 A fighter / bomber on its way ? |
  New York City -- Sept. 24, 2001 As any authoritative military historian will tell you, every era sees men like General George Armstrong Custer, while only the luckiest generations are served by commanders such as Dwight D. Eisenhower. So what will it be this time, as the United States military prepares its battle plan: overzealous Custers, blinded by conceit and underestimating the adversary; or the cautious, studious, determined approach of General Eisenhower, the allied commander who defeated Nazi forces ? The jury's still out, judging by the rumblings coming out of the Washington in recent days. On the one hand, Secretary of State Colin Powell looks and sounds to be every bit the cool, cautious planner who executed Operation Desert Storm in 1991. But on the other hand, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are reportedly exhorting the President to saddle up for a hell-bent-for-leather assault on several suspected dens of terrorism -- all at once. |
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Wolfowitz in particular advocates striking at the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, home of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrilla movement, even while American and NATO forces mobilize for a probable offensive on the Taliban in Afghanistan, itself an immensely difficult and risky operation. The Wolfowitz approach would immediately attach the post-Sept 11th counter-terrorism campaign to the quagmire of the conflict in Israel. However substantial Hezbollah's role in international terrorism might some day be proven to be, they've been far less of a factor recently in their traditional theatre of operations -- south Lebanon and northern Israel. An attack on Hezbollah now would reignite Lebanon, could well push the Palestinians and Israelis even further from the bargaining table, and overshadow, not bring in to tighter focus, the war against international terrorism. Colin Powell, recognizing the insanity of fighting simultaneously on many fronts, is said to have warned President Bush that such a plan would also offend many European and most Arab nations, thus destroying the alliance the U.S. is attempting to assemble. Meantime, even more worrisome than the clash of minds and egos within the administration, is the lack of political and diplomatic dexterity evident in the Americans' preparations in and around Afghanistan. True, they've succeeded in gaining cooperation from Pakistan to the south and the states of Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan to the north. And deployments thus far indicate that U.S. military planners have learned the lessons of the Kosovo campaign. They recognize that an array of ground forces, including elite combat units, will have to be placed on Afghan soil to fully exploit the impact of air and guided missile strikes. But only today will leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance army meet with the first delegation of top-level American officials; only now will they begin to develop a coordinated strategy. It's bad enough that no U.S. military or intelligence operatives were in direct contact with the Northern Alliance leadership prior to the assassination of their illustrious former commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, three days prior to the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. But even after it became clear that Massoud's murder was also the work of one of Osama bin Laden's suicide cells (and could well have been, as is suspected by diplomatic observers of the Afghan war, the signal for the hijackings in the U.S. to commence) the Americans have been slow to nurture their ties with, potentially, their most valuable allies against bin Laden and the Taliban. These are, of course, the Afghan resistance and the vast majority of Afghan civilians, who yearn for a comprehensive peace, for a future free of dictators and warlords. Equally urgent as the deployment of any weapons system or special forces unit is the winning of support by ethnic groups across Afghanistan for the anti-Taliban cause. For example, while the Northern Alliance constitutes a credible military tool for the U.S. to use against the Taliban regime and its army, the mainly Tadjik and Uzbek ethnic background of the Alliance limits its effectiveness in the south. That's because the south is the homeland of Afghanistan's Pushtun majority, the same tribes from whom the Taliban attracted -- or in many cases purchased -- their support in seizing power in Kabul, the capital, in 1996. Fortunately, many Pushtun tribal elders, and even commanders of pro-Taliban groups of fighters, are responding favorably to appeals to sever their links with the current Kabul regime and its "guest", Osama bin Laden. The former King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, who has lived in Rome since his exile in 1973, last week urged Afghans in a radio address, broadcast by the BBC and the Voice of America, to "rescue themselves" by rising up against the Taliban. Yesterday, Sunday, the Northern Alliance reported that a number of Taliban commanders had requested talks across several battlefronts. Alliance spokesmen claim their opponents wish to negotiate their way out of the Americans' line of fire, or perhaps even arrange their groups' surrender before the expected offensive begins. But there's no sign that the Bush administration is taking full advantage of the King's overture, or that officials in Washington have completely appreciated the ethnic and cultural complexities that present, in Afghanistan, an even more explosive package to handle than was the former Yugoslavia. For example, only a loosely knit group of U.S. Congressmen, aided by a Washington-based group, The Afghanistan Foundation, have been active in promoting talks among the disparate Afghan parties and personalities who could, by way of finally discovering a common cause in the need to rid themselves of the Taliban and bin Laden, give President Bush and his men both a force-multiplier in military terms and a political solution for the future. So far, the King's representatives and their supporters in Washington can only "express hope" that the administration will finally reverse the United State's appalling record of failure in Afghanistan. After helping the Afghan resistance drive out the Soviets, the U.S. turned its back on the country, allowing zealots like Taliban leader Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden to turn the landscape in to a Mecca of hatred and internal repression. Now, finally, the Americans have a chance to correct all of that. Most of the civilized world agrees that they have every right to strike back, and strike back with killing force, against the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks. But until the Americans raise their diplomatic agenda, lowering the military boom will have only limited, or negative, effects. |