A New Kind of War 1078
Americans think of D-Day or the invasion of Iraq when they think of war -- massed fleets, armies and planes, tanks and fortifications. But the National Security types and military brass were clearly talking about something else completely.
This sort of offensive, confusing and strange-sounding to non-tech laypeople and those outside the military, will clearly rely heavily on security technology -- surveillance, wire-taps, electronic ID's from cards to voice and fingerprint scanning, biological warfare and defense, e-mail encryption and interception, satellite photographs, the digital tracing of money, the use of pin-point troops and weaponry to go after small numbers of terrorists located in inaccessible cells in distant countries. Such a conflict raises all sorts of policy questions, from our grasp of different cultures to the nature of religious fundamentalism to changes in traditional ideas about civil liberties, to use of the Net as a communications medium for terrorism, to technologies that might make airplanes and buildings safer. People have suggested more sophisticated X-ray devices to spot weapons and bombs, stronger pilot cabins, buildings less massive and vulnerable than the World Trade Center towers.
Most officials were quick to say the war would like unlike any other, and that drafting vast numbers of people wouldn't be necessary. This war would be fluid, varied, combining weaponry with diplomacy and economic pressure.
The intelligence experts who came out of the cold last week were nearly unanimous in agreeing that old-fashioned spies -- sometimes unsavory humans -- were crucial to get close to terrorist "cells" but also that new forms of communications -- e-mail, cell, the transmission of encrypted files -- required new laws and better technologies to monitor them, since they were terrorist tools. Also needed, they said, are computer programs to better track the movement of money.
Is such a war possible? Technologically feasible? Can encrypted terrorist communications really be followed online? Is it possible to trace money so precisely by digital means? To what degree can civil liberties or privacy be protected in this context? Is there technology that can spot a knife in a briefcase or hidden in a human body? How close can satellite surveillance take us to small terrorist hideouts in urban or rural areas? Is the idea of the mobile, tech-equipped soldier feasible? What weapons would he or she carry?
Over the last few years, I've gotten e-mail from academics, defense researchers, satellite trackers, government cryptographers about various issues relating to technology. It would be interesting to hear from some of you who know more about this than most people. In fact, some of you might be directly involving in working on these things.
America's defense and policy planners are calling for a new kind of war and a new kind of warfare. Few people have any idea what it might look like or how it might work.
What can 60 billion dollars buy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we buy hope instead of terror?
With this 60 billion dollars could we start enough "rebuilding" efforts in Afgan, Iraq, and Palestine to turn would-be terriorists into brick-layers?
Re:What can 60 billion dollars buy? (Score:2)
I shudder to think the retribution we will suffer if we actually tried to rebuild the country.
The point is that rational action of cause and effect don't work here.
Mod parent up ! (Score:2)
Bin Laden is primarely upset that we dared set foot on Saudi Arabia, "Holy Land". Ironically as the poster said, it was to his own countries benefit, if not his own fanatical leanings.
Oh, 9 out of 10 dollars in foreign aid to Afghanistan come from the US, last year we sent over 40 million in drought relief.
Yup, no rational action of cause and effect when you are dealing with "Holy Warriors" and Theocratic despotic governments.
Quite Right! (Score:2, Insightful)
Money would be far better spent removing the motivation for people to become terrorists rather than putting out fires by stopping individual terrorists.
Not going to work (Score:2)
Somehow I don't think that "evil capitalists" like us could improve their image with terrorists by throwing money at them.
Authority and Responsibility (Score:2)
Reminds me of a saying from a movie not long ago. Wish I could remember which one!
"Yes, you've got the responsibility and authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?"
Assume the U.S. is now in charge of governing Afghanistan. What are you going to do with it?
Even a wounded animal can wreak vengeance. It will take some serious thinking to reconstruct a country in a way that benefits everyone.
For example, bulldozing mosques in Kabul to make way for a video store and a McDonald's may not be the best way to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Recall that ObL used his personal fortune to build houses for the widows and orphans of the struggle years ago. Take a lesson.
When 60 billion dollars can buy anything is later (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When 60 billion dollars can buy anything is lat (Score:2)
That is spot on. The majority of the Afghanis are almost certainly just like people anywhere. They are almost certainly decent, hard-working, and kind. The sort of people that you wouldn't mind having for neighbors. Unfortunately, both for us and especially for them, their country is currently being run by madmen who harbor terrorists. Both the Germans and Japanese from World War II show what a devastating effect that can have on a populace. Once the madmen were removed, it was relatively easy to rebuild these countries. But while they were gripped by the insanity of their leaders they were willing to order the massacre of millions in concentration camps, and to send their own sons to their deaths as kamikaze pilots.
Madmen must be opposed. Otherwise there can be no safety, peace, or liberty for any of us. In a perfect world the citizens of Afghanistan would take care of these madmen for us, but if they insist on following their lead, then it will probably take a war to straighten things out.
God help us all.
Interesting (Score:2)
I'm partial towards "bin Laden did it", or "someone we don't know yet did it". bin Laden har motive and means to have executed such an act. However, it goes against his pattern in one particular way - AFAIK, he has always struck at the military or government. He even said that striking against civilians is clearly against the Koran in some interview. So the WTC bombing does not sound as much like him as the Pentagon attack. Maybe we are dealing with somebody else?
I've been toying with the idea that some of bin Laden's followers have broken out and started to operate on their own. bin Laden has consistently stated that the assailants did it for "personal reasons". It could very well be a break-out group within his organization.
It could also be Right-wing extremists with shoeshine in their face, or it could be Israel, Egypt, Libya, Palestinians or just a brand new Moslem organization. It could be a bunch of people.
If I were to pull off an attack like that (and I wouldn't consider it), I would certainly attempt to obscure the traces and possibly make them appear to point to someone else. That is called "Covering Your Back 101", and is taught in real life every day.
Anyhow - I've been worried for a few days that the feds are blindly following the wrong path. I hope I'm wrong.
Re:Iraq is a lot flatter than Afghanistan (Score:2)
About time they invented a new kind of war! (Score:2)
Re:About time they invented a new kind of war! (Score:2)
Re:About time they invented a new kind of war! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well the new kinds are going to suck more. In the last half of the 20th Century, with the introduction of TV, etc, we got into the idea of being moral in our actions in a war. This has been used to pummel the US into a guilt complex. in my post Alternative Courses of Action [slashdot.org] I pointed out some of the more colorful suggestions being floated in some fourms. The point being, that with current events, certain moral inhibitions are no longer going to be present. War can be waged on many fronts, and many venues. the example given in the other post harken back to the tactics of Rome, and the Crusades
Bin Laden even views the infiltration of western culture (tv, etc) as an affront to Islam. So we can wager cultural war against him. A set of Levis in the middle east may be worth as much as a hundred bullets, because to that extent, we have won some portion of a mind.
This opens the door to a wider range of possibilities, where our marketing will be as an effective weapon as any other type of campaign.
Imagine the conquest of Afghanistan by MS lawyers and Marketroids!
The war of technology (Score:2, Funny)
What could this "different kind of war" be:
Shut down the power grid in Kabul immediately before the first bombing.
Interception of secure terrorist communications
Turn their own military technology against them
How can the random hacker help:
Exploit hotmail security holes to monitor for terrorist activity
Execute DoS attacks against Afghani web sites
Target virii at the .af domain space
My favorite - transfer $4 million from Usama bin Laden's bank account to the American Red Cross
Umm, read up on Afghanistan please (Score:2, Informative)
What could this "different kind of war" be:
Shut down the power grid in Kabul immediately before the first bombing.
Kabul is not the problem, the Russians conquered Kabul. The problem is the hundreds of Taliban living in caves in remote valleys.
Interception of secure terrorist communications
By this you mean the couriers going to Pakistani cybercafes?
Turn their own military technology against them
You mean point their AKs and RPGs at them?
How can the random hacker help:
Exploit hotmail security holes to monitor for terrorist activity
Execute DoS attacks against Afghani web sites
Target virii at the
My favorite - transfer $4 million from Usama bin Laden's bank account to the American Red Cross
You don't understand, Afghanistan has little IT infrastructure, is dirt poor, and is already bombed back to the stone age. Most of their internet activity is done through our new ally Pakistan.
Re:The war of technology (Score:2)
Also, in the
New War Of Information, Education and Image? (Score:2)
Your enemies choose you. (Score:2)
Technology today gives individuals the power once reserved for entire nation states, and it is appropriate that these powers be judiciously monitered.
In any case, you had zero privacy before any of this started - its virtually impossible for you to have less than you already do.
My take on the whole deal. (Score:2)
Forget the rhetoric - adaption is natural (Score:2)
Re:Forget the rhetoric - adaption is natural (Score:2)
Well then I would counter that 'not changing is the true threat' is only a threat to your security. The more secure you want to be without having to worry about such things yourself (i.e. - let the government own all the guns, the rights to protect you, etc.), the more freedoms you give away. This inherently gives way to abuse by the minority (government officials) who control such powers. Our forefathers knew this firsthand from the abuse the British government of the time inflicted on them and their families. I suggest you take another look at your American history to get an idea of WHY they wrote in the Bill of Rights all that they did.
Newsflash (Score:2)
As it stands, it was taxation that prompted the American revolution - the highbrow rhetoric about rights and freedoms, important as it was, was just gift wrapping.
