Spy vs Spy....

[JimC]

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.

[Coito ergo sum]

Coito

A flaw in your logic.
America did not attack Al Qaeda.

Of course it did. The US massively attacked Al Qaeta.

It attacked the Taliban.

Yes, that too, because the Taliban were harboring Al Qaeta.

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.

We killed large numbers of Al Qaeta members. That's called attacking Al Qaeta. And, nobody said Afghanistan was the sole theater of war. Hence the much-maligned (from the left) "global" war on terrorism, which acknowledges the basic fact that Al Qaeta is a hydra.

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

I don't take anything away from intelligence work, but intelligence did not work in a vacuum. What "really hurt" Al Qaeta was the United States shifting to a war footing, kicking in doors, putting bullets in heads, slitting throats and metaphorically mounting heads up on sticks.

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.

Sure, it was was something that had to be done due to the intelligence draw-down that had previously occurred. You may recall that in 2001, there were hardly any human intelligence agents who could speak Arabic in the US intelligence service. Covert human intelligence was at a minimum, and the US was overly relying on technology.

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.

Again, it doesn't occur in a vacuum or in isolation. Intelligence forces are vital. But, to suggest that the damage done to Al Qaeta by the invasion of Afghanistan was irrelevant or ineffectual is, well, all I can say is, counterfactual.

[Coito ergo sum]

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.

The idea was that some day someone would claim it never happened.

[Ronja]

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.

.

Another

[Coito ergo sum]

Which one is the Merkin?

[Audley Strange]

The merkin would be the one breaching neutrality acts, creating banks to launder the proceeds and using those proceeds to fund death squads, juntas and militias to destabilise democracies when the populace choose the wrong leader. Neither of those two then. Those two above are iirc meant to depict inept Cuban goons.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The merkin would be the one breaching neutrality acts, creating banks to launder the proceeds and using those proceeds to fund death squads, juntas and militias to destabilise democracies when the populace choose the wrong leader. Neither of those two then. Those two above are iirc meant to depict inept Cuban goons.

Kind of takes the exclusiveness out of being Merkin then.

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

Operationally, you're right about Afghanistan being very difficult; and given the geogaphy of the region, I doubt even a heavy nuclear attack would kill them. And yes, now that AQ has dramatically decentralized, a killing blow is simply not possible. But at the time, the latter condition didn't obtain, and the former was largely overcome by deft use of Special Forces troops, and superior air-attack technology.

I think what's important to remember is the fact that war is both an extension of policy, and that sometimes acts of war are not targeted at the putative target, but rather at a third party (for instance, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, serving as a message to an expansionist USSR).

When understood in this light, the Afghan war seems to be a warning to other nations: "if you host an organization which launches a mass-casualty attack on America, this is what you can expect." Had it not been for the Iraqi blunder siphoning off troops and resources, I think such an approach could well have succeeded (even considering the operational difficulties of that country) with much lower costs than what we are seeing now.

As such, I can understand pragmatic objections to it, but I think moral objections to the Afghanistan war stand on much shakier ground than those to OIF, and I personally don't share them. If a country houses an organization which attacks my country, and refuses to surrender the culpable parties, fvck 'em. If you lay down with dogs, don't whine about the fleas.

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

I'm sure you've read some interesting books about the matter.

[Svartalf]

AQ NEVER was centralized... it's always been a kind of nebula of groups united by a certain amount of common ground (sunni islamic supremacism and readiness to use every method including the most violent to reach their aims are two I can name).
For a time, there was a particularly large node clustered around bin laden because he brought in a lot of money, had wide and powerful connections, and was a good coordinator... once he was targeted as the mastermind and the man to eliminate, he obviously began to be shunned because nobody wanted to be leaning on the tree when lightning struck.

and this kind of indirect message is really a two bladed sword, because potential hosts will have greater readiness for invasion, not to mention a series of alternate and contingency plans. In the meantime, the US has actually LOST prestige as a military nation, because it has shown it never learned the lesson of Vietnam, and let itself be dragged into a morass from where it has difficulty extracting itself without leaving behind a situation worse than the one that was in place when they waded in. and no, even without Iraq, you would never have succeeded in eradicating the taliban... Pakistan would never have let you do a proper cleaning of its North provinces, like Waziristan, even if by some kind of miracle you had beaten the logistical problems of operating there and done what a logistically favored and numerically superior Red Army failed to achieve.

and let's face it, Pakistan is the root of the taliban problem, nothing will cure it if it's not eradicated at the source... a potential third Vietnam in its own right.

