I would certainly second your comments about caution on weighing news reports.

Joe:

Here is a quick round-up of everything I could learn either from folks on base or via cable news reports.

NPR just interviewed someone over there saying innocent children were being killed in this unprovoked attack and the community was vowing revenge.

let's visit the Wayback Machine
March 17, 2002 - reports are that high level leaders of Al Qaeda are hiding in the hills of the Northwest Frontier Provinces and Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan...
March 17, 2003 - reports are that high value targets among Al Qaeda leadership has settled in the mountainous areas of the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan...
March 18, 2004 - reports are that fierce resistance indicates that high value targets, aka Al Qaeda leaders, may be hiding in the valleys of the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Well, I sure am glad that our 200,000 troops in the War on Terror ® were deployed to Iraq until we could determine where Al Qaeda was hiding.
Or for that matter, if Ansar al-Islam cells were responsible for Madrid (as well as Morocco), the appropriate concentration of forces against a high priority target in the War on Terror ® like Zarqawi in Kurdish held regions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

please please please let Cheney out in public to talk about the successes. the past can't be forgotten so easily.

sorry, I was wrong
the reports were actually from March 4, 2002
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0304/p01s03-wosc.html

Skip- ever thought about the logistical issues involved in getting 200k troops into Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan who doesn't want official US intervention in the NW Territories.

Before waxing satiric, you might try the alternate approach of formulating a realistic policy alternative to the administration's deployments. Perhaps the 100k+ US troops in Iraq are there because they are doing a job there that needs to be done, while only 10k of troops are in Afghanistan due to both logistical difficulties and the restricted scope of the mission there.

Put this effort in Afghanistan into an historical comparison, and you might see the relation between current Afghanistan and the Nez Perce War of 1877, see:
http://www.nps.gov/nepe/greene/contents.htm

Would the US Army have caught Chief Joseph quicker IF they used more troops? Both the answer, and the conditional, are "doubtful".

...and of course, if we HAD sent 200k troops into Afghasnistan, people like SkipWalkDC would be after the administration for repeating the Soviets' mistake, and so stimulating a huge guerilla war in Afghasnistan. Because nobody, they would say, could possibly be so stupid as to advocate such a myopic policy.

Just ignore the rhetoric from these folks - it's neither informed, nor serious, nor sincere.

A US multidivisional invasion of Pakistan? It's a technique....

Let's not be hasty. If these military legends have developed techniques for obviating high energy weapons and further, have no fear of avalanches, the number one killer in technical alpine terrain, perhaps instead of insulting them, we should allow them the full opportunity they seek to produce the results they claim to desire.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I'm sorry David, but that really is crazy!

(A US multidivisional invasion of Pakistan? It's a technique....)

The only way to win this war is to win hearts and minds. Military action can be important, but IT WON'T WIN THE WAR! Pakistan is unstable enough as it is and a US attempt to divide it would (perhaps justifiably) be seen as imperialism.
There are many issues with Pakistan, but dividing the country or invading it would make the US popularity figures in the Muslim world slump from about 15% to 5%.
We must work with Pakistan bilaterally and encourage liberal democracy. Remember, most Pakistanis are not fundamentalists like bin Laden and his gang. But US actions which don't take into account local sensitivities will push Pakistanis into their hands.
Having said that, I support the Waziristan offensive, but it must be coupled with US aid to that area- it is one of the poorest areas in S. Asia and US tied aid would be beneficial to win hearts and minds.

