- Tue Oct 09, 2001 9:32 am
#111244
Well this is actually a really tricky situation.<br>Because I am not a warmonger I wouldn't normally support miltary attacks; but then the problem is: What other option do the west have?<br>Now let's look at the facts; the Taleban(or Taliban - the spelling can vary) are sheltering Osama Bin Laden, who has been implicitely linked to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th. The United States government have requested several times to the Taleban to hand him over to stand trial - which they've refused due to lack of eveidence.<br>So if someone has murdered 6,000+ citizens in your country and another government won't extradite that suspect you really have no other choice but military action.<br>But I think that the coalition have thought through this, and acted quite sensibly; because the days after the atrocities of September the 11th you may remeber the public's clamour for immediate and devastating retaliation.<br>So by waiting for nearly 4 weeks, they have suucesfully planned a well co-ordinated response, minimilising the risk of civilian casualties(or that terrible phrase 'colateral damage').<br>I also think by waiting they have achieved another importing step in winning this war by gradually getting neighbouring countries 'on board', first of all it was Pakistan, then the volatile state of Tajikistan, then they got tentative support from Iran, and now more recently; and indeed quite importantly, they've got permission to base some of their troops in Uzbekistan.<br>So now Afghanistan is totally surrounded we get to the tricky part of what method of attack; eg. You've mentioned carpet-bombing which they've employed on the first two days of bombing; now that seems relatively succesful - but they're not going to win the war by air strikes alone obviously, so sooner or later ground troops will have to be involved. So will it be another Vietnam? I don't honestly believe it will; I think that this is a completely different scenario in so much as this is a different kind of war. What America wants from this war is the arrests of Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar and for the Northern Alliance to take power(or possibly I heard bring the old king back)...Also with Vietnam they didn't really know what to expect, but with Afghanistan they will have undoubtely learnt from the debacle of the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. <br>And also another relevant point I think is that Afghanistan will have no backing from any other country; the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have both severed their ties with the Taleban -- so that only leaves Pakistan as the only country that recognizes the Afghani regime.<br>Whereas in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese obviously had backing the from Soviet Union,Cuba,the other Eastern Bloc countries etc.<br>In regards to the possibility of germ warfare, I would play down the possibilities of this for the following reasons:<br>1( Although the Al-Qaeda movement is very rich and well organized, I find it hard to believe wher they would be able to get the nuclear warheads from(perhaps Iraq?)<br>2( I think that if they had the capability for this they would have at least done a dummy test with them(remember the notorious mass murder of the kurds by Saddam Hussein testing his biological weapons?)<br>3( Politicians always give the worst case scenario - so the fact that they are warning that there could be germ warfare doesn't actually mean that they have any evidence to prove this theory.
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