posted
My brother and I were looking at an atlas today after Pakistan announced that it backed the US.
We started talking about the odds that the US would use Pakistan as it used Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm , as a staging area for its mobilization seeing as Pakistan borders Afghanistan.
Now we began arguing the logistics of this and possible problems the military would face.
My first fear is the chance of terrorist attack on our soldiers as they prepare. After all Pakistan isnt exactly safe ground.
Now lets say Pakistan is left alone and the US conducts Airborne drops , they still have no way to make land based supply lines or even a seaborne beach head.
Even the Air ways to Afghanistan are in question because you either have to fly over China or Iran if you take off from our bases in the pacific and Saudi Arabia.
Any military action will face huge problems , after all these Afghans were trained by the CIA to use Stinger Missiles and other equipment.
The road ahead is going to rough , thats all I have to say.
-------------------- My Mother never found the irony in calling me a son of a bitch
posted
Should it come to that, Russia has not so subtly hinted that they are more than willing to support such an operation.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Imagine, twelve years ago, if someone had suggested that Russia would help assist the United States in what has the potential to be the largest modern military mobilization.
posted
Afghanistan is pissing in their pants. They don't want to be attacked and have released a statement that pretty much pleads for mercy. Something along the lines of they're soo bad off anyhows, and the last thing they need is a thrashing by a modern military that may or MAY NOT end the terrorist threat. Its on www.nytimes.com somewhere.
-------------------- "Tragedy is when I cut my finger, Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."-Mel Brooks
Registered: May 1999
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posted
I seem to recall reading that the Taliban asked us not to attack because, if we weaken them, the previous government might be able to take back over, like they've been trying to do.
This doesn't make sense to me. The US only recognizes the previous government. We want them to defeat the Taliban. Isn't this all the more incentive for us to attack?
posted
Hmm... wouldn't that mean that we could see the TALIBAN as a terrorist group...? Yeah, pleas for mercy is right.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, Pakistan owes the States a lot, and they're pissed off with Afghanistan anyway, and horrified over these atrocities. But blood is thicker than water, and likely they'll balk at allowing their territory to be used as a staging area for the invasion of another Islamic nation by infidels.
Which basically leaves an invasion from Russia. Which means you'll run into all the problems the Russians did - Kabul is a long way away, far closer to the Pakistani border in fact. . .
Pakistan's government is walking a tightrope and a half. Although the government thus far seems to be firmly on-side with the West, there is a very powerful and influential fundamentalist Islamic voice in government that strongly opposes cooperation w/US against the Taliban. Should an attack on Afghanistan be launched from there, there is a substantial risk that Pakistan could collapse into civil war. Not good.
The Taliban say that if Afghanistan is attacked they will exact their own revenge on the West. Hamas has already declared that it, too, will consider a Western attack on the Taliban as an attack on all true followers of Allah. Fuck.
Russia has said that while it will share intelligence with the West, it isn't quite open to having NATO units crossing through the airspace/travelling along the ground of any states of the CIS. But there have already been very concrete steps for military intervention along the northern Afghani border launched by an alliance of Russia and the Islamic states of the former USSR in support of Massood's Northern Alliance.
Speaking of Massood, there're conflicting reports at the moment on his fate. (He was suicide-bombed by the Taliban last week) His doctors say he's lapsed into a coma for the third time, while the French foreign minister says he's succumbed to his injuries.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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just made by the Presbyterian Church
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posted
quote:Hamas has already declared that it, too, will consider a Western attack on the Taliban as an attack on all true followers of Allah.
Well now, that rather goes against everything Hamas has stated so far. Specifically, the bits about 'wishing not to get involved', and 'never having even considered an attack on any NATO-member state'. But then, Hamas is itself a collection of fundie-filth, so any war on terrorism would likely involve that miserable organisation anyway.
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
A senior official of the Islamist militant group Hamas, echoing calls by Taliban clerics in Afghanistan, urged Muslims to unite against any US retaliation for the terror attacks in New York and Washington.
In Cairo, the spokesman of Egypt's largest Muslim fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, defended the Taliban's threat of revenge for any US action against Afghanistan and urged Washington to show restraint.
"I join the cause for Muslims to be united in order to deter the United States from launching war against Muslims in Afghanistan, the Hamas official, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi," said in response to the calls by clerics in Kabul.
"It is impossible for Muslims to stand handcuffed and blindfolded while other Muslims, their brothers, are being attacked. The Muslim world should stand up against the American threats which are fed by the Jews," Rantissi said.
Taliban clerics used today’s prayers to urge Muslims around the world to unite against the United States if it attacked Afghanistan, and threatened revenge by other means in the event of such attacks.
Hamas has carried out a series of suicide attacks in Israel during the nearly year-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, killing scores of Israelis.
The Palestinian Authority, led by President Yasser Arafat, had no comment on the Taliban's call for Muslim unity.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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