as video gamer) is illuminating. But it requires some serious denial to adhere to the belief that only a handful of bombs ganged aft agley. Especially once he describes the operation's massive scale.
"From early October of 2001 until the following January," Bowden writes, "the sky over Afghanistan caterwauled with war planes and support aircraft from the British and American Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force -- so many that the greatest danger faced by . . . [the air crews] was colliding with one another or being clipped by . . . [bombs] from above."
Bowden cites, in descending order, scores of satellites hundreds of miles up and, at 40,000 feet, B-52s and B-1s (leaving, from that height, little collateral undamaged). Below them flew planes jamming enemy communications, fighters for support, tankers for refueling aircraft, and helicopter rescue teams. But this was just the supporting cast for the stars -- the "strikers": Fs 14, 15, 16, and 18. The F-15 alone carried nine bombs, including the occasional 5,000-pound bunker buster.
In light of this imperfect storm -- 21,000 flights and 20,000 bombs -- perhaps the 400 to 3,500 civilian deaths were proof of "astonishing precision." Besides, they're a drop in the bucket compared to 600,000 dead in Iraq, the "bad war."
But how can a person of conscience countenance such a no-holds-barred bombing campaign? After all, there are few countries as poor and wretched. Even Donald Rumsfeld, in Richard Clarke's famous quote, complained that "there were no decent targets in Afghanistan." (In other words, "Where's the fun in bombing a country back to the Stone Age that's already there?")
Rumsfeld may also have been unconsciously acknowledging that bombing is more effective at steeling an opponent's resolve than bending him to your will. Not only is the Taliban resurgent, but civilian casualties are as well. Sixty were killed in the south of Afghanistan by NATO forces last week. As with Lebanon, nothing beats killing civilians for driving a populace into the arms of an organization we've designated terrorist.
Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan may have been shattered by, in large part, the bombing. But, besides its hit or miss nature (hit civilians, miss bin Laden), bombing terrorists doesn't work because they grow among civilians like weeds. With terrorists, you either pull them out by the handful or enrich their arid growing medium by stimulating the economy.
In fact, bombing terrorists strikes as discordant a note as attacking a nation like Iraq whose government harbored hardly any terrorists (if only because it cornered the market on terror itself).
Finally, if it's credibility on national security issues that we crave, a good place to start is by ceasing to enable the administration. Rather than wracking our brains trying to solve their problems, let Bush & Co. clean up their own messes in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other words, save your breath. They're not listening anyway.
Instead, look to the future and keep them from making another mess. Let newly elected Democratic congressmen know there's hope for the Iran and North Korea stalemates.
As North Korea and Iran remind us at regular intervals, we don't observe the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Just for a moment, take them at their word. Aside to military wonks: nuclear tactical weapons are not a toy -- find a new one.
At present, due to non-nuclear signatories' disillusionment with the nuclear powers' refusal to disarm, the treaty is toothless. But show Article VI -- which requires the signatories to reduce and eventually liquidate their stockpiles -- some love and you've fitted the NPT with a new pair of choppers. Considering how vast our nuclear arsenal is, the first steps to disarmament will be painless.
North Korea and Iran will finally be forced to put up or shut up. Meanwhile, Democrats will have made their first end-run around Republicans on national security in a generation.
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
believing it to be the ultimate failure to communicate.
However there does come a time when such an horrific response is necesary, and Afghanistan was one such case. The government actively supported,harbored, aided and abetted those who planned and executed the events of 9/11 and thus our response initially was correct.
The actions of this supremely incompetent administration after the invasion are obviously as wrong and insufficient as has been their responses to most everything else. We replaced the Taliban and then turned our attention to Iraq and now Afghanistani Taliban are slowly rising up and we are losing there as well.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 7:11:33 AM
We usually coincide. But here I fully agree with Russ. WE DO NOT KNOW who did 9/11. There was neither investigation nor a trial. Moreover, it is not for us to judge which foreign govt is bad and which is not. We here accused the Russians of the same false logic when they invaded. Then why we used this logic now?
