>
> > Are you saying al Q is running one side or another
> of
> > the Kashmiri insurgency -- I haven't heard anyone
> say
> > that --
>
> Al-Qaeda is involved through affiliates. Kashmir is
> not very far from
> Afghanistan. . . .
>
> One would have to take into account the terrain in
> Afghanistan and Kashmir,
> mountains, poor visibility, no railway, poor roads
> etc.
Sounds sort of like Sicily . . .
and the kind of
> weapons terrorists use. The terrain is just right
> for guerilla activity. Is
> this comparable
> with the Mafia? I am not sure the police can handle
> counter-insurgency
> operations.
If al Q is involved in guerilla warfare in Kashmir, the Indian govt is justified in fighting back with military means. If it wants to ask for US militray assistance, I guess that's it own business. Nonetheless, I think that the best way to deal with an internatiuonal criminal cartel is through police work. That's not a graet method -- the Mafia is still with us after all these years.
But nothing I know makes me think that, even setting aside anything but considerations of efficacy, military means used against a vague target of no fixed location or territorial limits would work. There's a prejudice that just because you're making a very loud bang you must be doing something, we got trouble, send in the 82d Airborne. The record on that is not great. It worked for the Brits, to be sure, in Malaya and Kenya, but it failed for the French in Algeria and Indochina and for the US in Vietnam, and in those cases there were ground forces that would stay on the ground. The lound noises wea re making here are mostly long distance and from high up.
Moreover there a e other concerns than efficacy. War brings, as it always does, both terrible financial costs and (now) unprecedented limitation on liberty. I do not understand how liberals or leftists can advocate war here. It's different, as I say, if al Q is involved in normal guerilla warfare.
jks
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