Bush's threat -

[shadowsource]

So W wants to go after the folks who harbor the terrorists. Ok, that's Afghanistan, a wreck of a country that's been consumed by warfare (much of which we've paid for and encouraged) for more than two decades. Bin Laden is our old CIA asset in fighting the Russians, and he's pretty smart, no? The Afghanis have very little to lose. Do people here realize how Afghanis live, in ruins, with next to nothing? They don't have a World Trade Center. They don't have television. They don't have the internet. The only things an Afghani needs, every day, are: Food, water, a beard (for men), and full body and facial covering (for women).

So what is the Pentagon going to do to the Taliban? Kill them and send them to heaven (in their view)? Do what the Soviets did and try to seize an impossible country (ask Rudyard Kipling about subuing Afghanis)? If we go in there, how do we punish them? Starve them? Shave them? Make their women wear bikinis?

That's the problem, war hawks. The enemy is pathetic, to our eyes. They inhabit a different dimension of life. Most of them are hardly aware of us. Don't expect much. We could bomb Kabul for a week and it wouldn't look much different.

 

[Charly]

Oh, goody, let's surrender.

You would have certainly liked to surrender to Hitler and Hirohito. We wouldn't have an internet even.

Wherever the terrorists are harbored and encouraged, it is common sense to turn off the electricity, communications, utilities.

Surrender, my ass.