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Americans Expect Upcoming Military Retaliation to be Difficult
NEW YORK, Sept 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the United States prepares for military action to avenge this week's devastating attacks, some American editorialists, commentators and former government officials have been cautioning against expectations of a quick, easy victory.
The prospect of an imminent military operation arose Saturday as U.S. President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. is "at war" and vowed to "eradicate the evil of terrorism".
For the first time, Bush pointed his finger at Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden, who is sheltered in Afghanistan, as the prime suspect in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, with a vow to attack him with U.S. military might.
"We will find those who did it. We will smoke them out of their holes," Bush warned in a statement to reporters while meeting with his top national security aides at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland.
But as the mood of war builds up in a nation angered by the destruction and the massive loss of human lives, some U.S. commentators say the upcoming military action would be difficult and its goals erroneous.
"Removing the Taliban from power and hunting down Mr. Bin Laden's Afghanistan-based followers would be no easy task, even for America's powerful armed forces," the
New York Times said in an editorial Saturday.
"Afghanistan, a mountainous land of widely dispersed villages and fiercely dispersed people, is a general's nightmare as the Soviet Union learned after it invaded it in 1979," the newspaper said.
"Even a military campaign launched from nearby nations like Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia would be arduous. Ousting the Taliban would probably require a ground invasion leading to the capture and occupation of Kabul, the capital, and other main cities. That would still leave the rugged countryside, where the terrorist base camps are located, beyond American military control," the editorial added.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, in an interview with CNN television, also advised against using land forces against the Taliban, saying it would be "the last thing we would want to do."
Eagleburger warned the nation's policymakers not "to get mesmerized" by bin Laden.
"He is by no means the only problem we face. And if we get him tomorrow morning, he has a whole host of lieutenants in an organization that would carry on," Eagleburger said.
While the U.S. government puts the blame of Tuesday's attacks squarely on bin Laden's shoulders,
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen takes a different perspective, blaming the failure on U.S. intelligence, which allowed at least 19 hijackers to commandeer, almost simultaneously, four U.S. jetliners and use them to attack Washington and New York.
"New York and Washington grieve because we failed, and failed badly at the business of intelligence," Cohen said.
While Bush declared that America was targeted for attack "because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world," Cohen suggested otherwise - citing U.S. intervention in the Middle East.
"Whether the cause is oil, Israel, or the principle of resisting aggressors [our response to Iraq's conquest of Kuwait], we have taken the lives of Muslims, and some of them will not forgive us," Cohen wrote in Saturday's
Washington Post opening editorial page.
"Our ally, Israel, controls Jerusalem's Islamic holy places. We have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, too close, apparently, to holy Mecca. We have imposed an embargo on Iraq. And everywhere we go in the region and even from outside it, we exude a noxious modernity - the music, the clothing, the contempt for tradition and authority. We are a dangerous people," Cohen said.
Airborne attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon have so far left some 5,000 dead and missing - more than twice as many those who died in the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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