As the second night of attacks by American and British forces on Afghanistan began Monday, some University professors were reacting to the military action with a mixture of shock and approval.
“It’s a terrible situation, and we’re going to have a hard time extracting ourselves from it,” said History Professor Arif Dirlik. “Everyone I’ve talked to has been in a state of depression.”
The bombings follow weeks of demands by the Bush administration that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire who is believed to have masterminded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Taliban have refused to turn bin Laden over, but offered to try him in an Afghan court if the United States provided compelling evidence against him — an offer American officials called unacceptable.
William Baugh, an associate professor of political science who teaches a class on national security and terrorism, called the American response “entirely expectable.”
“There were obvious warning signs that something was in the works,” he said. “There’s a case to be made that the removal of the Taliban is a humanitarian effort. The question then is: ‘What replaces them?’”
The use of force, Baugh said, makes sense if the American and British forces manage to accomplish their stated goal of toppling the Taliban while minimizing civilian casualties. However, the administration should be wary of allying itself with factions in Afghanistan’s ongoing civil war.
“Policymakers are usually worried about today’s problems, not next decade’s,” Baugh said, pointing to the fact that the Taliban were once part of the Mujahideen — the guerilla group that fought to drive out the occupying Soviets from 1979 to 1988. “We should be very careful courting the Northern Alliance.”
While the attack may not have come as a total surprise to most Americans, it may play out in a different way than many expect. Tom Bivins, the John L. Hulteng professor of media ethics at the University’s journalism school, said that while people may have been expecting the attack to come, their expectations may have been skewed by the cleaned-up images of war that they saw during the 1990-91 Gulf War.
“We never saw any bodies,” Bivins said. “My big fear is that the media will try to repeat the Baghdad experience, where war became entertainment.”
Bivins, who characterized his own feelings about the attacks as too complex to explain, said that while the initial desire to find and punish the parties responsible for the events of Sept. 11 was understandable, it would be “extremely difficult.”
“We haven’t had to do anything like this before,” he said. “So people shouldn’t expect another Gulf War.”