Posted on 11/02/2001 5:29:06 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
WASHINGTON -- When the United States led its NATO partners into a war against Serbia in March 1999, the initial effort was rightly derided as inadequate. President Bill Clinton had ruled out deployment of ground forces. Preparations for the bombing strikes suggested that political and military leaders expected a relatively short, easy campaign.
Critics of the initial strategy argued that the United States should prosecute the war with a clear determination to win, which required more airpower as well as the option to use ground forces to wrest Kosovo from Belgrade's control.
Prominent among these critics were people who now bear responsibility for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, including the secretary of state and the president. Colin Powell derided Mr. Clinton's Kosovo effort as a "hope to win" strategy. Governor George W. Bush said the United States must "use whatever means necessary to achieve our objective," including ground forces. General Powell, Mr. Bush and other critics were right in their assessment of the initial U.S. and NATO strategy and in what needed to be done to ensure success. To its credit, the Clinton administration listened. It tripled the number of air assets in the Kosovo theater, intensified the bombing and gave notice that it was prepared to invade Yugoslavia to get its way. Seventy-eight days after the bombing started, Belgrade relented.
U.S. and British leaders are now prosecuting a war in Afghanistan for far more serious ends. The initial effort bears a disturbing resemblance to the Kosovo war.
The air effort has been paltry. The daily number of combat sorties has averaged far less than 100 - well below the number of initial sorties in Kosovo, let alone during the early days of Desert Storm. To be sure, Afghanistan is not a target-rich environment. But even strikes against Taliban troops in the field have been wholly inadequate, largely consisting of pinprick attacks against limited armor rather than wholesale bombing of frontline troops.
Although ground troops have not been taken off the table, we are told not to expect any significant deployments into Afghanistan. Only small numbers of special forces will likely be inside Afghanistan at any one time; and perhaps a small contingent of regular army troops could be inserted for some weeks to protect a base in friendly territory so as to allow forward operations of these special forces.
There are apparently no plans to send significant numbers of combat troops - several thousand or more.
Concern about civilian casualties and the need to keep regional allies on board help explain why the bombing campaign has been so slow. Fear of getting bogged down in another quagmire helps explain the reluctance to use ground troops. Similar issues bedeviled the NATO effort in 1999.
But then, as now, the answer was not to modulate the military effort but to strike swiftly and severely with whatever force necessary to achieve a certain and rapid victory.
The time for pinprick bombing has passed. It was a mistake to try to calibrate military efforts to the search for a politically acceptable coalition government that could take over from the Taliban, if only because that coalition cannot take power until the Taliban are defeated.
Contrary, apparently, to the expectations of some, the Taliban have proven to be a dogged foe. A bit of bombing has not dislodged them from power nor led to widespread defections among their troops.
So the coalition needs a more intense effort. It should bomb Taliban troop concentrations day and night and step up direct support for the resistance. And it should prepare for the possibility of using its own forces alongside the opposition to dislodge the Taliban if an intensified bombing campaign and a strengthened resistance cannot do it on their own. Humanitarian aid efforts to avert mass starvation in the months ahead should be stepped up, possibly including setting up safe areas for refugees to gain access to food and shelter.
The Bush administration should heed the lessons of the Kosovo campaign and practice what its key members preached at that earlier time.
The writers are senior fellows at the Brookings Institution and authors of "Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo." They contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Seems to me, Team Bush had two choices: 1) What they are doing now--softening up the Taliban until they are as assured as can be that ground forces can be effective; or 2) Use tactical nukes. I would have preferred the nukes, but it's not difficult to understand why they haven't been used.
The claim here that the military effort has been calibrated to meet political objectives is total BS. It's a notion that has gained widespread acceptance by the liberal media, but without a shred of evidence.
They should all just "stand watch listen" and SHUT UP!
(sorry, I'm moody today!)
Sorry that screenname is already taken...;^)
When I saw the headline, I clicked in to comment but you said it all.
Just a few days ago, we had Freepers writing that you can't carpet bomb in Afghanistan because of the caves, etc. so those of us calling for it should shut up. Well, now we are carpet bombing. But, instead of a steady flow of planes and bombs that could win the war in a matter of days, we are sending one B-52 a day in a seeming effort in delay the war long enough to enrage as many fundamentalist Muslims as we can. Does anyone really doubt that we have the power to put a bomb crater every thirty feet throughout the entire Taliban front line guarding Kabul, simultaneously removing every mine and Taliban soldier that stands in the way of the weak-kneed Northern Alliance?
On the homefront, we wait to be attacked, rather than making an all out effort to round up every illegal and non-citizen alien of middle eastern citizenship for deportation and thereby eliminating the threat of further terrorist attacks. Such an effort would at least force them to go to the mattresses, making them act more suspiciously and thereby become more noticeable by the authorities and the general public. In short, if it's not a war, don't call it a war. If it is a war, then act like it, and go all out to win it. That means, defeat the enemy with all possible speed, and protect the homeland with all necessary means consistent with the constitutional rights of United States citizens. So far, only the citizens have lost any rights. The bad guys haven't lost anything. They are laughing at our bombing campaign, and rolling on the floor in hilarity at our immigration policies.
Those who trumpet the benefits of air war alone, are doing disservice to the military campaign. They should go back to school and read the facts, not Clintonista fiction.
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