Need for clear military objectives from U.S.
LONDON: Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. defense secretary, is a man with great expectations. "This isn't going to be a few cruise missiles flying around on television for the world to see that something blew up," he says. In response to last week's attacks, the Pentagon is planning sustained military action on a wide range of fronts.
Rumsfeld also seems to have no qualms about ground warfare in Afghanistan or elsewhere. "We have to take this battle, this war to the terrorists, where they are. The best defense is an effective offense. That means they have to be rooted out."
Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, is equally gung-ho: "We're going to keep after these people and the people who support them until this stops ... it's not simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable but (of) removing the sanctuaries, ending states who support terrorism. It's not going to stop if a few criminals are taken care of."
Unsurprisingly, Rumsfeld's British counterpart, defense secretary Geoffrey Hoon, reads from a similar script. "It's certainly a war against terrorism," he said Tuesday.. "It's a war that we have to take to the heart of those countries that are sheltering these terrorists."
In contrast to President George W. Bush's down-home, country boy quips about smoking 'em out, hunting 'em down, and taking Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", these statements require very careful attention.
As the current crisis appears to move inexorably towards military conflict, these senior leaders' words commit the U.S. and its allies to an open-ended, unlimited warfare; they suggest the battle will be prosecuted by all conventional means, including ground invasion; they imply that the surrender of Bin Laden by the Taliban to the United States, UN or a neutral country, even if it could be negotiated, would not be enough to halt the coming offensive.
And they state plainly that any country deemed to be supportive of any terrorists in any way is not only a legitimate target; its government is also subject to overthrow.
These are the sweeping parameters of Bush's "war on terrorism". Yet when it comes to defining the specific military options that may be chosen to attain these ends, Rumsfeld and his imitators fall silent.
"The last thing you're going to hear from the U.S. government is talk about operations," he says.
There is a good reason for this -- and it is not just to do with security. The U.S. military's hard options in Afghanistan, as opposed to politicians' aspirations, range from the deeply dangerous to the downright foolhardy.
The U.S. has been in a position to launch substantial air strikes on Afghanistan for several days now; it has not done so, in part because it has no certain targets. The U.S. wants Bin Laden; but it cannot decide whether it wants to overthrow the Taliban regime, too.
Despite various Gulf war analogies, America is nowhere near assembling the 500,000-strong force it sent against Iraq. Even if it were, landlocked Afghanistan with its hostile terrain, uncharted minefields, approaching winter, and rugged, highly motivated guerrilla warriors represents a much tougher proposition.
A consensus is forming among defense experts that SAS-type special forces will be used, swooping in at dawn to snatch the bad guys. But the U.S. (and the British and Russian) military know, if the politicians do not, that such covert insertion is lethally hazardous even if the troops know exactly where they are going and who they are after.
Given the lack of reliable, ground-level intelligence, it seems unlikely that they will. Add to this the fact that U.S. forces may face an enemy to their rear, in the form of Pakistan's pro- Taliban fundamentalists and their army sympathizers and may not be able to count on the Northern Alliance resistance and the utter peril into which Rumsfeld may be sending both U.S. and British soldiers becomes clearer.
And all this assumes the U.S. will not be simultaneously engaged on other fronts, in other parts of a furious Muslim world.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic should not misread opinion polls showing broad public backing. Military action may be unavoidable.
But they have no blanket brief to place our troops, and blameless civilians, at unending, uncalculated risk. Whatever their expectations, whatever their prior pledges, promises, and rhetorical flourishes, they have no mandate to send our soldiers on missions that lack clear short and long-term objectives, achievable targets, and workable exit strategies.
-- Guardian News Service