ah yes, the Insincerity Game - the favorite ploy of people who have locked themselves in a false, circular logic. like the DPRK. as in "we cannot agree to anything you say - regardless of its stunningly obvious correctness - because of the insincere manner in which it is offered."
As for logistics, I think over the course of two years we could have mustered the carrying capacity to get more than 11,000+ troops into the country. But we know that the Vulcans first demanded the invasion of Iraq. And the commitment of all that logistical effort, so in part we were inhibited from advancing the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda due to weak logistics.
But now, Afghanistan is 1/3 controlled by regrouped Taliban, 1/3 is essentially lawless under warlords, and 1/3 is under NATO. Mission accomplished, I suppose, in the eyes of the Vulcans.
I am convinced that Pakistan will inevitably be the lynchpin to our truly breaking AlQ (what to do about the Wahhabi networks & the Iraq-inspired copy-cats are critical to the larger struggle though). It was that way on 9/12/01 and remains to this day. Tricky in the extreme, more than even the fiasco of post-Saddam Iraq. The ISI, AQ Khan, the porous border and their Pushtun tribes, the 'democracy' of fundamentalist political parties & Musharref's balls in their vice, Kashmir, the Pak-Indian standoff, the Muslim Bomb, the 'lessons of history' as noted, and even the squeemishness of many at the time towards the Afghan deployment. Undeniably all daunting challenges.
The chain of events - in part, but not wholly spurred by the example of Iraq - that have led to the 'hammer and anvil' offensive now ongoing would have been impossible to predict then or to replicate in the interim. But with NATO united with Northern Alliance troops, UN authority, US 'soft power backed up with heavy artillery', majority anti-Taliban/Afghan popular support, a mildly-recalcitrant Pakistan and WORLD PUBLIC OPINION SUPPLYING MOMENTUM there was sufficient force on our side to bring the 'hammer and anvil' approach to the fight AT LEAST two years ago.
But since Tora Bora, the strategy got sidetracked by the Iraq Deceit.
I have a question: if in 2002 the Vulcans were convinced that Ansar al-Islam was a AlQ jv/varsity cell sufficient enough to justify invastion why would the strategy of decapitating AlQ (at best) or separate/conquer AlQ from its cells by full offensive in Afghan/Pak border area be abandoned with translators, Special Ops + intel resources removed from that front? Because we can't walk and chew gum?
A second question: since we can't undo the Iraq Deceit, we must assume that the Vulcans thought AlQ was in enough of a box that they had to focus on Saddam and his connections to AlQ thru Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi (Door #2 of the rationale). Flawed as it was, it is the path they chose. So why not get Zarqawi when we had the chance?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
My point of course is that these jokers have completely missed opportunities all along, mostly due to the Iraq Deceit. Going back to 2002, one can easily see that we weren't done with the Taliban, we weren't done with AlQ, we weren't done with Pakistan and we had the Military & Moral High Ground. But we pissed it away.
So I'll say again, please please please give us more Cheneyburton giving speeches at AEI or Heritage or the Nixon Library or the Reagan Library or the Branch Davidian complex in Crawford in front of clapping yes-men.
Even if OBL goes the way of Uday and Qusay tomorrow, the mistakes of the past will show the Vulcans got it wrong all along. For even if Zawahiri or OBL is rubbed out, the imitators like Zarqawi will hit any soft target. What will we do, invade Morroco? And Iraq will be shown to be the diversion and perversion that it is.
PS - I do have a sincere suggestion for Winds of Change. Since you do run an invaluable clipping service, perhaps a Glossary of Major Actors could be assembled. Using something like a wiki, you could build a really impressive Who's Who matrix. See wikipedia.org as a model.

Introducing democracy into the midst of the arab religious death culture would never be easy. It requires a lot of persistence and firm persuasion, along with a generous rebuilding of infrastructure that the corrupt socialist Ba'ath had destroyed.

At the same time, chasing down the radical militants, wherever they go, is another part of the overall strategy.

In Iran and Syria, it may be necessary to support armed uprisings through various means. Perhaps establish no-fly zones over those countries so their vicious tyrants cannot massacre the pro-democracy rebels.

SkipWalkDC:

What is your plan? Do you really advocate deploying 200,000 troops in Central Asia?

What people like you fail to realize is the geographic & political significance of Iraq. It borders two active terror sponsrs (Iran & Syria) and one passive terror sponsoring state (Saudi Arabia). The legal justification to invade Iraq was sound, and the fallout Iraq forced Libya to surrender its WMD capabilities and exposed the underground WMD ring in Pakistan, North Korea, Indonesia, etc. Whether you want to believe it or not, WMD in the hands of terrorist is the biggest danger we face, and the US and allies made the decision to fight the proliferation along with al Qaeda. Tony Blair stated that WMD was a threat PRIOR to 9/11, and that 9/11 forced us to act:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004783

You also fail to understand the importance of going into Middle East and bringing down the biggest threat to the region. This certainly caught the attention of every state in the ME. It proved we will no longer tolerate overt threats to our nation and that change had better come to the region that tolerates terrorists. And it brought the battle to the ME. The more terrorists that pour into Iraq, the easier we can kill them (and the less that try to enter the US). Think of all of the Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Saudi, Chechen, and other fanatics we have killed or captured, then try and tell me that Iraq is not a front in the War on Terror. If it wasn't a front before, it is now, and that is much preferrable that waging the war in our cities.

We were attacked on 9/11 because al Qaeda believe we did not have the will to fight, they believed we would surrender. Iraq has shown that we have more than the will to fight, we have the will to win.

You underestimate the political pressure that the fallout from Iraq has placed on Pakistan, along with the attempts on Mushariff's life. This has forced Pakistan to actively fight in the tribal regions, something it has never done before. We could not have convinced Pakistan to cooperate with us in 2002. Iraq/Libya/AQ Khan/attempts on Mushariff's life did.

Please cut the Iraq Deceit/Cheney/Vulcan garbage. Save it for MoveOn.org

SkipWalkDC,

Given your own aversion to logic and careful reasoning, I can see why "Vulcan" would be an epithet to you.

Seriously, I appreciate the Wiki suggestion but dude, read your post, replete with epithets like "Vulcans" and smarmy references to "the Iraq deceit." You sound like a relentlessly partisan, petulant child, not a serious debater genuinely thinking through the issues. Worse, your post has holes that call into question your understanding of this area and qualifications to pronounce judgments upon it. You'd do better to make yourself a smaller target in these situaitons.

"Insincerity" isn't a label put on you - it's a big neon sign you erected over your own head. If you want to be taken seriously, stop wearing the clown uniform and tooting the little horn. You'll get a lot farther, especially here where we have a lot of thoughtful commentators on both sides who expect the same standard. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's true.

