What are you talking about. They have never been trapped. The Afganistan fighters went to the hills and caves against the British, they did it against the Russians, and they are trying it against us.
At no other time have they been trapped. In every other case they maintained the impregnable fortress. This time are trapped. Their fortress is nowhere near impregnable. It is a death fortress.
Always before they were in the caves and the only way in was to try to bomb or shoot your way in. The air weapons used against them were not good for the task. When the Russian planes got close enough to do dammage they were close enough for the Afghanistan troops to shoot down. The number of Russian aircraft wrecks (both fixed and choppers) in the valleys of Afghanistan are incredible. They have only taken a few of ours down.
When the Russians tried to assault the mountains, they were killed. After each Russian retreat the Afghanisatn troops sent their women down to strip the dead Russian bodies. Then the Russians would try again. WE have the weapons to kill them. All it takes is a few days of clear weather. Winter will end and summer will come. And as soon as we have a few clear days they are all dead.
This time we have the kinds of airweapons that can hit targets from a distance that protects our aircraft, and still allows accurate missile attacks. We have people close enough to spot and kill them as they try to escape. With our weapons their caves turn out to be death traps. Our missiles just blow the cave openings shut. Real shut. Mostly the explosion takes all the air and kills all inside while blowing the opening shut. Even if they survive inside and try to use explosives from inside the cave to blow it open, they just blow it more shut. Those that surivive in side will run out of fuel to burn for heat and light, food to eat, and water to drink. Then they slowly die in their caves. They have never faced this kind of siege before.
We were well aware of what we were going to face. The reason the Taliban left the cities and went to the hills with out a fight, was so they could surivive to take the nation back. They did not make us fight door to door to take the cities because the felt they could surive and retake the cities with guerilla tactics from the safe haven of the mountain caves.
They felt such tactics would result in a low cost victory for them once again. After all it had worked before. What they failed to understand is that we were hard at work on a the tactics and weapons to beat their stratety well before we ever made a move in response to 911. If we were not certain that we could win, we would not have made the move.
Only the media could believe we did not see where this was going and prepare for it. If you look at my old posts starting in mid october of last year I was talking about the siege of the Taliban in the mountains as being the major battle for Afghanistan.
Last fall I did not know we had weapons to kill them in the caves. I did know we had the force necessary to keep them from escaping from the mountains. And if we had that there was no way the Taliban could survive.
This is going exactly according to plans drawn up last september. The only think we can't control is the weather. But that only effects the timing, not the result.
Brokaw questions the timing hoping viewers will be dumb enough to question the result. As usual, Tom figures his audience correctly.