Does anyone else think this won't be a long military war?

[p_p_man]

For years the IRA bombed targets in Ireland and on the UK mainland. The latest conflict has lasted 40 years.

Nothing really changed. The IRA was not involved in any negotiations, its leaders voices were muted out from TV and radio programmes and life became one long seek and apprehend exercise. And the IRA continued bombing. They killed UK nationals, Irish national and nationals from other countries visiting our country on holiday or business.

Then in 1992 the IRA bombed the Baltic Exchange in the City of London. Within days the City was ringed by police road blocks and became the safest area in the country to go into. And why? Because the bomb was planted in the heart of the financial district. Foreign firms threatened to move their headquarters to other countries and the stock market took a dive.

Soon afterwards the first tentative moves were made to talk with the IRA.

One of Tuesday's targets was the heart of New York's financial district. The stock exchange, out of commission for a week, had to return to operational status even though its communications was severely disrupted, otherwise America would have plunged further and further towards depression. The airlines have been very quick off the mark in announcing massive job losses (too quick in my opinion but there you are) and I have no doubt that foreign companies which have invested heavily in America are right now nervously re-thinking their strategy - just in case.

Hit the flow of money of a country and you hit the main artery.

So, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I feel that as Afghanistan is already targeted that will be the country to bear the brunt of America's anger. That will be the end of any military action. Then there will be a time when various countries will clamp down on the terrorists within their own sphere of influence with not so much military but possibly economic and aid assistance. Then even further down the road there will be fewer and fewer attempts at going for the terrorists as different priorities take precedence and economic life will continue more or less as before.

Unless the whole thing is re-awakened by another terrorist atrocity.

 

[SoftPeaches]

I fear that the war might lose public support if results are not made....it's not a well-defined war, and Americans don't tend to be patient as a people.

 

[Problem Child]

The world according to p_p_man. How depressing.

Maybe we should just all roll over and take it.

 

[pabloback]

the problem with terrorists is the fact that they are the hidden enemy
it is much easier to fight a way against another military power
the russians learned the hard way in afghanistan
incedentally before the russians moved in the americans were the afghanis greatest ally
how times change

 

[shadowsource]

A lot of problems -

There probably won't be many obvious "victories" - success would be measured in events that never happen. Americans are VERY bad at such subtleties, in manifesting patience. Being personally convinced that whoever did this (and there is a huge constituencey in the intelligence and military community for blaming Saddam Hussein just now) will do it again and again, I am prepared to look back in five years and give Bushie lots of credit if NYC and other parts of the US aren't much further damaged.

But I'll be happily surprised if the US team turns out to deal well with the indispensable intelligence agents and connivers we're going to need in a lot of Middle Eastern countries. It will be tough to get them to tell us things, and it will be tough to know if what they're telling us is actually useful. I feel that my country is desperately unqualified for the mission Bush has outlined. And while I disagree that our mission has to be to destroy every terrorist in the world, I think that the perpetrators of this attack have forfeited their lives, or at least their freedom, by virtue of their bloody-minded nihilism. I think Bush needs to do much of what he has set out to do.

I can say that I disagree with bombing Afghanistan, or that conducting a ground war there is suicidal. Yet I feel that the training camps there need to be closed. I don't have a clue as to how they'll achieve much. As a longtime leftist, I support the effort in as honest a way as I can - critically, but without harping.
I recognize that my man Clinton failed to achieve much against these people; I hope that a man whom I regard as a lesser figure in all dimenstions can accomplish more. I suppose that's how a lot of people in the Uk once felt about the unpopular Winston Churchill when he assumed the Prime Ministerial duties.

 

[morninggirl5]

Re: A lot of problems -

I feel that my country is desperately unqualified for the mission Bush has outlined.


I recognize that my man Clinton failed to achieve much against these people;

Do you also recognize that much of our unpreparedness is due to Clinton's policies. We are sending a military force reduced by 40% since the early 90's into a WAR against terrorist regimes that have used the last 8 years to grow in number and sophistication.

For the past week, I've heard over and over again how we as a nation have ignored the intelligence warnings that terrorist attacks were our greatest threat. Bush has been criticized for 8 months worth of ignoring, shouldn't Clinton be criticized for 8 years of ignoring. We saw a significant escalation in the severity, boldness, and savagery of the attacks under Clinton and the response was indictments, requests for extradition, and more requests.

 

[Barb Dwyer]

Perhaps this is naive on my part, but I do not see us conducting any sort of traditional warfare. We cannot possibly use warships, aircraft or other historical strategies with any great effectiveness.