Now, on to those issues...

Let's start with troops in country and control issues. How deep is your understanding of tribal societies, and counterinsurgency in such situations? Of Afghanistan's past? Of successful and unsuccessful models in places like Vietnam? Not very, it would seem.

If you challenge the warlords directly, they will unite against you. At which point, the number of troops we currently have in Iraq would not be enough and you'd be replicating the Soviet strategy. By proposing to challenge the warlords directly and put massive numbers of troops into Afghanistan, your recommendations failed the laugh test, let alone serious examination.

Past experience and precedent, not to mention keystone military doctrine documents like the Marines' Small Wars Manual, lays out a longer-term map to success. Fortified outposts with fast-reaction capability plus infrastructure projects that help knit territories together are complemented by political overtures, slow progress toward acceptance of central authority, and then increased regional presence via CAP-like structures. Which is now happening with Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) of paramilitary aid, something Trent described aptly as "Fort Apache, Afghanistan". In parallel, you see a complicated game of tribal politics in which players are kept in line by threats of support for rival tribes against them if they get out of line. Slow disarming and formation of a central armed force is also part of the mix, and training and raising these cadres takes time. In a sociaety as broken as Afghanistan, 2-3 years before results really begin to show there is about right.

This has been the military plan in Afghanistan all along, a plan that began long before Iraq.

But with NATO united with Northern Alliance troops, UN authority, US 'soft power backed up with heavy artillery', majority anti-Taliban/Afghan popular support, a mildly-recalcitrant Pakistan and WORLD PUBLIC OPINION SUPPLYING MOMENTUM there was sufficient force on our side to bring the 'hammer and anvil' approach to the fight AT LEAST two years ago.

"Uniting with Northern Alliance troops" guarantees major factional friction with the Pashtun MAJORITY in Afghanistan. That's astonishingly inept diplomacy. Why do you think it matters so much that Karzai is Pashtun? Duh.

UN authority. Another howler. The U.N. has no authority in Afghanistan. None. Zero. Zip. The authority in these sociaties that means anything takes one of 2 forms: blood ties or force. The U.N. has neither, in a society where it's often the case that NO authority is recognized beyond one's tribal chief and family ties. Worse, U.N. rules of engagement are wholly inadequate to such situaitons, where there is no real peace to keep. Why do you think it's a NATO mission, not a U.N. one, and even France thought that was a good idea? Again, I'm wondering what you're smoking.

WORLD PUBLIC OPINION SUPPLYING MOMENTUM. Hahahahahahaa! See above. Do you actually understand Afghanistan at all?

US 'soft power backed up with heavy artillery' That HAS been the U.S. game thus far, and by its nature it's a slow game. Which is what you're complaining about. ???

Of course, without massive numbers of troops, the Taliban will run around burning down girls' schools etc. Then again, with massive numbers of troops, the Taliban become the good guys to many Afghans, And proceed to burn down girls' schools with popular support, instead of creating resentment over it. Welcome to the real world of hard choices and options that suck at times.

majority anti-Taliban/Afghan popular support Depends on where you go in the country. And it's support that can shift quickly if your efforts are seen as too heavy handed, or if you haven't built up authority and credibility slowly.

Now, could Afghanistan have used more ISAF troops? Yes. There is some utility in internationalizing the troop staffing to reduce the feeling of occupation by the USA, and in having varying approaches. The different approaches to the PRTs exibited by the Americans, British & Germans, for instance, is a plus that can help us discover more quickly what aid model works best.

The problem is, NATO has not met its commitments in Afghanistan. The USA, and Afghanistan, have consistently asked for more foreign troops and more aid money for Afghanistan. Both sets of requests have largely been met with inaction. NATO even failed when asked to bring in 12 (yes, a dozen) helicopters to provide mobile support for ISAF. Which isn't surprising, given that NATO can't even handle Bosnia/Kosovo in its own backyard without U.S. help. Pathetic.

In the face of these problems the USA has proceeded slowly and cautiously, building up intelligence, keeping the pressure on with consistent sweeps, plus a few major ops like Anaconda that achieved some results and taught important lessons, and letting the New Afghan Army see real combat, take losses, and begin to learn. Which is fine, because:

[a] Even if NATO HAD met its commitments, all you'd see is the same slow approach over a slightly wider area;

[b] Afghanistan may have AQ/Taliban in it, but it isn't a viable base for planning major attacks any more and reversal of that truth isn't likely any time soon - and that's the strategic bottom line. The hard truth is, everything else is gravy, because...

© All other fronts in the War on Terror are still under a ticking clock problem, vid. Iran these days - speed matters because delay could be fatal (vid. North Korea, which the Clinton/Carter deal turned into a problem with no reasonable solution); Besides which,

[d] The "Hammer & Anvil" approach relied mostly on Pakistan, not the USA or NATO.

was sufficient force on our side to bring the 'hammer and anvil' approach to the fight AT LEAST two years ago.

