Terrorist Attack in US

[Mike]

definitely...but I'd try to keep the humor in another thread, seeing this one's very unfortunate title...

[bhar]

I'm sorry.  I didn't find it very funny myself.

[robbo]

pity
my school doesn't have cheerleaders

[bhar]

i'm sorry.  too sad, too sad.  

[Mike]

I know.  The sheer numbers...4,700 people at least...killed.
Everyone in NYC knew someone

[bhar]

I was speaking of Robbo's predicament, but you can take it in that context too.

[Mike]

Er...see topic...
It's what I assumed you were talking about...

[DonaMaria]

Dear All,

Thank you so much for your kind words and for keeping Mike (and all the others) in your prayers.  There's been no sign of him, so at this point, I must assume he's crossed over to the other side.  You know, I don't think I feel so sad about him - he's gone on to a far far better place.  It's those that are left behind - not only his co-workers and his family - but all those who lost someone in this horrible act.  I'm sad for them and for all of us - life just isn't gonna be the same.  I wonder if we'll ever feel "safe" again.  Yes, we'll carry on...but we'll always be looking over our shoulders.  The innocence has been lost.

Bob - thank you so much for your poem.  I have a candle all ready to carry into the office tomorrow and place upon Mike's desk.  I figure we'll light it as a remembrance - and I've been looking for some appropriate poem to sit there along with it.  Your poem is perfect and I hope you don't mind my using it...

Junta - does this tragedy bring back all those awful memories for you?  Know my thoughts are with you...

I watched the service from the National Cathedral and have to say that I really really loved the fact that they sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  Such a stirring song!  

And did anyone notice the poise with which Chelsea Clinton was handling herself after the service?  I noticed her talking with Bushie Sr....and she was perfectly at ease.  There's a politician in the making...

And while I didn't vote for Dubya, I have to admit that he has handled the past week with grace. I'm quite impressed!  And I loved seeing him with the firemen, policemen and construction guys at the trade center site....his speech was the best I have heard in a long, long time!

Hugs to all,
Dona

[Pattycake4554]

Another msg received from a friend of a friend. Heartbreakingly succinct explanation of what we're up against and why:

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to
the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio allowed that this
would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do
with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral
damage," and he asked, "What else can we do? What is your
suggestion?"  Minutes later I heard a TV pundit discussing whether
we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about these issues especially hard because I am from
Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never
lost track of what's been going on over there. So I want to share a
few thoughts with anyone who will listen.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is
no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the
atrocity in New York. I fervently wish to see those monsters
punished.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan.  They're not even
the government of Afghanistan.  The Taliban are a cult of ignorant
psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding
the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal
with a master plan.  When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you
think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of
Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."   It's not
only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity.
They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for
someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of
international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.

Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and
overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved,
exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated.  A few years ago, the United
Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.  Millions of
Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed
during the war with the Soviets.  And the Taliban has been executing
these women for being women and have buried some of their opponents
alive in mass graves.  The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land
mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan
people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able
to.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The
soviets took care of it .  Make the Afghans suffer? They're already
suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles
of rubble? Done.  Eradicate their hospitals? Done.  Destroy their
infrastructure?  There is no infrastructure.  Cut them off from
medicine and health care?  Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs.  Would
they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan,
only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around.
They'd slip away and hide. (They have already, I hear.)  Maybe
the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move
too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul
and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals
who did this horrific thing. Actually it would be making common
cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been
raping all this time

So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and
trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with
ground troops. I think that when people speak of "having the belly
to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of
having the belly to kill as many as needed.  They are thinking about
overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the
belly to die not kill that's actually on the table.  Americans will
die in a land war to get Bin Laden.  And not just because some
Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin
Laden's hideout.  It's much bigger than that, folks. To get any
troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they
let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first.
Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going.
The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam
and the West.

