The military phase: October–December 2001

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If Bush wants an invasion, it could become more costly than Vietnam
By Robert Fisk, The Independent (London), 18 September 2001. President Bush is talking about a ‥crusade” it would be difficult to find a word more likely to enrage Muslims but if he plans to wage it in Afghanistan, the United States faces a military campaign more fraught and potentially even more costly than Vietnam.
The algebra of infinite justice
By Arundhati Roy, The Guardian (London), 29 September 2001. America is at war against people it doesn’t know. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an international coalition against terror.
Fighting terrorism
By Z. Pallo Jordan, ANC Today, 4 October 2001. After the terrorist bomb attacks on New York City and Washington, the government of the USA declared “war on terrorism”. President Bush sounded extremely earnest in his declaration, but a question arose in my mind: Is the USA in fact opposed to terrorism? Closer examination of the dramatis personae involved in the September 11th outrage sheds a rather different light on US pronouncements past and present.
Killing them softly: Starvation and dollar bills for Afghan kids
By Norman Solomon, Media Beat, 12 October 2001. The Pentagon's air drops of food parcels and President Bush's plea for American children to aid Afghan kids with dollar bills will go down in history as two of the most cynical maneuvers of media manipulation in the early 21st century.
A war in the American tradition
By John Pilger, The New Statesman (London), 15 October 2001. The ultimate goal of the attacks on Afghanistan is not the capture of a fanatic, but the acceleration of western power.
US War on Afghanistan a Hornets' Nest
By Rajeev Dhavan, The Hindu, 19 October 2001. America may have targeted Afghanistan, but it has also targeted itself. Americans will not be able to sleep easily for many years to come.
A War Like No Other? You Bet!
By David Graham Du Bois, Black Electorate, 27 November 2001. This “war against terrorism” is in fact an open declaration of war against the peoples of the developing world; ultimately some four-fifths of humanity.
This war is not just
By James Carroll, The Boston Globe, 27 November 2001. In recent days, sage editorial writers, religious leaders, politicians, liberal pundits, and admired columnists have joined in the Donald Rumsfeld-Condoleezza Rice chorus praising the American war in Afghanistan as “just.”
On Hitchens, the Taliban and fascism
By David C. Schweickart The Blanket 30 November 2001. Hitchens' main point was that the Taliban should be seen as a fascist organization with transnational designs \ that is truly dangerous and needed to be stopped. Parallels of virulent Islamic fundamentalism and fascism. But the issue is US real aims.
The Taliban of the West: This war is threatening the very freedoms it claims to be defending
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 18 December 2001. The world's most comprehensive attempt to defy modernity has been atomized. But this is not, as almost everyone claims, a triumph for civilization; for the Taliban has been destroyed by a regime which is turning its back on the values it claims to defend.