Posted on 10/24/2001 4:59:52 AM PDT by Mustard
It’s apparent that our “war on terrorism” is off to a halting start. Things aren’t going as planned. Militarily, politically, and propagandistically, we’ve got some problems, not to mention the anthrax panic that has the entire civilized world on edge.
After two weeks of bombing Afghanistan, we’ve found the Taliban is a tougher nut to crack than the administration and the Pentagon had hoped. It’s not falling apart on schedule. Our Special Forces operation in which 100 or so troops were parachuted into a Taliban stronghold is reported in the Russian press to have been a failure, in that it didn’t achieve its objectives. American and British war planes have missed or mistaken targets, in one case slamming a village near a former terrorist training camp, in another, destroying a Red Cross supply depot marked with a big red cross.
The United States had hoped by the time to have the pieces in place for a coalition government to rule Afghanistan, perhaps underestimating the difficulty in getting the various Tajik, Pashtun, Uzbek, and Hazara tribes to agree on anything except how much fun it is to kill each other.
Meanwhile, the ever-simmering tensions between India and Pakistan are again reaching the boiling point, something that must command attention since both nations possess nuclear weapons. Israel has thumbed its nose at U.S. demands that it retreat from Palestinian territories it’s seized following the assassination of a far-right Israeli cabinet minister.
When it comes to the propaganda war, we’re doing well on the home front, with the media basically cheer-leading the war effort when they aren’t busy fueling the bio-terror panic. Overseas, it’s a different story. Osama bin Laden has had considerable success in shaping opinion in the Muslim world. Though the American media, bowing to government pressure, has for the most part kept his statements out of our newspapers and off our TV screens, this is not the case elsewhere.
So far, then, we see that the initiative, or momentum, if you will, is with the Islamic zealots who have declared War on America (though bin Laden claims he is not fighting America, just Israel and its allies, which raises the question of why, then, the jetliner attacks on New York and Washington?). But this is the early stage of this conflict and unpredictability is a two-way street. Things may not be going as we had hoped, but they won’t always go the way the terrorists hope either.
For, as World War One opponent Randolph Bourne so memorably put it, “War is like riding a wild elephant. You don’t know where it will take you.” This warning is also applicable to those who bombed us with our own planes. They think we are weak, that we lack the courage and stamina to effectively fight them. They are playing with fire. If, heaven forbid, they should achieve, say, the deaths of many more thousands of Americans through further attacks, it is altogether probable that big cities in the Moslem world harboring these terrorists would be removed from the earth.
We’ve done it before at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ve firebombed Tokyo and Dresden. Hell, we even burned Atlanta during the Civil War in our own land. Miscalculations abound in war, and we’re not the only ones prone to them. So watch out, Mr. Osama, instead of being remembered as a martyr for Allah, you may in the end be the man who called down a holocaust on those who would revere you.
I find it refreshing that someone is actually saying that the nuclear option is entirely plausible.
On the other hand, he is a Freeper - so he can't be all bad.
Let us—the USA—use any means necessary!!!
Bobp
What is this guy thinking???
There are billions of Muslims and 3 million israelites. It would be easier to simply ceed New York State to the Jews and refrain from turning 3 billion people into shadows. And couldn't you have found a word other than refreshing to describe the melting of enemy civilians?
The mind set of the Muslim seems to be one of, if your not Muslim then you don't deserve to live. I was always told for years, that any country or nation that used Bio-chem weapons on this nation would be nuked in a second.
It may take many lives and several years, but in the end, and when it becomes clear that it is our survival that counts, the nuclear devices will fall.
This has been our policy for quite along time against countries who attack us with weapons of mass destruction, such as Anthrax. It just hasn't been highlighted as an option. Plausible and feasible are too different situations.
Then what word would you use?
I'm sure they found it "refreshing" when the twin towers fell.
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