And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and
why he did this thing.  Read his speeches and statements. It's all
right there.  At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not
exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such
political entity as Islam.  Bin Laden believes that if he can get a
war started, he can constitute this entity and he'd be running it.
He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem
ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam
and the West, he's got a billion soldiers.  If the West wreaks a
holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left
to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view.  He's probably
wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably
overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war would
last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who
has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?

I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty
are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts
want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind
can flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.

Tamim Ansary

[Railnut]

Pattycake,
Thanks for that reply. You raise many good points.
Now I'll have to start over considering what I think would be the best course of action. It's always good to have another point of view.

[Pattycake4554]

That's what it did to me, too, Railnut...sure sounds like we are boxed in.  I was all set to email a copy of a cartoon reprinted in my paper from a San Diego paper, showing the American Eagle with a fierce look in his eye, using a nail file to sharpen a talon...then I read this.

For those of you discussing it in High School, you are better armed with facts to debate.

And I have seen the beautiful minds here at the Cafe and I thought if anyone can come up with some sensible strategies it will be you guys (and gals).

I look forward to reading what you all think.

[Revolucionario]

This whole situation makes me sick and outraged. We should pray that the president will make the right moves.

[Junta_Joe]

Patty is truly aware of the situation. If the ruling military in Pakistan can convince the independant intelligence service there to give us information there is hope.

If we can pin down the Taliban leaders and bin Laden we can use Vietnam tactics to good advantage.

Insert small numbers of ground troops to control gunships and precision ordinance to decimate them. The ground troops then mop up. There will be civilian casulties, a fair number I'm afraid. Especially in Kabul. Since cowards tend to hide amongst the local populations, it is inevitable. We just have to try to keep civilian losses to a minimum wherever we can. The price paid in civilian losses is always less in the initial attacks if we truly crush the rulers. How many people died in Iraq after the war when we allowed Saddam to survive? It is always cheaper to pay the price up front. A universal maxim.

Dona, I had a little bit of momentary surprise and was over it. The mind only takes so much before the heart hardens. Innocence lost. Survival mechanism. My biggest fear is that the rest of you catch my "disease".  My biggest surprise is the fact that something like this didn't happen sooner.

[Mike]

You know, this war...the war that we are going to fight...it's not just about Bin Laden.  We do not have *proof* that he did it.  We just know that he's a terrorist and probably, in fact, very, very likely was the one who planned this operation.
But no, my friends, this is not just about Bin Laden.  This is about destroying terrorism as a whole.  If we kill Bin Laden and the cowardly Taliban, we are not only killing terrorists, but making martyrs.  Years will pass, and new terrorist groups will be created.  This cannot happen.  We must first make an example of Bin Laden, then we must hunt down all the people who we know are funding terrorists.  Without any funding, the terrorist operations will continue, or at least try.  But, if we are watchful, no attack of the magnitude that we saw on that fateful day will ever occur again.  It is not the Afghans that we need to blow back into the stone age.  It's the terrorists.

[Maus]

Sadly, I fear we can't avoid war by seeking ways to not let it occur. The terrorists have demonstrated that they will bring it to us one way or another. Benjamin Netanyahu was correct in his reference to this event as "your wake-up call from hell". He pointed out that the goal of terrorist groups of Bin Laden's ilk is the destruction of western civilization. He reminded us that, unless we act, they will soon have access to nuclear and biological weapons, and the next attack will kill hundreds of thousands, or even millions. They won't acquire WMDs and then sit on them to deter us; they will use them immediately and they won't care how many innocents, on either side, are killed. Netanyahu's general assessment was to the effect that:  "the western nations have the power to stop these groups; what you lack is the will to carry it through. The terroroists have the will to destroy you, but at present they lack the power. They WILL have the power very soon unless you get organized and do whatever is necessary NOW". It is said that "in war, it is chiefly the innocent who suffer". The tragedy of the coming conflict is that the suffering of innocents will be the centerpiece. God give us the will to do what is necessary to prevail, grant ALL humans mercy for the horrors that will accompany the task, and give us the strength to not become the very thing we are fighting.

