Well, yeah. But...
Possibly true on the crime bit. It is certainly arguable. It is also irrelevant. The international criminal justice system was and is no more prepared to deal with non state actors flying airplanes into buildings than was or is the US DoD. Anything done would have been ad-hocery to the tenth power and would have been of marginal value with all sorts of cock-ups. As, indeed, was the case...Originally Posted by Bob's World
I'd also note that if it was accorded status as a crime, implied is capture and trial of the perps -- that would have been a real circus.
The only really effective response would be to track down and kill all those involved and their families unto fifth Cousins or thereabouts and the sooner the better. Rightly or wrongly, we do not operate that way; thus any action would have been of only marginal effectiveness and all things considered, the military was in a better position to take some sort of action than was law enforcement -- that's why they got the job. The facts that several pre-emptive efforts had been mounted but cancelled at the last minute by vacillating politicians and that both law enforcement agencies and the armed forces had adequate warning of the likelihood of such attacks but were ill prepared is an indictment of those Politicians and our ponderous political (and military...) system -- it is also reality.
Make no mistake, in the US, something had to be done simply because that's the way -- wrongly but universally -- we operate; the Pols must be seen as doing something -- even if it is wrong as is usually the case...I'm surprised that a Stratagerist doesn't understand that. Not agreeing with it is one thing, not understanding it is another. It wasn't illogical, it resulted from flawed thinking in some aspects but there was a sound logical basis.and also in regards to the illogic of going into Iraq. I have never understood that one from the moment the first snowflake of "start thinking about Iraq" drifted down to my work station in the Army AOC from Secretary Rumsfeld's stand up desk.
The need to be seen doing something to effectively respond to probes from the ME over almost 30 prior years; doing that without greatly disturbing world oil trade; the geographic centrality of Iraq; its size and ease of access by air, sea and land; the pariah status of its leader; base locations the US has long wanted in the area (for what reason is a different question...); halting the conversion of international oil trade from dollars to Euros, disrupting the French, German and Russian economic hegemony in the area and returning it to a UK /US fief; disrupting the EU Constitutional process -- literally dozens of good reasons. Shame about the terribly flawed execution. That, however was the fault of the US Army, not Bush or Rumsfeld.
Flawed execution does not denote an illogical effort. The fact that it was rushed was due to US domestic politics. Bush believed something needed to be done, he accepted the dippy neocon plan and had it modified to suit his purposes -- do something significant to get the attention of folks in the ME (in contrast to his four predecessors who swatted flies and as opposed to Afghanistan which is not part of the ME; Afghanistan was do not attck the US on its soil, Iraq was do not attack US interests anywhere...), do it in order to lock in his successor, do that in the first term just in case he did not get reelected, do it to spend lots of money to also hog-tie said successor...
One can disagree with any or all that but none of it is illogical. Though any or all can be 'wrong' in the view of some.
Nah, it was logical, just not done very well -- yet more examples of how the US domestic political scene totally drives our foreign policy and how the US Army isn't quite as good as it likes to say it is (I think it knows better but it cannot say that).
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