Re:Newsflash (Score:2)
Re:Newsflash (Score:2)
Don't mistake my view for pacifism - I would gladly pull the trigger to nuke Kabul myself. Nonetheless, the world is a drastically different place than that which Jefferson inhabited, and it would be silly to presume that you can expect the same degree of freedom as a farmer in eighteenth century Virginia - you don't live in his world. If you don't want to be searched at the airport, then don't fly. If you don't want your spending habits tracked, then don't use a credit card. Its fairly simple.
Re:Newsflash (Score:2)
Taxation was the last straw, not the first.
Re:My take on the whole deal. (Score:2)
That's not Bin Laden's goal.
His goal is to attack us because we dared touch his "Holy" land, never mind it was to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq.
The main goal of his org is to replace all infidel governments with righteous Islamic fundamentatist Theocracies like the Taliban.
Guess what, I'm not about to cover up my wife like a mummy and grow a beard.
World Without Borders (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology has brought us to a point where communication can be relatively clear and simple over great distances. It's no longer necessary for communities to share a physical location (Slashdot is a great example of this.)
This has also allowed the formation of armies without a single physical location. Its troops are scattered around the globe, making it difficult for the United States to simply "invade."
War is a classical pursuit, and its concepts are rooted in histoic notions of borders and terrain. We don't yet know how to attack an army made up of citizens of our own country, living in our own neighborhoods.
This is not to blame the Internet for what happened. The internet had nothing to do with it. However, access to technology gives everyone the freedom to communicate -- everyone
Re:World Without Borders (Score:5, Insightful)
The Middle East is a prime example: many of our foriegn polices, which seem almost trivial wave of our hands to us, have had tremendous effects on the lives of people there. Some are good, some are bad. Naturally, those who feel they are bad are going to feel absolutely violated, and these feelings of illegitimacy often give rise to extreme fringes that are willing to use violence- because they lack any other avenue (remember: in a democrcacy, this avenue is becoming part of the political and legal system: even if your party loses, it still has a chance to live and fight another day).
So, contrary to people's claims that Bin Laden hates democracy: that we are a democracy is actually probably totally irrelevant to people like him. This concept, in fact, is almost totally opposite to the real problem: that he feels that there is no legitimacy (which democracy would be one avenue of providing) to what the US does in the Middle East. The problem is not that we are a democracy, but rather that there is NO democracy at work to mediate between our ME policies and the people affected by them.
Remember: this is not a moral estimation of anything or anyone: simply a policy analysis of the dangers that inevitably arise when situations of political illegitimacy exist.
A side note: The one morbid effect our democracy might have on Bin Laden would be to lead him to conclude that all Americans are ultimately responsible for what our government does, since it's power ultimately rests in us. That this rationalization might be how he or his cells justified attacking civilians is an almost chilling thought. There is nothing per se wrong with this reasoning: we are responsible for our government. But to think that such a previously glorious and wonderful fact could be employed in such a sick, blowback fashion, is deeply deeply saddening.
New Kind of War (Score:2)
Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson:
A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
Giving credit where due - I rediscovered this quote at Freedom & Liberty Quotes [ronholland.com].
War or Policing? (Score:2, Funny)
Would we send the army in to a country to capture the CEO of a forign corporation and call it war? I hope not.
I don't think this is truly a 'new kind of war', I think that's rhetoric to get the public onside for a long, and likely bloody policing action.
Re:War or Policing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Other "police actions" that we have taken part in were less than popular b/c of the fact that the propaganda was ineffective. Honestly there was little worry by most of the American public that communism would spread to the US or large European states (yes the domino effect -- no it never really truly happened -- yes this is IMHO)
This "police action" already has very little need for propaganda due to the graphic impression it left on the public.
I myself am already quite annoyed w/Bush's statements and his bullshit (yes I voted for Bush and I am a republican) but I find his "wanted dead or alive", "new war", etc to all be over-stated and obvious propaganda.
We are going to start a serious war that IMHO will have very little effect on stopping future terrorism from happening again on American soil. Take out Bin Laden and who is left? Tons more...
That's just my worthless rambling.
Re:War or Policing? (Score:2)
Maybe if you call something a war for a long time, it becomes a war...
Re:War or Policing? (Score:2)
but bin Laden isn't a member of the Taliban, or any other government faction -- he's one man with his own organization.
But he might as well be part of the taliban. He's paying for their operation. And this Omar guy, the taliban leader, is married to bin ladin's oldest daughter. Omar doesn't want to give up his father-in-law. That's why they won't expel him.
Would we send the army in to a country to capture the CEO of a forign corporation and call it war? I hope not.
If that CEO were funding or controlling international terrorism, I would hope so.
I don't think this is truly a 'new kind of war', I think that's rhetoric to get the public onside for a long, and likely bloody policing action.
Does it really matter what you call it? The only difference between the military and the police is the rules of engagement. I think the Bush administration is using the word war to get people's attention: to prepare the american people for casualties, and to threaten other countries into working with the US.
Here's my prediction: We'll have a long, bloody conflict in afghanistan/pakistan. We'll have to prop up the current government in pakistan to stop their civil war (which is almost a certainty). We'll also maintain a huge military presence in pakistan so that we can control their nukes. We'll get bin laden. We'll set up a puppet government there. Humanitarian aid to afghanistan will cost more than the military effort. We'll launch covert missions into some countries with special forces (egypt, yemen). We'll launch larger strikes on other countries (syria, iran, iraq). Many countries in the world will condemn us for our actions (france, arab countries). Others will stand by us (UK, turkey). Israel will do whatever they want including air strikes on nuclear power plants in iran. We'll have freqeunt middle-east style terrorist strikes here. I'd say we're certain to lose some famous bridges and tunnels. And I fear that china will use this opportunity to invade taiwan.
In short, the US foreign policy will get a lot nastier. And while I support all of this action, not to do so would be to relinquish the sovereignty of the US and invite disaster, I fear that we're sowing the seeds of our destruction. Sonner or later, terrorists will have weapons of mass destruction. And because of that, we must never again let our guard down. But we will anyway.
Re:War or Policing? (Score:2)
However it will probably become a war because force may be the only means of getting access to some of the countries involved so that we can shut down the terrorist operations. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, if they are involved, are more than likely both incapable and unwilling to apprehend the people that have attacked the US.
Since they can not do enough to ensure US safety, the US and other western countries will have to do it for them. Regardless of how well focused and implemented, stomping out terrorism on foriegn turf may well require a conventional war before national governments let international police forces do their work.
Tracking encrypted communications (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
PEN Registers (Score:2)
Not sure... (Score:2)
Somehow I don't think diplomacy and economic pressure will matter to these people. Our enemy, in this case, cannot be localized to a single country. Cell infiltration and intelligence gathering will be our bread and butter. Diplomacy, in the sense that we lean on countries that support these cells, won't be effective unless we have the intelligence to discern whether or not they are indeed supporting these cells. Even without a country to back them financially, I don't think they will stop. Their fanatacism, and willingness to trade their lives for their cause, makes them immune to any suffering we could impose on them short of extermination. (Take that how you will...) We won't stop until they're no longer a threat, and we can expect the same from them.
I'm better than herpes.
Diplomacy needed (Score:2)
The point is, fanatics do not appear spontanously. People with a nice live, food, a house, and a future don't want to blow things up. It takes time for those groups to dissolve, but they can appear quite fast.
Diplomacy will be a key part of this crisis - only diplomacy can prevent new sources of terrorists. Take Pakistan, this situation is putting a lot of stress on the country. A lot of people from Afganistan are fleeing to Pakistan. The country has "accepted" to help the US (not that it had a lot of choice). This has generated a lot of tension both inside the country and with it's neighbours. If Pakistan collapses as a result of this crisis, there will be one more civil war, misery and despair. Guess who gets the bad karma?
It's all about messages, it can be "we try to make things better" or "we kill our enemies and put those who helped us in trouble". If you leave it with the military, the message might well be the second.
rambling (Score:2, Interesting)
First off, I think that I actually liked this article.
Nothing scares me worse than the fear of losing freedoms. I don't mind the new restrictions at the airports, or anything like that. Those are things that I don't consider a basic right. I just don't want to have to worry about encrypting all of my email, or even about possesing a strong encryption program without a backdoor.
As far as terrorism is concerned, I think that we need to treat the sickness, not the symptoms. We need to fix our foreign policy, to help stop things like this. We need to not use violence, as it begets more violence. No more innocents or civilians need to die.
I'm all for giving Osama a fair trial, but how is that possible? How do we extradite him from Afghanstan(sp?), and if we manage to, who is going to serve on his jury? I would try to be impartial, but could I, could you?
I know this is sorta off topic, and doesn't even follow any sort of logic. I just felt like rambling.
garc
"Unsavory" informants (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to admit I was astounded that I heard that current US policy was that informants could not have a criminal background, or some such nonsense (anyone know what the standard actually is?). I mean, who the hell expects upstanding citizens in criminal organizations?
I think that is definitely one law that needs to be reviewed.
They talked about this on the "O'Reilly Factor" .. (Score:2)
Many claim this is an unecessary bureocratic step, others say it's necessary so field officers don't go acting like rogue agents.
