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The Case for the Third Army:
July 22, 2002:
Last week I promised that I would post two essay which I wrote
near the beginning of this so called war. This is not about what
actually happened, it is about what should have happened. For
the essays to make sense, they must be understood in that light.
When we began bombing Afghanistan, I bit my tongue and archived
these essays. I supported the President. I wanted desperately
for us to succeed. Now it is clear that we have not done so. I
do not condemn the bombing. I simply regret that we did not follow
up properly.
When we bombed hell out of Afghanistan, we should have put an army on the ground to establish and enforce law and order. We did not. Our government has made a terrible mistake here. Now we have anarchy. Those tribal bandit leaders do not care about law. They are roving tribes of bandits for goodness sake. Pillaging and looting are their stock in trade.
Now I have pretty much given up on any good coming out of this. I watched the bombing of Afghanistan on the news, night after night. So far as I can see, we used up a heck of a lot of high explosives on a heck of a lot of rock to make a heck of a lot of gravel. We dropped a lot of ordinance and we causes a bunch of raggedy Taliban, alleged soldiers, to cut and run. They left all of their equipment behind. We have bombed the Taliban out of power. Now we seem to be replacing it with a coalition of bandit tribes with agendas.
The question becomes, do we want to finish terrorism or do we want to dink and dunk around? To finish terrorism, what we need is to have the entire Third Army or its equivalent on the ground in Afghanistan. To be sure, we do not have George Patton, but I'm sure we have some great generals. They are just buried under the bureaucrats for now. When we get the troops down on the ground, the real general will step up.
The real generals are patriots and they love America. When a crisis comes, the bureaucrats will realize that and step aside. They can let the real generals step up and do the job. After the crisis is over, the bureaucrats may come back and push the heros aside. Sometimes they may even discredit them. The heros, of course, expect it. That is how the American system works. It has always been thus.
Here is the reality. If we give our military the people and resources they need, no one can beat America. The notion that we can't win a ground war in Afghanistan is ridiculous on the face of it. It just requires the commitment of a dedicated administration. It could not possibly be as difficult as what we did in the pacific in the forties.
The United States has a historical plethora of heros going back to the war of independence. That's a record which cannot be matched by any other nation on this earth. This heroic history is a natural fallout of a democracy; a free people. We can continue that tradition if our government will stop being so damned timid about it. There is nothing which will wear a people out faster than a dink-around government. We should have and could have brought this war to a successful conclusion. That means not just destroying the Taliban but installing a stable government.
The way to do that is to put troops on the ground. Then they round up and disarm every Afghan they find and put them all in cages. We can sort them out later. If they resist capture they must be killed. This is war. War is not nice. It does not have time to be nice. We must imprison Afghans. We give them a place to sleep, medicine if they need it, a sanitary facility, and enough food. That's all.
When we sort them out after the war, we can charge and try the suspected criminals. If they are found guilty, we should punish them. I favor execution for hard core Taliban. We can let the rest out and tell them to get at it. Go to work and form a government under an American military governor.
After we take the cities, we go into the mountains and do the same thing we did in the pacific islands in WWII. We drive the desert rats into their holes. Then, we burn them out and we kill them. That is how a war is prosecuted. It's a downright mean procedure. If we don't do that, it is not a war, it's something else.
Everyone is still saying we are at war, but we are not really at war. Afghanistan is at war against us with their terrorists. We are still playing dink and dunk. We are not at war against Afghanistan. We are not investing enough resources to finish the job. We need to quit substituting the word for the deed. That's a bureaucratic dead end. After the destruction of the Trade Center, the president had all of the people with him. The people have spoken. Prosecute the war with all vigor. People are going to get hurt. People have already been hurt. So what?
The Taliban are whining because they claim some American bombs went astray and killed some civilians. Our government has no comment. I do! When you start a war, people are going to get hurt. Some of them may really be innocent. I say, tough camel dung! So what? We never considered that when we blew Dresden away in WWII. Ditto for Hiroshima. When those desert rats crashed the World Trade Center, they intended to kill civilians. Let's get real. I don't give a damn if thousands of Afghan civilians get in the way and get killed. I still say, tough camel dung. War is nasty. We did not start this war.
I suspect that, from a commercial standpoint, the complete destruction of every capital asset in Afghanistan would not equal the value of one tower of the World Trade Center. that is the pity of our situation. They destroyed the World Trade Center and they destroyed the ageless carved stone statues of the Buddha. Destruction is their way of life.
Raggedy drooling beggars can destroy that which they have no
will or skill to create. They can destroy the beautiful and majestic
symbols of human achievement, but they lack the discipline to
build a decent cowshed. They live in poverty because of that.
If we set up a coalition government consisting of those kind of
people, we will have failed. They will quickly revert to savagery
and, sooner or later, attack civilization again. I'll say it again.
The Afghan people need the long term support of a military governor
to build a stable democracy. Only that will nullify the terrorist
threat from there forever.
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