Mr Chomsky wanted Mr bin Laden taken alive. My suspicion is that Mr bin Laden didn't want to be taken alive. Perhaps most pertinent to the issue was the environmental conditions at the time. It was night. Things are harder at night. On the other hand, a daylight raid would have denied our forces several advantages and would have likely resulted in collateral damage and the deaths of uninvolved civilians in the area.
Like Admiral Yamamoto, he was a commander in an ongoing conflict. he was doing his duty as he saw fit and s were the SEALs, God bless them.
Back to Mr Chomsky, he says:
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region."Uncontroversially"? Maybe in Cambridge, Mass, but not in Lowell, Mass. I enjoy talking with those of differing views, but the distance here seems a little wide for a serious exploration of the views of each other.
Then there is the question of Holder v. Holder, as Andrew C McCarthy, of the National Review Online. Te question raised is how conflicted our Attorney General would have been if Mr bin Laden were taken alive.
You pays your money and you takes your chances.
UPDATE: I said "Norm" and it is Noam Chomsky. My apologizes. As for TF-160...back in the day it was.
Regards — Cliff
A few minor corrections, I believe it is Noam Chomsky, Norm just seems too pedestrian for such a self proclaimed brilliant commentator. And, having spent considerable time working with the Nightstalkers (NOT, as Obama says it..Night Stalkers), it is the 160th SOAR (A).
ReplyDeleteWithout having the tasking order in front of me, I'm only guessing, but recalling how the 160th executes its missions, there would be two pilots in each of the MH-60's carrying the ST-6 assault force, and two door gunners, one of whom functions as the FE as well. Both can double as field medics if necessary. There would normally be 2 MH47's on the perch that would carry an exfil force of Rangers should things go south on the ground. Further behind would be another pair of MH60's or even one MH60 and an additional MH47 with most likely 4 AF PJ and some AF STS folks as well....I'm guessing a JTAC and a CCT. So, if you add it all up, there would be about 62 people total in the strike force.
It is always interesting, if not even wryly amusing to listen to the exalted intelligentsia assign extreme guilt to Bush, something not done since the days of Hitler, and expect the fawning public to swallow their swill without so much as a slight grimace. Never mind that Bush didn't pick the fight. Never mind that nobody had a very good handle on who the opposing players were simply because we had emerged from 8 years of relatively incompetent management of strategic intelligence by the Clintonistas in favor of social reform programs and dry cleaning bills.
But then, everyone is entitled to listen to their own bugle....even blow their own as Chomksy loves to do.
In terms of numbers, I can't speak to SEAL tactics, but I can say we all seem to have the collective tic of overstating Bin Laden's. His crimes were more high profile than lethal compared to the US' (and Bush's) invasions and destabilizations of entire sovereign nations, but Chomsky's horribly clumsy attempt at embedding that comparative shot within his "how would we feel?" point goes so completely astray that it's completely lost.
ReplyDeleteBush's (and our) defense, were he/we to wind up in the dock at The Hague, would boil down to the same one used in the back seats of countless family cars--"he started it". (Bin Laden's natural retort, of course, would be "did not"). Unfortunately, the aggrieved and too-many-deceased innocents of Iraq and Afghanistan caught in the crossfire have no SEAL team to take up their case, and that's been more and more my thought these days.
Let's say we got the bad guy, turned the evidence that will let us get the rest, and we will (eventually) be safer. It's going to be a long, long time before these countries recover from our leaning across them to deliver our euphemistic back seat punch in the arm.
I knew that Norm didn't "feel" right, and I will fix it right after this comment. The thing that worries me is that "nealcroz" would actually recognize that.
ReplyDeleteAs for the numbers, I guess if you included the backup, backup AC-130 and the four F-16s to protect it and the AWACS to help the F-16s and the needed tankers, you could soon get the number up toward 160.
As to Kad's point, it is true that the otherwise uninvolved, the bystanders, often find themselves caught in the crossfire. In peace and war. We need better institutions, but that seems to always lead to a loss of freedom, not an increase. The idea of "I just want to be left alone" is a great one, but hard to implement.
Regards — Cliff
Where the hell were Neal & Cliff when the Blackhawk went down in Mogadishu?
ReplyDeleteNever mind Noam. He is on his own team. Though it may be convenient to tie him around the neck of Democrats, it would also be lazy.
Maybe lazy, but maybe it is just fun. The question is, to where are Progressives progressing? One hopes not to Mr Noam Chomsky's office.
ReplyDeleteRegards — Cliff
I hope progressives ignore John Yoo, too:
ReplyDeleteMr. Obama's policies now differ from their Bush counterparts mainly on the issue of interrogation. As Sunday's operation put so vividly on display, Mr. Obama would rather kill al Qaeda leaders—whether by drones or special ops teams—than wade through the difficult questions raised by their detention. This may have dissuaded Mr. Obama from sending a more robust force to attempt a capture.
Early reports are conflicted, but it appears that bin Laden was not armed. He did not have a large retinue of bodyguards—only three other people, the two couriers and bin Laden's adult son, were killed. Special forces units using nonlethal weaponry might have taken bin Laden alive, as with other senior al Qaeda leaders before him.
I think it preferred to have W. help POTUS lay a wreath at Ground Zero, than have to suffer the scolding of this asshat, Yoo.
if memory serves, Cliff was at the NWC. I had somehow found my way to the hallowed halls of Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB....thence to my FIRST retirement from the AF....only to return as a very bad penny to the AF and ESC to retire one more time from the AF.
ReplyDeleteTF-160....holy Toledo Cliff...THAT IS a ways back. As I recall..that was a provisional unit.....to keep the funding off the books and the conventional Army in the dark.
Kad...i am with you. Our Imperialism recalls for me the famous (or "infamous") slogan of the 3rd Army post Normandy regarding Old Blood and Guts, General Patton....."His guts...OUR blood."
The grunt on the ground is ALWAYS the tip of American power projection....and nobody seems ever to consider that in its most basic dimension.....we should NEVER commit that resource unless our very sovereignty is threatened.....and its been a long, long time since that has been the case.
War is NOT romantic...or noble.....