Afghan War: Part of what the Iraq War cost us (4 of 7)

Someone remind me again: how is it that the Bush Administration's record in the "war on terrorism" is supposed to be a political asset for him?

This Newsweek article of 08/14/02 of the Battle of Tora Bora seems to be prophetic now because it was analytically sound at the time:

What went wrong? American officials, both civilian and military, prefer to focus on what went right. In only three months, US forces and Afghan proxies managed to rout the Taliban and deprive Al Qaeda of its base, at modest cost in American lives. American officials concede that there was a mass escape from Tora Bora – as well as a broader exodus by various routes into Pakistan and Iran – but insist that Al Qaeda now is crippled and too busy running to do much damage. "Perhaps we could have got them wholesale," says one senior Defense official. "Now we're doing it retail. In the end, it doesn't make much difference. We're getting them."

But it does make a difference. Some European and Arab intelligence experts believe, in fact, that Al Qaeda has mutated into a form that is no less deadly and even more difficult to combat. "We are confronted with cells that are all over the place, developing in a very horizontal structure without any evident big center of coordination," a top European counterterrorist investigator told NEWSWEEK. "Our operational evaluation today is that the threat is a lot greater than it was in December. That is to say, the worst is ahead of us, not behind us."

At a time when leaders in Washington are agitating to move on to the next war – to remove Saddam Hussein – it's perhaps surprising that few if any are critiquing the Afghan campaign. Criticism is deemed to be almost unpatriotic. But the Afghan war is not over, and the primary mission is not accomplished. The fledgling regime of Hamid Karzai has little power beyond the capital, and Karzai himself needs US Special Forces to ensure his safety. Qaeda operatives and their Taliban allies may not coordinate their activities, transfer funds and mount sophisticated operations as easily as they used to, but those activities do continue around the world.