That's a fairly astonishing judgment given the realities outlined above, and the fact of Pakistani non-cooperation until recently. You're right that they're a big key. So what changed? 2 things:

[1] The assassination attempts on Musharraf; and

[2] The A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation scandals, which gave the USA a much bigger lever than its previous trianguliton games with India had, all at a time when Musharraf was at last ready to take a big risk to get Al-Qaeda, and had built up his own internal support through a long process of appointments, demotions, etc.

Did you follow our links on Waziristan? The Atlantic articles on "the lawless frontier"? Are you aware that recent pushes into these areas by the Pakistani army, in force, are nearly unprecedented? That "hammer and anvil" across the border was exactly what was tried (in far more limited fashion by the Pakistanis) at Anaconda? Yet this time, the push is coming from the Pakistani side (new), is happening in force and willing to kick down local doors (new) and doesn't seem to be failing on that side (new, but we're not done yet).

The spring offensive is happening now, and didn't happen earlier, for a reason. A whole bunch of reasons, actually... but you have to be willing to engage those reasons and think them through before criticizing, instead of touting yourself as a military mastermind and most the Pentagon plus a very experienced War Cabinet as a bunch of morons who somehow missed what's obvious to your genius intellect.

That approach always seems to leave the hammers and anvils falling on Wile E. Coyote's head - and your results this time weren't much better.

Good fisking, Joe. And you're right about NATO. If they had been doing their job in Kosovo, we wouldn't be seeing what's going on now (and a lot of Orthodox churches and monasteries would still be standing and the monks and nuns would be focusing on the Great Fast).

The whole "Iraq is a distraction" argument is getting tired. Was Germany a distraction from the Japanese war?

slow day at work today so I'll gladly joust

I won't continue with the epithets since Joe has graciously refrained from throwing them around too. But I thought since the "very experienced War Cabinet" gave themselves the nickname Vulcans, it was a fair shorthand term. ("Their nickname, which they coined during the 2000 campaign, came from the Roman god of fire and the forge, and was meant, Mr. Mann says, to convey a sense of "power, toughness, resilience and durability." - 3/4/04, NY Times). But if you'd like, I can think of a couple other bad words to call them.

Until proven otherwise, I'll stick with the Iraq Deceit however. Because despite the revisionism of the Wall St Journal, the reasoning given in 2002 and 2003 for invading Iraq was "we know they have WMD and we know where WMD are (but we won't tell the inspectors)" and only after the fact was the reasoning, as posted by Bill R., "the importance of going into the Middle East and bringing down the biggest threat to the region" or some great experiment to prove the "honeypot" theory. It simply revisionist history to say that the argument for invasion at that time was to embark on nation building ad infinitum and not War on Terror = prevent WMD in hands of Al Qaeda = Saddam is Al Qaeda's WMD supplier.

sorry. got a work call interrupting my post. I'll try to get back to a thoughtful response.
The relentlessly partisan in me still wants to debate with Fair and Balanced Joe "Cheney takes Kerry to the Toolshed and Beats him like a Rented Mule" Katzman. but with hoops all weekend I might not even bother. I'm tiring of the goosestepping chorus line.

Oh dear, I just can't resist...
Darren's article of Feb 23 just begs for this headline:
"SEALs Have Their Eyes On A Big Fish."

Joe,

While we're on the subject of NATO and fiskings,
Joe Lieberman has an op-ed in todays WaPo, where he writes:

[T]he Europeans invoked Article V of the NATO charter after Sept. 11 and pledged to send their troops to fight alongside ours in Afghanistan, the Bush administration rejected the offer and chose to go it alone.

This statement seems inconsistent with what you wrote in your fisking above; to wit, there are NATO troops fighting alongside ours in Afghanistan, and the biggest problem has been that NATO has not met its committments.

And what is the truth about the claim that the Bush administration rejected the offer and chose to go it alone?

THAT was a joust?!?

NATO 'volunteered' to take on the Afganistan campaign then same we they did Kosovo. Under joint NATO commad along with all the usual political approval of plan, targets, etc.

Bush basically said it was going to be a US led operation. Take it or leave it. Some of the NATO countires still contribute under that formula. I think NATO has now taken on responsibilty for security in and around Kabul.

What can I say, Skippy, other than you are wrong. If you took the time to read the evil neocon websites such as American Enterprise Institute, New American Century, and The Weekly Standard, this was EXACTLY what they were arguing for. Aren't the evil neocons our real shadow government, secretly pulling the strings of the puppet Bush?

Your only real problem is that the administration could openly state the "we must estiblish democracy and change the ways of the Middle East" argument as a reason for invading Iraq.

WMD was not the only argument presented to the UN: human rights, terrorist links (like Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqari, Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas, etc.), violation of 17 UN Security Council resolutions. Go back & real Powell's presentation:

http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text2003/0205pwlun1.htm

You just want to focus on the WMD 'failure', which really wasn't. We have found that he violated the UN resolutions by building dual use industries, developed long range delivery systems and retained knowledge on WMD. We have YET to discover stockpiles of WMD, we may never, but we were still justified to act. If you don't think that Saddam had the potential to supply WMD to terrorists, its your right to do so.

