RE: Bombing Afghanistan..

["Max Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The U.S. is not merely bombing.  It's going to
invade and depose the government.  Or at
least Bush implied that it's going to.

The speech was very specific in its open-
endedness.  Afghanistan is the first target,
but implicitly about 7 other countries are
fair game as well.  But in any case it's
hard to know what the Gov thinks it is
going to do.

Check the State Dept reports on terrorism. I
took a spin through them last night.  The chief
offenders, according to the reports, are Iran
and Syria, mostly for hosting Palestinian-related
groups.  Both are particularly tough nuts, for
different reasons.  Iran because it's a huge
country, Syria because it is deeply entwined
in conflict with Israel.  The Saudi's have
explicitly warned against any attack on Syria.
State says Hamas is funded by individual
benefactors in Saudi Arabia.  Sudan gets
honorable mention because OBL's business
interests are there.  Of course there are
also Iraq, which had the best reason to
support the attack, assuming its role
could be concealed, and Pakistan, a country
that seems ripe for destabilization and
chaos.  The complexity of all this makes
Vietnam look pretty simple.

I watched my neighbor's boy grow up. He
used to cut my lawn (well-compensated,
naturally).  Nows he's in the Marines.
My mission is to prevent him from getting
killed to satisfy an ill-considered,
politically-driven strategic objective.
I'm not quite sure how to do it yet,
but I'm pretty sure 'hands off Afghanistan'
is not going to do the trick.

mbs