We have been in Afghanistan for 5 years now. We should have some fluent Pashto speakers capable of leading psuedo-gangs and long range reconnaisance patrols into Waziristan. The Afghan National Army should have by now at least a battalion of decent light infantry capable of serving as a mobile strike force.
A winter campaign in the Hindu Kush will be hard school for an American soldier, but with the proper leadership they can rise to that challenge, and maybe bring in the heads of some HVT's and turn the pessimism and defeatism of the American public around.
But I wonder if one can reasonably factor in the fanatacism of these Taliban and AQ thugs.
But overall it seems sound. Pacify the ones you can. Kill the ones you can't.
L
If you want to get a little of Gen. Crook...he's a figure in the historical novel, A Distant Trumpet by Paul Horgan. This is an excellent story of the s.w. Indian wars...honor and Army life, and so forth....
What the old saying?All I want is results. We have been playing games too long and the credability of the U.S. is going up in flames and the Democrats don't help.
I wonder if the logic breaks down here:
The American Indian knew they were outnumbered by the white population. "White man is like the buffalo -- endless numbers".
The Islamist believes Muslims outnumber (or soon shall, "god" willing)the Infidels. They will fight on.
No strategy will defeat the Islamists. All we can do is hope to manage them. Even a "scorched earth", "glass parking lot" policy won't defeat them. They are with us until the end times.
In the line of work I do, I have said that "I'm in this fight until the last terrorist is reduced to a puff of pink mist". And I know I'll still be saying that when I'm 89, should the Lord tarry.
The point is that even if your strategy and tactics are sound, they are meaningless if the government does not support them.
My quibble is , and horse lovers will agree, that the author's assertion that small grass fed ponies are "faster" then shod, grain fed horses is simply contrary to fact. Whether by, "fast" the author means actually quicker in the run or simply being possessed of more endurance, a shod, grain fed horse will surpass a grass fed pony, all things being equal. And this is true summer or winter, although in winter the pony would need more grass for heat when little is available and have very little extra energy stored up to spare for exertions, and in summer, although grass would be more plentiful, the campaigning presumably harder.
In fact in my reading of the Indian wars it was the ultimate superiority of the Army horses that gave the cavalry a great advantage and that superiority was expressly attributable to these factors. I note that the author does not explicitly make the case that Miles was tied to his supply tail while the Indians were not. But this is a different argument.
An unshod horse will break down in hard riding over rough country long before a shod horse and he will play out sooner than the grain fed horse. You simply can not get uninterrupted hard work out of the grass fed horse for days on end. There simply is not enough energy in the grass. The horse would have to spend the bulk of the day grazing to accumulate enough energy to make up for yesterday's exertions as well as tomorrow's. I would further assume that in campaigning, the Indians would be unable to bring with them a herd of replacement horses.
We have to be willing to wield other weapons that truly destroyed the Indian culture:
1. Promise one thing and do another, which is difficult in our PC days.
2. Spread smallpox and other such diseases to the Taliban.
3. Kill their means of support - poppies, goat herds, etc.
4. Place Taliban on remote reservations without means of support so they are dependent upon us.
I believe we can take the same approach with the tribes in iraq.
I don't think this pessimism and defeatism belongs to the public at large. There is an anxiety present there, to be sure, and the corrupt media have translated that into pessimism to advance their left-wing masters into power.
That pessimism isn't based on reason, so it probably won't respond to reason. No amount of heads -- including that of Osama bin Laden himself -- is going to sway the liberal propaganda machine from its intended purpose: the betrayal of America.
We MUST NOT win this war!
The points, however, are valid---use natives when possible (an old British trick) and don't get carried away with the "destroy-the-village-to-save-it" approach.
The heroism of thousands in the Iraqi and Afghan militaries is testimony to the fact that they are willing to fight and die for democratic principles and peace.
The Arizona campaign was a whole 'nother story, a story of unremarkable men doing rather remarkable things with the clouds and fog of war hanging low and dense. Crook, by himself, probably would have notched up another failure had it not been for other equally interesting characters. John Clum at San Carlos, Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts, the Indian scouts themselves, tenacious and (usually) loyal. The dynamic that these men created ended the Apache Wars. Could it have been done faster and better? Probably. But this is the way it was done.
The horse issue was not critical to Arizona. The Apache could dogtrot up to 60 miles a day WITH women and children, up and down mountain ranges, in and out of ravines. The few horses they had were used until they were useless, eaten, and more stolen. Crook, himself, rode a mule.
We need a modern-day George Crook to work on the Taliban and convince them to give up the fight. I doubt that anyone can convince most of the Al-Qaeda fanatics to lay down their arms, but a number of the Taliban might be willing to listen.