Foreign policy requires for you not to lay all of the cards on the table. Had we officially stated that the reason we wanted to invade Iraq was for the reasons mentioned above PLUS the positive effects of change on the region, none of the Arab nations would have supported us (such as Kuwait, Qatar and others).

I hope your skills in hoops exceeds your knowledge of the War on Terror.

Bill Roggio has an excellent historical point: the WMD issue was up front prior to invasion as a point to coalesce regional Arab support (and failing that, acquiescence) on deploying US troops and then invading. The concept of democratic reform is totally unpalatable for most of the pint sized royalty in the region, along with all the thuggish dictators. For a while there even Syria promised cooperation. More fools they.

Now the US is pushing its MidEast Initiative (MEI) which puts political and economic liberalization on the forefront of US policy. After looking at what this practically entails in liberated Iraq, the regional "leaders" (perhaps the German "Führer" would be appropriate to call them for both political and antiSemetic reasons) look on the MEI like they would consider a plate of pork chops.

The ironic thing about all this, in terms of both North American and European political trends, is that the US and its Coalition have placed themselves on the liberal side of history in many contexts, both in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Mideast in general. Skip, and the Axis of Weasels in general, have placed themselves on the side of historical reaction.

Feel confortable following the mandates of the Arabist Führerprinzip, Skip? Goosestepping down the path to the dustbin ("of history", quoting from VI Lenin), eh?

I thought Lieberman presented a great critique of both Bush's and our "allies" approach to Iraq and terrorism, and I liked his call for a NATO meeting to organize a common strategy. Key sentence for me:

Europe should take our outstretched hand and commit to working through NATO, not outside it.

I'm not so sure that NATO will endure as a meaningful alliance long enough for Lieberman's strategy of 'winning hearts and minds' in Europe to take shape. Europe seems to want increasingly to flee any association with the U.S. (including NATO) for fear that Al Qaeda might notice.

Bush might personally attend this meeting, which would be held in Brussels, to show our willingness not only to lead but also to listen.

Wouldn't they have to evacuate Brussels to do this? What if Al Qaeda threatens to crash the party?

I say this in jest, but much less so than, say, a week ago. I would never have imagined that a single strike in one European city could have provoked the level of hysterical opposition to Bush that I am now seeing in Europe. Rather than criticize U.S. policies, they are attacking a fanciful caricature of those policies (SkipWalkDC by comparison does sound like a military genius) in the vain hope that if Bush would just go away, the bad guys would leave us alone. What will they do when there really is a truly catastrophic attack? I am now beginning to recognize how truly prescient and on point Kagan's analysis was.

That being said, I think Lieberman recognizes the danger here and is right to call for allied unity - urgently. Bush has not been a very good babysitter and needs to show a bit more Lieberman.

The regional "leaders" (perhaps the German "Führer" would be appropriate to call them for both political and antiSemetic reasons) look on the MEI like they would consider a plate of pork chops.

Right. And the number one problem here, as usual, is: France.

Chirac Backs Mubarak in Opposing US Plan: "We support modernization through consultation and cooperation among countries... On the other hand, we do believe that it is impossible to impose any thing... In another way, we say yes for modernization and no for interference." and of course "All development, all modernization in this region depends on a resolution of the problem of finding peace between the Palestinian and Israeli people."

I also heard from Chirac's speech last November before the alter-globalization European Social Forum (no kidding!) his warning that unless we, the "North", pay more money to the "South", we will be responsible for their youth's rising up in an "explosion of uncontrollable violence".

Well, France can always make a buck selling the bomb-making materials.

Though I disagree with his stances on various domestic issues, I do respect Joe Lieberman for his undaunting vision that we DO have to stand united and fight them!

Gabriel,

I do agree to the extent that I think that some of Lieberman's criticism of Bush was valid.

I do, however, think that "the Bush administration rejected [NATO's] offer and chose to go it alone" is a bit dishonest in light of Lurker's comment that NATO's was offering the same kind of help as they did in the Balkans.

Having NATO run the show caused a lot of problems in the Balkans, especially with the French passing on intelligence to the Serbs during the Kosovo campaign.

Lieberman knows this very well. Chirac bears far more responsibility for the rift between the US and Europe than Bush does.

I'm all for better ties with Europe, but how can that be accomplished when France has, if not joined the other side, at least no qualms doing business with the other side?

Fine questions, observations & debate re: France/Europe. More on that issue when Gabriel Gonzaleez' next Guest blog runs early next week.

Lots of opportunity to comment then - but until then, let's come back to the subject of the post: Afghanistan, Pakistan & al-Qaeda.

Fredrik-

True. But Lieberman's point is more stylistic than substantive. While Bush has had good instincts on the substance of his policies, I do think his diplomatic style could use improvement in rallying support from allies (and actually think he has improved). You can say that that's not important, but I think it is: why else would we be concerned about Spain pulling out, when it's contribution was more symbolic and "legitimacy providing" than militarily meaningful.

As for Chirac, I think the U.S. could have done a better job of neutralizing France's capacity for obstruction by lowering the rhetoric and handling the diplomacy better across the board. I think Clinton did a better job of dealing with the French.

Sorry, Joe. Back to main topic.