I think the problem was not so much the law, but the current CIA director. No one on the CIA likes him, and he seems to have shot down many of the field officer proposals.
Re:They talked about this on the "O'Reilly Factor" (Score:2)
However, Torticelli said that somebody needed to be accountable for hiring people who may in turn do horrible things, which is a valid point.
The compromise O'Reilly proposed, which I think is a good one is to have the field officer report to whatever their boss is in the local region. And have that person answer for any problems.
Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, it's going to be nasty, brutish, bloody, not fun. War sucks. Killing, noise, fire, confusion, being tired constantly, on edge, it's not a game.
There are many ways we can do it. The smartest would be to get some local intel of terrain and people (many of whom have fled, maybe some assistance from Afghanis who fled the Taliban to Iran would work, since the Pakistanis support and arm the Taliban, and half their intel would be designed to trap us). Land on mountain tops and passes, set up defensive perimeters with mines and mortars, anti-tank and ATA, put spread out artillery in gun pits, and blast any vehicle or concentration that moves. Because only the Taliban moves in 2/3 of Afghanistan, the local population that they control (who don't support them) don't have mobility.
But we'll probably do something dumb instead.
Some of us have combat experience in mountains, Jon. And you're not one of them. Your techie toys won't work in mountains - a defender has a 20:1 or 10:1 advantage if he knows the terrain and the opponent is vaguely unfamiliar with it. A few people can hold off battalions, when placed right, we'll be lucky to move 2 miles in a day.
And cruise missiles are economically ineffective - JATO-assisted dumb bombs have a 98 percent kill rate, while a cruise missile there has at best an 80 percent kill rate, and you just need a dug-in position and nothing short of a nuke will affect you (and even those have to get the angle right).
This isn't a war game. This is a war. We will lose people, we need sound strategy and tactics, not people with ideas about fire-and-forget missiles that get confused in mountain terrain, or using MBTs in mountains (which are easy to kill with mines and vertical attacks with anti-tank).
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:2)
I hate to defend Katz, but after re-reading his article after reading yours, I don't seem him advocating strategy, only asking questions. That said, I agree with you that there are too many armchair Pattons (and WAY too many armchair Ghandis).
Personally, I think if we want to win a war in Afghanistan, we need to massively arm the opposing side who know the terrain and how to win.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:2)
It worked pretty well back in the late 1700s for the United States.
It might be interesting to try and extract a promise from the opposing side to institute freedom and Democracy. Perhaps even to adopt a draft constitution.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:2)
1789 can almost completely be put down to the crippled state of the French economy from arming the Americans against their (and the French) enemy, Britain.
Invasion won't work (Score:2)
Defensive perimeters, land mines, etc., have proven historically to be ineffectual in that kind of territory with a motivated enemy. But, as one mujahdeen was quoted, "I do not fear the Russians, but I fear their helicoptors."
Now IANAG (General), but I believe the best way to go about something like this is a long series of directed raids by missile, bomber, helicopter and (most importantly) Special Forces units. They need to be focused though, and directed by good intelligence. Something we have precious little of in that area. We would be well advised to ally ourselves with the Northern Alliance if we are going to have any sort of protracted involvement in the area, because they actually have people who know the terrain and are in contact with the enemy. (This of course assumes that the Taliban will back bin Laden).
In defense of Jon Katz, technology will most certainly play a pivotal role in the intelligence gathering (although I definitely hope we invest more money, time and effort in HUMINT). It will also be big in any kind of attack. A large part of the reason our Special Forces are so effective is their superior helicopters, our planes achieve dominance because of their better technology. Saying that the technological portions of this battle will not be significant would be terribly naive.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:2)
Traditional warfare in Afghanistan has essentially been ruled out. Airstrikes will be extremely limited because their are so few targets other than the civilian population. Ground troops may not be used at all. And if they are, they will be extremely limited in number. Economic sanctions will do no good against a country with no economy. Yet despite all these restrictions, the taliban is marked for removal. Doesn't this seem just a little bit strange to anyone else? Jon noticed it and is just making an attempt to understand. In this case, if the Bush adiministration is telling the truth, you have no better idea of what is being planned than anyone else.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Now, my reading of Katz's article is that he's just asking questions. But even if he was expressing concern or worry, or even if he was saying, let's go get them, why do you seem to think he shouldn't do that? It's just as much his government as it is yours.
Who would even begin to question whether or not the military knows more about making war than civilians? Certainly not I. But I *do* question whether or not the military should or shouldn't be used. And while the military may have good input on that question (like whether or not they think they'll be effective, what kind of effort a particular objective will take, etc) they can *NOT* all by themselves, say whether or not military action *SHOULD* happen. That is a job given to the President, who is accountable to ALL US CITIZENS (even *gasp* civilians).
Do you really think that, even now that we're in a heightened state, on the brink of war, that civilians don't count? I hope you are a minority representative of our military. Because you don't even know what you're fighting for.
The "War" is a front. (Score:2)
From the Carnivore installations of Sept. 11 to the law they passed that legitimizes it, our rights and privacy have been absorbed by the big sucking sound. This is having the same effect on individual rights as the Len Bias death had on the War on Drugs.
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps America's Karma has achieved the proper state that someone will wipe us off the map. The Gauls are attacking Rome. (And of course, George W. is playing fiddle.)
Over the past week, I have seen a people manipulated by the media, and blindly walk down the corridor to the slaughterhouse.
Useful Links:
mediafilter.org
essential.org
globalresearch.ca
~Hammy
"You know you're a geek when you visit more
2001 or 1984? (Score:3, Insightful)
Digitally tracing cash? How bout we just get rid of cash and everyone use credit cards? That's what George Orwell wrote about in 1984...
A "new type of war" where one country is the enemy one day and our friend the next, and the American people are supposed to go along with whatever way the winds of war blow that particular day? Again, straight out of 1984...
How about we give the government access to all our personal information? Worked for Big Brother...
Again, I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but these are extremely important, fundamental issues that are going to be raised in the next few days.
Everyone has said this, but as the tech-literate, educated people we are on
Today I plan on calling my Senators and Representatives, and writing letters (snail mail). I think it would be prudent for all of us here to show that, even in times of trial, democracy still can work. Make your voices heard and inform the policy makers of your views!!
Too late, you already have zero privacy (Score:2)
Think about it - almost every gainfully employed adult has a credit card. Right there you have built up an audit trail that describes you enough that most data mining techniques can reasonably predict what you might purchase (any Amazon user knows this).
Most people user their SSN to create bank accounts - once again you are easily tracked and described.
You phone can be easily tapped, as discussion on this site already have indicated.
If you have digital TV, or any TV system requiring a phone jack, your viewing habits are being cataloged.
As for your internet connection - this is probably the easiest to monitor. Just do a google search on your own name, you may get a blast from the past.
You can bemoan the current state of affairs if you want, but the fact is you have already have zero privacy.
enemy one day and friend the next (Score:2)
The Media, War, and How to Solve This. (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we are using the wrong word when we talk about a war. Maybe we need something new, something that better describes what we are doing. If we look at the War on Drugs or the War on Crime or the War on Poverty these were not 'wars'. Maybe they too need a better word. A word in which we do not automatically think of large military efforts or fire raining down from the sky.
I have talked with many of my classmates and friends in the past week and most of them seem to think we will invade Afghanistan. The media has made it seem as if all of Afghanistan is part of this, and that much of the Middle East is partly responsible, when its not. It is as much our faults as these foreign states. It is not because we are free or because we don't regulate people lives like Pat Roberson seems to thing, it is a failure of our foreign policy. I am not saying a failure in Bush's foreign policy, a failure of the American peoples foreign policy. We do not pay attention to the rest of the world; we don't understand them or what goes on with them. And this is our failure. So while we look at ways to solve this situation abroad, let us try and prevent further actions like this at home.
Defending our infrastructure. (Score:3, Interesting)
This type of act is, at it's core, a terrorist act and could contribute to the confusion surrounding other events.
Imagine if a particularly nasty computer virus had been released on September 11th... even if it had nothing to do with the actual attack, it would have contributed greatly to the feeling of helplessness that so many of us experienced that day.
Regarding civil liberties (Score:5, Informative)
While in Israel, my first experience with liberty in that country was in passing through customs. It was actually quite easy to get into the country, compared to leaving. I was asked the purpose of my visit (a standard question) and asked to give a list of places I would be visiting. Since I didn't really know where I would be going yet, I said so. I was greeted with suspicious looks and incredulity, but allowed to pass through. I fit the profile of "single male, travelling alone."
Upon entering the country I immediately took a bus to Ashdod where my girlfriend lived. There were several soldiers on the bus. This seemed odd, but my girlfriend assured me they were there merely as travelers, not guardians. I still felt safer knowing there were several people with assault rifles on the bus.
Over the course of my visit, I was in many busy public places, including restaurants, night clubs, transit centers, malls, etc. In the malls and transit centers I was asked to show the contents of my bag upon entering. I didn't feel violated by this. I felt safer knowing these checks were being made. The people were friendly and expeditious.
Everywhere I went in Israel I saw soldiers. All had rifles; some had rifles with grenade launchers. You actually get used to this after a while. I was only there a month, but by the end of my visit I hardly noticed anymore.
