strategicstudies
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
- Messages
- 6
- Likes
- 6
On the tenth anniversary of 9-11, a multitude of ceremonial events and media recapitulations took place across America, focused especially on New York, where the twin towers of the International Trade Center were demolished by two hijacked airliners, in Washington, where a hijacked airliner was flown into the west wall of the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where another hijacked airliner was only minutes away from careening into the US Capitol until some of its passengers decided to fight back by storming the cockpit and overpowering the fanatics at the controls, then perished in a thunderous crash in the hills of Somerset after having failed to fully wrest control of the plane from its Allah-Akbar-chanting captors.
As the reminiscing and memorializing on 9-11 has been taking place, echoes of a deeper, more analytical dialogue has become increasingly audible in many quarters of the country; thoughtful people are asking whether the ten year war America and its allies have been waging against politicized Islamic fundamentalism has been as successful as was hoped, or indeed as it should have been.
Scepticism about results has now reached a point where the indeterminacy of the campaigns in Iraq, and now especially in the AfPak theatre, are being compared with Vietnam. That is, in both instances massive American military power essentially failed to subdue an adversary who possessed a mere fraction of the military resources which America could bring to bear against them. In the case of Vietnam, two successive administrations (Johnson and Nixon) took up the cudgel against a grass-roots Communist insurgency and in the end were compelled to accept defeat. In the present, two successive administrations (Bush and Obama) also took up the cudgel against a swarm of grass-roots Muslim fundamentalists, including al Qaeda (the perpetrators of 9-11), both in Afghanistan where they openly do battle against their American adversaries, and in Pakistan where they are surreptitiously asylum-ed and subsidized by the country's military class. As in the case of Vietnam, the battle has gone on far too long and with results that no longer justify the price that has been and is being paid in lives and treasure.
Read complete IDSA Comment at following URL address and give your comments:
The party's over in the Hindu Kush: It's time for the US to call it a day | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
As the reminiscing and memorializing on 9-11 has been taking place, echoes of a deeper, more analytical dialogue has become increasingly audible in many quarters of the country; thoughtful people are asking whether the ten year war America and its allies have been waging against politicized Islamic fundamentalism has been as successful as was hoped, or indeed as it should have been.
Scepticism about results has now reached a point where the indeterminacy of the campaigns in Iraq, and now especially in the AfPak theatre, are being compared with Vietnam. That is, in both instances massive American military power essentially failed to subdue an adversary who possessed a mere fraction of the military resources which America could bring to bear against them. In the case of Vietnam, two successive administrations (Johnson and Nixon) took up the cudgel against a grass-roots Communist insurgency and in the end were compelled to accept defeat. In the present, two successive administrations (Bush and Obama) also took up the cudgel against a swarm of grass-roots Muslim fundamentalists, including al Qaeda (the perpetrators of 9-11), both in Afghanistan where they openly do battle against their American adversaries, and in Pakistan where they are surreptitiously asylum-ed and subsidized by the country's military class. As in the case of Vietnam, the battle has gone on far too long and with results that no longer justify the price that has been and is being paid in lives and treasure.
Read complete IDSA Comment at following URL address and give your comments:
The party's over in the Hindu Kush: It's time for the US to call it a day | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
