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Fighting Terror

© Dennis Morehouse

The operations to locate and apprehend Osama Bin Laden are not, and probably will not be, well seen by the general public; at least until after he is taken. Some operations will be revealed to us by the government but a great deal of care must be taken with these revelations; otherwise our troops in the field could be endangered.

Though we are involved in a shooting war, we are not AT war, at least in the sense of having a formal declaration of war by Congress. This creates limitations in the actions that we can take. We must work with a coalition of nations that have their own goals and can change their level of support at any time, so we must do our best to keep these partners as happy as possible. Some of the techniques we would like to use may be completely unsuitable for the task at hand and we are also limited by our own outlook on how to wage war.

The United States is in love with air power. Ever since the Gulf War, this country has responded to most insults and attacks with responses by air. The last ten years showed us an unparalleled success story in the Gulf War, then the news that the accuracy of our smart weapons had been overstated, then the continued use of these weapons for every contingency in spite of known inaccuracies. The major result of these inaccuracies has been that we have increased the number of our enemies by injuring and killing innocent people in larger numbers than strictly needed, and by giving the appearance that we are afraid to risk our soldiers in 'man to man' engagements. Much of the rest of the world feels a moral superiority to us simply because they consider us to be cowards. It's kind of difficult to argue with their reasoning.

Selecting the most productive method to achieve an end, whether it be tactical, operational or strategic, requires proper evaluation of the target, the obstacles, opposing force capabilities and friendly force capabilities. In the U.S. it also should include consideration of the public will to continue support for the needed effort, and how to maintain that support. But their reasoning is based on incomplete information. Americans don't particularly like war and historically, we've usually avoided it when possible in this century. But out of four major wars and innumerable smaller ones; we've lost one, tied one and won all the rest. We may not like war but we conduct it really well whenever we have a definite goal. Osama Bin Laden and his organization are very definite targets.

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