But the most important thing I noticed in Israel was the degree of freedom I had. I didn't have to pass through checkpoints (except when I went to Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian area, and even then we weren't even stopped, just looked at as we drove through) and was never asked what I was doing or where I was going.
Look people. America has been changed, and not by choice. Security must be enhanced, or we will continue to be blown to small pieces on a whim. I ask people to look at Israel as an example of how to conduct security without impinging unduly on people's liberties. There are necessary steps which must be taken. There is simply no option. But it needn't be an end to liberty. If Israel (a country that clearly has its own governmental problems) can do it, so surely can the United States.
I am hopeful.
Re:Regarding civil liberties (Score:2, Insightful)
A couple things:
1) You didn't mention it, but I can pretty well guarantee you didn't pass through customs fitting the profile of 'single male arab, travelling alone'. What I mean is, you have a lot of freedoms in this kind if setup, if you don't fit a certain profile.
Point: Look at number of attacks on anyone the local (US) idiots think might be arab (eg my girlfriends jamaican professor was verbally attacked yesterday by someone who thought he was the devil/pakistanian).
2) One thing you may have noticed in Israel was the degree of freedom you had, but one thing I noticed was that while walking from my brothers apt. to his girlfriends place in the Old City (Jerusalem) 3 times in two weeks we were stopped and shielded by local police while they checked out potential bomb threats. 3) Feeling free is nice. But that TINY country spends an INCREDIBLE amount of energy trying to stop terrorist bombings, and they FAIL. How do you think that will work out here? Do you see every other bus you take here in the states having multiple army soldiers on it, let alone multiple undercover intelligence agents?
And assuming this would work as well as it does in Israel (quite well - they only get bombed bi-weekly instead of daily), how do you think our citizens would react towards arabs or whoever's race they thought might be behind the bi-weekly bombings?
You can look at Israel as an example of how to conduct security without impinging unduly on (insert one race/creed) people's rights, but I look at it as an example of how to exacerbate problems until you're stuck in a situation where everyone wants to kill their neighbors (even though their beliefs are very similar).
Re:Regarding civil liberties (Score:2)
People have to do a lot of military service. I'm Swiss, it's already a pain to do the military service and the military budget is huge for the country but it's a joke compared to Israel. Somebody has to do the soldier and to pay for the weapons...
Re: "You actually get used to it after a while." (Score:2, Insightful)
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the cafe.
Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day. A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely a question of losing Central Africa: for the first time in the whole war, the territory of Oceania itself was menaced.
A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of undifferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded again. He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even retch slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine, themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way, could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst of all was that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night and day, was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those --
He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so far as it was possible he never visualized them. They were something that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his face, a smell that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter since they released him, and had regained his old colour -- indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the current issue of The Times, with the page turned down at the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty, he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill, but he had the impression that they always undercharged him. It would have made no difference if it had been the other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old job had been.
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had been over-fulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This is news of the highest importance. Take care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!' The tinking music struck up again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and moved it across the board. There was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary medley of feeling -- but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost -- struggled inside him.
The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:
2+2=
'They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could get inside you. 'What happens to you here is for ever,' O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist.
There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and done that if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been.
He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something -- something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.'
'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer.'
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again.'
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the everflowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people. He made a half-hearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable from behind.
'At the time when it happens,' she had said, 'you do mean it.' He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over to the --
Something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came into it. And then -- perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound -- a voice was singing:
'Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me --'
The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.
He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank. But it had become the element he swam in. It was his life, his death, and his resurrection. It was gin that sank him into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken, it would have been impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, listening to the telescreen. From fifteen to closing-time he was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what he did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admonished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth and did a little work, or what was called work. He had been appointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were engaged in producing something called an Interim Report, but what it was that they were reporting on he had never definitely found out. It was something to do with the question of whether commas should be placed inside brackets, or outside. There were four others on the committee, all of them persons similar to himself. There were days when they assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another that there was not really anything to be done. But there were other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished -- when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels, threats, even, to appeal to higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out of them and they would sit round the table looking at one another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.
The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised his head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely changing the music. He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow horizontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?
His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move. Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because --
Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a candle-lit room with a vast white-counterpaned bed, and himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared. It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well, a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscoting until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother said, 'Now be good, and I'Il buy you a toy. A lovely toy -- you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby, and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill-cut that they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tiddly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting-point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny sister, too young to understand what the game was about, had sat propped up against a bolster, laughing because the others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had all been happy together, as in his earlier childhood.
He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally. They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they were. Some things had happened, others had not happened. He turned back to the chessboard and picked up the white knight again. Almost in the same instant it dropped on to the board with a clatter. He had started as though a pin had run into him.
A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears.
The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the telescreen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: 'Vast strategic manoeuvre -- perfect co-ordination -- utter rout -- half a million prisoners -- complete demoralization -- control of the whole of Africa -- bring the war within measurable distance of its end victory -- greatest victory in human history -- victory, victory, victory!'
Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive movements. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago -- yes, only ten minutes -- there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.
The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Re:Regarding civil liberties (Score:3, Informative)
I was in Israel in 1988, when I was 12 years old. I did not get used to it, but my Israeli friend who was my age, didn't even think about it. For me, it was the first time I ever saw a weapon and I was so afraid, that I didn't want to leave the house, where we were staying.
"I was asked the purpose of my visit (a standard question) and asked to give a list of places I would be visiting. Since I didn't really know where I would be going yet, I said so. I was greeted with suspicious looks and incredulity, but allowed to pass through."
In case any of you are ever asked at border, where you are going, then don't say you don't know where. A year ago I went to Sweden from Denmark in my car, and had no particular aim, just wanted to cruise. Well, when I said that to the policemen at the border, they decided to tear my car appart and hold me back for about half an hour. They didn't have anything else to do, and being 20 at the time, I guess I did look suspicious (besides, I was actually carrying hash, but they didn't find it). Next time, I'm giving them dates and city names
is america ready? (Score:3, Insightful)
the main problem with our military and the concept of it, is that it's geared for fighting nations, not individuals. "the us army is a broadsword, not a scapel." [imdb.com] invading the nation that hosts the individuals who are responsible may bring them to justice. we should keep in mind that the eyes of the world are on america right now. i don't think there's citizen on this planet (who has access to television) who isn't considering what we're going to do next.
evidence to the fact that we're still not thinking about this correctly comes from quotes like "rid world of evil-doers" [salon.com]
_f
Osama Bin Laden - Not Guilty (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, Osama does have violent intentions toward the US. But the way his organization works is that wanna-be terrorists go to his camp to be trained and become part of the community. They meet each other and develop their own terrorist plans, completely independent of central leadership. If Osama Bin Laden thinks that US citizens should die, then yes, he is guilty... of THOUGHTCRIME. The first ammendment would protect him until it was proven that he was somehow part of the planning for the specific incident. The US Gov has yet to produce any evidence that would prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
Bush has turned this man into a scapegoat, a punching bag for 300 million angry americans to get their agression out on. Bush has asked for the death of this man, without fair trial. How long will it take for us to lose our freedom and rights as Osama Bin Laden has? If he is guilty of planning the WTC incident, he should be punished. But the Bush administration could not allow him to be 'innocent', they would have to admit that this attack was actually performed by 18 individuals who hate the US as a direct result of Bush administration policies in the middle east!
As far as I know, the culprits are already dead, they were on the planes. There's nobody left to kill. It wasn't a 'declaration of war', it was a group of angry individuals doing what they thought was best for their people. The US cannot 'avenge' the dead innocents by killing more. Go home, take your anti-islamic rhetoric off your pickup trucks, and ask your leaders for a more sane approach to the situation.
War is a bad metaphor (Score:5, Insightful)
(See this commentary in the New Yorker [newyorker.com] and this one in Salon [salon.com] for calls to treat this as a police action.)
I suggest that the best analogy for what we need to do is treat this like the Italian struggle against the Mafia. The crucial step is a cultural change, from the situation where the CD party treated the Mafia as a necessary evil that was just part of the political landscape, to where all of Italian society turned against the Mafia, and magistrates and judges were willing to risk their lives to rid Italy of Mafia control. The Mafia still exists, no doubt, but it no longer has the same insidious grip on the political system.
Here, the crucial step is getting the Arab and Muslim countries to stop treating their radical Islamists as necessary evils who, since they can mobilize the poor, and can kill dissenters, must be tolerated and accepted. Many countries, such as Iran and Syria, have used these groups to fight proxy wars for political control over the Middle East. The best thing that can come out of this tragedy is an alignment of Arab and Muslim contries against their radical elements, and a change in the culture there to stop accepting bloody attacks against civilians as acceptable political tactics.
That's why bombing Kabul, for example, is likely to be counter-productive. As much as we want the Taliban to be out of Afganistan and replaced by some more acceptible government, the likelihood that we will succeed is low, and the likelihood that we will simply piss off the very countries we need to align against these guys is high.
I suspect that what Rumsfeld et al. are talking about by "new kind of war" is making their point on asymetric warfare: the notion that we have gotten so good at fighting conventional wars that no one will send armies and navies against us, but will instead fight with more "terrorist-like" actions. My guess is that internal in the Pentagon this is being used as an "I told you so/wake up call".
Perhaps War is what's needed (read below) (Score:2, Interesting)
Look at Germany: we fought them tooth and nail, clashing on levels not seen before. Yet now they are among the world's most prosperous nations.
