Posted on 12/15/2001 5:18:06 AM PST by FairWitness
Edited on 05/11/2004 10:57:11 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, a reader stepped front and center with a suggestion: Why not recruit an American Foreign Legion to carry the war to the Taliban?
The suggestion appalled Jerry Cooper, who teaches military history at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. He said mercenaries ran counter to American tradition. And he said that as an American citizen, "I don't want some back-alley thug fighting my battles."
(Excerpt) Read more at home.post-dispatch.com ...
"It's relatively simple," Stanford University Professor Peter Duignan said. "The Russians went in ill-equipped, ill-trained and unprepared on the ground, and stirred up all of the Afghan people against them.
"The Americans went in well-trained, well-prepared, not substantially on the ground and we united Afghan nationalist forces against the Taliban," he said. "We really didn't fight a war there. We had proxies fight a war for us on the ground and we battled from 35,000 feet in the air."
Such threats and NATZISM, COMMUNISM, or attempts at world domination are always based on the belief in a superior system or an all powerful GOD. Hitler made his pitch on the superiority of the German race. He told his followers they were superior to others. Superior "races" do not get defeated by inferior races. So when the government of the Master Race was totally defeated, the members of 'master race' figured out they were not the masters of much.
Communism believed it to be superior system of organizing society. They would 'bury' capitalism. When capitalism buried communism economically its suport fell dramatically.
The Muslims that followed the Taliban beleived they were the chosen true believers of Islam and Allah. Since Allah is all powerful, he would give them victory over the United States. When Allah fails to do that, the only conclusion for the followers is that Allah was not with the Taliban. In fact they must draw the conclusion that Allah prefered the United States to win.
Any system that claims to be superior, and gains followers on that basis, had best not fail. For if they do, they cease to be thought of by their followers as superior.
If Allah won't give the Taliban victory over the United States, why would Allah give his martyrs 72 virgins and an eternity in paradise for killing a few thousand americans. Why Allah let the Americans defeat the Taliban is a hard qestion for a militant Muslim to answer.
It is hard to get people to die for a cause when the supreme God of the cause doesn't care enough to let it retain control of its own nation. WE don't have to kill the people, we just have to kill their beliefs.
An astute observation worth repeating.
The silence in the Muslim world as the U.S. has systematically dismantled the Taliban has been deafening.
Lots of questions are being asked about whose side Allah is on.
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