In a matter of weeks, they destroyed all of the training bases of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and killed a major part of the leadership. Al Qaeda was a strong force at the time that the New York Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001. They have not recovered and the leadership that survived are living in a poor mountainous region that is on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States Air Force and the Navy rained rockets and bombs down on their loca-tions very accurately and destroyed their targets without destroying the country.
The Taliban was a group of Islamic leaders who had taken over the government by force. They were given the opportunity to surrender the Al Qaeda leaders and not face attack and they refused. After the bombing the United States Army and the Marines moved in with ground forces and drove the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the country. This was not an easy task. Afghanistan is a very back-ward Tribal Nation that has only one major paved highway in the country. It connects the major cities. The rest of the roads are dirt which become mud roads during the rainy season.
The Russians learned that trying to control a tribal nation that has a very low education level and whose major money crop is heroin is a difficult process. Our government is reviewing our position in Afghanistan trying to decide what can be done. If we leave, the Taliban will return and provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda. If we stay, we will probably have to maintain a police force on a continuing basis. This choice is not an easy one. The recommendation of the U S Generals is to increase our forces and try to destroy all of the Taliban fighters and depend on the tribal leaders to keep the peace.
Islamic armies are generally not well disciplined. One experience that I had in Saudi Arabia shocked me. We had a group of Saudi young men working in the factory and one day about six of them did not show up for work. Their friends told us that they had gone to work for the government. They had joined the army. Less than a month later they all showed back up again and asked for their old jobs again. We asked them about joining the army. They said that they did join but they did not like it so they quit.
Another time, the English newspaper in Jeddah mentioned a young man who was in trouble with the police. They described him as a man of bad character. They reported that he formerly had been in the army but they had fired him for non attendance.
I was in the nation of Bahrain on the East Coast of Saudi Arabia and visited the Fuddrucker’s Restaurant for a meal. When I left the restaurant to walk back to my hotel there was a young man in an army uniform outside carrying a rifle. I asked him if he spoke English. He did. He told me that he was from Bangladesh. I asked him how he happened to be a soldier in the Bahrain Army. He told me that all of the soldiers in the Bahrain Army were foreigners. The citizens did not serve in the Bah-rain Army.
You cannot expect discipline from soldiers like these. This was also evident when the United States Army and Marines entered Iraq. Iraq was supposed to have the best military force in the Middle East second to Israel. They ran and hid while the U.S. Military captured the capital city in two days time without any resistance. The United States Navy has rockets that are radar guided that were fired from ships in the Persian Gulf. They were so accurate that they went into the windows of the target buildings. They state that they can actually guide them down a chimney of a building sev-eral hundred miles away.
It is not just the technology that makes our military great. It is the dedication and training of our men and women. The United States Military in all of its branches have the greatest group of loyal members of any force in the world. They serve with purpose and that purpose is to bring freedom to the world.
Many of those serving today are men and women who joined the National Guard and the reserves and they were called up. The majority are career men and women who expect to serve until they are eligible for retirement. Some of those serving in foreign countries today have already accepted retirement previously and then come out of retirement to go back to the front lines in order to serve our country.
I salute all of our military and I am proud of the way they represent us around the world.
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