“We hope that these brothers will be the first martyrs in the battle of Islam in this era against the new Jewish and Christian crusader campaign that is led by the Chief Crusader Bush under the banner of the cross,” says the recent fax supposedly sent by Osama bin Laden.
It shows better than anything what type of person we are dealing with. This is a man for whom the world has not changed in 900 years. He still thinks he is fighting the Crusades and that the United States is a religious enemy seeking to stamp out Islam once and for all.
In other words, we are dealing with someone who refuses to acknowledge the reality of the modern world.
Bin Laden and the Taliban that supports him are believers in a fundamentalist form of Islam that the vast majority of Islamic clerics have denounced. Many of the Taliban’s edicts are leftover products of the ancient customs of the Talib tribe that predate Islam and contradict many of its teachings.
Neither bin Laden nor the Taliban represent all Muslims any more than David Koresh represents all Christians, and realizing that the people we are dealing with are more like cultists than anything is our first step toward singling them out for punishment.
Their intense disconnection from reality is further witnessed by the Taliban’s recent saber-rattling. They have boldly declared that 300,000 of their mighty warriors have been mobilized to defeat us. Ooh, scary!
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They are saying this to the nation that, the last time it was attacked this way, was faced with the prospect of war against two of the largest, most technologically advanced totalitarian regimes ever to stain the earth. What did America do? Rolled up our sleeves and got to work, and four years later the world was at peace again.
The United States is a nation that can do anything if it wants to. The resources we have at our command, from the iron in our mountains to the boundless creativity and resourcefulness of Americans, are formidable beyond the ability of someone like bin Laden or the Taliban to understand.
The history of the United States is not kept secret. Surely bin Laden and the leaders of the Taliban have found time to read up on us. How can they look at our recovery from the Depression, our power during World War II or our sending men to the moon and not realize the vast difference in scale between themselves and us?
As we mobilize for war, many are prophesying a new Vietnam, a conflict that will stretch on for years and that cannot be won. They are forgetting one basic fact: there is no superpower backing the Taliban. In a world without the Cold War, a small band of troublemakers claiming to be a country have nowhere to turn for support.
After the terrible type of attack they perpetrated on the U.S., no one is going to threaten nuclear war on their behalf. No one is going to supply them with weapons or military aid. Already the borders are being closed on all sides of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban stand alone in the world, and if battle is joined, it will not be long before they find themselves out of food, ammunition, and places to hide.
Although we have yet to receive official word, it looks as though American military deployment to the region is going to be about three times as large as during the Gulf War. In that war, we were faced with the fourth largest army on Earth, with decent equipment, training and discipline. It came apart like tissue paper as we advanced, and in only 100 days Iraq was defeated.
It is true that the coming conflict in Afghanistan will not be exactly like the Gulf War, but Iraq’s defeat should stand as an example of American competence in desert warfare.
The Taliban has been given the opportunity to resolve this situation peacefully, by surrendering bin Laden and his supporters, but they have refused.
I don’t know any more than anyone else what Bush plans to do in Afghanistan, but whatever it is, there is little danger that we will not succeed.
by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
