Celebrating the success in Afghanistan:
It would be curious to know, though, how many of them advised against plans to invade Afghanistan with a light and nimble force–and were proved wrong. Some in the military and many outside analysts argued that such a strategy carried too much risk for failure. They would have allowed Al Qaeda and its host, the Taliban, to operate much longer while the U.S. assembled a large force to invade. They were wrong.
The issue wasn’t just whether we had a large or small force, but whether we allowed the plan to be carried out by Afghan warlords. We see the result of the problem with relying on warlords–they tend to be more worried about themselves than the objective. That was part of the argument about Afghanistan. In addition, we didn’t cut off escape routes so much of Pakistan’s tribal territories are now hiding places and an attack on that nation would both topple the leadership and potentially put nukes in the hands of Islamists not in 10 years in Iran, but now in Pakistan.
It’s hard to imagine how a small force achieved our longer term goals of destroying Al Qaeda’s leadership and denying them a place to operate from. We did neither.
“It’s hard to imagine how a small force achieved our longer term goals of destroying Al Qaeda’s leadership and denying them a place to operate from. We did neither.”
But other than *that* Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
I really enjoyed the visuals, and that Rumsfeld character was entertaining in the way he spoke. So a thumbs up for the theater of it….
“Those were administration errors, though, not solely Rumsfeld errors. Lest we forget, the nation had a referendum a year and a half ago on whether the administration should stay or go and decided it should stay.”
Yeah, but in that case, bring McClellan back as well! Certainly the “referendum” was on him as much as anyone in DoD.