Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The problem with the war on terrorism and Iraq is.....

that we have been mislead on the basic premise. While the war on terrorism can be termed a war, it is largely not suitable for standard war time military type responses. I believe that Afghanistan was a correct response since it was a large scale base for AQ and we have certainly disrupted their C&C due to our operations there. How truly successful we have been there will only be determined in the future but I suspect it will not be as rosy as it is being painted at the moment. Still, it had to be done and should have been done more forcefully if we had not committed to Iraq. BTW, we are there in force, and it is a stated objective of the US government to destroy the drug trade. Given that Afghanistan provides a very large percentage of the opium used in heroin production does anyone wonder why we aren't stopping that. Simple, we'd have a Russian style fiasco on our hands immediately just like we are working on in Iraq. So, the US government, while completely knowledgeable about the opium production turns a necessary blind eye on it.



I have been thinking about this a good bit and the war on terrorism IS absolutely going to boil down to police type activities supported by small military special ops type operations if the situation calls for it. Why? The answer is simple, once you remove your thinking from the current situation in Iraq, (which while definitely a war of our creation and definitely requiring vast military resources is accomplishing very little or nothing positive against the real terrorists of AQ and other similar groups that have formed based on AQs example), the terrorists are often a religious based movement (IRA, AQ, ETA, etc) and are comprised of cells of terrorists or terrorists in training. While it is convenient for them to have a friendly country base, such as Afghanistan, it by no means necessary. To combat them successfully, we are going to have to penetrate the cells and destroy them one by one while maintaining pressure on the leadership. I believe that the basic structure of the organization(s) willing to commit these atrocities will continue to replicate itself as long as there are religious fanatics to support them (which we are creating daily in Iraq BTW). Certainly, to be very effective, such as 9/11 these small terr cells will need some central directions but with current cell and computer technology we are not likely to find some vast base somewhere that we can attack militarily. It will more likely be a small apartment in NY or London, or Jakarta, or..... again calling for police type activities coupled with the resources of the various US and international intelligence agencies, not some scenario requiring the First Battalion, etc.



The problems with the war in Iraq are many but the main problem is that our basic assumptions for being there, which by anyone's definition were based on the war on terror, were not sufficiently correct for an invasion. Therefore, we have only managed to set up the world's greatest real time, real fighting, training camp for terrorists while at the same time, incredibly enough, putting our troops in the way of real Iraqi Freedom Fighters opposing our occupation of their country. When you start out for the wrong reasons, it is very hard to justify the continuance of that line of effort. Whether the Iraqis reasons for that opposition to our occupation are correct or not from our POV is unimportant, they think it is and our troops and the civilian contractors become targets either because we are the invaders or because we are interfering with their agenda for the country. Our chances for the democratic nation building effort to be successful are nearly nil IMO. And, to have any chance will require years of occupation with continued losses of men and the expenditure of large sums of money that are more needed at home, while not combating the real terrorists, and will likely not be successful both for Iraqi and domestic reasons. IMO the US people are not going to put up with a long term occupation of Iraq and the concommitant losses of men, money, and material when it will become increasing obvious to them that it is not a legitimate extension of the war on terror. Bush was right when he said the war on terror would take years, but he was mostly wrong with the idea that it could become a standard "war" and he was certainly wrong, intentionally or otherwise, on Iraq and that has cost us time and money that we could have better used elsewhere.



As we are processing the Iraqi effort, we have no chance at achieving any of the long term goals IMO. We got rid of Saddam, we'll have to settle for that or expect the American people to hunker down for longterm losses, although certainly on a smaller scale than we have seen recently, and occupation of Iraq. I don't think they will allow the latter choice.

*Finding myself in agreement*


Good post.

That is probably the clearist take I have seen yet Sir.

Welcome back, Flies--didn't have time to fully digest your post---I'm actually having to work today in order to pay my outrageous tax bill--but will get to it later.
More to the point, did the fish cooperate with you? The weather was hellacious here all day Sunday. I was thinking about you guys down on the island when the branches were falling on my house about 0400 Easter morning.

SteveNO:

Thanks for asking. Well, it was an interesting trip. Started with a wheel bearing going belly up on my relatively new 76K miles 2001 Ford crew cab at 1 AM Fri just South of Houma. Had to retreat and get a motel in Houma. Long story short, Ford dealership was closed for Good Friday but found a great, knowledgeable, and typically friendly cajun independent garage who got it fixed by 11 AM,(I cannot say enough good words about the guy, Randy Carrier of Auto Experts 6125 W. Main, Houma La. Not only was he and his crew very competent, I told him to add $50 to the bill to take his wife to dinner of Good Friday, he wouldn't take it, said he was open that day to help people like me. Not many people turn down money, gave the actual mechanic $20 and told him to have a couple of cool ones on me), considering I had to get there after findind the Ford dealership closed and that the parts had to come out of Thibodeaux, it was really quick work. Damn Ford, frigging "sealed" wheel bearings UNITS which aren't sealed and require replacing the whole unit, not just the bearing, $400 per unit. Second one that has cratered. First one was at 41K miles. If I knew this was common and I think it is, I could make a fortune selling replacable units with greaseable bearings.

Had fun with and for the kids (damn, my wife and I are worn out, need a vacation to recuperate, 4 kids, 3 ours, 5, 9, 10, 10)but the specs weren't on the beach yet. Gave them some solid efforts with good surf fishing conditions on Fri and Sat, caught a couple of Spanish but not even a spec hit, but as you noted, it REALLY got interesting about 5 AM Sun morning. Strong thunderstorms with HAIL. We packed it in, but a good time was had by all and the fish owe me one. Long drive tho, 9 1/2 hours one way if you don't have kids with you.

Flies, I figured it must be blowing like crazy down on the coast--we had the hail too, about 0300, then tremendous wind and about two inches of rain.
Sorry about you truck troubles--thank goodness you found a good guy to save the vacation--Easter weekend in Houma would have been a nightmare.
It is really a little early for the specks to be on the beach, particularly since it's been such a cool spring (low tonight is supposed to be around 45--that's February weather in south La.)
May is really prime time, until the sharks come in in early June and start complicating things. Grand Isle really is a great place for kids, mine love it.