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'Taliban' and Red Cross Warehouses

May I suggest that Antiwar.com desist from use of the word "Taliban" as a substitute for "Afghanistan." As in Yugoslavia where a war against that nation became a war against Milosevic, and Panama where an invasion of that country became semantically reconstituted as a police seizure of a drug criminal, all mainstream news reporting routinely describes the object of our onslaught in Afghanistan as The Taliban.

When the Defense Department announces that it's OK to bomb Red Cross food warehouses because "The Taliban" uses them for military shelter (and would poison the food anyway), the reader who doesn't much like armed theocrats can easily believe such things. But if one accused the government of Afghanistan of deliberately poisoning their own food supply it takes on a different and more far-fetched coloration.

~ Geoff Berne

Mistake

The Pentagon characterizes their bombing the Red Cross' warehouses in Kabul (again) a "mistake." We'd been warned at the outset of our "war on terrorism" that our leaders would shade the truth and lie to us, when it suited their purposes. I think, in this instance, we're being told an outright lie.

Bombing warehouses full of food and relief supplies, when considered with official statements that our campaign against the Afghans could take years, and the small number of Western ground forces that are in the area, suggests that no serious ground offensive is planned any time soon.

Contrary to Secretary Rumsfeld's promise that he's going to wow us all with "new" tactics, the campaign that we are putting together appears to one of classic siege warfare. Perfected by the Romans, it's among the oldest strategies in the book. We have Afghanistan's borders, more or less, closed off. Expect to read more stories about "targeting error" and other stockpiles of food incinerated. We're going to starve them into submission.

~ Lloyd G.

[Regarding Alexander V.'s letter of November 2, "Let's Capitulate":]

I think Alexander V., of New York, has the right idea. Give bin Ladin et al exactly what they're asking for: the Middle East with our troops, technology etc. out. Let them fight each other and stew in their own Islamic juice. I'm very sorry that they apparently oppress their womenfolk etc., but that's their culture and let 'em have it. If they don't like it, convert to Catholicism or Judaism. The only military action we might take, if any, is to deactivate every item of modern military hardware and technology we've sold any of them over the past 50 years!

I may be prejudiced and myopic, but my recollection of history is that Islam has done nothing in the way of developing any technology in the last half millennium. The one place it has proven superior to the West, even to the US Government, is in creating and enforcing poverty. They seem to like it. Let 'em be! Oil will get expensive, but even at $10 per gallon for gas, it's still cheaper than American blood. Besides, as the price gets higher, new technologies will come on line and eventually Big Oil may find itself with an unmarketable product.

~ Mario de Solenni, Crescent City, California