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Friday, March 8, 2002
02:07 - All going according to plan-- for everybody
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/08/ret.afghanistan.fighting/index.h

(top) link

This is the image that keeps coming to mind whenever I read more news about Operation Anaconda: from the way it's sounding, just about the most clean-cut, methodical battle I've ever heard described. It certainly helps that the goals of the two sides seem to be so similar.

Put 1000 Americans and 1000 al Qaeda in a mountain battleground, close the lid, and shake vigorously. What do you get? Well, after about three days, the score seems to be about 700 al Qaeda killed to 8 Americans. But the best part is how they seem to be surrounded, having regrouped to a meaningful central location, and are now doing their damnedest to stay that way. More and more fighters have been arriving from elsewhere in Afghanistan in small groups, magnetized to the battle scene, only to be mown down by the coalition forces that are ringing the area and filling it with fire on a constant basis.

We're being all patient and careful, and they're well-trained fighters, and we're maintaining the utmost respect for the situation, say the American commanders. But seriously, is this all a joke? Or is it exactly what both sides expected all along? It seems to me that al Qaeda is playing along exactly as though they had hoped all along for a pitched battle that they knew they'd lose: it's genuinely their goal to die in a futile war. That's what jihad is all about, at least in the popular fundamentalist context: it's better to find a completely unwinnable cause that can be justified through your belief system and die while fighting it, than to live a life that isn't true to those convictions. As I've heard restated a number of different ways since the war began, "Their greatest ambition is to die, and we're more than happy to accommodate them."

Meanwhile, as Steven den Beste writes, we're proceeding on the assumption that the ideal outcome of all this is for everybody inside the circle of coalition troops to end up dead. And if the remaining Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the region are determined to coalesce into a central location so we can take them all out one by one, well, that's mighty neighborly of y'all; you didn't have to go'n do that, y'know, but it sure does save us a heap of effort.

Seriously-- am I the only one who sees this as though the enemy is just play-acting out a script they'd all memorized? The scene is set: Islam is failing to gain respect and acceptance in a world controlled by America and Israel and the Western powers. Beating these powers at their own game is beyond the reach of the Islamic nations, so just twist the rules a little bit, and the victory condition becomes martyrdom on a cultural scale. So what do we do? Well, let's bring down the military wrath of the American superpower upon us! Here's how we do it: Set up an impossibly brutal dictatorial government to carry the banner of "We Are Islam!", dynamiting ancient Buddha sculptures and oppressing women and doing everything possible to make America look at us like a cat looks at a bratty two-year-old; then, after a few years of letting this situation fester, send out some suicide bombers to fly planes into the Americans' buildings. Then they'll strike out at the big visible government, and the effort will lead them right to us-- and we'll be right there waiting for them, gathered conveniently up in Shahi-kot, ready to die one by one fighting a battle we know we can't win, or even fight properly. Surrender is the last thing anyone will want to do. Once the rockets start zeroing in, the martyrdoms will begin, and they'll keep on going until every last fighter is dead. As long as we keep the Americans engaged, drawing their attention, making them mad, making sure they kill us all, we'll be assured Paradise. Right?

I know, I know, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But frankly, this battle just doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. For me, this is as good an explanation as any.

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© Brian Tiemann