BTW, are you willing to receive Palestinian based attacks on ground that both your government and any number of private persons and organisations in the US openly support Israel and its oppression and encroachment policies?
Because your argument just justified that.

[Thumpalumpacus]

AQ NEVER was centralized... it's always been a kind of nebula of groups united by a certain amount of common ground (sunni islamic supremacism and readiness to use every method including the most violent to reach their aims are two I can name).
For a time, there was a particularly large node clustered around bin laden because he brought in a lot of money, had wide and powerful connections, and was a good coordinator... once he was targeted as the mastermind and the man to eliminate, he obviously began to be shunned because nobody wanted to be leaning on the tree when lightning struck.

Cancers are best treated early, before they metastasize. While there's always been decentralization in any underground terrorist movement, my point is that the strike at Afghanistan while it had such a cluster of high-value targets was not necessarily poorly-conceived.

and this kind of indirect message is really a two bladed sword, because potential hosts will have greater readiness for invasion, not to mention a series of alternate and contingency plans.

I'm not arguing that the policy was certainly correct. I'm simply laying out one possible explanation for it.

In the meantime, the US has actually LOST prestige as a military nation, because it has shown it never learned the lesson of Vietnam, and let itself be dragged into a morass from where it has difficulty extracting itself without leaving behind a situation worse than the one that was in place when they waded in.

I'm not sure that any "lessons from Vietnam" are really applicable, myself. The geography, culture, military power, available strength, and internal motivation of the enemy were all different. Those are all factors in any decision to engage an enemy, and necessarily change the nature of the decision to be taken.

and no, even without Iraq, you would never have succeeded in eradicating the taliban... Pakistan would never have let you do a proper cleaning of its North provinces, like Waziristan, even if by some kind of miracle you had beaten the logistical problems of operating there and done what a logistically favored and numerically superior Red Army failed to achieve.

Perhaps. The issue of Pakistan was certainly one best dealt with by diplomacy, and whether that was possible or not is doubtful at best, considering their lack of ability to control their own frontiers. I think a decisive victory might well have been possible had we been better able to close the routes through the Hindu Kush passes. Like any "what-if" history, that's debatable.

So far as the Red Army, whatever logistical and numerical advantages they had were squandered through both political and doctrinal failures ... the failure to respect the locals being high on the list. I think that we could have avoided the problems we're having now, along those lines, had we not suffered the reignition of the Taliban resistance after the Iraq invasion started siphoning our resources.

and let's face it, Pakistan is the root of the taliban problem, nothing will cure it if it's not eradicated at the source... a potential third Vietnam in its own right.

Agreed. Our failure to close off the routes into Afghanistan assured that result ... and that possibility should've been regarded more seriously in the planning stages, I think.

BTW, are you willing to receive Palestinian based attacks on ground that both your government and any number of private persons and organisations in the US openly support Israel and its oppression and encroachment policies? Because your argument just justified that.

Have the Palestinians asked for any war criminals on our territory to be handed over for trial?

[Audley Strange]

Kind of takes the exclusiveness out of being Merkin then.

Oh absolutely, clandestine sociopaths semi-autonomously running rampant without restraint or accountability on behalf of a nation or ideology or as I prefer "state sponsored terror" is not a U.S. invention. Shit Europe was doing it before they polluted the Americas. I think the U.S. were the first to capitalise upon it and turn it into a profitable industry in and of itself though rather than a means to an end.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Kind of takes the exclusiveness out of being Merkin then.

Oh absolutely, clandestine sociopaths semi-autonomously running rampant without restraint or accountability on behalf of a nation or ideology or as I prefer "state sponsored terror" is not a U.S. invention. Shit Europe was doing it before they polluted the Americas. I think the U.S. were the first to capitalise upon it and turn it into a profitable industry in and of itself though rather than a means to an end.

I don't think it's very profitable, myself.

[Audley Strange]

It's incredibly lucrative. Supposedly they between 30 and 50 operatives were pulling out billions from Laos alone in the 60's, that money didn't end up in the treasury. Considering the heroin and cannabis crop from Afghanistan, they must be fucking raking it in.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If you're talking about individuals on a personal level, that's one thing, but saying that America has mastered the art of profitable war is not borne out by the facts at hand regarding our national debt and so forth. Your post which I quoted was unclear in the sense that you started by mentioning individual "sociopaths", but finished with the general "U.S."