[bhar]

Very good point by Maus.  I must add that overthrowing the dictatorships and blowing the terrorists back into the stone age is not a complete solution.  Martyrs will be created, the terrorists will come back with a vengance.  We must not put the nation back further, we must modernize them.  To modernize them, we must find out why they attack us.  

The answer to that, however complex, can be simplified disgustingly:  jealousy.  They don't like our prosperity, our morals, or "decadence".  They are jealous of the priviliges of western culture and fear losing their religion to western desires.  We must not only eliminate the terrorists, we must work with them to modernize the countries and bring them up to western standards.  As long as they live in our wake, they shall be angry.  Improving them is the only somewhat permanent solution (no solutions are permanent).  More of my thoughts on this subject are in the "political philosophy 3.0" thread.

As for the state in Afghanistan, Bin Laden owns the Taliban.  The Taliban protect him, he supplies them with money and helps them fight their war against the rebels.  For example, a few days before the WTC attack, bin Laden ordered his troops to kill the Afghani rebel leader, making the Taliban further indebted to him (knowing that their relationship would be strained under US pressure).

Pakistan is allowing us to base troops in their nation, a very brave stance given the instability in the region.

[bhar]

Another interesting point:  Bin Laden uses computers to control his empire (physical and monetary).  This is one field the US has a huge advantage over the rest of the world in, posessing a huge base of excellent hackers (legally intended, of course).  I heard a suggestion earlier that US intelligence could fairly easily break into bin Laden's bank account and essentially empty it.  We could also foul up his communications and wreck his information database.

To me, a lot more appealing than using jets and cruise missiles to weaken him.

[Pattycake4554]

As I expected, you young men zero right in...it is not a matter of do we go to war or not...it is, rather, how do we successfully fight this war.

After Vietnam, we became reluctant to sacrifice American lives in "another country's war".  But now, bin Laden has made this Our Country's fight.

Netanyahu (a particular favorite leader of mine) was 100% correct. We must stop Terrorism now, before they gain any more technological power.

But We, as Americans, must be willing to fight where I fear it will be needed, on the ground.  I do not trust Pakistan, as they are between a rock and a hard place. They have sent their own men to bin Laden for training, to send in to their skirmish with Kashmir so they are also playing both ends against the middle and the Taliban have also threatened them.

We are in a good place to fight this war. We have the best military minds in our government now and we have an all volunteer military service...men and women who are there because they want to be there. (not like Vietnam where we drafted the unwilling and naive and made martyrs of them).

I pray that America can sustain the rage long enough to do the job. Hate and anger are the proper emotions now, as long as directed at the true enemy.  Perhaps the length of time it will take to clean up the rubble and rebuild will help to maintain our resolve. We have been conditioned by TV to a short attention span. This time the Tiger must not go back to sleep.

[El_Subcomandante]

Some random thoughts and factoids because I'm rather tired (courtesy of NJ traffic jams).

Bombing Afghanistan will do nothing.  There is no government infrastructure to destroy.  The country cannot be destabilized any more than it already is.  I'm concerned because my impression is that our policy makers are going about their reaction plans as if we are dealing with an enemy state.  There are no bridges to blow up or supply lines to cut.  Stealth bombers will not eliminate what is essentially an Islamic street gang.  Gather accurate intelligence and send in the guys in black body armor who the government refuses to talk about.

If I'm not mistaken the Taliban was installed by Pakistan's version of the CIA.  I'm pretty sure this was done by a previous government that catered to the militant Islamic element of their country and also wanted a ready-made ally in their problems with India.  Sometime recently the secular military took over Pakistan and I think they'll stay on our side - as long as the military isn't toppled.  As a footnote, India was helping the Northern Alliance and their now-slain leader visited India a month ago - India built a hospital in Uzbekistan where the N.A. send their injured soldiers.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Boys and girls, the word of the day is "proxy war".

When US forces go to Afghanistan I hope they don't ignore the lessons of history.  Britain and Russia struggled over the area a century ago; on my reading list was a book called The Great Game but I had to go out and get a job, severely curtailing my reading time.  From what I know the peoples of what is now Afghanistan played both sides to their advantage.  Plus we all know what happened in the 1980s; Afghanistan isn't called the "USSR's Vietnam" for nothing.

