The U.S. response to 9/11

General General Discussion
1

Eleven years ago, terrorists attacked high-value targets in our country. According to the 9/11 Commission report, “9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack”. They murdered 2,977 innocent people. When the stock markets reopened, U.S. stocks had lost $1.4 Trillion in valuation for the week.

Let that sit in your mind for a moment.

The most recent figure from the DoD of the number of US troops killed in the Global War on Terror: 6,349. Wounded times ten, easily. Financially, the US has spent in excess of $5.4 Trillion, on both wars and homeland security expenditures. Speaking of homeland security, the cost to our freedom at home has been immense. Warrant-less surveillance and eacesdropping, groping pat-downs, purchase tracking and tracing, domestic drone deployment, harrassment, suspicion, intimidation, and the dismantling of the bill of rights has been the response at home.

So the question presents itself: was this a well thought-out, measured response? Or was it a knee-jerk reaction? If this outcome was laid out in front of you in October 2001, would you have considered it reasonable?

Today, and always, let us remember not only those who died, but the damage done by our own inept government. They have pushed through unimaginably terrible solutions in response to the 9/11 attacks. Wiser men would have taken their time to make sure that the counter-attack would be both brutally effective AND measured, and not inflict even greater harm to our country.

Lastly, it has become obvious to me, as well as anyone paying attention to such things, that the entire homeland security apparatus has been redirected onto us. The citizenry of America are now the ones being targeted, watched, suspected and surveilled. Our own tax dollars are being used to build an electronic cage around us. “Doesn’t bother me, I pay my taxes and stay out of trouble” you might find yourself thinking. Fair enough. But know this: Power corrupts. Suppose someday they target you not because you’re a bad guy, but because you’re a good guy? Murder committed by ones’ own government was the highest cause of unnatural death last century, with some estimates reaching as high as 400 million non-combatants killed.

Giving a government, ANY government, the kind of power that homeland security now has, is beyond foolish.

God bless the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and the families of our wounded and slain soldiers.

2

Sadly, All true.

3

Here’s another thing:

The various makes and models of MRAP vehicles are saving soldiers lives over seas. IED fatalities are way down since the DoD started ordering thousands of them. Good.

However, those vehicles cost $475,000 to $500,000 per unit. And they are destroyed and mostly unsalvageable after a hit from a $200 russian artillery shell made into an IED. The guys inside usually survive, thank God. But does anyone else see an issue with this? The Afghanis couldn’t win the war by, oh I don’t know, making us go bankrupt, could they?

The Soviets went through the same crap. I don’t know how much a stinger launcher costs, but I’d bet my lunch they cost less than a Havoc or a Hind.

There’s a pattern emerging. Spend $500,000, destroy $$ TRILLIONS. Spend a few hundred bucks, destroy a $500,000 truck. I hate to say it, but the jihadis’ seem to have found our achilles heel.

4

Welcome to modern warfare. A 3rd world country living in adobe huts and 100 years behind the rest of the western world in technology can easily triumph over it by playing good hide and seek, blowing up their equipment, and extending the war as long as possible.

America simply cannot fight a guerrilla/less advanced war against a low-tech, old-fashioned enemy in their own territory.

Vietnam…

5

100% true. DHS has never caught a single actual terrorist, so it is trying to make citizens into terrorists.

6

Can’t or won’t? I’d say the latter, which is another issues to whether we actually should no?

Lessons learned, the hard way. A very different military we have.

7

There is no reason to think we would have spent or done less on homeland security if we did not have the GWOT. It’s easier to say we likely would have done and spent more, because without putting terrorists on the run I think we would have seen a follow up of 9/11 scale within a few years.

We can debate the strategy, but I don’t see where there was a cheap and easy fix.

8

A think it is a bit of both. We have been fighting for 10 years and what progress have we made? Our type of modern military just can’t fight the type of war they fight. (non-uniformed, non-tacticle, non-strategic, guerrilla) Won’t? Why waste our time? Why ARE we wasting our time?

Lessons learned, the hard way. A very different military we have.

Lessons “maybe learned”. Do you see that much of a difference between vietnam and this war? It has the same basic characteristics. (Fighting with Soviet-bloc weapons, guirella warfare, old-fashioned methods and tactics, home territory, extended period of war)

9

On the whole war fighting strategy, I like VDHs “Carnage and Culture” view that western warfare was based on shockwarfare with short timelines and determinate victories. We don’t do long insuregencies and disbursed warfare by our nature or cultural basis. At the same time we have reduced our shock warfare by increasing demands for less collateral damage and even reduced enemy casualties.

10

Actually that war was lost at home. The Tet Offensive destroyed the enemy and they were on the brink of defeat. But the American news media declared it an enemy victory.

The American people lacked the willingness to support the war then (in fact they undermined it) and most of them won’t support an actual war now. So we are limited to BS efforts to “rescue” muslims from fundamentalism.

Our response to 9-11 saddens me so greatly I cannot express it in words.

11

The battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 may have been a lost opportunity to catch Osama bin Laden. But it was definitely the moment when Operation Enduring Freedom shifted from a fast-moving, US-led rout of Taliban forces to a tricky counterinsurgency war.

