By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
October 29, 2001
A report by Associated Press, one week after 4000 American civilians were pulverized by al Qaeda terrorists, reported Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev, a veteran of the Soviet war with Afghanistan, warning the United States would find bin Laden only if it was ready to comb 200,000 square miles "rock by rock."
"You can occupy it, you can put troops there and keep bombing, but you cannot win," Aushev said.
Three weeks after President George W. Bush authorized bombing of Taliban forces, we find the week-end news dominated by widespread commentary of America being "bogged down" in a "quagmire" in Afghanistan.
How can we possibly be "bogged down in a quagmire" in three weeks time?
Where is all the "quagmire" conversation coming from and why do we have so many people, like Sen. John McCain, whose military expertise is confined to getting shot down over Hanoi, demanding that we start putting ground troops into Afghanistan?
Does anyone even remember Desert storm? There we had the advantage of at least being able to SEE the enemy on a level, treeless desert. The first troops on the ground there was the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines from Twenty-Nine Palms, California, who arrived in Saudi Arabia a week after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. That was a memorable date for me because my son, Dr. Guy Grooms, was the battalion surgeon for the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines.
Does anyone remember when the ground troops moved into Kuwait to push the Iraqi forces out? It was almost 7 months later, February 24, 1991. And, just what was the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines doing during those intervening six and a half months? Well, they were moving around 5-6 times a day, sleeping out on in the desert without sleeping bags or tents, dodging Scud missiles, waiting for the military build-up needed to confront the reported 650,000 Iraqi troops amassed on the borders.
While Desert Storm was a highly successful operation, there is almost no information about the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines ventures at the time, because the Marine Commander would not allow any newsmen to know what they planned to do. The day the Marines had a tank battle with the Iraqis, CNN was reporting that all was quiet on the front lines.
On September 10, 1990, Guy wrote to tell me he had been in the hospital with a heat stroke for several days, back behind the lines. He said,
"Our biggest concern is still terrorist activity. Immediately after the Kuwait invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis let thousands of their soldiers go 'on leave.' So they put on civilian clothes and came to Saudi Arabia. There are thousands of Iraqi spies in Saudi Arabia. I'm probably in more danger here than I was in the field. I don't know what the newspapers are saying, but we've already caught a number of Iraqis trying to do a variety of nasty things. The good thing is, our men are now really taking this whole thing very seriously. You wouldn't believe how alert they are."
That was five and a half months BEFORE the ground offensive began. The leaders who brought about that success were ALL Vietnam veterans who had experienced the frustration of a military operation that failed due to political interference. They said, had they been allowed to actually FIGHT the war in Vietnam, they would have won it. President Lyndon Johnson and his fear of the political impact of anti-war protests blocked needed military action. The same thing happened in Somalia when the Clinton administration refused to send needed armored vehicles to U.S. troops there.
Today, in the Bush administration, we have the same man who was setting a lot of the military policy for Desert Storm, Colin Powell, as Secretary of State and who is now supposed to be the dove, not the hawk where Iraq is concerned.
We also have Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose no nonsense, straight from the shoulder response to often really stupid questions from the press corps, as a daily oasis of logic in a sea of media blather. He was asked yesterday by Wolf Blitzer of CNN, "How long is this going to go on, in your opinion?"
Rumsfeld responded,
"Well, I think the very first day, I said, this isn't days or weeks or months, this is a very long process. And the task is to root out terrorists, it's to stop the terrorist networks, and that is a difficult thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do. And it's going to take time and patience. And I must say, I hear some impatience from the people who, of course, have to produce news every 15 minutes, but not from the American people. I think the American people understand the fact that it's going to be long and hard."
I gather from that that all the Press deadlines are not very important to the new Bush administration. Do we need to be out of there by Ramadan, the Muslim day of fasting? Or, perhaps, are they just waiting for the snows to come so they can see some tracks into caves to tell them where to bomb?
If there were "thousands" of Iraqi soldiers in civilian dress wandering around creating problems in Saudi Arabia in 1990, from the 19.5 million people of Iraq in 1991, how many thousands of Taliban soldiers in civilian dress, do you suppose, are wandering around in Pakistan these days from the 22.5 million people of Afghanistan?
Those terrorists were trying very hard to bring down the Saudi government. Today, terrorists are trying very hard to bring down the Musharraf government in Pakistan, for the same reasons. Terrorists in Bahawalpur, Pakistan strafed a Christian Church killing 16 men, women and children whose only crime was being Christians.
But, what is the featured news story today? The lead story in the N.Y. Times isn't about the 16 dead Pakistani Christians. In fact, it wasn't even reported in the N.Y. Times or Washington Post this morning. The Associated Press reported: "American airstrikes meant to punish the Taliban spilled over today into residential neighborhoods here, killing 13 civilians. It was the second time in two days that missiles have hit homes and killed residents."
Will the American people understand the fact that the war on terrorism is going to be "long and hard" if their media keep leaving out important facts while trying to publish "human interest" stories about the Afghans suffering from U.S. bombs? Hopefully, they will. Maybe I'm just not politically correct, but I can't figure out why the death of 13 civilians who were not targeted in Kabul, Afghanistan, a nation harboring terrorists responsible for over 4000 deaths by terror in America, by U.S. bombs is a bigger tragedy than the 16 civilians killed by deliberate assassination in Bahawalpur.
The American military is not "bogged down" in a "quagmire" in Afghanistan. They have a plan, and they are working the plan. It is, however, possible the U.S. media is bogged down in a quagmire of misinformation in Afghanistan.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com