bobbyw24
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The ‘Long War’: Who’s Winning? By Justin Raimondo
It has been eight years since al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: eight long years in which the “war on terrorism” – begun by George W. Bush in a blaze of righteousness, and since carried on by his successor, in Afghanistan and Pakistan – has been waged on several fronts. So, how are we doing?
No one can honestly say we are winning, or anywhere close to it. Osama bin Laden and the top leadership of al-Qaeda are still at large, still issuing messages mocking their pursuers and vowing fresh terrorist attacks to come. One of those messages, communicated by bin Laden himself in the days before the 2004 presidential election, effectively demonstrates not only our ongoing defeat but also the reason for it:
“All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.
“This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.”
As we race from Afghanistan to Iraq, back to Afghanistan, into Pakistan and now into Yemen, bin Laden must be chortling in his cave, somewhere, contemplating the undoubted success of his strategy. As what the war aficionados and amateur grand strategists call the “Long War” approaches the end of its first decade, the fact that we are losing – and losing badly – cannot have escaped the attention of Western leaders. This is underscored by the most recent attacks – the post-9/11 wave of seemingly minor incidents (or, at least, minor in comparison to what happened on 9/11) – and the Western response.
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-‘long-war’-who’s-winning-3436
It has been eight years since al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: eight long years in which the “war on terrorism” – begun by George W. Bush in a blaze of righteousness, and since carried on by his successor, in Afghanistan and Pakistan – has been waged on several fronts. So, how are we doing?
No one can honestly say we are winning, or anywhere close to it. Osama bin Laden and the top leadership of al-Qaeda are still at large, still issuing messages mocking their pursuers and vowing fresh terrorist attacks to come. One of those messages, communicated by bin Laden himself in the days before the 2004 presidential election, effectively demonstrates not only our ongoing defeat but also the reason for it:
“All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.
“This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.”
As we race from Afghanistan to Iraq, back to Afghanistan, into Pakistan and now into Yemen, bin Laden must be chortling in his cave, somewhere, contemplating the undoubted success of his strategy. As what the war aficionados and amateur grand strategists call the “Long War” approaches the end of its first decade, the fact that we are losing – and losing badly – cannot have escaped the attention of Western leaders. This is underscored by the most recent attacks – the post-9/11 wave of seemingly minor incidents (or, at least, minor in comparison to what happened on 9/11) – and the Western response.
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-‘long-war’-who’s-winning-3436
