Monday, January 01, 2007
The state of the Long War
Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.
And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
President George W. Bush, September 21, 2001
In light of the foregoing, read -- and discuss, if you are so inclined -- Bill Roggio's post on the "state of the jihad."
Regular readers know that I believe that the relative strategic positions of the jihad and the counterinsurgency is less a function of the size of the jihad (that is, how many soldiers it has deployed or the number of attacks it has launched) as the breadth and depth of the counterinsurgency. War polarizes, and as it progresses both sides will fight in greater numbers and with greater ferocity. It is always thus, at least until one side begins to collapse. As the pool of neutrals shrinks and more governments and people who wanted to stay out finally get off the fence and commit to one side or the other, which side will most of them oppose? The answer to that question is perhaps the best measure of strategic progress in the war, not how many new terrorists al Qaeda is able to recruit or the global popularity of the United States.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
1 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Jan 02, 02:33:00 PM:
I don't see many fence sitters, TH. For example, Spain pulled out of Iraq. Afterward, Spain quietly continued to build what some people claim is the largest intelligence agency in Europe.
Several governments in predominantly Muslim countries have fought quietly against Islamic terrorists for years. In the late 1980s an air force general from one of the Arab countries told me over lunch, "We need helicopters to shoot terrorists as they run across fields."
(The Arab country is a customer of mine so I won't reveal the name.)
