Sounds like a weeked at the Kennedy Compound...
They have studied the debacle in Viet Nam and are constantly looking for a "Tet" type offensive and have developed safe havens in Pakistani tribal areas ala Cambodia and Laos.
The air strike in Damadola shows a change of strategy by us to take the fight to the enemy directly, no matter where. Iran better take notice that we are ready to cross borders, they are next on our hit parade.
The Paki tribal areas pose a big problem in that about 1,000 old school arab mujahadeen have intermarried into Waziristan Puhktun tribes and so have the acceptance of locals and the trust of the foreign al Qaeda operatives. Very clever and effective of them, Zawahiri did so himself.
Bin Laden is only good for trotting out on audio tape to continue his figure head legacy only. He will not be connected operationally anymore, too many spies in al Qaeda and he would be too big a prize for us. He is imprisoned by his own infamy.
Our primary challenge is to figure out what tasks appeal to al Qaeda the most.
Bin Laden offered a truce that he knew would be rejected. Bin Laden cleverly understood however that our media would present this "truce" to Bush/Rice/Rumsfeld who in discounting it give recognition to Bin Laden's position of leadership. Our leadership should have responded more with disinterest rather than opposition to the "truce". We blew a major opportunity to marginalize Bin Laden to the Muslim world.
Horizontal organizations can't pose enough of a sustained military or, transposing the tactics, guerilla or terrorist pace of operations similar to "Tet".
If you have no leadership and bunches of "cells" charged with carrying out missions or objectives co-ordination becomes nightmarish. Think of it as a deadly game of "telephone". Without some kind of centralized command structure objectives and missions are bound to fail due to coordination.
Lastly Tet had two advantages AQ does not have. 1. A period of truce. Tet was supposed to be a lay down of arms and caught us off guard. No such truce would ever be observed in this war. 2. There are no major state powers supplying arms en masse to AQ. Furthermore if there were there would be no political worries about sinking ships or shooting down planes of foreign countries supplying such arms. Sure, the usual leftist suspects would decry the damage we did to our foreign image if we were downing Iranian transports but the world would collectively yawn.
You said in part, "Our primary challenge is to figure out what tasks appeal to al Qaeda the most."
PERSONAL (NON-EXPERT) OPINION: They hate us. They want to kill us. They want to make the world one ummah under Sharia law.
As with any terrorist organization, AQ operates about the same way most terrorist organizations do. If they are prepared to attack and they have the opportunity to attack they will do so.
The good news is that our troopers and the coalition forces have scattered the heck out of the terrorists. They are very fragmented.
The bad news is that the internet and other forms of communication unites the terrorists.
The end of AQ is near. Very near.
Good, because Tet essentially spelled the end of the Vietcong. The U.S. was initially caught off guard, but regrouped and crushed the Vietcong to the point that they were never again as effective as they previously were.
Sounds like a weeked at the Kennedy Compound...
the new AQ base of operation in waziristan is a target if the pakis really lose control of this area. It would be a manuver from afghanistan on one side, and pakistan on the other.
The AQ would be crushed.
Gen murshariff would fill that roll very nicely.
"Al-Qaeda has lost hundreds of operatives through killings and arrest. By the end of 2003, the organization was in the doldrums and infested with spies."
That cannot possibly be true. John Kerry, who is never wrong, told us that Al-Qaeda has refrained from attacking the the US only because Al-Qaeda is doing so well against us in Iraq.
We know that Kerry is never wrong because he so correctly informed us that there would be a massive call-up of US troops to Iraq just after the 2004 elections and that a draft would surely follow. We should listen to that man.
I think you're right.
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