A rushed posting.

It is clear that the US just bombed and bombed to crush the Taliban and
what is Binnie's crew. The US military have the distinction of providing
further proof that with the air technology together with all the
necessary accessories it is possible to bomb an enemy to pieces.

The Taliban and friends are like the injuns fighting the whiteman's
superior technology with bows and arrows --capitalist technology against
stone age technology. We only have to read Engels to understand the
significance of technology and economics with regard to warfare.

It the crushing of the Taliban adds up to a rather pathetic and, in a
sense, tragic picture. The most pathetic aspect to it all is the
complete naiveté of both the Taliban and its friends. They entirely
miscalculated --to say the least.

Here Ferguson from Proyect Stalinist mailing list was proven completely
off the mark. In one of his posting he suggested that Afghanistan looked
like it was to be the location where the US was to experience serious
difficulty. As with his views on the Provos and the national question in
relation to Ireland he has been completely off the mark.

I pointed out before things really got going in postings to mailing
lists that the Taliban would be crushed. I indicated that the Pentagon
would engage in carpet bombing and even the use of tactical nuclear
weapons. Indeed Afghanistan has been used by the Pentagon as a military
lab. I also suggested that the best strategy that the Taliban could
adopt is withdrawal from the cities and retreat to the mountains. They
did not do this. If anything they only did under retreat. I was
suggesting that they simply withdraw from the cities before any air
assaults took place. Instead they insisted on maintaining conventional
positions of defence. This meant that under conditions of positional war
they were goners against the might of the US. Had they strategically
retreated to the mountains their forces and morale would have been
conserved. They should have left plants or moles within the cities,
towns and villages. These moles would have been of had a military and
political aspect. The military element would have engaged in urban
guerrilla warfare within these centres. They would have melted into the
urban population even vigorously applauding the entry of the Northern
Alliance into Kabul.  This would have added to their disguise. Then they
could gather intelligence and strike where appropriate. The political
aspect of the movement would have organised and mobilised the Afghan
masses against imperialist oppression. Mobilisation against
unemployment, lack of housing, food etc.  In this way it would have
built up popular support against imperialism and its puppets.  Such a
strategy would have been formulated well in advance. Instead they were
forced to ignominiously retreat under conditions in which they had
suffered serious injury and demoralisation. But they were incapable of
listening to me. This was not a subjective problem. It is a result of
the reactionary backward character of the Taliban and its Binnie allies.

The Taliban, when it got down to it, were politically, militarily and
strategically bankrupt. Once Musharraf went abroad the game was up for
the Taliban. Musharraf would have not gone on tour of the power centres
if he was not already guaranteed the safety of his authority. Clearly
his going abroad was evidence that he had thrown in his lot with the
Americans. The Taliban were a product of the Pakistani state.
Consequently it was doomed once the plug was pulled on it by the
Pakistani state. In the same way the Northern Alliance is a proxy force
for imperialism. Without imperialism it could get nowhere.

These force are pathetically reactionary forces that count for nothing.
Their master is imperialism. All this romantic bullshit  about the great
Afghan fighters makes no sense. At most it is propaganda put about by
imperialism to artificially puff the enemy up. In this way US
imperialism's target is made to look more formidable than it really is.
This means that when it triumphs it looks as if has been faced with a
serious challenge. The US attack on Afghanistan could be likened to a US
attack on Ireland. What chance would Ireland have against such an
onslaught. Even Ireland w3ould stand a better chance of resisting than
Afghanistan.