The same, and even more so, with Japan. We slagged Tokyo on the scale of Dresden as well as her other cities, and then nuked two more. Now Japan has the world's second largest economy in the world, but the fact is we went in and rebuilt her after WW2.
Perhaps what we really, truly ought to do, even though it will be unpopular in the long run, is to go in, kick ass, take names - baring in mind the xUSSR's experience there and ours in Vietnam - and then...rebuild her.
There are enough volunteers here in the US that would probably be willing to go over and help rebuild. Plenty of patriotic americans that are muslim as well. Send them over as the teachers while the rest of us build roads, factories, and more. Build their economy from nothing to something. Take 10-15 years to do so. Just like in Europe and in Japan.
Then transition things back into their hands like we did before...and leave. well off people rarely rise in revolt.
Let the people who want to die fighting us, do so...those that want to live, live.
Then we can work our 'infamous' reconstruction project and go home. It would be great - and amusing - to see Afghanistan as one of the top 4 economies in the world.
Bunch of Hype is all it is, as usual (Score:2)
Taliban: they are stacking up some 25000 troops for a possible attack on Pakistan, or to resist an invasion by the US. That is an army folks, no new war here, if they attack, we fight back, and it's a war just like the others. We will send in our planes and our choppers and our cruise missles, and eventually our tanks and troops. Its warfare like we all witnessed on live TV during the gulf war.
Future Terrorism: Bush and others are calling for the collaboration of intelligence agencies from around the world to prevent future terrorism and hunt down all terrorists. This is the new kind of war, and it really is just a reincarnation of the old west with outlaws and bounty hunters, now on a worldwide scale. Instead of getting leads and slowly acting on them and not stepping on anyone's toes (other countries',) investigators are going to have no political lines to worry about and they will be able to pursue terrorists wherever they may go.
All in all, if you're wondering what kind of war we're going to have because of the attacks, rest assured, our military is going to go in and kick some major ass just like we did with Iraq, but this time we will finish the job. In addition, we will wage war on anyone else who attempts, encourages, or harbors terrorism.
Alternative Courses of Action (Score:3, Flamebait)
First, As noted here [jerrypournelle.com], The Russians already bombed Afghanistan back to the stone age. and the Taliban are not the Afghans. The Taliban are a bunch of psychopathic nuts, hated by the majority population.
Some more interesting proposals [jerrypournelle.com](only half tongue in cheek) are to builds special monuments to the WTC dead, consisting of cities razed perfectly flat and with enormous amounts of salt to make sure no one lives there again. Some people have objected to this. It is worth discussion.
Another idea is based on historic precident, seen in a letter on this page [jerrypournelle.com] (towards the bottom). - It is based on the idea that we must use cultural factors as well force to fight the war:
Incidentally this really is from Harry Reddington...Media FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
"Some companies were at least taking the minimal step of blocking out encrypted e-mails to their networks, said Russ Cooper, surgeon general of TruSecure, a security services provider based in Herndon, Virginia."
How the hell can blocking encrypted e-mails improve a companies security against terrorism?
Weapons of War (Score:2, Interesting)
What an tough situation (Score:2, Funny)
This "new" type of war, going after small factions with ground troops... this will have high casualty rates. On top of that, we will have to send in hundreds of men at every target, over and over. We're going to run out of men in a hurry.
Then I, the 18-26 year old in good health, get a call. I am called to active duty so that I, your basic computer nerd, can be taught how to shoot a gun and aim for the head.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would opt for another solution. Granted this will be tough, but I don't think that more American lives need to be lost over this.
I also agree that Afghanistan is almost already ruined, so there's no use going to war with them. What would we have to gain? The Taliban would seem like hero's for defending the people of Afghanistan...then guess what, suddenly there's a whole new group of people that want to join in the holy war against the U.S.
Bin Laden is a smart guy...he would be dead or in jail if he wasn't. I don't think we have a prayer of getting through this like Desert Storm. People will die if we get cocky and think we'll just toss 'em around like Iraq.
One last thing I'd like to mention is this: When America fought the revolutionary war against England, we were far outnumbered and didn't have a chance. But we were fighting with our hearts, and had a purpose.
By waging a holy war, Afghani's now have that same sort of purpose. They may be far outnumbered and technology inferior, but I'd put my odds on the man fighting with his heart any day of the week.
UNDERSTANDING BIN LADEN (Score:2, Interesting)
SOURCE: Iran News
William O. Beeman teaches anthropology at Brown
University in Providence, Rhode Island. A specialist on
Middle East Culture, he has written extensively on
fundamentalism and terrorism. He has worked for the
past four years in Tajikistan, where he has been able
to monitor developments in Afghanistan.
UNDERSTANDING BIN LADEN
The United States risks a severe miscalculation in
dealing with the destruction of the World Trade Center
and the attack on the Pentagon on Tuesday. This event
is not an isolated instance of violence. This is not an
"act of war." It is one symptom of a cancer that
threatens to metastasize. The root cause is not
terrorist activity, as has been widely stated. It is
the relationship between the United States and the
Islamic world. Until this central cancerous problem is
treated, Americans will never be free from fear.
Merely locating and hunting down a single "guilty
party" in this case will not stop future violence: such
an action will not destroy the organization of
terrorist cells already established throughout the
world. Of greater importance, it will do nothing to
alleviate the residual enmity against America that will
remain at large in the world, continuing to motivate
violence. The perpetrators of the original attack on
the World Trade Center in 1993 were caught and
convicted. This did not stop the attack on Tuesday.
The chief suspect is the Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden
or his surrogates. He has been mischaracterized as an
anti-American terrorist. He should rather be thought of
as someone who would do anything to protect Islam. Bin
Laden began his career fighting the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan in 1979 when he was 22 years old. He has
not only resisted the Soviets but also the Serbians in
Yugoslavia. His anger was directed against the United
States primarily because of the U.S. presence in the
Gulf Region, more particularly Saudi Arabia itself, the
site of the most sacred Islamic religious sites.
According to bin Laden, during the Gulf War America
co-opted the rulers of Saudi Arabia to establish a
military presence in order to kill Muslims in Iraq. In
a religious decree issued in 1998, he gave religious
legitimacy to attacks on Americans in order to stop the
United States from "occupying the lands of Islam in the
holiest of places." His decree also extends to
Jerusalem, where the second most sacred Muslim siteâ^À^Ôthe
al-Aqsa Mosque. The depth of his historical vision is
clear when, in his decree, he characterizes Americans
as "crusaders" harkening back to the Medieval Crusades
in which the Holy Lands, then occupied by Muslims, were
captured by European Christians.
He will not cease his opposition until the United
States leaves the region. Paradoxically, his strategy
for convincing the United States to do so seems drawn
from the American foreign policy playbook. When the
United States disapproves of the behavior of another
nation, it "turns up the heat" on that nation through
embargoes, economic sanctions or withdrawal of
diplomatic representation. In the case of Iraq
following the Gulf war, America employed military
action, resulting in the loss of civilian life. The
State Department has theorized that if the people of a
rogue nation experience enough suffering, they will
overthrow their rulers, or compel them to adopt more
sensible behavior. The terrorist actions in New York
and Washington are a clear and ironic implementation of
this strategy against the United States.
Bin Laden takes no credit for actions emanating from
his training camps in Afghanistan. He has no desire for
self-aggrandizement. A true ideologue, he believes that
his mission is sacred, and he wants only to see clear
results. For this reason, the structure of his
organization is essentially tribalâ^À^Ôcellular in modern
political terms. His followers are as fervent and
intense in their belief as he is. They carry out their
actions because they believe in the rightness of their
cause, not because of bin Laden's orders or approval.
Groups are trained in Afghanistan, and then establish
their own centers in places as far-flung as Canada,
Africa and Europe. Each cell is technologically
sophisticated, and may have a different set of
motivations for attacking the United States.
Palestinians members of his group see Americans as
supporters of Israel in the current conflict between
the two nations. In the Palestinian view, Ariel
Sharon's ascendancy to leadership of Israel has
triggered a new era, with U.S. government officials
failing to pressure the Israeli government to end
violence against Palestinians. Palestinian cell members
will not cease their opposition until the United States
changes its relationship with the Israeli state.
The Mujaheddin fighters in Lebanon also direct their
hostility against Israel and the United States. They
also operate against the Maronite Christian community
in their own country, who were supported by the French
from World War I until the end of World War II. They
will not cease their operations until the region is
firmly in Islamic hands.
Above all, Americans need to remember that the rest of
the world has an absolute right to self-determination
that is as defensible as our own. A despicable act of
mayhem such as those committed in New York and
Washington is a measure of the revulsion that others
feel at our actions that seemingly limit those rights.
If we perpetuate a cycle of hate and revenge, this
conflict will escalate into a war that our
great-grandchildren will be fighting.
________________
Copyright 2001 William O. Beeman. This article may be
distributed for any non-commercial purpose.
New Kind of War? Old Kind of Errors (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, we will not be attacking ("offensive"), we will be defending ourselves against terrorism - in a way that European countries already have for years.
