The Challenge Is Clear—and Daunting

The dust of the World Trade Towers had hardly settled before it became clear—Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, al Qaeda, were responsible. One other fact followed in the wake of this reality—the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, by harboring bin Laden and supporting al Qaeda training camps, was complicit in this heinous crime. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden and dismantle the camps, a war to deal with both the Taliban and al Qaeda became certain. What was far less certain was how such a war could accomplish anything effective yet acceptable to world and U.S. public opinion. Decision-makers and opinion shapers were debating the options publicly and passionately. Some advocated a massive bombing campaign—"Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age!"—but few thought this would serve any purpose other than naked vengeance. With little real infrastructure and a regime that rejected modernity and wanted in many respects to see Afghan society stripped of its Western trappings, there was little bombing could do to cause the Taliban real pain.

More troubling, some advocated a major ground invasion. Sending a massive U.S. ground force to bring down the Taliban, root out al Qaeda, and hunt for bin Laden seemed the only sure way to end that threat, and according to a CBS/New York Times poll, 55 percent of those asked said they would accept thousands of American deaths in a military campaign against Afghanistan (N.Y. Times, 25 September 2001, A1). Surely this level of support opened the door for a major ground offensive. But the Bush administration seemed less sanguine, probably because the history of foreign armies in the region was ominous. Afghanistan, with its rugged terrain and long history of tribal and clannish independence, was infamous as the graveyard of European armies. Alexander the Great conquered it, but his generals did not hold it long after his death. Britain and Russia both tried to absorb it into their respective empires in the nineteenth century, battling each other in what became known as "the Great Game," but the recalcitrant Afghanis thwarted both their efforts. Upper-most in people's memories, however, was how the Soviets had met their "Vietnam" in Afghanistan, and in the view of some, this national disaster was what really started the Soviet slide into collapse. Few advocates won any real support for this option.

Adding to concerns about taking on the Taliban and al Qaeda in a conventional ground war was the fact that for years a loose coalition of Afghanis known as the Northern Alliance, as well as other groups, had waged a tenacious but seemingly futile rebellion. If these Afghanis couldn't beat the Taliban on their own turf, what chance did Americans have in this mountainous landlocked country half a world away? While this added to the pessimism of dealing decisively with the Taliban, it did offer a glimmer of hope: why not link up with the Taliban's enemies, help them bring down the regime, and then be in a better position to deal with a new, hopefully more cooperative, Afghani government?

On 7 October, the U.S. military began launching air attacks against Afghanistan targets. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration did not announce its strategy at the outset, so speculation on this point was rife in the media. Airstrikes appeared calculated to degrade the collective military capabilities of the Taliban regime and their al Qaeda allies, but by all accounts it looked like a classic strategic bombing campaign. Fighters, bombers, and cruise missiles from the United States and its coalition partners struck key buildings, airfields, radar installations, and other fixed targets generally considered part of a nation's infrastructure and vital to its defenses. The terrorist training camps were being bombed as well, which had obvious utility to the War on Terror, but many asked how an impoverished nation that had seen decades of uninterrupted warfare and that was notoriously bereft of infrastructure could be seriously weakened by these air attacks. Many speculated the attacks were meant to aid the Northern Alliance somehow, though Northern Alliance leaders were unimpressed and unsure how their cause was being advanced. Officials remained tight-lipped about the overall strategy, though some pointed out that any modern U.S. military operation would begin with just such an "air phase" to ensure air superiority, disrupt enemy air defenses, and degrade enemy political and military command and control facilities, all of which would aid whatever happened in "phase two."

After several weeks, however, it looked to outside observers like the air campaign was the strategy. Reports had surfaced of Special Forces teams moving into theater, but no major combat unit movements seemed to be under way that might indicate an imminent "ground phase" to follow up and exploit the "air phase." Moreover, it didn't seem like the air campaign was meant to directly help the Northern Alliance, since its officials were still complaining that few airstrikes were aimed at Taliban troop positions. This charge seemed plausible since a Northern Alliance offensive on Mazar-e Sharif had been halted and the widely touted drive on Kabul postponed. If the air campaign wasn't paving the way for either an imminent U.S. invasion or a Northern Alliance ground offensive, what was it trying to achieve?

Since most targets thus far had been of the type struck in what air doctrine calls a strategic attack campaign, many observers assumed Bush and Rumsfeld were trying to win the war with air power alone. This assumption awakened the old strategic bombing debate and brought back images of Bill Clinton's handling of the Kosovo campaign. Critics ranging from politicians like John McCain to academics like air power theorist Robert A. Pape and media pundits like Charles Krauthammer lined up to denounce any strategy based on "paralysis through bombing" and to call for conventional invasion as the only way to victory. The chorus of criticism only grew louder with a string of high-visibility mistakes as U.S. planes bombed the wrong targets. Inexplicably, Americans targeted a Red Cross relief warehouse, not once, but twice. "Collateral damage" and large numbers of civilian casualties were being widely reported, and not just by the Taliban. By late October America's war on terror in Afghanistan appeared, publicly anyway, to be like a ship without a rudder, and the critics were becoming more insistent.

But events in Afghanistan were poised for a dramatic turnaround....