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| Krauhammer on why we're hesitant |
| 2001-10-30 |
THE war is not going well. The Taliban have not yielded ground. Not a single important Taliban leader has been killed, captured or has defected. On the contrary. The Taliban have captured and executed our great Pashtun hope, Abdul Haq. The Joint Chiefs express surprise at the tenacity of the enemy. The war is not going well and it is time to say why. Thirty years ago in Vietnam, we fought a war finely calibrated to win "hearts and minds." Bomb today, pause tomorrow. That strategy met with nothing but pain and defeat. One of the products of that war was Colin Powell. He and his generation vowed that never again would American lives be sacrificed, their missions compromised, their objectives distorted to satisfy purely political objectives. And yet for three weeks in Afghanistan we held back from massively bombing the Taliban front lines facing the Northern Alliance. Why? Because Pakistan does not like the Northern Alliance. So we calibrate the war to produce a precise ethnic balance, satisfying our various allies, for a post-Taliban Afghanistan. That's an interpretation. It may even be the right one. But it could also be the while the bombing has been going on we've been moving forces into position, setting up liaison with Northern Alliance forces, working politically behind the scenes an any number of other things. Why not let the armed forces do their job? If things are still unmoving in another month or two, maybe you'll have a point. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |