I'd never doubt you for a moment.
Well, it's a compliment. I suppose.
This is amazing. Love the writing style.
Thanks!
PART IX: September-November 2001
“You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows every cause.”
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place.”
-[FONT="] [/FONT]William Tecumseh Sherman
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“According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bombing against Taliban targets and airdrops of humanitarian aid to refugees began on the same day… So this is how we fight: making war against governments, and providing succor to the people. The distinction in theory is obvious. Maintaining it in practice will be the great challenge of the coming years.”
-[FONT="] [/FONT]from
Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001 issue
This was the war Americans liked to fight. From high above, with impunity, and consciences comforted by big planes marked USAF dropping the packages marked USAID. Strategic bombers were never under threat for a moment – the B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s attacked what they wanted, when they wanted to. What little air defense the Taliban possessed before the bombing campaign could not touch them. There were fears that Stinger missiles leftover from the 1980s might, in some suitably ironic effort, down lower flying fighters, but this never came to be. Carrier based aircraft faced nothing but small arms and a handful of crew-served guns.
The only Americans on the ground were yet to be spoken of – Special Forces, wrapped in local clothing, riding horses, but brandishing customized rifles and next-generation communications gear, were riding with the Northern Alliance, especially Massoud’s “Lions.” They engaged and defeated the Taliban in combat, supported from the air by NATO bombers. By the closing week of October, larger numbers of NATO Special Forces were on the ground, and an assault against the critical airfield at Mazar-e-Sharif had begun. After a one sided victory in early November, news also came of a Taliban abandonment of Kabul, ushering in their almost complete collapse save for the southeast.
However, with the onset of winter, the war against the Taliban had to be paced. Such stunning success had left NATO and the Northern Alliance with 75% of the country to care for. As thousands of NATO regulars began landing in Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance became the primary operation throughout much of the country. But for the pocket around Kandahar and the Pakistani border, search and destroy was still NATO’s modus operandi. McCain wanted the Taliban wiped out before 2002, knowing they would reorganize in the Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“We can hear the bombs falling across the border, on our brothers. They are waging a war against Pakistan’s people too, on Islam. And the Western puppets can shoot at us, but in every city in Pakistan the people are making their true feelings apparent.”
- Unknown Pakistani, Islamabad rallies, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on
BBC News