Winds of War: Are We Fighting the War in Afghanistan and Iraq Like We Did in Vietnam?

From The Gathering Storm

I’ve been meaning to make a point about the Iraq and Afghanistan on the war against Islamism for some time. Then this new item appeared. The question is, why didn’t Bush and his advisors see it first?

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta appealed to the United States and Europe to act against countries that host what he called "terrorist factories".

"We can destroy the networks in Afghanistan but there are terrorist factories outside our borders ... which are torpedoing our good results," the minister told the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.

That analysis is right on and was the cause of our defeat in Vietnam and our victory in the first Gulf War.

A theater of war can not be contained within artificial boundaries on a map. The enemy needs to be pursued and defeated with in the entire theater of war. In Vietnam we could not invade North Vietnam which was supporting the war effort in the south without having China enter war.

This defeatist strategy also was employed in the Korean War. When General MacArthur asked to bomb the bridges between China and North Korea to prevent China from sending troops into the peninsula to support the defeated North Koreans, he was told he could only bomb the Korean side of the bridge. The befuddled MacArthur replied, “In all my time as a combat officer, I’ve never knew how to bomb only half a bridge!”

In the first Gulf War, the miltary were given free reign to fight within the theater or war. To eject the Iraquis from Kuwait, the miltary invaded parts of Iraq - and succeeded in meeting the miltary objective.

When the military’s hands are tied and the enemy has a safe haven to plan the strategists and deploy their forces, that’s a recipe for defeat. And that’s what we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamist jihadists operate from safe haven in Pakistan and Iran and as long as they are not pursued into those parts of the theater of war, the outlook for success in Iraq and Afghanistan is bleak. The Islamists know that our inability to pursue them will lead to the wearing down of the multinational forces that will eventually lead to withdrawal and defeat.