Bin laden terrorist attacks
Remember the optimistic remarks a couple of weeks back about the way American bombs were eviscerating the enemy? This has given way to sombre comment about the Taliban's dogged resistance. bin laden terrorist attacks Arafat terrorism. Evidently our leaders gambled on the supposition that the unpopularity of the regime would mean the bombing would bring about the Taliban's rapid collapse. And they also seem to have assumed that it would not be too difficult to put together a post-Taliban government. This was a series of misjudgements. bin laden terrorist attacks Definitions of terrorism. The Joint Chiefs may have been misled by the apparent success - now that Milosevic has been defeated - of the bombing campaign in Kosovo. Perhaps they should have reflected on Vietnam. We dropped more tons of explosives on that hapless country than we dropped on all fronts during the Second World War, and still we could not stop the Vietcong. bin laden terrorist attacks Goals-of-terrorism. Vietnam should have reminded our generals that bombing has only a limited impact on decentralised, undeveloped, rural societies. Bombing has potent appeal to any American administration because it minimises American casualties. But bombs also kill enemy civilians. Civilian deaths are mobilising pro-bin Laden volunteers throughout the Moslem world. The trick we have not yet learned is how to fight terrorism without creating new terrorists. So now, with air power failing to achieve the expected result, we gloomily contemplate turning loose the Northern Alliance, a dubious collection of tribesmen, opportunists and mercenaries, backed by the Russians and detested by the Pushtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and by Pakistan, a crucial ally. If the Northern Alliance fails to overthrow the Taliban, we may have to send in our own ground forces. Do we do that next month in face of the grim Afghan winter, Moslem religious holidays and unexploded land mines? Or do we wait for spring? In any event, a quagmire looms ahead.
Bin laden terrorist attacks
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