Actually, the effort in Afghanistan long ago took a back seat to our critical national interest in dealing with Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction."
But, unfortunately, the same application of conventional-war techniques to a guerrilla conflict is undermining the war efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. We probably should use only the past tense in both cases, because it's highly doubtful this Adminstration can salvage either situation.
9 Afghan children killed in US attack Christian Science Monitor 12/07/03
<< An American A-10 aircraft struck a site south of Ghazni, 100 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, where a "known terrorist" was believed to be hiding at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Army Maj. Christopher E. West told The Associated Press.
<< "At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby," he said.
<< Jawaid Khan, the Ghazni governor's secretary, said that eight children and two men were killed but the intended target, whom he identified as a former Taliban commander named Mullah Wazir, was not among them.
<< "The Americans wanted to bomb Mullah Wazir, but they bombed a different house," Khan told the AP. "The people there are very afraid. They have no idea why the Americans bombed their village.">>
What is the point in this? What is really the point? If we don't have the capability to send in teams to go after individuals like this - leaving aside the question of whether targeting individuals in this way is a good approach - why kill innocent people in a ham-fisted attempt to get one guy? And trying to wage a guerrilla war this way will inevitably kill civilian non-combatants.
If this is the way we still have to run the war in Afghanistan after two years, we've lost. And we don't have the available troops to escalate the Afghan War, because they're in Iraq dealing with the imminent threat of Saddam's WMDs.
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