Thursday, October 14, 2004
Someone's been reading my blog!
Re: Iraq War Explained
The Washington Times reported today "Bush strategy of multifront war weakens rebels in Afghanistan". Military analysts seem to be confirming most of my major points in my own analysis of the Iraq war. Compare:
The Lone Fortress
And while the extremists are occupied in Iraq, they are weak in Afghanistan. Therefore, in Afghanistan the Taliban has few allies and limited resources, and there was almost no resistance to the historic elections there that likely will keep re-elect President Karzai. This is a major victory for Afghanistan and for America.
Washington Times
President Bush's three-year-old strategy of fighting a multifront war on terror is stretching enemy forces thin and reducing their ability to mount attacks in Afghanistan, said U.S. officials and independent authorities.
Much of the debate in the United States has centered on U.S. forces being stressed in the global war. But military analysts are pointing to Afghanistan's near-violence-free elections on Saturday as an example of enemy forces being depleted to the point where they cannot sustain attacks.
The analysts also say some of the thousands of terrorists trained in Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps have gone to fight in other areas, such as Iraq, further stretching their capabilities.
The Lone Fortress
We kill tens of [terrorists] everyday, and in the next few months, we'll be killing a lot more.
Washington Times
"The terrorists are being used up, and they're losing hundreds a day in many cases," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a military analyst. "The administration has a low profile on that. But [the terrorists] are suffering severe casualties. [ed. I suppose I didn't do our military justice.]
The Lone Fortress
If we weren't fighting the terrorists in Iraq, we'd be fighting them in Afghanistan instead (if not America).
Washington Times
L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said captured foreign fighters had told the U.S.-led coalition there that many of them had been trained in bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan. They presumably would have been fighting in Afghanistan today if they did not have to move to Iraq, officials said.
The Lone Fortress
With American support and steadfastness, Afghanistan has just held their first democratic presidental election in their many thousand year history, in an extraordinary defeat of the extremists. Here we have our first case-study of the power of freedom, and it's ability to defeat extremism....
We have a President who understands this, and who understands that the best way to fight terrorism is to give people living under dictatorships a better choice. And that choice is Freedom.
Washington Times
The election "was a big defeat for the Taliban and a huge defeat for al Qaeda," Gen. Barno said on Tuesday....
"Don't underestimate the power of national elections — the appeal to Afghanis is to run their own government."
A U.S. special operations official agreed. "There is popular support for a stable Afghanistan, and the bad guys would do their cause no good by going against the population," said this source, who has fought the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Lone Fortress
We are killing terrorists. While Clinton was President, thousands of extremists trained in Afghanistan to attack the West. While that didn't seem to bother us much at the time, we are now faced with the aftermath -- thousands of terrorists. So how are we supposed to find all of them, being incognito throughout the world or hidden in caves who-knows-where?
Well, that problem seems largely solved. Many of them have come to fight Americans in Iraq, and they're now largely surrounded in the Sunni triangle.
Washington Times
The source said, "Terrorists don't have the affirmative duty to kill us. They can sit and bide their time if they have to. We don't have that luxury. We're trying to force them into battles where we can kill them.
I do feel affirmed to have my opinions seconded. But then I think all of these points are relatively obvious -- and they should be common sense to anyone with basic military understanding. Unfortunately John Kerry doesn't have a clue about any of this. That's what I find so frightening about the idea of a John Kerry presidency in today's world.