Another way of assessing the shifting strategy would be as a refusal to allow it to end as quickly as it had begun! Do you understand? We had this thing all but wrapped up, then the Bush administration stepped in, and a decade later we have the longest war in US history still well under way…

12

I’m going to take issue with this, GB, but not for the reasons that you might expect. The issue is not that we/our military is not capable of going into these situations and coming away with decisive victories; the issue is that our military is an extension of our values as a nation, and as Americans, we simply aren’t willing to go into the fight with an indiscriminate, no-holds-barred, everybody-dies approach to the job. Nor should we, as tempting as it might be at times.

From a military perspective, it isn’t a particularly difficult thing to burn every village next to an IED site, and to string up the bodies of the inhabitants along the roadways, but that isn’t how we fight as Americans. It isn’t a reflection of who are as a people, and although the distinction may be lost to some, the work of a liberator is disctinctly different from that of a conqueror. Ultimately, we aren’t looking to rule, so much as to leave a place in control over its own destiny; hopefully, better than we found it. Sometimes, that just isn’t up to us.

Like most anyone who has bothered to conduct an intellectually honest examination of historical fighting formations like the Waffen-SS, I’ve always had to balance my admiration for their effectiveness as fierce soldiers with my unwillingness to be part of any kind of fight conducted on those terms. There is an element of naivety there for sure, but I think it is an important one to hold on to. Yes, we are capable of winning anywhere, at any time, against anyone … but if we lose sight of who we are and why we’re there in the process, then how are we any better than a band of unprincipled renegades?

You see, the soldiers of the United States have to fight in such a way as to be able to come home to the approval of their countrymen; perhaps not at the campaigns that they undertook, but at least in the manner in which they discharged their duties. So, yes, we will sit in our Apaches and Strykers and blow up insurgent pickups all day long. We will kick in doors in the middle of the night, and conduct our searches. But … we will also hand kids a Coke, collect supplies for a local school, turn their electricity back on and adopt their stray pups as our unit mascots. Why? Because the people that America sends to do its fighting have to remain true to the ideals that – even with all of our divisions – we still hold fast to as One Nation, Under God. We insist on it. As well we should.

If you don’t care about consequences, don’t care who gets killed in the process, and have no interest in counting the cost afterward, we can win decisively every Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan that we face. But, in doing so, we will lose the identity that has made our country unique for more than 200 years. Avoiding the fight in the first place is probably the better idea in many of these situations, but now you aren’t talking about our military at all: you’re talking about our civilian leadership. Lest that come off as an indictment, even with all of its flaws, I still think that our approach reveals who we are as a people, and that is a good thing. From the perspective of one old soldier, I can sleep soundly at night knowing what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if these people continue their descent into chaos. We gave them a very real chance to re-shape their destinies, and that is far more than most nations would ever dare to do.

AC

13

Extremely well put and it dovetails with my understanding of Victor Hanson’s cultural studies of western ways of warfare.

The short version is: Congrats Taliban, you ‘win’. Enjoy your shit hole.

While I agree with your insights into the American way of war and the differing roles of conquerer or liberator, how do you address the ‘game-theory’ result that enemies will see what happens and realize that if they play a zero-sum game for a decade, we lose interest and they get their way. Add in foreign ‘super’ powers that will enable such forces and how do you keep global punks from thinking they can take swipes at momma bear?

When do you go full ‘Carthage’ and remove a people from being a threat for all time? I’m comforted by the fact there are no Iranians in ‘Star Trek’ episodes, but it seems dropping nuclear weapons in the last century has not informed people that we do have limits.

14

I disagree with the last part.

We made the Germans and Japanese understand that they had been defeated. That doesn’t happen anymore. The Taliban can actually claim victory for driving us out of Iraq. This means we are still fighting us as an enemy.

If we fought WWII like we did recent wars we’d still be dealing with rogue bands of SS werewolf groups and underground groups of Japanese Imperialists.

The “no holds barred - indiscriminate” war actually saves lives. It means wars are ended - decisively. As much as we all truly regret the lives lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they are the cost of “lives saved” by eliminating the need for an invasion of Kyushu. And that works for both sides.

Additionally, if we fight “decisively” we will have fewer wars which require fighting. Our lack of response in Somalia led directly to 9-11. Al Quida saw us as “weak” and “unwilling to accept losses” and they tested us with the USS Cole which reinforced that belief. If we would have hammered the shit out of Somalia for attacking our forces we might have saved 3,000 lives 11 years ago.

15

I would also disagree with waging a “just war”. I think we should win by killing everyone on the other side and destroying all their stuff.

16

Not sure that I see the actual disagreement there, unless it is a matter of semantics. I absolutely believe in decisive victory,. I’m simply suggesting that it was a much easier thing to achieve when fighting an organized, uniformed force sworn to defend county or king. We might not have agreed with their ideologies, but at least their motivations made a modicum of sense to the western mind. The Germans and Japanese were easily identified as adversaries, and dealt with accordingly in a campaign that was prosecuted largely according to conventional laws of warfare. We didn’t resort to an amoral rape, pillage and burn approach; we simply struck with overpowering force, and kept at it until the job was done.