The current Afghani catastrophe is our doing. We did it. Both wars were criminal and illegal. We introduced a principle of punishing any country we like. No wonder that they react. No wonder we are losing everywhere big time. No wonder we should lose because their cause is right and ours is not.
The proper answer to 9/11 was supposed to be an investigation and a trial. It is exactly to avoid that the hysterical idiots in power unleashed wars. And they reap the harvest big time. Actually, we reap the harvest too, I am sorry.
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3204 comments)
on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 7:29:09 AM
. . . by (and still is) by the Taliban. But bombing the disease's host, Afghanistan, is like the most aggressive form of chemotherapy, weakening or even killing the host.
If my opposition to bombing under any circumstances disqualifies me from the dialogue, I can live with that. (Read "House of War" by James Carroll [Houghton Mifflin, 2006].)
by
Russ Wellen (58 articles, 1029 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 335 comments)
on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 8:04:22 AM
I have to admit, there was a part of me that was all for the bombing of Afghanistan. Yes, as much as I hate to admit it, I was suckered in to the fray on that brain fart. While the Taliban MAY have been headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, the question I have always held is why didn't we bomb Saudi Arabia back to the stone age?
For the purpose of this comment, let's assume that what we were told about 9/11 by the media was correct. If it was, then the lion's share of the "terrorists" who brought down all those airplanes were, in fact, of Saudi descent. Where is our outrage and our retribution aimed in the direction of Saudi Arabia? I'll tell you where it is, it doesn't exist.
Why is this? Well, part of it could be the fact that at least ten percent of our economy is upheld by the "generous" monetary donations of oil rich Saudi Sheiks. Another part of it could be the fact that the Bush family numbers many of Saudi descent among their "friends". Further, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is a close personal friend of DUBYA, even to the point of being given "son-like" status and a Bush-esq name, even to the point of standing on the veranda of the White House smoking a cigar.
In other words, our retaliation against Saudi Arabia is and ever shall remain as invisible as the WMD's in Iraq about which DUBYA joked as our troops died fighting for Halliburton. If this so-called "war on terror" is supposed to be waged against countries that harbor and/or support terrorists, then we are long past overdue with our carpet bombing raids over Saudi soil.
But we can't do that. Oh no, if we were to do that, the American economy would be plunged into a dark, dismall abyss from which it would never again surface. We have prostituted our country for the sake of the world's favorite drug, oil, and therefore, we can never fully prosecute any war on terror.
The Saudis should be made to pay the piper. As a matter of fact, they have a larger debt with said piper than Saddam Hussein or Iraq ever had. Of course, if we toppled Saddam, the world would beat a path to our door, right? We'd be greeted as liberators, and have rose petals thrown at our feet, right? We'd find those pesky WMD's that the UN seemingly couldn't locate, right?
Apparently, no on all counts. So, here we are, stuck in the mire of an unwinnable war in Iraq. The Taliban has re-asserted itself in Afghanistan. So have all those pretty white poppies and their milk of paradise. The puppet dictator we installed there can seemingly do nothing to stop the rising of either the Taliban or the poppies (and in the case of the latter, it's probably truer to say he WANTS to do nothing).
All the while, Saudi Arabia continues to pump their black gold from the ground. They continue to enjoy the prosperity of the pimp who is also the pusher. They rest in seats of power, safe from the penalties of their terrorist supporting ways. They know to a man there is no way on this planet or any other we would even consider slapping them in any way, shape, or form. By all rights, and assuming the official story on 9/11 is true, they deserve at least a good slap upside the head, if not a few cluster bombs.
I admit at the time, I was for the Afghanistan war. Now I know it was a mistake. This is especially true since we couldn't even meet our goal of capturing a six foot four diabetic terrorist attached to a dialysis machine.
I have never been for the war in Iraq. I knew we were going to find a way to go there even as Gore was conceeding. There was no doubt in my mind. When 9/11 hit, I knew that was the fuse for which DUBYA had been waiting.
We will never truly prosecute Saudi Arabia, a country that was directly involved with 9/11. Until such time as we do, the "war on terror" will remain what it has always been, a PR campaign used to insure Republicans retain their offices, and a means to usurp our civil rights in the name of "national security".
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 2:19:26 PM
