Retaliation Not An Easy Choice Essay Research

Retaliation: Not An Easy Choice Essay, Research Paper

.September 11, 2001, like Dec. 7, 1941, will live in infamy. For the first time since the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor, Americans have been attacked on their own soil,. said Senior San Diego Police Spokesman Bill Robinson. On this date terrorists hijacked four planes, all heading for major American landmarks. Two planes crashed into and leveled New York City.s World Trade Center towers, one plane drove itself into the Pentagon, and the last plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The hijackers, members of an Afghanistan home based terrorist organization named al-Qaeda, and its. leader, Osama bin Laden, left President George W. Bush with a daunting and complicated decision of how to react.

President Bush was faced with an assault that .was so sudden and so shocking that it seemed to obliterate many of the doubts that were the legacy of the country’s tortured Vietnam experience. Polls show that up to 90% of Americans support a military response,. wrote Mark Barabak. Simultaneously, President Bush and his administration encountered a potentially dangerous and sensitive situation in the Middle East. Any type of intervention, be it Diplomatic Intervention or Military Intervention, would be viewed by the predominantly conservative Muslim Middle Eastern countries as the .start of a hobnailed Western Victory march, justifying extreme actions in self-defense. (Biema et. al. 34). Before acting, President Bush had to take into consideration Bin Laden.s motives for the onslaught. Boaz Gabor, the executive director of the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) and a Reason Magazine journalist, defined in the ICT.s web-based newspaper, Bin Laden.s Motives for the September 11th attacks:

Bin Laden and his followers regard America as their main enemy because it is America that leads the Western and democratic world, and supports the moderate Arab regimes. Moreover, America is regarded in their eyes as controlling and contaminating the holy places of Islam.particularly those in Saudi-Arabia.through the presence of military personnel there and in other countries in the Persian Gulf since the Gulf war in 1991. America also is condemned by Bin laden for its support of Israel, which he regards as the .arrowhead in the heart of the Islamic world,. which must be rooted out and destroyed.

Needless to say, either course of action to be taken by the United States needed to fire a message to Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the rest of the terrorist community that terrorism absolutely and under no circumstances would be tolerated by the United States. The message had to be clear and on Thursday, September 20, 2001, President Bush delivered it: We will pursue you, if you.re a terrorist and/or .provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists..

President Bush had to first weigh the costs of a possible military intervention. On one hand, he had at his disposal the most technologically advanced and elite force in the world. From air to land to sea, the nation’s arsenal includes, but is not limited to, surveillance aircraft, laser-guided bombs, attack submarines, stealth bombers and Tomahawk missiles.

As a given, the world.s strongest military, in any new war, would enable it to use new technologies. According to Washington Post reporter Greg Schneider anywhere from a .lexis-nexis-style online search system for intelligence documents to a new sniper rifle that can penetrate light armor from nearly a mile away, technologies developed since the Persian Gulf War would help (the) U.S.fight an unpredictable foe..

Another reality that weighed towards a possible military intervention was that the Taliban, Afghanistan.s terrorist harboring ruling government, has a small, scattered military. According to MSNBC.com.s .The Afghanistan Files,. though accurate numbers for troops are unavailable, it boasts .between 40,000 and 50,000 lightly armed infantry.10 Su-22 fighter-bombers, 5 MiG-21 fighters, 10 transport helicopters, (and) 40 cargo airplanes.(but) many are inoperable due to lack of spare parts..

Because of its air-military superiority .Americans have grown accustomed to clean, quick hits over the past generation: (Examples include) Grenada. Panam.. Hait.. (And) Iraq,. wrote reporter Howard Kurtz. Alternately, this point was like a double-edged sword for President Bush. As Kurtz affirms, .if there is a serious attack on countries such as Afghanistan, it.s not going to be a video-game war like the Persian Gulf conflict a decade ago.. Afghanistan.s natural terrains protect the country from any type of international aggression. .Afghanistan is a country of jagged ridges and deep gorges that is about the size of Texas. It is nature.s gift to guerrilla warfare. (Hirsh and Berry 36). .Afghanistan.s modern history of slaughter, of skewered hubris, goes back to 1842, when 16,500 British soldiers and civilians were killed in a winter retreat from Kabul; only one escaped. (36). Consequently, as both British and Russians unavoidably and horrifically discovered, even with the most technologically advanced fighting equipment, winning the war in Afghanistan turf would take a considerable amount of time; something that the American people would more recently not be accustomed to.

More importantly, anot