Posted on 10/09/2001 4:23:52 PM PDT by Pokey78
So it must be done the old way after all. The faces of Britains rulers on Monday night said it all. They had lost the argument. Sitting in Parliament they looked haggard and wretched. Tony Blair thumped on yet again about Osama bin Laden being a fiend and a monster. Everyone chanted that bombing should be proportionate, measured, targeted, knowing that this was beyond their control. Clare Shorts face was a picture of misery. She must now excuse the civilian deaths, the laying of cluster mines, the airborne terror for which she is responsible as a War Cabinet member. How skin-deep is humanity when the guns begin to fire. Whenever Americans start bombing, Britons dive under a blanket of Churchillian waffle. Britain is not at war at present, any more than it was at war during the IRA bombing of London or after bin Ladens previous attack on New Yorks World Trade Centre. To describe what should be a relentless campaign against criminal terror as war is metaphor abuse. By hurling resources and media attention at some distant theatre, it deflects effort from the domestic front. It also insults those who fought and died in real wars, when territory was threatened and states were at risk. For the past three weeks, the case against bombing was marshalled in every capital in the world. It was advanced in Washington itself by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Tony Blairs every waking hour was devoted to it. His round-the-clock diplomacy was to build up the case for cunning not killing, not in the Middle East but in Washington. He was sincere but eventually he lost. We need hardly repeat the argument. For the West to extract bin Laden from his lair before winter is near impossible. While his networks and cash could and should be choked, regional diplomacy should use every conceivable means to get others to extract him. The heat should be put on every ally. All back-channels and bribes should be activated. September 11 had yielded an unprecedented coalition of the willing across the Middle East. Give it time to work, not just three weeks. Do not give up when the Taleban are showing some sign of wobbling if not collapsing. Above all, the argument said, do not bomb. Do not raise expectations of military success. Bombing would not deter a new atrocity, only make it more likely. Bombing would achieve little in a land of hand-to-hand combat. It would kill civilians and risk the security of cross-border platforms for special forces. It would turn hesitant new friends into sullen old enemies. Round every table the argument raged, with Britain on the side of common sense. But once the bombers were in place, there was a dreadful inevitability to the outcome. As in Iraq, air forces can play all the best overtures to war. They promise to kick butt and whup ass. They would avenge America for the World Trade Centre. They would have the tabloids purring, speech-writers drooling and liberals trapped by their vitals. As for consequence, that was for politicians and wimps. There is a fond belief in Downing Street that Britain has influence in Washington. It does not. Britain has the leverage of a comfort blanket. Now that sophistication has lost out in Washington, Britain must toe the line like an obedient junior. Indeed to prove its loyalty, it must bomb first. So much for influence. In his desperate speech on Monday, Mr Blair played a cheap card. He depicted opponents of the bombing as being soft on bin Laden and the Taleban. Was he not an opponent himself just a week ago? Like the tongue-tied, fencesitting religious leaders who met him that day in Downing Street, he merely demonstrates Britains subservience to America. How can Britain ever hope to join a panEuropean foreign policy on this performance? Those who disagree with Mr Blair are not on the side of bin Laden and the Taleban. They disagree over means, not ends. Britain is now committed to bombing Afghanistan to the next stage of the war, an obscure destination. In comparison, the bombing of Beirut, Tripoli, Baghdad, Mogadishu and Belgrade seem shrewd and calculated. Some pundits are explaining that the bombs will enable a special forces base to be set up to capture bin Laden. How rearranging the rubble of suburban Kabul achieves this is a mystery. If I were special forces, I would be far more worried if the bombing led to a withdrawal of logistical support by neighbouring states. I would be alarmed at the mission creep which already has the Americans requesting an extended war against other states in the region. I would want no return of the old CNN ritual of whooshing rockets, screaming rioters and wailing women. I would be appalled at Donald Rumsfeld mimicking Moscows boast, that we can forget about exit strategies; we are looking at a sustained engagement. When American Defence Secretaries ignore exit strategies we can bet the exit will be fast. The bombing is