A couple of excellent article in the NYTimes Magazine: the first is a very powerful and concise overview on four years of the "war on terror":
Taking Stock of the Forever War
By MARK DANNER
Published: September 11, 2005
The other is a chilling account of the failure to capture Bin Laden:
Lost at Tora Bora
By MARY ANNE WEAVER
Published: September 11, 2005
Money quote:
It was only on the third day of the battle that the three dozen Special Forces troops arrived. But their mission was strictly limited to assisting and advising and calling in air strikes, according to the orders of Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was running the war from his headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
Three dozen!!! I guess the armed forces were already gearing up for Iraq.
1 comment:
I don’t find anything chilling about the article. Anyone who thinks we should have sent more troops has absolutely no understanding of what combat is like in that type of terrain. Look at the only major operation during the campaign, Operation Anaconda (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oef-anaconda.htm). Total of 2,000 troops and the entire thing was a mess. Intel was horrible, the enemy had back hand knowledge of the terrain and fighting was so close that air superiority could rarely support troops. For an in-depth look read Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda. While Naylor is a little hard of Spec-Ops it shows the extreme difficulty of fighting in these conditions. Add the fact that intel was borderline if Bin Laden was even there and if he was then you would be fighting an extremely motivated enemy. An enemy that is also defending their leader in terrain many of them have grown up in and fought the Russians in. I wouldn’t deploy significant troops there if it was a sure bet Bin Laden was there and anyone who would doesn’t have a high regard for the lives of US service men.
Steve
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