Third, before asking for new toys, how about those in charge of this defense started by using the info they already had? See
(According to La Repubblica, this "memo" dates from October 20, 2000. They don't say how they got it -- I couldn't find the complete text online, but another part is in "Jeff"'s guilty plea in "USA v. Ali Mohamed" [cryptome.org], dated the same day.)
France Surrenders (Score:2)
full story:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?disp
history (Score:5, Insightful)
"we must be willing to continue our bombing until we have destoryed every work of man in North Vietnam if this is what it takes to win the war"
-Curtis LeMay
General US Air Force
Long Beach CA,
April 1, 1967
"We have dropped twelve tonnes of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam. Whole provinces have been substantially destroyed."
-Robert Kennedy
Senator from New York
Washington DC,
Feb 8, 1968
"You've got to forget about this civilian stuff. Whenever you drop bombs you're going to hit civilians. It's foolish to pretend you're not."
-Barry Goldwater
Senator from Arizona
New York City
January 23, 1967
"It has become increasingly apparent that the US bombing of North and South Vietnam has been one of the most wasteful and expensive hoaxes ever to be put over on the American people."
David M. Shoup
Commadant US Marines Corps
in Atlantic magazine
April 1969
Think hard about this people (Score:2, Interesting)
Psyops is in full force. We are at an extremely high threatcon level. The rage against the machine message board was closed by the Secret Service and there were some credible tactical reasons for doing so, but that shows you where we have went today.
The big radio companys are under orders not to play a huge list of songs and that is really, really wierd, I was just at the page where the list of songs were, I went back to memepool to grab the url it was gone. This goes way beyond extra security checks. This is scaring the shit out of me ten times as much those planes. I'm not even going to try and clean up my post as I'm worried that the first link I posted will disappear as well. Maybe the sky really is falling.
Islam is not the enemy. Islam is the prize (Score:2, Insightful)
The terrorists did not attack us in order to end curbside check-in. They attacked us so we would become enraged and attack an Islamic country causing the people of Islam to see America as a mortal threat. They hope we will do something stupid with a cruise missle which will lead to Islam uniting in a Jihad with the terrorists as the leaders.
I know it's nutty but that is what they want.
When our top dogs describe this as being different from other wars it is because they see that this war will be won or lost in the shadows, not with large battles, fleets, or bombing campaigns.
This war demands that we are smart, crafty, devious, decepive, brutal, ruthless, and effective all without inflicting mass causalties and while walking through the political minefields of Islam.
Some thoughts on warfare. (Score:2)
Nothing: Not an option. The people won't stand for it, and the events will occur again.
Embargos: Um, lets starve the people of a country who are already abused by their government. The people don't have anything, and additional sanctions will only make the situation worse for them. Bin Ladden and the Taliban will still be able to procure goods through other means. Only the people will suffer. However, this is a necessary portion of any conflict as it requires Bin Ladden increase the spending of his infrastructure to get goods which wold otherwise be easier to obtain.
Financial Crackdown: Siezing assets, cracking systems, and otherwise disrupting any high tech aspects of Bin Ladden and Afghanistan will only be partially possible (at least as of now). Part of the problem is - they can't touch him once he is inside the US (of all places) networking system. GWB hopes to change that, that's the part that screams of echelon.
Missle strikes: As shown following Clintion's attempt, do not inspire the american people, do little lasting damage to an already war-torn country, possibly endanger civilians, and otherwise only infuriate and unite a culture against us.
Air strikes add an element of personal involvement, which works in favor of approval raitings with the american people early on in a conflict, but endanger the lives of pilots, and suffer from the same problems of missile strikes. The Taliban does not believe in following the Geneva convention (obviously). Expect any POWs to be horribly mistreated and tortured, and in reality they may be better off dead.
Assasination or extraction: We haven't gotten Bin Ladden yet. He is content to sever communications, live in a bunker, and wage guerilla warfare against us. He's done it in the past and he will do it again. We won't even know which bunker he is in. He uses low-tech means to survive when necessary, and provides the US little to track him with.
Small scale insertions, etc: These will drastically increase the chances that a US soldier will be captured. We may out tech them, but even with the gulf war under our belts, most of our troops would still qualify as highly trained, but green. Afghanistan has been at war for the past 22 or 23 years, they may not have much, but they are highly vetran in regards to guerilla warfare, and they've already beaten the former USSR with that stacked against them. In addition, ground forces will only inspire others to become terrorists. More than likely the terrorists inspired will be from a different country, and more than likely will be able to strike in a similar manner to the WTC (just probably not the same scale of distruction or target).
Full scale assault: The most US lives imaginable will be on frontlines, facing an enemy closer in tactics to vietnam. They will be viewed as a savior for a few, but for many they will be the enemy. The war will be against the people of Afghanistan at that point (in addition to the Taliban). We will inspire a sense of nationalism and fanaticism in them, similar to what we are experiencing now. If we are upset neghboring Islamic countries, who usually side together, we will be faced with more than just Afghanistan as our enemy. Many lives will be lost, and yes, it will require the support of every civilized western country to be won - i.e. world war III. World War III will be viewed as ended when either: the Jihad is called off (an unlikely scenario) but will still inspire some fanatics to continue to perform terrorist actions, tensions will still run high. The US may also choose to withdraw in the Saigon or HoChiMihn City sort of fashion. Terrorist actions will increase as the US is viewed the looser by radical islamic fundamentalists. The third scenario is complete and utter devistation, possibly thermonuclear. Regardless, almost evey man woman and child will have been affected in some way, and how do you tell a terrorist from a refugee in these circumstances? The Western world will either emerge united, or the western world will view the US as having committed one of the worst global vendettas ever seen, and remain in shock and disbelief with relations strained to near breaking points.
Eh, these are just some thoghts...
Impossible objectives (Score:2)
It's obvious that such a goal can not possibly be acheived. We're not even talking about the in itself impossible task of catching everyone who has commited terror, but the claimed objective is to somehow stop any terror attacks to even occur, ever.
So what does this mean? Are we entering a state of permanent war until something that will never happen happens?
An other very clear problem with all this is that "terrorism" is a vague and undefined term. One persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter. There really are no clear lines. So the objective is undefined and arbitrary.
Just based on these two issues alone, I think this may end very badly.
War and Liberties... (Score:2)
What exactly do you fear? Is there something you all are trying to hide from the government? Is it just the principle of the thing? Having my email filtered or my phone calls monitored seems like a trivial price to pay if it means I can get on a plane this christmas and fly home without worrying about smashing into a skyscraper or having my throat slit with a box cutter. It's YOUR government listening and YOUR security and life being protected. Why oppose these things?
You're probably going to reply to me and say "but the Constitution says...!". Do you honestly mean to tell me that you are construing a document written hundreds of years ago as being directly applicable to this situation? That is suicidal and not realistic in the least. When the Constitution was written, there were no planes, no internet, no skyscrapers, no phones, and there were no terrorist groups committing mass murder. Committing an atrocity on a scale equal to what we witnessed was perhaps impossible. Hell, there werent even Arabs crashing horses into barns!
Certainly the creators of the Constitution never could have forseen the kind of cowardly attacks we faced recently. Do you people even grasp the severity of what happened? The "impenetrable" United States was attacked on its own soil! I believe the Constitution says that our privacy is guaranteed not to be violated "without reason", or something to that affect. Clearly this attack was well beyond reason. In fact, for many of us, it is beyond comprehension.
For those of you claiming that we are "violating" the US Constitution, I propose that it is YOU who wish to violate it. One of our government's greatest strengths is that it is NOT rigid. It must constantly evolve to maintain the balance of liberty while giving due powers to those who must protect us and our way of life. Obviously, when an unseen enemy turns our own modes of communication and transportation into terrible weapons, it is time for an adjustment.
I value my right to privacy, but I value my way of life, my security, and that of my country more.
For those of you who wonder if we are actually at war or not, consider the following definition of war: "A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious". If this is indeed how war is defined, then I sincerely hope that we are very much at war.
The War on * (Score:2)
I think we can safely say this new war, "The War on Terrorism" is going to be fought just like the old war, "The War on Drugs". It is going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, strip us of freedoms and accomplish nothing. If anything it will make it worse.
Different enemy, different approach (long) (Score:2)
Osama bin Laden is only one of the combatants here. Let's think about who the combatants are in this conflict, which has already been going on for several years:
1) North America, Western Europe, Israel, and supportive other nations (India, Japan, et. al.)
vs.
2) A very loose network of independently-funded, sometimes (but not always) externally-supported terrorists whose agendas differ, but whose means are similar.
There are Basque terrorists in Spain, clamoring for statehood and independence. Palestinian terrorists decry Israel's occupation of their homeland, and fight to remove them from Palestine. Narco-terrorists in Columbia attempt to destabilize the national government so they can make money more easily. Bin Laden directs attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia because of his rigid fundamentalist view of Islam. The IRA wages war on what it sees as Protestant invaders, fanning flames that the majority of Northern Irish people want extinguished.
All these groups are pursuing different aims, but they all are using the same means - extranational use of force. Groups of armed combatants who do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of the population.
In the days before September 11, 2001, the differences between these groups and older insurrections, such as the Viet Cong, the American Minutemen, and the Russian Communists, may have been hard to discern.
But now the real difference is clear. Those organizations were limited both in means and in goals. Their efforts were focused exclusively on obtaining control of specific geography, for the purpose of governing it themselves. In the main, most terrorists groups still are after that goal (IRA, Hezbullah, Basque separatists, et. al.).
