Sunday, August 01, 2004

This plan is completely insane

Matt Yglesias reports to us on a memo apparently authored by Douglas Feith on September 20, 2001:

According to the commission, "the author expressed disappointment at the limited options immediately available in Afghanistan and the lack of ground options. The author suggested instead hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq. Since U.S. attacks were expected in Afghanistan, an American attack in South America or Southeast Asia might be a surprise to the terrorists." If Feith really wrote such a memo, how is it possible that he is still in his job?

We'd been attacked by al-Qaeda, and this guy wanted us to surprise the enemy by attacking a non-al-Qaeda target? In South America??? Was Doug Feith sitting there with a random-number generator and a digitized map of the world? I guess that would explain how we got into the whole Iraq mess.

2 comments:

Blue said...

Well if being surprised or not affects the success of our operation, no reason not to do a good mixed strategy.
Of course that premise is unlikely, and its also nigh impossible for our army to "surprise" like that.

Neil Sinhababu said...

My point is merely that South America is unlikely to have any targets worth striking in a war against Al-Qaeda, even when the miniscule bonus that a surprise attack carries is added.