<HTML>Hi Kat,
You are right I think. I would only offer this to chew on.
Our allies would likely support a ground operation if there were a viable target and military objectives. With nobody left in Afghanastan and essentially a stone-age level of existance there anyway you have to ask what the purpose would be militarily. It might be symbolically significant, but with anti-us sentiments so high in northern Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Somolia, and a number of other places, it would just lite a fuse.
I think that the Taliban needs to go, but so does the mechanism that created them and brought them to power in the first place and that involves Pakistan.
Is there some humanitarian alternative? It might be a good time to force a resolution down Israel's throat over Palestine, that would help. But, Bin Laden's own statements indicate that there are other issues, less tangible and far less reasonable, and that spring from religious zealotry. What can be done to mitigate this zealotry? That is the harder question.
Is poverty the motivation? I saw an interview with the parents of one of the hijackers, they are normal middle-class people living in Germany. They had no idea of his intentions, no clue, they were sending the guy money for school. So that means Bin Laden manipulated a middle-class kid into doing his bidding. How?
Through demagogy, the manupulation of faith.
What allows demagogy to be successful? How is it applied? What are the mechanisms behind it? Who is susceptable to it? Clearly Bin Laden knows the answers to these questions and applies that knowledge. Then the question becomes, to whose ends? It is not likely the Taliban's ends, the process of training for this attack started years ago when the Taliban was itself being organized. Pakistan? The 'leader' there came to power through a coup that overthrew a democratically elected leader. Who supported that coup? I think if you follow that trail you will solve a big part of the puzzle.</HTML>