However, the means for terrorists to wage war far beyond ther own borders has been unleashed. In a sense, what we've seen is less like Pearl Harbor than it is like Hiroshima. While the concept of a massive terrorist attack against a far-away nation has been around for a very long time, this is the first time it has been executed.
So now the reality is sinking in. Extranational terrorist groups, which are just small collections of active individuals, are now capable of unleashing the kind of destructive force previously restricted for use by nation-states.
Imagine that you're Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK. Your nation has been fighting IRA terrorism for decades, and now the US endures this massive assault from terrorists. The first thing that enters your mind is: "Perhaps the IRA will attempt something of this magnitude as well."
Repeat the scenario for any number of presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of nations around the globe. Every nation-state has enemies. They all must now realize to one degree or another, that their enemies have just been shown that massive attacks are possible.
Recall that the United States gained mastery of nuclear weapons in the late 1940s, but by the 1950s, the Soviets had acquired their own. Soon the Chinese, Indians, and Israelis followed. Now there are over a dozen nuclear-capable states.
In the case of nuclear weapons, we've been fortunate enough to avoid any further use of them beyond WWII. But that is because nuclear weapons have been controlled, so far, by national command and control structures. The implications of launching nuclear weapons when you are the leader of a country, responsible for the survival of your own people, is immense.
Terrorists, who have no national sovereignty to defend, do not have such limitations on behavior.
So this is a world-wide conflict between nation-states and independent small groups who now have been shown a new way to press their goals. Alliances have always been a part of warfare, from the Trojan War to the Gulf War. But in the main, alliances have been formed to deal with one easily-identified enemy. For example, in WWII, the Allies banded together to fight the Axis. Though composed of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the components of theAxis were still easily pinpointed on a map.
Now the threat is much more diverse and much more diffuse - nation-states face potential terrorist action at virtually any time, any place.
Beyond the short-term, technical issues of how we fight terrorists, the long-term approach needs to be wholistic. The world is a smaller place now, and actions that impact one nation impact many. One result of this interconnectedness is that internal politics that disenfranchise, alienate, or radicalize people will now be looked at more closely.
A classic example of this is Israel. By assassinating top Intefada leaders, the Israelis are taking care of an immediate security threat, but they are simultaneously helping to create a whole new generation of disenfranchised Palestinian youth with nothing to lose. In short, they are creating terrorists.
The rest of the world, led by the United States, needs to exert more pressure on Israel to come to an equitable agreement with the Palestinian people, because this conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is now no longer just their problem, it's everyone's problem.
We need also to think beyond military matters when attempting to diffuse conflicts. We're discovering that bin Laden's financial interests are extremely broad and that he has seemingly profited from the market downturn following his attacks. The international monetary system needs to be re-examined from perspective of international security. While financial privacy is important, when someone has been identified as a terrorist, we should be capable of choking off their most immediate air supply, which is money.
Every terrorist organization needs physical space to operate, even if their activities are dispersed and controlled from afar. Terrorist training camps in Libya, for example, have been showing terrorists how to wage war for decades now. Shutting them down is a key means of denying terrorists the ability to perfect their craft and plan their missions. If the international community collectively puts terrorism-supporting nations such as Iraq and Libya on notice, and destroys their ability to defend themselves swiftly and without warning if and when such camps are discovered on their territory, we'll see far less willingness to support terrorism.
Our HUMINT (human intelligence) capabilities were curtailed years ago as part of the "the Cold War is over, we don't need to be involved with nasty people" mentality of the time. We need to get off our high horse and get down in the mud. Human intelligence is vital to infiltrating terrorist cells and stopping violence before it starts.
Finally, our ability to defeat terrorists will not be contingent upon some sort of ballistic missile shiled costing billions of dollars. It will be contingent primarily on our ability to insert special operations forces at the right time and place to execute surgical strikes on terrorist cells. In short, we need to place the terrorists more off-guard than they can place us.
The western world has a wide array of resources in this regard, but the coordination of intelligence, logistics, and operational assets will be complicated. The more coordination, the more chances for over-complication and security leaks. Nonetheless, this must be a multinational effort, sustained over time.
It won't be easy. It won't involve teams of hackers taking down someone's website and winning the war. It will involve skilled, dedicated people risking their lives to kill terrorists. People will die, but it will truly be so that others may live. 21st century Americans hate to admit it, but wars aren't antiseptic, and they're not video games.
This one will be long, difficult, and frustrating, but one thing is certain: the terrorist's days of easy living are over.
The whole thing is insane. (Score:2)
As for the idea of sending in troops -- uh, you're talking about hilly terrain, an inner-continental climate, and the remnants of the last war fought there.
For all anyone knows, any patch of ground could be the r[e|u]sting-place for an old Soviet minefield. UXBs probably litter the ground like pebbles on a beach. The level of documentation that probably still exists is likely minimal to non-existant, and this is what the Good Ol' Boys are going to be walking over. Oh, goody. Check your life insurance for a stupidity clause, guys.
Then there's what you're going to do, once you've got there. As another poster noted, the terrain favours defence, heavily. And the opponents aren't using 30-year-old pop-guns, either. They're using high-tech US weapons, supplied by the US Government in more politically favourable times.
In fact, because none of that was exactly official and on public-record, is there anyone who can even be 100% sure what these maniacs were given??? Remember, information of this kind tends to accidently fall in the shredder, when it becomes embarassing, as Col. Ollie North showed. (And that's aside from anything they've stolen from any country they've been in contact with.)
In short, a head-on assault might be an effortless stroll. But it could just as easily be a complete fiasco. The battle for Monte Carlos, WW2, comes to mind.
The other thing that a lot of people forget is that we're going against a totally different type of opponent, for whom suicide is a perfectly legit option. The Japanese Kamakaze pilots are about the closest the US has had to tackle fanatisism in the battlefield. The cost was not trivial.
To put it another way, you can't just roll into town and expect them to roll over. What you can expect is ten-year-olds leaping from windows, carrying molotov cocktails. If we go in, by force, then we invite a war that will be over only when one side or the other is utterly exterminated. NO survivors.
Electronic war will just enslave the "free world", putting it in the control of mega-corporations and unaccountable agencies. It will not stop the terror attacks, but it will stop civilization.
A military war can mean one thing, and one thing only. Genocide. Not "attempted genocide", as Milosovich is accused of, but ACTUAL genocide. The complete destruction of an entire people.
I fully, 100%, support any attempt to genuinely prevent terror attacks. I support any Government that wishes to be free of such a menace. But I will NOT support the very actions that our fathers and/or grandfathers risked their lives to oppose, when they challanged the might of Nazi Germany and the evils of the Reich.
There are other options. Find them.
Re:A jihad (Score:2, Informative)
Slightly different, but makes a huge difference as to how aggressively to respond.
not in official capacity (Score:4, Interesting)
Here, read the interview with bin Laden, it's all right there.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html [go.com]
Not only is bin Laden pissed at the U.S. being mostly Christian, he's pissed because we aren't allowing them to literally exterminate the Jews in Israel. But it goes farther than exterminating the Jews in Israel, he really wants to exterminate all non-Muslims around the world.
And for all the Liberal Europeans blaming U.S. foreign policy on the whole mess, watch out, he doesn't like you much better and wants you dead too.
note: I'm not condoning U.S. foreign policy, there's plenty I don't agree with, however, preventing other middle-eastern countries from taking over Israel and exterminating the Jews is not one of them.
Re:A jihad (Score:2, Informative)
Afghanistan has NOT declared a holy war, but will do so IF they are attacked. Just as any other nation would do. A secular nation would just call it with a different name.
Re:A jihad (Score:2)
The word really refers to personal struggles, or an effort put forth toward a valid cause. It has nothing to do with "Let's kill all the white capitalist pigs!"
Re:A jihad (Score:2, Informative)
Yes.
Jihad means Struggle (more or less). And there are several possible Jihads.
Jihad of the mind. When You have a confussed mind
Jihad of the soul. When you are facing a religious struggle, with all the questions about religion, meaning of life...
Jihad of the Sword. When you have to "get your sword" and defend yourself (you, your family...). It does not mean Holy War.
I don't remember know what is the forth "jihad". But sure it was not a "let's kill all non-muslims!" thing.
Also, I would like to note that in the Muslim religion, there are different non-believers: The people from the Book and the rest. The People from the Book are all the Christians, Catholics, Jewish... that share fundamental pieces of Holy Writtings (Bible, Torah, ...). And the Al-Coran explicitely says that they are "brothers" and should not be harmed.
And this is all what I remember form my talks with Medieval Historians, so long ago...
Regards, with sadness
Perfect Day was Re:A jihad (Score:5, Interesting)
BIN LADEN COMES HOME TO ROOST (From MSNBC)
At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.
Before you call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia's Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.
But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.
Beginnings
As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.
As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
Intelligent Agencies
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
In fact, while he returned to his family's construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.
Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt's Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.
Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said. "Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Tunnel Visions
It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden's connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein's monster like this.
It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA's Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party's grip on power in Moscow.
Even Hatch can't be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission," had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director William Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military Power" report right up to 1990.
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America's potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
That decision is coming home to roost.
