First, thanks for your service.
“was still not the main effort for the WoT”
Just because we had more troops in Iraq doesn’t mean there wasn’t/isn’t a signigicant effort in Afghanistan. We have more troops in Iraq because there’s less support for the effort there from other countries; hence we have to bear more of the burden. Because Al Qeada said the central front in the WOT was Iraq and they sent most of their supporters there, we focused there.
Also remember that Iraq was by and large fought by conventional forces doing what they do best. Even the urban combat is squad level with a good sprinkling of sniper trade.
Afghanistan from the start was SpecOps. First blood was actually drawn by the SAS in early OCT 2001. We put 100 "operators" in-country and within 100 days they'd killed 30,000 AQ and Taliban with the magnificent help of the USAF and USMC air assets made available.
I understand that one of the AWACS coordinators was a female who spoke pashtun. Before a strike, she'd get on the enemy freq and tell them that SHE was about to rain death and destruction on them for killing Americans. Then the Spector Gunships would go to work. The Taliban started calling her the "Angel of Death."
Then we almost lost the whole thing because the BOZOS in charge of the military conventional forces infrastructure jumped in and tried to steal the show. They forgot the painful lessons taught to the Soviets.
The Terrain in Afghanistan lends itself to special forces type operations, especially in forging close working relationships with resistance fighters. Afghanistan isn't tank country. Not by a long shot. Iraq certainly excels for tank warfare.
I remain convinced that if we'd simply let the special operations guys really off the chain, we'd have OBL and his cronies heads on a pike in short order. If you do the research you'll see that even though the ROE for them is remarkably brief and fluid, some of the most important missions are killed by the bosses for senseless political reasons. That is no way to get a wily old fox like OBL. Gotta "grow a pair" and let slip the Dogs of War.
“Just because we had more troops in Iraq doesn’t mean there wasn’t/isn’t a signigicant effort in Afghanistan. We have more troops in Iraq because there’s less support for the effort there from other countries; hence we have to bear more of the burden. Because Al Qeada said the central front in the WOT was Iraq and they sent most of their supporters there, we focused there.”
You got it. I’ve often wondered how the troops in Afghanistan feel when they hear that some people SOME PEOPLE are saying that there hasn’t been a “significant effort” in Afghanistan. That’s a bunch of crap...they know it and it has to really burn them up...