We'll be saving it up for that thread, Gabriel.

Re: NATO in Afghanistan, IIUC there are two problems. The first was the need to avoid the Kosovo Syndrome mentioned above.

The second issue is a technical one and it's actually the bigger show stopper. US troops are begining to deploy some rather advanced technologies on the battlefield, plus fighting doctrines to leverage these technologies. The other NATO countries can't begin to match these capabilities and integrating those troops with our forces that do use them is a recipe for real problems. Note that in Iraq, the best way to have the Brits work with us was to give them the area presumed to need mainly police work and reconstruction rather than extended battle. No criticism of British troops intended - it's a command and control issue.

In Afghanistan we're using UAVs, special ops forces with some advanced equipment and in some cases we're fielding things right from the labs and evolving battle doctrine as we get experience with them. A good example are the small number of experimental tele-operated robots that have been used to check out Afghan caves remotely. Other technologies include tactical level info collection / dissemination software (which played an important role in the capture of Baghdad).

Even where the technologies themselves aren't groundbreaking, the tactical and operational use of them often is - for example, the use of PC-based database management software makes Effects Based Operations planning and effects assessment feedback loops practical in a new way. The result? In Iraq and in Afghanistan, commanders on the ground are have a lot more flexibility in how they achieve objectives. To my knowledge EBO has not filtered into the other NATO forces as a basic doctrine at this point.

How on earth would you integrate large numbers of NATO forces into those scenarios, even if there weren't the ego / geopolitical games about targetting and risk taking???

rkb- Non US forces don't even have digital communications for the most part. In many cases the Coalition forces have to be lent commo gear so that their HQs can talk with US forces. This creates a dichotomous pace of operations in any NATO command as well. Without heavy US liaison elements, the NATO forces don't know what is going on. To a certain extent the Canadian friendly fire deaths by Kandahar two years ago were due to such issues (along with two US pilot's very poor judgments), but you might notice that when US forces swing into an offensive situation either allies get totally integrated into the US force structure (like the Canadian snipers were at Tora Bora or the Aussie SAS is with us Spec Forces) or they get totally out of the way.

What this means for the future is that Euro/Canadian armies will shrink dramatically if they want to technically keep up. Even the Russians see this. There is no reason to have a draft army if 95% of your forces can't talk with each other and are useless. That has been one of the leading causes of Russian casualties in Chechnya as well. But when you consider how US and allied forces need to be integratable into composite forces, you start getting answers like what the Canadians and Brits are considering now.

What this means for Afghan and Iraq ops is that coalition forces increasingly get the infrastructure improvement/minesweeping roles while the US forces get to play the heavy "peace keepers". That being said, if you read the Canadian press carefully, you'll still read of national consternation that their troops get killed in jeeps that make our Hummers look like tanks.

Tom,

Yep, this development was something I talked about on Winds of Change before:

http://windsofchange.net/archives/003631.php

June 20, 2003
U.S. Military -- Back to the Future!
Trent Telenko

Please note two things in this article clip: First, the digital data link is the key to air-ground cooperation. That is why it is the first thing the USAF cuts, and also why 95% of Marine AV-8B Harriers have digital data link.

Second, the key variable in future American military operations aren't platforms or precision guided munitions, but network bandwidth connecting intelligent people. The bigger and faster the sensor/shooter/C3I network, the nastier and deadlier it becomes. The really interesting thing to see is what happens when the 4th Mechanized (Mech.) Infantry Division's land combat data system comes into use and we then add "Land Warrior" infantry to it. We are talking a half an order of magnitude increase in combat network size compared to the heavily touted theater air power networks of the Iraq war from the 4th Mech's combat vehicles alone. Combat infantry added to that bumps it up to a full order of magnitude larger.

The American Army's love affair with vehicle-mounted .50 Caliber M2-HB machine guns has made for very unfair close combat firefights between Americans and everyone else since 1944. Ask the Wehrmacht what the fifties mounted on 3rd Army M-8 Greyhound armored cars did during the pursuit after Falaise. The "Ma-Deuce" has been the U.S. Cavalry's version of the mounted lance for several generations now. Yet that was nothing compared to the kill ratios the 3rd Mech had in Iraq. The 3rd Mech went through the Iraqis like the Martians went though the British Army in H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds."

There are some good organizational reasons for this. Yet those reasons can be applied to every combat division. This begs the question just what is the fully networked 4th Mech going to be like in combat?

In aerial combat, "situational awareness" is a great combat multiplier until you have to close the range to engage. AMRAAM missiles kill lots of bad guys at range but closing with Sidewinders is the only way to be decisive, especially in a politically/tactically constrained rules of engagement fight. Then it gets down to who has the initial advantage, with the best trained and experienced pilots, and with adequate equipment.

What will these networked land combat units be like before they "go into the merge" of close combat firefights? Robotic micro-UAV "point men" 300 yards ahead and 50 yards above human point men are going to make for very "situationally aware" line platoons and extremely "unfair" close combat firefights. Add this to GPS-based fire support, loitering drones, airborne sensors, JDAMS, and modern body armor and our infantry is "...going to make Caesar's legions look like combat-ineffective girly-men," to use a quote from a friend of mine.