Re:Perfect Day was Re:A jihad (Score:2)
Re:A jihad? (Score:3, Interesting)
Erasing Afghanistan from the face of the Earth won't do you a bit of good. By the time your bombs hit Afghanistan, terrorists will be long gone. Terrorists are everywhere, and they're way more mobile than your bombers or troops. They can easily avoid attacks of this scale.
The only effective way I can see of getting rid of them is infiltrating their organizations, gathering as much intelligence about them as possible, then assasinating them one by one. No fussy and cumbersome war procedures, no large-scale military operations, no pointless delays with diplomatic BS; just a few elite troops of trained assassins, quiet, accurate and deadly.
Assasination: what a GREAT idea (Score:2)
*sigh*
Assasination isn't the answer folks. Open trials, clear evidence, long long long prison sentances. Those are the answers. Reveal them for what they are in the stark light of truth and the lock them away.
Re:Assasination: what a GREAT idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Allow me to disagree. First, assasination won't make martyrs out of them. Sure, for them it's a great heroic thing to go down in flames taking a thousand "enemies" along and making the news worldwide. But to die in their own secret compound, killed by a silent bullet without even knowing what hit them? That doesn't sound very heroic. Second, fast and merciless assassination would save a LOT of time. In order to bring them to "open trial" you would first have to capture them, and that implies a whole diplomatic mess. By the time you manage to persuade (one way or another) governments like those of Afghanistan or Iraq to hand them over, they would have plenty of time to organize the next attack. If you just go after them with Rambo-style assassins ("if they catch you, we don't know you") you avoid the diplomatic hassle and you do essentially the same job a lot quicker and cleaner. With the added bonus that without their leaders, terrorists aren't worth much and certainly won't be capable of planning a second hit.
Political dissidents, you say? Nonsense. We would be going after *known* terrorists, people with quite a few claimed terrorist attacks on their records, not some guy who just opposes his country's government.
Well, I guess you *could* try them and put them in prison. But what do you do when, a few months later, 10 guys carrying concealed plastic containers walk into the Empire State building and threaten to release Serin gas (or Anthrax or whatever) all over Manhattan unless you let bin Laden or whoever is currently in jail walk away free? Not much you can do, eh?
No, these guys *must* die. And they must die in such a way as to discourage others from becoming terrorists: quietly and anonymously.
Allow me to disagree with your disagreeing :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Political dissidents, you say? Nonsense. We would be going after *known* terrorists, people with quite a few claimed terrorist attacks on their records, not some guy who just opposes his country's government.
We'd be going after *known* terrorists? How do they become *known*? By killing people. So by then it is too late. So then how do we stop them from getting to that point? We have to infiltrate organizations who *might* harbor terrorists. And hey, while we are there, why don't we do a bit to keep them quiet. It's a very slippery slope when the government starts lashing out secretly. If there's no oversight, no judge, what's to stop them from infiltrating more benign organizations?
Well, I guess you *could* try them and put them in prison. But what do you do when, a few months later, 10 guys carrying concealed plastic containers walk into the Empire State building and threaten to release Serin gas (or Anthrax or whatever) all over Manhattan unless you let bin Laden or whoever is currently in jail walk away free? Not much you can do, eh?
So we kill him. And then 10 guys carrying concealed plastic contaners walk into the empire state build and release serin gas (or antrhax or whatever) all over Manhattan. The only way to defuse their fanaticism is to show to the world in a fair way what he has done and how it is truely a blight on humanity. The most fanatical won't be convinced by this, but then shooting him won't convince them either (and it may convince less radical elements that the United States is just a VERY large rogue nation).
No, these guys *must* die. And they must die in such a way as to discourage others from becoming terrorists: quietly and anonymously.
Yes because we all know that people who aren't afraid to die are likey to be afraid that we will kill them.... uh, okay, sure
Re:A jihad? (Score:3, Interesting)
My personal opinion is that this is pure propaganda. It's precisely what politicians and the media would want you to believe. Why? Because this approach leads to an emotional response, rather than a rational one. And we all know how easy it is to manipulate people's emotions. This is an incredible opportunity for politicians to push their own agenda, and stirring up people's emotions is the first step in that direction (if you have trouble believing this, look closely at any statement made by any politician during the last week and notice the abundant use of metaphors and symbols, rather than logical reasoning in their speech). The real reason, IMHO, for this display of hatred towards the USA has to do with how SOME of the Middle-Eastern people perceive the interventions of the US in what they call "their own business". They see the US as a country that uses its superior military power to brutally impose its own selfish interests to anyone who might not agree. Whether this perception is accurate or not, it's beyond the scope of my argument. The fact is that it exists and it's leading to despicable acts of terrorism against innocent people like the one last Tuesday.
Now what US politicians seem to be trying to do is feed a constant stream of propaganda to the population, with the apparent purpose of getting the public to identify Afghanistan as "the enemy" and to believe, exactly like you stated, that these people hate the "American way of life itself", which, logically speaking, is nonsense. These people have probably no idea of how American live and what they believe in. How can they hate something they don't know? They're probably manipulated into mindless hostility towards Americans, the same way Americans seem now manipulated into mindless hostility towards Afghans. THIS CANNOT LEAD TO ANYTHING GOOD.
People, both Eastern and Western, need to wake up and realize there's no point in blindly hating each other. They need to see how their own leaders are turning them against each other, for who knows what reasons, and for once step up and put an end to all this. What the heck would be so wrong in Middle Easterners collaborating with the West in an effort to stop terrorism, and the West revising a couple of items on its foreign policy, especially the ones Arabs find the most sensitive?
Oh well. I'm still allowed to dream, aren't I?
Re:A jihad (Score:2)
The USSR lost in Afghanistan, but that was against a resistance that was united against a common enemy, and very heavily supported in money, modern weapons (stingers!) and advisors.
The US lost in Vietnam, but there it was severely constrained by popular opinion and the disapproving international community, troops with low morale, and faced an enemy that was heavily supported in equipment and advisors by the USSR and China.
The Taleban don't even have the support of the majority of the Afghan population. This time they will have no foreign support at all, no modern equipment, nothing.
This time, the US have no trouble with demoralised troops, popular opinion is heavily in favour of killing as many Afghans as possible, the international community no longer has the slightest influence on American policy, and has no sympathy for the Taleban anyway. Even Pakistan has agreed to help!
I'm no expert in logistics, but imho a war against Afghanistan would be a very one directional bloodbath. The area would never be completely pacified as long as the magical mountain penetrating Kalashnikov detector hasn't been invented yet, but I doubt that an occupation of Afghanistan would need to cost more than a few dozen American lives.
Re:WAR! (Score:2)
> Absolutely nothing.
[insert obvious WWII statement here about the usefullness of military action against Germany and Japan]
Re:Outline of a new war (Score:2)
Arguably this is why WW2 was truly a victory; whereas WW1 (for all the military success) was not.
Survival and then victory in 1945 were only the first stage. The lasting victory was to persuade the Japanese and German peoples to reject, even to condemn the past, and to refocus on a positive future.
The imperative in the present 'war' isn't to reduce a few military training areas to rubble in Afghanistan. That isn't even the main battle. The real war the West must win is to change minds. It will be much harder, and will take much longer. I only hope we can succeed.
Re:War against whom? (Score:2)
I agree completely. In a CNN interview (here [cnn.com]), Powell said that his "defined mission" is "to make sure that nothing like this happens again."
If that's a defined mission, I'm afraid to ask what a "poorly-defined" mission is like...
-Chris
Re:Detecting communications (Score:2)
Digital correspondence can always be buried in noise.
It was mentioned in an earlier article that it is very easy to pass messages through public message boards like Slashdot. For instance posting a meaningless troll which will be moderated down, garrenteeing it will not be read by 80% of the people here. Of course the real message is in the writers sig. Two or more people could easily carry on a conversation using quotes from TV, Movies, Books, Comic Books, poetry, whatever. As long as the context was known, they would not even need a secret decoder ring. The point is if people want to or need to communicate in secret, there will always be a way.
Re:Phil Agre on "Imagining the Next War" (Score:2)
Generation Memory.
WWI, WWII, Vietnam. All these actions left entire generations w/the memory of the destruction that war creates. Desert Storm did not leave this thought w/us due to the little impact it left on our country. It was short, little loss of life, etc. This war is going to be quite different. It will NOT be fought only in Asia (as we have already had the first strike here in the US). There is a GREAT potential for more strikes to occur if we do end up creating a situation over there.
Personally I do NOT feel that this war is a necessity and I do NOT back the government's descision to do this. Bush is spreading pro-war propaganda and it is doing nothing for me but annoying me furthur.
I agree that something needs to be done but sending 1000s of men over there to fight a country b/c they are harboring a single man and his "troops"? How about the fact that we were harboring a good many of those assholes ourselves? We let these people into our country, let them train here, and let them attack here. Why are we not at fault as well?
I am very afraid of the consequences of this war. We are going to be forever impacted by this just as those that lived through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were.
I say fuck the war, find some other reasonable means to retaliate but killing more people than already died and creating a generation of seriously affected people is not the answer.
My girlfriend's grandmother randomly said once, "War is a horrific event." and said nothing more. I already know this as does everyone else but do you want to read/hear about it 50 years after it happened or do you want to live it?
I don't.