We will need to employ new methods and partners. This means that we will need to enlist the aid of individuals who are not considered 'above board.' Our military or intelligence operatives won't be able to blend in to infiltrate bin Laden's organization.

So we will need to recruit and pay for criminal minds from his own organization. People whose morals are questionable to be sure. People who, like bin Laden himself, we will train and use for our own purposes and who will, no doubt, one day turn on us.

But that is how I see this campaign. We cannot carpet bomb Afghanistan's cities. We cannot indiscriminately kill innocents. We need to minimize collateral damage. We cannot target mountainsides. We cannot wage a ground campaign in those mountains and outcroppings- we would have no prayer!

We need to cut off his funding- from the various and sundry investments he has on a global scale. We need to target his supporters and their financial contributions. So, I see this as a more diversified warfare than just using our military personnel and hardware. Our fancy fighter jets and naval fleet; our air support and ground troops are mostly for show. They will not win the war on terrorism. There is no specific target for them as in wars past. No buildings. No munitions factories. No barracks. With bin Laden picking up and moving camp every 12-24 hours, we cannot keep up with large troop movements.

So, I don't see this as taking long in the way we are used to warfare.

 

[shadowsource]

Re: Re: A lot of problems -

Do you also recognize that much of our unpreparedness is due to Clinton's policies. We are sending a military force reduced by 40% since the early 90's into a WAR against terrorist regimes that have used the last 8 years to grow in number and sophistication.

For the past week, I've heard over and over again how we as a nation have ignored the intelligence warnings that terrorist attacks were our greatest threat. Bush has been criticized for 8 months worth of ignoring, shouldn't Clinton be criticized for 8 years of ignoring. We saw a significant escalation in the severity, boldness, and savagery of the attacks under Clinton and the response was indictments, requests for extradition, and more requests.

Yeah, yeah. It's witless ever to concede an inch in this place. No one respects or understands it.
Barb Dwyer is correct: Military cuts, which began under Bush I (the cold War ended, remember?) and continued under Clinton, have no real effect on the "war" we shall be conducting.
The fact is that the Hart-Rudman Commission long ago suggested this Homeland agency that Bush backed tonight. It had a lot of Congressional approval from both parties, and Bush killed it because he wanted his old campaign manager Joe Allbaugh to run it at FEMA. So nothing was done. Whether or not it could have been done in time, Bush didn't give a rat's ass about our security when it came time to pad his crony's dossier. So lay off the endlessly partisan shit stirring and look forward, huh? Or are you trying to set up excuses for any failures that take place?

 

[Problem Child]

Re: Re: Re: A lot of problems -

So lay off the endlessly partisan shit stirring and look forward, huh?

That's pretty funny coming from you.

hehe...best chuckle of the night.

 

[p_p_man]

Re: Re: A lot of problems -

We are sending a military force reduced by 40% since the early 90's into a WAR.

This is precisely the type of comment which I find very annoying and builds up the mistrust against America that you seem to find so surprising.

America is NOT, repeat NOT, fighting this by herself. She has a military ally in Britain who's armed forces will probably make up more than the 40% you say was reduced. Other countries will come in with military help if they can. So numbers have nothing to do with it.

And to say that the terrorists have grown in sophistication is laughable. Apart from Hussein, and he has the resources of a country at his disposal, and still hasn't achieved the technological sophistication of the rest of us, terrorists don't have massive factories, laboratories or organisation to become "sophisticated". They're just a bunch of fanatical zealots who have to be given their "sophistication" or steal it.

Just once morningirl5 I would like to hear you and others who think like you, say "America and her allies", and forget about what resources you, alone, as a country have but to take on board that other countries are in this with America and are about to have young people killed alongside Americans.

Don't be so bloody partisan.

 

[KillerMuffin]

The problem with this war..

Where is the front?
Who do we fight?
How do we know who the enemy is?
How do we stop the enemy from attacking us at home?
Which weapons would be the most effective?
Do we fight the people who harbor them?
How do we know the people who harbor them did it knowingly?

Have you ever tried to get rid of the cockroaches in the house? The most effective means of killing cockroaches is to get everything alive that you want to stay alive out of the house and then bug bomb the shit out of the place.

How do you fight a war against cockroaches?

I think this war will be long and protracted. It's going to make whomever is in charge mighty unpopular, they'll want a Desert Stormish thing. Zoom in, save the day, zoom out and leave some tanks there and don't tell the public about how many of our people are "keeping peace."

Rather, we'll be in a land where the surrounding countries are going to grow increasingly hostile as time goes on. Civilians will be mistaken for terrorists and killed. There will be vast repercussions over that. There will a lot of money spent to keep us over there. The very nature of terrorists attacks will leave our allies who are soveriegn where we fight vulnerable and they will leave our own homes vulnerable.