He also said, "We will literally be able to fight at ludicrous odds - not just outrageous odds - and triumph nearly bloodlessly," to which I have to agree.

I am of the opinion that this phenomenon is a logarithmic progression that the American military is only just beginning to climb. The reason we are light-years ahead the rest of the world in conventional military power is that we have invested enough in people and technology that we have gotten past an inflection point on the military effectiveness curve for the use of modern information systems. It is going to take very little more marginal investment on our part to obtain vastly increased and selective killing power.

As can be seen in the latest US Military operations in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas, some of that additional investment has been made.

Trent,

You make one small point that deserves to be much more heavily emphasized:

"we have invested enough in people and technology"

The investment in people is of immense importance as your placement in this phrase indicates. The unintended consequence of the All Volunteer Force was to allow the military increase the qualifications for recruits so much that this outweighed the reduction in total headcount. Higher quality personnel are more able to take advantage of the power of the new technologies and maintain them properly.

At the same time, fewer troops made more realistic training in the use of these sophisticated systems affordable.

The downside of these developments is that the republican ideal of a citizen soldier is even further from the experience of the typical American than ever before. When we were an isolated nation without nearby enemies, this was not critical. Now that we have responsibility for global security, it could, repeat, could create problems for the polity as it fails to understand this resource.

The technology is great gee whiz stuff and in the right hands, with sufficient training, irresistable, but when combat starts, quality of personnel and training will be more important. Consider how the Iraq War II would have ended had the sides traded systems but kept the quality and training levels the same. It might have taken longer and we might have taken more casualties, but the ultimate result would have been the same.

Given that we now have the quality personnel, properly trained with the finest equipment, it is unlikely that our military dominance will erode relative to any other country before our economic.

But we have strayed from the subject of the post and risk incurring the wrath of the Jedi, so I will ask, given developments of the weekend, when will Mushariff blush? It looks like if there was a big one, it got away again. After Colin's annointment as Ally of the Month and all the the excitement of Thursday and Friday this is turning out to be a bit of a let down. So Mushariff has probably burned some domestic bridges he had avoided and disappointed the big guy. He seems to be getting really wedged between the rock and the hard place.

This appears not to be a coincidence! September 7, 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115 http://www.angelfire.com/space/pearly/htmls/bush-ignored.html

"Another US official was also present ­ possibly from the intelligence services. Mr Katz, who now works at the American embassy in Eritrea , declined to talk about the meeting. But other US sources said the warning was not passed on.

A diplomatic source said : "We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff. When people keep saying the sky's going to fall in and it doesn't, a kind of warning fatigue sets in. I actually thought it was all an attempt to rattle us in an attempt to please their funders in the Gulf, to try to get more donations for the cause."

The Afghan aide did not reveal that the warning was from Mr Muttawakil, a factor that might have led the Americans to down-grade it. "As I recall, I thought he was speaking from his own personal perspective," one source said. "It was interesting that he was from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but he gave no indication this was a message he was carrying."

Interviewed by The Independent in Kabul, the Afghan emissary said: "I told Mr Katz they should launch a new Desert Storm ­ like the campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait ­ but this time they should call it Mountain Storm and they should drive the foreigners out of Afghanistan. They also had to stop the Pakistanis supporting the Taliban."

The Taliban emissary said Mr Katz replied that neither action was possible. Nor did Mr Katz pass the warning on to the State Department, according to senior US diplomatic sources.

When Mr Muttawakil's emissary returned to Kabul, the Foreign Minister told him to see UN officials. He took the warning to the Kabul offices of UNSMA, the political wing of the UN. These officials heard him out, but again did not report the secret Taliban warning to UN headquarters. A UN official familiar with the warnings said : "He appeared to be speaking in total desperation, asking for a Mountain Storm, he wanted a sort of deus ex machina to solve his country's problems. But before 9/11, there was just not much hope that Washington would become that engaged in Afghanistan."

Officials in the State Department and in UN headquarters in New York said they knew nothing about a Taliban warning. But they said they would now be looking into the matter."

When Sean-Paul sarcastically remarked that it might be Juma Namangani, the leader of the IMU believed to have been killed in 2001, that is holed up near Wana, something clicked.

The IMU is currently headquartered in Wana, and it looks like the guy they have cornered is likely Tohir Yo'ldosh, the co-founder of the IMU. The Telegraph seems certain that it is Yo'ldosh, and Ahmed Rashid, the author of Jihad thinks the evidence suggests Yo'ldosh's presence. This may be the last stand of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Richard said:

The investment in people is of immense importance as your placement in this phrase indicates. The unintended consequence of the All Volunteer Force was to allow the military increase the qualifications for recruits so much that this outweighed the reduction in total headcount. Higher quality personnel are more able to take advantage of the power of the new technologies and maintain them properly.

At the same time, fewer troops made more realistic training in the use of these sophisticated systems affordable.

The improved "human capital" of American troops is something little remarked upon in the American media, but is something widely remarked upon in the foreign military press.