In an unconventional setting, we are denied almost all of this. We have difficulty recognizing our adversaries on sight. We don’t know where the battle lines are from one day to the next. We often have no idea who can be trusted, and who cannot. Everything becomes more difficult as a result, and unless you’re willing to go in and devastate a population indiscriminately and with few moral scruples, it becomes nearly impossible to completely cull the irregulars from the masses. It doesn’t help that most of them fight for reasons that make little real sense to us (i.e. we aren’t at war with their religion, nor seeking to extinguish any particular tribe or clan).

What you end up with is a situation wherein it simply isn’t possible to “win” decisively without strong local support, and we have continually over-estimated the degree to which that would be extended to us. As Americans, we aren’t in the business of indiscriminate killing, wholesale atrocities or willfully attacking institutions of faith and culture. Were we to cross that line, we might win a temporary victory on the field of battle, but the loss of our moral standing as a nation would forever change us as a people. Are any of these dysfunctional countries we are seeking to assist really worth paying that kind of price?

AC

17

In short, I don’t – save to say that this needs to be factored-in before any troops are committed to one of these ventures. Are the temporary gains worth the long-term price? Sometimes they will be, as evidenced by the fact that many feel we never needed to “win” in Iraq and Afghanistan so long as the Islamofacists remained in a state of relative disarray, and unable to pursue visions of a united regional Caliphate.

I’ve heard it effectively argued that our strategic victories in this sense were decisively achieved, no matter how we might feel about the win-loss column on the military side of the scoreboard. Granted, we need to keep this in mind as Iran continues to seek to peddle greater influence, but taken as a whole, this part of the world is now so mired in their own difficulties that they are incapable of posing a more direct or substantial threat to the United States.

Will we have to go back at some point and tend these gardens some more? Likely so, but for this generation, our national fears borne on September 11th, 1991 simply haven’t materialized, and I think we have our troops to thank for that, even if they will not get to enjoy a moment of unconditional surrender on the part of some vanquished foe. We left much unifinished, no doubt, but consider that what we did accomplish has served our purposes rather well, away from the rhetoric and politicization of the cause.

We’re commemorating the anniversary of an attack today – not dealing with the carnage and chaos of another one. Once, not so long ago, we were braced in anticipated of much worse to come.

AC

18

Let me try to be more specific.

During WWII we didn’t try to rescue the Germans for “national socialism” nor did we try to fight the ideology of “national socialism” while actively attempting to NOT target the German populace. Men, women and children of no significant military value were incinerated at Dresden. This is unfortunately, however it holds the population that gives even “tacit support” to “national socialism” accountable. We didn’t care if they were nazis or not, we were at war with them.

That means the population is now forced to take a role, and they did. This includes attempting to assassinate Hitler on many occasions. This includes helping allied efforts and undermining the nazis. That is because the population understood they were getting their asses kicked and they wanted it to stop. We weren’t doing things like putting US servicemen or trial because they shot a non combatant. The Germans EXPECTED us to shoot them if they screwed with us even the slightest little bit.

The population of Iraq didn’t feel defeated, so they did what “they” felt like doing. Often that meant undermining our efforts to “help” them. Most of them saw us as nothing more than inconvenient “errand boys” who were doing something of their benefit but who they wanted out of their country asap. That also means they didn’t fear or respect us and would potentially become our enemy at the slightest provocation. And in comparison to the populations of Afghanistan, the people of Iraq LOVE US.

But if a population doesn’t believe they are defeated or understand they could be at a whim, we will never have that “strong, local support.”

Additionally, there are some places where that will never actually happen. Afghanistan is probably one of those places. Even if we didn’t undermine the crap out of them, the Russians might not have been capable of subjugating the country. And that is why sometimes you simply bomb the shit out of them every time they screw with you and call it “good enough.” This is why Reagan didn’t try to rescue Libya from Kaddafi.

19

The one thing we’ve failed to do repeatedly since WWII is to fight the enemy to surrender. There are no more VE or VJ days. We never had a VK or VV day, and we’ll never have a VA day.

If we’re not willing to fight them to surrender, then we have to learn to stay home. There’s nothing wrong with dropping some bombs or firing some Tomahawks and calling it a day. When we struck Lybia, the F-111’s went, dropped their ordinance and RTB. Mission accomplished and Gadhaffi learned his place. We didn’t feel an overwhelming drive to do a full scale invasion. So why has this become the preferred method of combatting terrorism and rogue nations all of a sudden?

America didn’t lose the ability to win a war, we lost the will. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right or not at all. :frowning:

20

If we’re not willing to fight them to surrender, then we have to learn to stay home.

I’m sorry, but this is just to goddamn inclusive, as though “we” were given a choice in the matter! Is anybody paying attention here? This thing was won at Tora Bora, that is until someone decided that “we” didn’t want a win!

Who is profiting from these wars, and just who the hell’s interests is DHS serving? Its sure as hell not “we the people!”