Another must read from a person who should know, Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)All,
My perspective on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is from a professional military standpoint.
To defeat an enemy you have to take the fight to them on their turf and you want pick the battlefield on your terms and on your schedule. The enemy tries to do the same, hence 9/11, etc.
Making Afghanistan the main theater of operations had its problems. Making it the sole theater of operations was and is very problematic.
First, it is taking the war to a place where the enemy intimately knows the ground and has long established areas of support, lines of communication/logistics, etc. That gives them a real edge in a gun fight.
The center of the war is now in the Helmand and adjoining Kandahar as well as Kunar wilayats (provinces). It is also important to note that Kandahar, which fell to the Taliban in 1994, was their first major prize in their drive for power after the Soviet withdrawal. We are really fighting in the heart of their home turf and where they have an excellent sanctuary/safehaven in Pakistan.
We all need to remember that the Afghan Taliban movement originated in the Pakistan border regions across from these provinces during the Afghan-Soviet war, NOT indigenously in Afghanistan.
We are also likely seeing AQ beginning to draw down in Iraq and redirecting resources into Afghanistan. This does not mean they are quitting Iraq in total. It does look like they are no longer making Iraq the priority in the war and are instead making southern and eastern Afghanistan the central front.
This is a good strategic move for them. Unlike Iraq, where they have lost support of the population, in eastern and southern Afghanistan there is still a hard-core base of support for both AQ and the Taliban. Further, as cited above, they have a secure sanctuary in Pakistan, a major advantage on the battlefield that does not exist in Iraq.
Making Afghanistan the main battleground has always been to AQ's advantage. Iraq would never have been a battlefield that they would have chosen (although they did remarkably well there for two years). It would appear that AQ is finally getting the fight they wanted at the place they wanted.
Finally, Afghanistan is also landlocked. That makes our lines of communication very perilous. It always best to have either a secure base or a coast or both. We have neither in Afghanistan. In the end we are relying on an airbridge that requires other countries to give us overflight permissions. Needless to say Iran is not one of those.
That leads us to biggest problem, Pakistan. Iraq was working on Nukes and had some WMD. Pakistan has it all in spades. They have about two dozen nukes as well as the delivery systems. Their army is far larger and better equipped than the Iraqi army was.
Are they our ally? Are they our enemy? They are trying to play both ends which almost always ends in disaster.
So how do we play it?
AQ (w/Usama) and the Taliban are still standing because they use Pakistan as a sanctuary. No sanctuary in Pakistan = strategic defeat of AQ. Thus to finally defeat them means we have to eliminate the sanctuary in Pakistan.
The problem is that most scenarios to accomplish that leads to ground combat by Coalition Forces in Pakistan followed by civil war there. It will be a far worst replay of 2004-2006 in Iraq.
In Iraq we had full support from the Kurdish region and always a strong majority of support in the Shi'a regions. We did this by capitalizing on being the liberators who removed the Saddam killing machine. We had a similar situation in Afghanistan due to the liberation from the Taliban and AQ.
We do not have the constituencies in Pakistan that will form a working majority alliance as in Iraq and Afghanistan. That makes winning there extremely difficult.
We also need to be aware of the long friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The presence of a NATO mission that is arming and training a strong and effective Afghan army is an immediate friction point in Pakistan who has desires of suzerainty there.
That makes the Pakistanis resist our goal of eliminating AQ. Some there want to have some Taliban and AQ hanging around to keep Afghanistan weak. Others in Pakistan want the Taliban and AQ eliminated.
And that points out the factionalism within Pakistan that makes civil war highly likely if we enter there to kill Usama and his minions.
If we make Afghanistan our whole basket of eggs we are going to get stuck to the Pakistan tar baby. And also do not forget that Iran has a long border with Afghanistan. If they feel that they helped drive us out of Iraq then they will step up their operations to get us out of Afghanistan as well.
I feel for the next President.
That is why fighting the war in Iraq to WIN is and has been to our advantage. We had Kuwait and the Gulf States as strong partners because they are/were too weak to stand up to revolutionary Iran or to the Saudis or to Saddam's Iraq. They love having us an ally.
Further, AQ had a very small presence in Iraq as compared to Afghanistan. That meant that they had to shift their forces to come to us. They HAD to make Iraq their main battlefield because the "Crusaders" were there in Muslim Arab lands.
We took away their initiative in the war and made them fight us on a ground they would never have chosen at a time they did not want.
That put them at a disadvantage and that is why you are seeing them on the edge of defeat there now. A defeat in a battle that even they declared is their most important fight.
It is ideal for us. It is makes AQ fight the US military in the Middle East and not US civilians in America. It is a battle against soldiers vice innocents. It is US troops over there killing AQ vice in US airports and cities.
The bigger looming problem is the catalyst that started this all, Iran.
Usama and AQ are, at their core, a Sunni counter-revolutionary movement. They are result of the Shi'a revolution in Iran.
The world changed forever in 1979 when the Shah was thrown out and none of us understood. Much of the turmoil and terror that has followed within the Muslim world has stemmed from that revolution.
Before that, violence in the Middle East was defined in a narrower, albeit highly complex, Arab v Israel context.
After 1979, Islam entered its first major civil war in a millennium and it dragged the rest of world into it. The Iran-Iraq war was one campaign. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the first campaign that drew in a Western power into the war. The AQ battle in Beirut last year was another manifestation; as is the rise of Hamas in opposition to the Palestinian Authority and violent revolutionary Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
That is 95% of the global war on terrorism.
It is a tough fight. A lot of the Marines call it the LONG war. Many are now calling it a Generational War.
Not good news. Sorry.
It is going to be tough for us.
We will win.
God bless you and yours.
Semper Fi,
Mike
