Report From a Forgotten War (Oliver North)

Helmand Province, Afghanistan – To Americans of my generation and older, Korea is “The Forgotten War.” For this generation, it’s Afghanistan – or to be precise, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

This seven-year long campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the shadow of the Hindu Kush didn’t start out as a “forgotten war.” On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9-11 attack, OEF began with a salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles and raids by B-1s, B-2s, B-52s and waves of carrier-based aircraft. For the next month the entire world was riveted as Afghan “Northern Alliance” troops – bolstered by U.S. Special Operations Forces and CIA teams – swept south toward Kabul.

The November 9 liberation of the capital was an international press event. When the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) landed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) “Rhino” on 25 November to cut Taliban/Al Qaeda escape routes into Pakistan, reporters clamored to cover the operation. For the next sixteen months, most of the so-called "mainstream media" provided at least some regular coverage of the hunt for Usama bin Laden.

Then came Iraq. The start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 20, 2003 created a virtual news vacuum in Afghanistan, and it has been pretty much like that ever since. Though there have been brief moments of media interest – like the October 9, 2004 election that brought President Hamid Karzai to power – the potentates of the press have largely ignored developments in Afghanistan and focused on predictions of disaster in Mesopotamia.

Hopefully, that is about to change. Success in Iraq is now an undeniable reality. Here in Afghanistan, the NATO International Security Force Commander, U.S. Army General David D. McKiernan, is calling for more troops...

Right now, the NATO forces are taking out endless waves of hired guns, Taliban, al-Qaeda and drug gangs. Their strategy is of targeted assassinations of enemy leaders in Pakistan, via Reaper-zapping.

However, we cannot stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. So I see two possible alternatives.

First, from the very onset, we should have taken it upon ourselves to rewrite Afghanistan, much like we rewrote Japan at the end of WWII.

That is, almost nothing of their old ways should have been preserved, since it was nothing but failure. They should have been given a secular “MacArthur constitution”, that was totally western in concept. Sharia Law and tribal authority should have been relegated to minor local disputes.

In turn, this would also mean retraining their entire government, police and judges, and military, to bring them up to international standards. They would have no say in doing things their way for 20 years, after which time they wouldn’t have wanted to go back to their old, failed ways.

Part and parcel to this would be employing every unemployed adult male in much of the country—possible because of their tiny national wage, and using them to rebuild their towns and cities and improve the place considerably, with an eye to creating future jobs.

All children would be taken to safe secular public boarding schools for education by foreign teachers under military protection.

The other strategic alternative, and a much more practical one right now, because of this lost opportunity, is to radically expand on the program of targeted assassinations. SOCOM agents should be going on a killing spree in Pakistan, taking out threats right, left and sideways.

This means taking out the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership, and any Imam who tries to instigate attacks. Such priests are a cowardly lot when their own lives are threatened, so a lot of them will shut up.

The tribes should be terrified to have anything to do with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Tactically, it is called “counter-terror”, or terrorizing the terrorists.

The villains shouldn’t be safe anywhere. If they are an MP, in the ISI or the Pakistani military, and the CIA finds out they are helping the enemy, we should Phoenix Program them.

All told, SOCOM should take down a few thousand of their worst offenders, and the entire region would get a lot quieter. There is a finite supply of such dogs, and once gone, the rest would be very careful not to make waves.

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