Spy vs Spy....

[Blind groper]

All very easy to say, in hindsight.

Very true, but.....

I cannot say what things were like in the USA with ordinary people, but here in NZ, before the commitment to war in Afghanistan, but after 9/11, the comments by those who were politically astute was to predict exactly what happened, and to offer the intelligence alternative.

I cannot believe that George Bush junior, with all the advisory services available to him, did not realise exactly the same. Yet he started the war, with all the deaths that had to follow, for what?

My view is that his real motive was simply to get re-elected. The mood in the US after 9/11, as reported all round the world, was one of extreme anger, with the American people demanding drastic action. If Bush had done the correct thing, he would almost certainly have been seen as 'weak' and been voted out of power.

[Coito ergo sum]

He did... wasted thousands of lives and billions of taxpayer money and destroyed much of what stability the middle east had for... well, very little.
Without Saddam Iraq is teetering on the edge of balkanisation and civil war, and Afghanistan is treating the US military as it served the Reds, that and we now now for a fact that Karzai is president of Kabul, not much anywhere else.

As for Obama, He's doing what he can with what he inherited, and when you inherit that kind of Augean stables to clean, that takes time, because you know as well as anybody (except maybe the likes of Ian and Zilla) the disaster that cutting your losses and instant withdrawal would have produced. Maybe he's not been the exemplary guy he was touted during his first election campaign, maybe he's as much a scuzzball as any guy who ever sat in the House or senate... but I can't find that much fault with his handling of that particular pile of manure... maybe more expert eyes do, I can't.

We were talking about Halliburton, not the entire middle east. If Halliburton was George Bush's buddies' cash cow, and they were giving kickbacks to George Bush in reward for taking the US to war, as you said was happening, then why would Obama continue using them? He doesn't know what you know? He doesn't care? He stepped in for Bush and is now getting the kickbacks? Or, perhaps....just perhaps...it's easy shit to make up, and you really don't know fuck all what you're talking about?

Consider whether your understanding of the rest of the middle east situation and the events of the past 10 years is as meaningful as your "Halliburton kickbacks from buddies" analysis.

[Coito ergo sum]

All very easy to say, in hindsight.

Very true, but.....

I cannot say what things were like in the USA with ordinary people, but here in NZ, before the commitment to war in Afghanistan, but after 9/11, the comments by those who were politically astute was to predict exactly what happened, and to offer the intelligence alternative.

There were only a few hundred to a few thousand American boots on the ground in Afghanistan in the early days of the Afghan War, and there were comparatively few all the way until Obama came to office. The biggest complaint from the Left and the so called Peace Movement from 2001 to 2008 was that the Bush Administration committed too few troops to Afghanistan, and that 100,000 troops that were sent on the "adventure" to Iraq should have gone to Afghanistan.

In short -- the "intelligence" method was precisely what was used in Afghanistan. There was an air campaign, and then special forces teams went hole to hole blowing up the massive Al Qaeta cave systems. After that, it was all special forces and intelligence forces, and small numbers of ground troops.

The major criticism of the Bush strategy was that it did not commit enough ground forces to the Afghan theater. Then Obama surged Afghanistan, and the casualties went way up and the situation has become precarious. So, you say that Bush should've had done something different?

I cannot believe that George Bush junior, with all the advisory services available to him, did not realise exactly the same. Yet he started the war, with all the deaths that had to follow, for what?

To destroy as much of Al Qaeta as quickly as possible, shatter their ability to organize and carry out any further attacks, and strike a heavy blow on anyone supporting them.

My view is that his real motive was simply to get re-elected. The mood in the US after 9/11, as reported all round the world, was one of extreme anger, with the American people demanding drastic action. If Bush had done the correct thing, he would almost certainly have been seen as 'weak' and been voted out of power.

The problem with your analysis is that it does not take into account the uncertainty of the times in 2001. It gives too much credit to the persons in power, assuming they had knowledge they do not have. Why did they send a few thousand ground troops into Afghanistan with bags of money to enlist Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban and anti-Al Qaeta forces to fight? Why did we train and arm them? Because large numbers of US ground forces would have been seen as targets and invaders. That's why.