The average American senior NCO of today's army would be a better staff officers than the LTC and Col. running the Division, Corps and Army staffs of the WW2 draft American Army.

Any three year junior NCO of today's army would be better running a platoon than the 2LT, 1LT of the WW2 draft army. A seven year infantry or armor NCO would be better than a WW2 captain in running a company in combat.

As for the citizen soldier problem, it isn't.

Who is doing most of the killing and most of the dying in Iraq today? It isn't the infantry. It's the truck drivers.

Who are these truck drivers?

They are reservists for the most part.

We are in a paramilitary war and reservists citizen soldiers are the cutting edge because they are moving and exposed to attack.

The American infantry is slowly being turned into the same kind of specialist force the Special Forces are.

The emergence of teleoperated killer UAV and UGV means we will see reserve teleoperation specialists fighting along side our infantry and armor from inside the USA.

Our youth's ability to use electronics is as superior to other nation's as our WW2 soldiers ability to tinker with automobiles.

Face it, the increase in the human quality of our soldiers is simply a reflection of the increased human capital in American society. We have a talent pool of 280 million from which we can choose the best volunteers and we can afford to give them the very best in training and tools.

I had something relevant to say but promptly forgot it when I realized that you call Dan Darling but you never call me Goddess Darling.

Sigh.

I lost my train of thought now.

It'll be OK, Goddess Darling. Does that mean you & Dan are an item?

A.L., frivolously...

Hope not, Alicia would kill me ... :P

I detect a lack of strategic thinking in the folks who think Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terrorists. We're fighting a war against a clandestine group of cells, who hide out in countries who shelter them and in many cases provide funding and weaponry.

Consider the choices we had after 9/11. I think that attacking Iran would be very difficult, considering its geographic size. It makes more sense to send covert special forces in and funnel support to the groups already opposing the Mullahs. We knocked off the Taliban in order to scatter al Qaeda and destroy their training facilities, but they were not a particularly impressive target, when the countries we want to influence are Arabic. Afghanistan has been destroyed by all the years of occupation by the Soviets and the tribal struggles thereafter.

That leaves all the small Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, and so forth across North Africa, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Turkey and Jordan already see the light. Syria sponsors terror but it doesn't have the oil that Iraq does.

It seems to me that Iraq is the logical choice. We already had dealt with Saddam and had a lot of experience in dealing with his military. He was not a person that others in the region would defend, since he's invaded a couple of them, and probably would have invaded the Saudis if we hadn't intervened. He had also used chemical weapons and had a history of severe miscalculations, making deterrence not a sure thing.

You have to remember as well that a lot of our allies, the UN and most of the Democrat who are now calling Bush a liar, believed as he did, that Iraq was still developing WMD. We knew he was violating his ceasefire agreement, which was cause enough to resume hostilities.

What better way to make the point that the U.S. was done treating terrorist attacks lightly? And if successful, establishing a Muslim democracy in an Arab country would set a precedent all of these countries would be hard put to deny their own citizens.

I write from Sydney, Australia. Darwin is but a couple of hours from Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation on earth. Its government has a tenuous hold on power. It is known to harbor terrorists and to exhibit a strong anti-West sentiment. So in Oz we have more than a passing interest in the so-called 'war on terror'. Let me venture a few personal opinions in this context.
Invading Iraq was a huge mistake, a blunder of monumental proportion. bin Laden would have rejoiced at the news. He has achieved infinitely more than he could have hoped for himself, at no cost. The cost to the USA, in political, economic and personnel terms, will be incalculable.
Imposing democracy on Iraq, with its history of factionalism, is unrealistic. Civil war seems certain. Authoritative commentators such as Paul McGeough, an experienced journo who knows Iraq's history and who actually lives the scene day by day, are suggesting that civil war may have already begun.
The US has declared Pakistan a major ally. Pakistan, the Wal-Mart of illicit nuclear technology ($100 million to Libya alone), where elements of government, the military and the intelligence are thought to be sympathetic to muslim extremism including the Taliban and al-Qaeda; where a ruthless military dictatorship by its nature fosters anti-American feeling; where Muslim extremism could become the dominant legitimate political force. It is not inconceivable that Pakistan has already supplied al-Qaeda with nuclear material. The Pakistani nuclear inventory is thought to be flaky. With friends like Pakistan, who needs enemies?
Meanwhile, Sharon does as he likes, seemingly immune from criticism other than tokenistic stuff. With friends like Israel...
If GWB had spent a fraction of the cost of Iraq on ensuring that all freight containers entering the USA were x-rayed, he'd have taken a step in the right direction in the war on terrorism. At least Logan Airport was seemingly secure when I passed through it late last year. Last time I passed through Logan I felt more secure in a K-Mart checkout queue.
Biological weaponry remains a high threat. What is being said about this in the Bush Administration, I wonder?
History will show Iraq to have been a sideshow in the campaign to minimise terrorism. Powell talked tough to Iraq. I invite you to check what he said the other day about the activities of Dr Khan in Pakistan, the world's best-known nuclear 'salesman'. What a sellout! They want bin Laden before November and are apparently prepared to compromise all principle until they get him.
Regards
JB