not military but political. It is revenge, no less ferocious for being postponed. It will probably freeze the Taleban in their hold on power as long as it lasts, as is usual with bombed regimes. Nor is global terror deterred by such onslaughts, least of all the new suicidal terror. Bruce Hoffman of St Andrews University, in his recent and prescient Inside Terrorism, cites the conclusion of a 1996 US government paper, that neither sanctions nor military action had ever had an effect against state-sponsored terrorism, except to be counter-productive. The growth of religious fanaticism and chemical weapons, he said, renders this policy failure extremely dangerous. In retrospect, the lack of follow-up to the 1993 New York bombing, given the evidence revealed at the trial, was criminal negligence on the part of Western Intelligence. So too was the refusal of later Sudanese help against bin Laden. Yet somehow a thundering blitz of Kabul atones for these mistakes. For a moment this past month, we saw a new wisdom. Washington seemed to realise that the Muslim world resented its decades of mistreatment. A moment for possible rapprochement was at hand. The horror of September 11 meant that East might join West in one humanitarian cause. When Mr Blair has not been on helium, he too seemed to glimpse that new dawn. He surely cannot see it now. The past fortnight has been a battle of new guard against old. Those who wanted to concentrate on counter-terrorism, covert operations and coercive diplomacy and who protested that bombing would endanger their work, have lost. Those who wanted a reprise of Baghdad and Belgrade, who wanted to play to the gallery with things that go bang on television, have won. The old guard have triumphed. They must now deliver, as must those who kowtowed to them. The Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, must show how his Tomahawks will really help to find bin Laden. He must bond with the bandits of the Northern Alliance as his predecessor, George Robertson, bonded with the Kosovo Liberation Army. Mr Blair must explain how firing missiles at empty hillsides will enhance his world congregation of virtue. Jack Straw must construct a puppet regime in Kabul more secure than that left by the Soviet Union. They must all explain how they will prop up a new regime indefinitely, or risk losing the war all over again. From these people we want no nonsense about precision weapons and surgical strikes. Bombs miss targets. Only infantry can shoot straight. We want no weasel words about no quarrel with the Afghans. We want no fake dismay at a surge of anti-American riots, at British contracts cancelled, hostages taken and lives put at risk. This is the course on which the Government is set. When it bombs people, the innocent get hurt and the rest get angry. Aerial bombardment is never proportionate, measured or targeted. It evolves a logic of its own, an escalation of horror similar to that unleashed by the terrorist. Like all distant and indiscriminate violence, it breeds a violent response. It is the dumbest weapon of war. At present the bombing is likely to increase anti-Western hysteria in the Middle East and dissolve Mr Blairs coalition. We can only hope that it at least installs our villains in Kabul, and one day captures bin Laden. It had better.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
Only infantry can shoot straight.Only infantry can occupy territory, but even they sometimes shoot the wrong target. Stonewall Jackson's own men shot him by mistake. That one sentence shows that the author didn't think about the topic for more than one second, then he just let his left-wing reflexes take over.
...proportionate, measured, targeted... THIS sounds very much like an ALGORE tax cut.
I.e., only politically correct weapons may be used. I remember how the US Army's pre-war infantry branch chief, a guy named Lynch, was so in love with the cult of the rifleman that he had all automatic weapons removed from rifle company and platoon TO&E's.
First we get air supremacy by bombing the air defenses. Then we insert the light infantry.
And he wants everyone in Afghanistan to starve too. We have to get air access to the place to fly in food for the starving population, which means eliminating everything which can shoot down large slow-flying transports carrying the food. He hasn't made that connection yet because he is a fool.
There may be a lot of nonsense in this article, but this item here should be repeated ad nauseum for the next thousand years. On September 11th, the U.S. simply paid the price for its own negligence. How could we have been so damned stupid?
Who was in the White House and what did he know?
If these people are not made to answer for their negligence, there is no doubt in my mind that we deserve another black eye. It's much easier to "turn Afghan rubble into smaller pebbles" than to address the real cause of this problem.
