The Written Word
for October 10, 2001

As one watches CNN - and what a story that is ... I remember interviewing Ted Turner back when it started and the chances of it succeeding were next to nil. - but as one watches one gets the uneasy feeling that there is no end game in sight.

We badly want to trust President Bush and his senior  colleagues. I have been especially impressed with Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald  Rumsfeldt. They are clearly outstanding men. But still, what is the game here?

It can't surely be to hurt Afghans. They are so miserable as it is it's hard to imagine even American bombing making it much worse.
Is it to soften up the Taliban so that a airborne ground force can occupy Kabul? Well, the Russians demonstrated that occupying the Afghan capital really is of little help when it comes to controlling the country.

Is one of the objectives to get rid of the Taliban regime? If so, that's a noble objective but the obvious question is, with what do you replace it? The Northern Alliance/ About all they can be said to stand for is an antipathy to the Taliban. Moreover, they are very short of Pathans, the large ethnic group in the Taliban controlled area.

Is the object to kill Osama bin Laden? Laudatory though that objective surely is, how do you manage that without killing a great many innocent civilians? One assumes that bin Laden, as did
Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, will not hesitate to use human shields. If bin Laden is killed, will he not then become the Che Gueverra of the hard line Muslims? The great martyr? Might he not be even more harmful dead than alive?

If the bombing continues for a long time, what will be the effect on other Islam states, especially those with shaky governments within the coalition? Will there not be a lot of popular support arise for the Afghans which might trigger a revolt against the government? A revolt in which the Fundamentalist is bound to take a leading role?

What makes this war so hard to get a handle on is that Mr Bush and others ask us all to be patient. Does this mean that the bombing will go on for a very long time and we should be patient while that happens? Or does he want us to be patient in waiting for the next moves that have not been disclosed to us yet?

Then there is the nagging fear that Mair's Axiom I might apply, namely that you make a very serious mistake assuming that people in charge know what the hell they're doing? There is no question but that amongst many other feelings, an enormous desire for revenge came over the American people and that President Bush had to react. How much is revenge motivating the actions
the coalition is taking?

I hope the answers to these questions come and come soon. For this is a very hard war for the public involved to understand and governments cannot long sustain wars that don't have public understanding and support - and the latter comes from the former.