|
U.K. Paper Says U.S. Will Also Suffer if War Comes
LONDON, Sept 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The upcoming war planned by the U.S. will not be an easy ride, even for Americans, and losses will probably be greater than during the Vietnam War, said a leading U.K. daily Tuesday.
In an editorial in The Independent, Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk said, "President Bush is talking about a 'crusade' it would be difficult to find a word more likely to enrage Muslims but if he plans to wage it in Afghanistan, the United States faces a military campaign more fraught and potentially even more costly than Vietnam."
He added that ground troops may be necessary to seize Osama bin Laden - the top U.S. suspect - but they will be entering a country containing one tenth of the world's land mines, left by Soviet occupation forces across 80% of the land.
Besides, he added, anyone who wants to invade Afghanistan needs friends. "With the murder of the only serious opponent of the Taliban, [Ahmad] Shah Masood…nine days ago, the United States hasn't a single friend in that cemetery of foreign armies."
Fisk also inquired as to whether the U.S. was planning a mere attack via cruise missiles. "They fired 70 missiles at Osama bin Laden's camps after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam they knew where they were, of course, because the camps were built by the CIA during the Afghan-Russian war but they did not touch bin Laden."
He added that the land mines add additional risks to U.S. forces seeking to enter the country. "There are, in Afghanistan today, more than 10 million mines. They lie in fields, on mountainsides, beside roads, around the big cities, along irrigation ditches.
"On average, between 20 and 25 Afghan men, women and children are blown up by mines every day even if we take the lower figure, this indicates 73,000 civilian casualties from these mines in the past 10 years alone.
"A military incursion would, therefore, need an army of mine clearance specialists, as well as soldiers, men who would have to inch their way over the roughest terrain in the world while under attack to make the roads and countryside safe for the Americans and their allies. Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 27 are littered with mines."
Fisk added that even if the U.S. penetrated Afghanistan, their shells would only plough over the ruins. "The Russians tried to destroy the Taliban's predecessors with 10 years of bombing, destroying whole villages, with their people, farm animals, fields, trees and mud huts. And still they could not get rid of the
mujahedin [fighters], still they could not to use Bush's inappropriately folksy phrase 'smoke them out of their holes'. "
"With Pakistan as its only broken ally among Afghanistan's neighbors, with no friends inside the country and 10 million hidden land mines lying across its mountains and fields and cities, Bush's "crusade'' looks more than dangerous. We are now being told that the United States is no longer afraid to take casualties. America, the President says, will have to accept losses. He'd better be right," added Fisk.
NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, General Joseph Ralston, said that American casualties would be "unavoidable" in the attempt to retaliate against the terrorist attack on America, reported
The Independent.
He went on to say, "We must all recognize that this is not a risk-free operation that we are embarking upon. There will be casualties. That is a necessary part of any military operation.
"We cannot be in the mindset of a zero-casualty operation. That's not what we are about. We have to get the mission done. We will take all prudent measures to protect our people as best we can. But the mission will go on and we will accomplish the mission."
|
