Yeah, I've been reading Debka. Interesting that they don't mention how many Soviet troops were used during their previous defeat. Why is it so clear now that 1,000,000 will do it? I mean, I guess then can take Kabul, or any of the other "cities," but the whole point was to get O.B.L. and the rest of the Al Queada network, and I thought those guys were up in the mountains. They can send 10,000,000 troops in there and they would still probably lose in the mountains, where "lose" means having a marginal amount of control over the ground during the day, but never really finishing off the guerillas who will keep inflicting hit and run casualties. I still think the only way to get O.B.L. and the rest of those hiding in deep mountain bunkers is with the use of nukes (either full scale, or the small b61-11.) Same thing with the bunkers in Chechnya, and Iraq for that matter. I don't want this to happen, mind you, I'm just saying I don't see how it can't.
It's analogous to the RIAA going after file sharing networks. They made all this loud noise about stopping the whole thing, but it's almost like they didn't realize that the thing is completely distributed, so you can fight, but you don't know where the enemy is, and worse, you can never know if you've won or not. So now the RIAA and the rest of the content industry is trying to do what I think the US will try to do - bring out the big gun and just shut the whole thing down. In the US case the "whole thing" means turning those cave and bunker containing mountains into a sheet of glass, and in the RIAA case it means using lobbying power to actually outlaw every type of general purpose computer. Probably the individuals in the government, as well as those working in the recording industry, don't want this to happen - but they've backed themselves into a corner with all their promises to do the basically impossible.
Of course the counter example is the war on drugs, which is similarly hopeless, yet they keep fighting it at a steady, continually losing pace. Blah, blah, blah...
By the way, let me retract any statements in support of McCain I may or may not have made in this forum. On one of the weekend talking heads shows, McCain was rather cavalier about civilian losses in the bombing campaign. It's bad enough that the bombing of innocent Afghans is the culmination of 20 years of cruel games the US has played in the region. But it's also bad military strategy.
Is Bush spreading stupid spores? Cuz it seems like an epidemic.
-Mark
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It's analogous to the RIAA going after file sharing networks. They made all this loud noise about stopping the whole thing, but it's almost like they didn't realize that the thing is completely distributed, so you can fight, but you don't know where the enemy is, and worse, you can never know if you've won or not. So now the RIAA and the rest of the content industry is trying to do what I think the US will try to do - bring out the big gun and just shut the whole thing down. In the US case the "whole thing" means turning those cave and bunker containing mountains into a sheet of glass, and in the RIAA case it means using lobbying power to actually outlaw every type of general purpose computer. Probably the individuals in the government, as well as those working in the recording industry, don't want this to happen - but they've backed themselves into a corner with all their promises to do the basically impossible.
Of course the counter example is the war on drugs, which is similarly hopeless, yet they keep fighting it at a steady, continually losing pace. Blah, blah, blah...
- jim 10-30-2001 10:26 pm
By the way, let me retract any statements in support of McCain I may or may not have made in this forum. On one of the weekend talking heads shows, McCain was rather cavalier about civilian losses in the bombing campaign. It's bad enough that the bombing of innocent Afghans is the culmination of 20 years of cruel games the US has played in the region. But it's also bad military strategy. Is Bush spreading stupid spores? Cuz it seems like an epidemic. -Mark
- anonymous (guest) 11-01-2001 7:48 am [5 comments]