The US used the air bombardment to destroy identifiable ground targets and collapse underground facilities. They then sent ground forces to go hole to hole and blow up the the cave systems and camps where Al Qaeta was.

It also is not unreasonable that the need to display drastic action was also, but not solely, important. At the time, the world was watching, and wondering, and speculating --- was Al Qaeta correct? Was the US really a "Paper Tiger" like bin Laden wrote? Were we incapable of rooting Al Qaeta out of the graveyard of empires? Had they brought the war to the US's shores, and did we have the muscle to respond?

Indeed we did. And, what is thought of as commonplace now -- and assumed to be pretty much business as usual, now -- in 2001, it was anything but certain. To maintain a global action against an Afghan based enemy, all the way on the other side of the world, that was something that many folks were not sure we could pull off. We did. A show of might was, indeed, required. We took gut shot to New fucking York city, and Washington DC. That's not small potatoes. Without an overwhelming response, the US would have been viewed as incapable of such a response. Moreover, the devastation wrought on Al Qaeta and active enemy forces was huge.

To suggest now - "oh, you could have taken out all the Al Qaeta guys with just some good intelligence work." That's naive in the extreme, and underestimates the size and sophistication of the organization that carried out 9/11/01. We also had no way of knowing there wasn't another shoe about to drop. Leave them working and acting around the world, as intelligence folks do their work, and perhaps another event occurs.

Moreover, in 2001, there was a dearth of on the ground, human intelligence. That part of the American CIA and intelligence regime had been gutted since the late 70s, and 80s.

[Blind groper]

Coito

A flaw in your logic.
America did not attack Al Qaeda.
It attacked the Taliban. It attacked the then legitimate government of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda simply shifted its base. You cannot harm Al Qaeda, except in a small way, by attacking its hosts.

What really hurt Al Qaeda was the intelligence feed back, and the actions targeted with surgical precision against them.

I take my hat off to the intelligence community who did that. One of the correct actions Bush took after 9/11 was to increase the funding of intelligence agencies and send them out to infiltrate and gain information on Al Qaeda. I strongly suspect that MI6, Mossad, and other allied intelligence groups did the same. The flow back of information was what allowed proper actions to be taken.

Al Qaeda has been hurt and hurt badly. Its ability to strike is seriously curtailed. My guess is that they are also harmed by the fact that they can no longer trust their own members. How do you launch an attack when your strike team probably contains spies? However, the attack on the Taliban has done little to harm Al Qaeda. They have been hurt by the much smarter, and much more localised attacks against their members.

[Audley Strange]

All you have to do is look at the suppression of intelligence reports from 1943 onwards about what was going on in the concentration camps. Despite there being dozens if not hundreds of them, they were ignored or considered implausible by "allied" Governments and denied to be factual even though they were being widely reported in the press.

The rest of Yerup hated da Joos almost as much as the Germans. They were probably hoping the "problem" would just "go away..."

I agree wholeheartedly, which why it annoys me that they've somehow become the centre-piece reason for the allies being "noble" in their murder sprees, when no one gave a shit about them. However the O.S.S. and some tool in the State department kept saying the camps were rumours even after people were being liberated from them. In fact I heard a story that Jack Warner (of Warner Bros) was brought in by some general (could have been Ike) to film the camps because he did not trust the politicians to make it public. Dunno if it's true or not.

[Audley Strange]

That was the minimal cost.

Since the real victories were all gained by intelligence agencies, and covert operatives pretending to be Al Qaeda, why should there have been a war in Afghanistan at all (or Iraq)? That it, apart from the political and economic reasons (Bush wanting to be seen by the electorate as 'strong'), and the quest for oil.

The thing is that Al Qaeda was not really the reason for war. Al Qaeda needed to be countered, but that was best done via more subtle methods using good intelligence. Not the blunt and horribly destructive method of going to war.

The Afghanistan war was simply revenge and the Iraq war had been on the cards for a while. Granted it was an opportunistic ransacking of a country for business interests and at the same time gave the Western allies a chance to waggle their war-peens at any other nation who might consider an alternative form of governance rather than plutocracy.

[Blind groper]

The Afghanistan war was simply revenge and the Iraq war had been on the cards for a while. Granted it was an opportunistic ransacking of a country for business interests and at the same time gave the Western allies a chance to waggle their war-peens at any other nation who might consider an alternative form of governance rather than plutocracy.