How the US handles this will set the tone for the 21st century.  Bin Laden and the Taliban must go.  I've looked into my crystal ball and I think the US will work with Iran believe it or not to turn them into some sort of regional policeman: it's a changing society with creative energy, the mullahs will not stop their young people from wanting blue jeans and pop music, and as far as I know they've laid off the support for terrorism.  Plus they have no love lost for Afghanistan, nor do they like Saddam.

I'm rambled enough.  My geopolitical babbling in no way diminishes the sorrow I feel for the victims - perhaps it's my way of coping.

[El_Subcomandante]

Ok so I'm not going to bed quite yet ...

From the conspiracy files, does anyone remember how Saddam was acting up in the weeks preceding the 11th, bagging a couple of unmanned survelliance planes?  Seems like ages ago.  I only remember because Tues. morning before the attack Don Imus was joking about the reward money Saddam gives to missile batteries which shoot down Allied planes - 3000 bucks which is a lifetime's salary for Iraq but not a lot for us.

Saddam acts up after consulting with Bin Laden .... US intelligence focuses on him and not terrorism ... clearing the way for the 11th.  Add to this the $80 million insurance policy the Iraqi mission in DC purchased recently --- a facility very close to the Pentagon and not exactly worth $80 million.

Saddam knew and played his role.  Let's get him once and for good.

[Malovane]

Oh, we will get Saddam. The military already has that on their to do list. It is amazing to me how stupid this man is.. adding insult to injury as he has done in recent days. I guess he does not realize that we mean to kill him this time.

What is odd .. and rather frightening, is that these leaders seem to be trapping us in some fashion. It is evident that they want to start a war, and incite the muslim people of middle east to unite and attack us.... but they seem far too smug. Maybe I am just being paranoid, but it seems they are trying to get as much military reaction as possible which would concentrate our forces in the middle east while leaving other areas loosely defended.

Could China be involved in this? They seemed far too eager to give us information that US targets in China would be under terrorist attack. Perhaps they are genuine in their concern, however political tensions between our countries have been growing for years. Before these terrorist attacks, the Chinese and North Koreans were probably our biggest threats. They have similar goals to the Arab nations... to rid the world of western influence. Could they be united in this cause?

[Junta_Joe]

The Chinese have been having problems with fundamentalist uprisings in their western region for quite a while. They have been helping Iran  because it the enemy of Pakistan and the Taliban. I'm sure they are only helping us to help themselves secure their western region. I can live with that for now. The Chinese are patient. This means we can worry about them later.

[Revolucionario]

No, China isn't on it. They will cooperate by not voting against the UN decree.

[Morticcia]

God Bless America

[bhar]

No, China has had a massive load of problems caused by the Taliban in their western side, much to the same extent as they have attacked western non-islamic states.  Bombs have been planted in cities (including Beijing) and officials have been killed.  It would take a huge worldwide conspiracy against the west to pull of something like a joint cooperation effort between those two.

Remember:  Just because 2 nations are Islamic extremist does not mean they like each other.  For example, Afghanistan is ruled by radical Sunni Muslims, while Iran is ruled by Shiite Muslims.  Those to countries hate each other vehemently.  Recently, 10 Iranian diplomats were killed by the Taliban in Kabul.  The CIS states to the north of Afghanistan have enmity towards it also, quick to ally with the US.  Most of the Middle East dislikes Afghanistan, all with the exception of Pakistan.  Pakistani militants put the Taliban in power, wanting a free ally in the region against India.  Since that time, the Taliban has caused bokus of problems for all the nations in that region, not excluding Pakistan.  

Whether the Taliban gives us bin Laden or not, they need to be eradicated.  We might lose world support for this, countries saying that we're just "cleaning up dirty business".  Well, in a sense, we are.  And we should pay them no heed and march to Kabul.