This is guerilla warfare taken to a new and more extreme level.

Bush must figure out how to exterminate the cockroaches without emptying out the house. To make matters worse, you can't always tell the cockroaches from the friendlies.

This will be a war of assassination and intelligence. Anything else is too absurd to consider. We want to go over there and bomb someone to make ourselves feel vindicated and our lost avenged. That's why we'll pick a fight with the countries that "harbor" the terrorists, so we look like we're doing something.

Kennedy to Reagan was a Cold War. This will be one like it.

 

[Problem Child]

Pretty good analysis, although I hope we don't "pick a fight" just to satisfy impatient Americans that want to see smart bomb camera footage.

One thing people must consider, is that raids, mainly by air, may be conducted just to stir things up and get the intended targets out and moving where we can see them, or to divert from where a real commando strike may take place. Thes attacks might be conducted with the intent not of killing people, but just shaking things up and getting cell-phone and internet traffic moving, so our intelligence guys can find the real targets.

 

[shadowsource]

Thank you, PC -

That's pretty funny coming from you.

hehe...best chuckle of the night.

I always appreciate positive feedback, and you know about my humor issues.

 

[Problem Child]

you have issues?

 

[p_p_man]

Yes I agree KM.

Now that it looks inevitable that Afghanistan is going to be the target chosen for miltary action (whether bin Laden is there or not) that will be the "immediate revenge action" any country would want if they went through what America has in the last week or so.

After that I see it being as you say. With the added weapons of economic and aid to be used against countries that give sanctuary to terrorists.

As we've learnt in the UK there are no borders in a fight against terrorism you just have to infiltrate, infiltrate and infiltrate.

Although America or any other country has never built up a couvert global network of assassins or anti terrorist organisations it's more than likely that she won't have to.

All we have to do is to keep those countries who have terrorist problems on the side of the alliance and filter the information as it's received. The hard work will be setting up a system of global co-operation and a central clearing house for all the incoming information.

When I first heard about Bush's global war against terrorists I was skeptical. I didn't think that in the way it was presented it would work. But more recently he has moderated his initial ideas and has come around to a more practical way of dealing with the problem.

With the technological weapons at our disposal, echelon being one of the more recent additions, together with the more traditional methods of counter-intelligence I'm beginning to think this might work.

As you say it's going to be an on going thing though. There never will be and end to terrorism, but after the initial flush and destroy, I can see the "war" becoming more or less a routine operation of information gathering and collation. And of course you can destroy an enemy quite easily if you know where he is at any moment in time.

 

[shadowsource]

Suggested movie, if you can find it -

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, by Gillo Pontecorvo (also directed BURN, with Marlon Brando).

 

[KillerMuffin]

Hey, I've been looking for the article, can't find it, but reports show that this is a global incident, not just an American one. A little over 1,000 of the missing or dead are citizens of other countries. Britian clocked in with just over 300 dead or missing. China, Japan, Germany, Belgium, France, Israel, Ghana, Korea, Mexico are just a few of the countries with citizens who are either lost or missing.

 

[FlamingoBlue]

I do not believe that the U.S. citizens

will tolerate or support another Vietnam type war.I anticipate that there will be an initial overt show of force coupled with an intensive, long term, covert, multinational effort to identify, infiltrate and destroy terrorism throughout the world.

I don't see this as a war against nations but rather as a battle of ideologies. And you can't bomb ideologies unless they are supported by countries that further the cause. That's why I believe the "war" will be a long one, but not a very heated one. This will not be a "war" in the sense of another Vietnam, with large committed ground, air and naval forces. But, then, WTF do I know.

blue

 

[Styphon]

the problem with terrorists is the fact that they are the hidden enemy
it is much easier to fight a way against another military power
the russians learned the hard way in afghanistan
incedentally before the russians moved in the americans were the afghanis greatest ally
how times change

Yep - the Afghans were seen as heroic warriors, fighting a cruel invader. America LOVED them, as witness the Rambo film (was it number 3?) where he and his staunch Afghan allies blitzed the Russkies...

"The enemy of your enemy is NOT always your friend."

Styphon

 

[shadowsource]

"The enemy of your enemy is NOT always your friend."
Styphon

It would be soooo nice if Americans understood this. But that's unlikely. I even saw the unusually intelligent and articulate (for a US Senator) John McCain mouthing the old crap about the enemy of my enemy with no consciousness that this is how we first fell in love with Osama bin Laden.