Audley

I love your hard bitten cynicism. It may not be totally correct, but nevertheless it warms this skeptical heart of mine.

[Audley Strange]

The Afghanistan war was simply revenge and the Iraq war had been on the cards for a while. Granted it was an opportunistic ransacking of a country for business interests and at the same time gave the Western allies a chance to waggle their war-peens at any other nation who might consider an alternative form of governance rather than plutocracy.

Audley

I love your hard bitten cynicism. It may not be totally correct, but nevertheless it warms this skeptical heart of mine.

I thought I was being pretty reasonable for a change. My take on things is chimp behaviour first, then mind and logic wrenching rationales that what we did wasn't chimp behaviour, second. I don't blame the U.S. regime for it, it's the nature of chimps with power to abuse it for their own benefit.

And before anyone mentions the bonobo again, let me just say the bonobo can go fuck themselves.

[Blind groper]

My take on things is chimp behaviour first, then mind and logic wrenching rationales that what we did wasn't chimp behaviour, second. I don't blame the U.S. regime for it, it's the nature of chimps with power to abuse it for their own benefit.

Not a bad take on things.
My view is that you are mostly correct, but humans are pretty good at taking what a chimp would do and making it worse.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Without even considering the shoddy grounds on which it was mounted, the invasion of Iraq was a foreign-policy and military blunder of the first order, in my view.

On the military side of the ledger, it represented, on a strategic level, an unnecessary and indeed harmful division of forces. The buildup of forces for OIF prevented the assignation of sufficient troops to Afghanistan in order to attain a favorable decision there, resulting in a drastic lengthening of the war there. While the military campaign itself was executed almost flawlessly, the planning for its aftermath was hopelessly optimistic, and ignorant of Iraqi history regarding foreign forces on its soil; they've never taken kindly to it. The resulting quagmire prevented a decision in Afghanistan. The Japanese have a saying: "He who chases two hares catches neither." This decision is exactly that sort of mistake: in military operations, remaining focused on the mission at hand is crucial.

Diplomatically, it squandered the reservoir of goodwill we had around the world, even in Muslim nations. This makes it more difficult for us to garner support for diplomatic initiatives we would like to pursue, which in turn hamstrings our foreign policy.

[Blind groper]

Thumpa

As a non American, let me agree with you. It certainly did not improve the very tarnished view I already had of the American administration and the American military.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You? Holding a tarnished view of America?

[Svartalf]

Without even considering the shoddy grounds on which it was mounted, the invasion of Iraq was a foreign-policy and military blunder of the first order, in my view.

On the military side of the ledger, it represented, on a strategic level, an unnecessary and indeed harmful division of forces. The buildup of forces for OIF prevented the assignation of sufficient troops to Afghanistan in order to attain a favorable decision there, resulting in a drastic lengthening of the war there. While the military campaign itself was executed almost flawlessly, the planning for its aftermath was hopelessly optimistic, and ignorant of Iraqi history regarding foreign forces on its soil; they've never taken kindly to it. The resulting quagmire prevented a decision in Afghanistan. The Japanese have a saying: "He who chases two hares catches neither." This decision is exactly that sort of mistake: in military operations, remaining focused on the mission at hand is crucial.

Diplomatically, it squandered the reservoir of goodwill we had around the world, even in Muslim nations. This makes it more difficult for us to garner support for diplomatic initiatives we would like to pursue, which in turn hamstrings our foreign policy.

For that matter, so was the invasion of Afghanistan, as the place is a standing army nightmare... as the Russians got to know and the US and their allies also did... problem is, as has been noted, you can't destroy Al Qaeda by invading its host countries, as they'll just relocate, and the destruction of the taliban can't be achieved short of nuking out all civilisation north of the India/pakistan border.

[Clinton Huxley]

As I heard on the radio the other day, the British Army has been trying to subdue Afghanistan since 1839. The commanders assure us they are making steady progress....

[Blind groper]

You? Holding a tarnished view of America?

No. My view of America and Americans has never been tarnished. However, my view of the American adminstration, military, and some aspects of the American system is something else.