[iwar] [fc:The.Wrong.Battle.Plan]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-19 07:16:17
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 07:16:17 -0700 (PDT)
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Washington Post
October 19, 2001
The Wrong Battle Plan
By Robert A. Pape
The initial U.S. air strategy against Afghanistan is not working. We appear
to be escalating toward a sustained air campaign to bomb that country for as
long as it takes to topple the Taliban regime. Americans who remember the
air war over Kosovo may think that a sustained air attack is a smart
strategy. This is a misreading of both the history of air power and the
lesson of Kosovo.
Air power alone rarely achieves ambitious foreign policy objectives.
Punishment from the air rarely coerces other countries, but it often makes
them angry -- just as the Sept. 11 attacks have made Americans angry. What
does coerce is the prospect of certain military defeat, regardless of how
determined the target government is to resist.
Kosovo supports this pattern. What coerced Slobodan Milosevic was not the
bombing -- which inflicted moderate, tolerable pain on Serb society and
little harm on the Serb military in Kosovo -- but the clear threat the
United States made in June 1999 that NATO would soon conquer Kosovo on the
ground. Widening the roads in Albania, and deploying more than 35,000 ground
troops to Kosovo's borders posed a credible ground threat that no Serbian
leader could ignore. Today the United States appears to be heading toward a
sustained bombing campaign, with perhaps a modest role for special
operations troops on the ground. Unlike in Kosovo, there is no prospect of
ground forces conquering Afghanistan any time soon. The air war against
Afghanistan began as a limited effort, mainly designed to root out al Qaeda
terrorists and topple the Taliban leadership. Air defenses and military
aircraft were also targeted, but these were less important, since the United
States enjoyed air superiority over Afghanistan even before dropping a bomb.
So far the goals of the initial air strategy have not been met. Bombing has
killed few terrorists or Taliban leaders. And despite unconfirmed reports of
division within the Taliban, it has not led to the downfall of its leader,
Mohammad Omar. In recent days the United States has escalated the bombing to
include virtually all fixed military installations and many Taliban troops,
but it has made only limited use of the opposition forces of the Northern
Alliance and none at all of the 2,000 American ground forces stationed in
Uzbekistan. At least until the winter passes, there is no prospect of
launching a major ground offensive into Afghanistan, and such a policy is
unlikely even then.
The United States will achieve victory over the terrorist threat to
Americans only if two conditions are met: (1) the terrorists now operating
in the United States and Western Europe are rounded up; and (2) a new
generation of suicide terrorists does not emerge. No amount of force against
Afghanistan or any other country will keep Americans safe from the
terrorists now operating in our midst. Today's anthrax menace, which began
before the bombing and has continued unabated thereafter, strongly
demonstrates that the current generation of terrorists is far too dangerous
to let stay loose, even if Osama bin Laden is killed tomorrow.
The United States must ensure that bin Laden and his followers cannot use
Afghanistan as a sanctuary to train new terrorists. But the central
objective of American diplomatic and military policy over the winter should
be to proceed in a way that does not help bin Laden or his followers recruit
new terrorists down the line.
A prolonged air campaign to smash the Taliban is likely to be
counterproductive, especially with winter coming. The problem is not that
air power cannot cause the collapse of the Taliban. The Taliban governs so
little and its forces have already dispersed so much that it may have
effectively lost the capacity for cohesive rule. Rather, there are four
reasons not to rely on sustained air operations:
* There is no legitimate government of Afghanistan waiting in the wings to
replace the Taliban. Although the United States and Pakistan may have agreed
on the nature of the post-Taliban regime, there have to date been no
negotiations with the Northern Alliance, much less any other Afghan group.
To destroy the Taliban before a legitimate successor government composed of
Afghan groups has been organized is to leave Afghanistan with no government.
The most likely outcome is a new round of civil war, which many Afghans
would blame on the United States and which bin Laden would use for
recruitment.
* The Taliban's collapse is likely to be more apparent than real. So long as
there is no strong ground force -- either of the Northern Alliance, Pakistan
or the United States -- to control territory, the Taliban leadership and
troops have an incentive to disperse. Once a capable ground force appears,
the Taliban can reappear as guerrilla fighters if not as an organized
government.
* A sustained bombing campaign is likely to increase the number of refugees
well beyond the more than 1 million who have already fled their homes, and
is also likely to make food shipments to refugees inside Afghanistan very
difficult. Many Muslims around the world will blame the plight of the
refugees on the United States.
* Most dangerous: A sustained bombing campaign could destabilize Pakistan's
government. Since the bombing, Gen. Pervez Musharraf's government has come
under domestic pressure and is relying on repression to blunt it. Kashmir
has again become a flash point, and if tensions with India grow, this will
increase Islamic fervor inside Pakistan. If Pakistan's nuclear weapons end
up in the hands of radicals it will greatly increase the threat to
Americans.
The United States should scale back its bombing campaign and use air power
in a sort of "sniper" role: If it gets the intelligence that puts al Qaeda
in the cross hairs, shoot. It should also work with Pakistan and other
Islamic nations to develop the support necessary for the United States to
pursue a long-term plan to monitor Afghan military and paramilitary
organizations so that Afghanistan never trains another suicide terrorist.
In the end, President Bush is right that nation-building is the ultimate
solution to Afghanistan. A sustained bombing campaign that leads to a new
round of civil war is unlikely to build a more peaceful society. Only
protracted economic assistance to Pakistan, Central Asian states and Afghan
groups can achieve that goal, and is perhaps the most helpful step toward
blunting a new generation of terrorists.
The writer teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author of
"Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War."

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