Long War: In Libya, the rebels are making tentative progress among savage fighting. Gaddafi is resorting to the use of cluster bombs and the outright shelling of civilians in a desperate bid to deliver a knock-out blow. More and more evidence is surfacing that Qatar is helping the rebels, probably in conjunction with the CIA.
AQIM (Al-Qaeda North Africa) attacked an Algerian Army outpost and killed about a dozen good guys. There can be no doubt that the Libyan War has vastly strengthened AQIM. When and if the rebels win the Libya War, the US will have to stitch (or restitch) together its alliance structure in North Africa and restart the campaign against AQIM.
The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan are meeting to create a unified front in the upcoming peace talks with the Afghan Taliban that will apparently take place in Turkey. So three of America's most important allies in the Long War are determined to reach out to the superpower's greatest enemy. If these peace talks occur it would be like Charles De Gaulle and Winston Churchill entering into peace talks with Hitler in 1943.
The spring fighting season is now starting in Afghanistan and NATO troops are taking casualties. The Taliban is usually quite open and honest when it announces new tactics. For this fighting season it will infiltrate Afghan Army units with suicide bombers and avoid stand-up fire fights with NATO and the Afghan Army. The Taliban is positioning itself for the withdrawal of American troops. The solution to both this tactic and the upcoming Taliban peace talks is to not withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and defeat the bad guys on the ground over the next several years. Either that or go forward with Obama's proposed restructuring and expansion of the CIA and have it continue fighting in Afghanistan.
In Iraq: On paper Kurdistan is part of Iraq. In reality Kurdistan is a separate country and the Kurdish Army and the Iraqi Army routinely square off in and around the oil city of Kirkuk. The US Army routinely prevents a new war from starting along the Iraq/Kurdistan border by jamming itself between the two antagonists. Iraq has one other serious problem, its army might be able to fight the Kurds into a stalemate but would get annihilated by the Iranian Army. With American foreign policy so wobbly of late, Iran is on the march. Aware of all this, Hillary Clinton and other hawks in the Administration are setting the stage for the US Army to stay in Iraq. She will have to battle the President on this issue. The same is true as far as Libya and Afghanistan are concerned. In other words, the US needs to stay engaged in all the Long War hot spots.
Here is a good analogy, staying engaged in all these hot spots is like painting the Golden Gate bridge, an unending process that needs to be done if the structure is to avoid rusting and eventually collapsing. Wars lasting hundreds of years are not uncommon in the pages of history and the answer to a long war is the same as to a short war: win.
Monday, April 18, 2011
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