Over and over again, Rumsfeld has been saying that airpower cannot win this war. So has Bush, Rice, and everyone else.
This isn't carpet bombing. Very few civilians have been killed in comparison to the Iraq campaign. You need air superiority before you send in the SF and the Light Infantry.
Why doesn't Jenkins get this?
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Ths is not revenge, it is making our world safer for he future: for the British and for US!!
The first twist is a moral sleight of hand To describe what should be a relentless campaign against criminal terror as war is metaphor abuse. By hurling resources and media attention at some distant theatre, it deflects effort from the domestic front. It also insults those who fought and died in real wars, when territory was threatened and states were at risk.
This man is a moral monster whose agenda like so many of his liberal cronies is to regain the initiative in the battle over political correctness. This is a battle at home, the "domestic front" and this pseudo-sophisticate would use bigger words than he understands in order to "de"-demonize terrorists.
One technique of these liberal fascists is to create false dichotomies. You see, the 5,000 who just died don't count, because theirs was not a real war, and this was just a crime. Turning the argument on its head, Hitler's gassing of Jews was real legitimate war - and not a crime - since he was the legitimate target of "resources and media attention in some distant theatre." But we reject the false dichotomy. Hitler was both a criminal and a warror and so are these terrorists.
But then he continues in his illogic with some choice phrases:
The bombing is not military but political. It is revenge, no less ferocious for being postponed. - first - a factual error - it wasn't postponed at all, and second, yes of course it is revenge - all responses in war to an act of war are "revenge." Furthermore, he creates another false dichotemy. It is not one or the other, but both political and military as are most state uses of organized violence.
And then one creates false imperatives to deligitimize and ridicule the opposition. The Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, must show how his Tomahawks will really help to find bin Laden But no he musn't. This not the goal of Tomahawks at all. The goal is the destruction of important military assets of the Taliban - military, because unlike Mr. Jenkins, the rest of us are not chasing a pickpocket - we are at war.
And then one begs the question Aerial bombardment is never proportionate But it isn't supposed to be. War is not won by playing patty-cake. It is won by using unmeasured, disproportionate, overwhelming force. Oh- I fogot, Mr. Simon wants to drop show cause warrants on some friends on the domestic front, leave the terrorists in their distant lands, and haul someone or other (Tony Blair and his warmongers, one suspects) before the bar of justice.
And then you must put thoughts in the heads of your opposition - thoughts they clearly don't have. Mr Blair must explain how firing missiles at empty hillsides will enhance his world But shooting $2Million missiles at tents and the backside of a camel is the habit of previous regimes. Ours has made it pretty clear that they will not shoot missiles when there is no target. So far, we have not, however, run out of targets.
From these people we want no nonsense about precision weapons and surgical strikes. Bombs miss targets.
Don't show us any evidence that we are mistaken and that bombs hit their targets. We will have none of it.
Only infantry can shoot straight. Why does he expect infantry to shoot straight when he can't even shoot straight.
And then - he blames - you guessed it - us! the lack of follow-up to the 1993 New York bombing .. was criminal negligence...The bombing wasn't criminal, but the lack of follow-up was. For a moment ...Washington seemed to realise that the Muslim world resented its decades of mistreatment.
At the hands of whom? For the most part, the Muslim world has been left free to go its own way. The major western influence has been that the sale of oil to the west has made some wealthy and others not and those who haven't gotten their share are resentful. But the Muslim world needs to look locally to find the fault for that.
And finally, he gives us a false goal They must all explain how they will prop up a new regime indefinitely, or risk losing the war all over again. But that is his definition of victory, not ours. Our definition is to see some murderous thugs thrown out of power, and so long as that happens, we won. If we get bin Laden - even better. Who rules afterwords - we have a humanitarian care - but so long as it isn't the Taliban, strategically we don't give a hoot, just so long as everyone understands that the next Tomahawk is pointed at the guy who shelters and makes common cause with terrorists, and it will be launched, carefully and deliberately.
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