Charles Krauthammer

Not Enough Might

Wed Oct 31 14:48:12 2001


Not Enough Might
By Charles Krauthammer

Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A21

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9033-2001Oct29.html


The war is not going well. The Taliban have not yielded ground. Not a
single important Taliban leader has been killed, or captured or has
defected. On the contrary. The Taliban have captured and executed our great
Pashtun hope, Abdul Haq. The Joint Chiefs express surprise at the tenacity
of the enemy.

The war is not going well and it is time to say why. It has been fought
with half-measures. It has been fought with an eye on the wishes of our
"coalition partners." It has been fought to assuage the Arab "street." It
has been fought to satisfy the diplomats rather than the generals.

Thirty years ago in Vietnam, we fought a war finely calibrated to win
"hearts and minds." Bomb today, pause tomorrow. That strategy met with
nothing but pain and defeat. One of the products of that war was Colin
Powell. He and his generation vowed that never again would American lives
be sacrificed, their missions compromised, their objectives distorted to
satisfy purely political objectives.

And yet for three weeks in Afghanistan we held back from massively bombing
the Taliban front lines facing the Northern Alliance. Why? Because Pakistan
does not like the Northern Alliance. So we calibrate the war to produce a
precise ethnic balance, satisfying our various allies, for a post-Taliban
Afghanistan.

But you don't get to post-Taliban until you've defeated the Taliban. And
you don't defeat the Taliban with antiseptic attacks on fixed installations
and pinpoint raids on front-line positions. You do it by scaring the living
hell out of the enemy, producing in him the rational calculation that
you're going to win and he'd better change sides.

The president repeatedly emphasizes that this is not a war against
civilians. We are expending enormous effort on dropping food. The Pentagon
feels obliged to respond to every Taliban claim of civilian casualties --
diverting reconnaissance and other resources to investigate stories that
are often fabricated.

Why have we turned this into an operation for the liberation of
Afghanistan? Afghanistan will be liberated if we succeed. But that is not
why we are there. We are there to avenge 5,000 murdered Americans and to
protect the rest by killing those preparing to murder again.

That defines our mission: destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban. What comes
after will be an interesting problem. But it comes after. To restrain our
military now in order to placate the diplomats is a tragic reprise of
Vietnam.

The error began in the very naming of the mission. It started out as
Infinite Justice. But we could not have that, we were told, because it
might offend Muslims, who believe that infinite justice comes only from
God. (Don't Christians and Jews believe that too? Were they offended?) So
we changed it to Enduring Freedom. Very nice. Too nice. We should have
called it Righteous Might, the phrase Franklin Roosevelt used in his Pearl
Harbor speech to describe what the enemy would now be facing.

Instead, the enemy today is facing calibration and proportionality. The
"Powell Doctrine" once preached overwhelming force to achieve victory. Yet
we have held back. Why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s to
carpet-bomb Taliban positions? And why are we giving the Taliban sanctuary
in their cities? We could drop leaflets giving civilians 48 hours to
evacuate, after which the cities become legitimate military targets. We
know our enemy is planning more mass murder. Every day of urban safety for
them is another day of peril for innocent Americans.

Restraint has already cost a lot. An important element of winning is
psychological shock, the key to demoralization, defection and
disintegration. We have squandered it. Now that the first wave of American
power has come and gone, the Taliban are ever more convinced of American
uncertainty and of their own indestructibility.

Our solicitousness knows no bounds. The president urges the children of
America to each send a dollar to feed Afghan children. He now urges
American schoolchildren to find Muslim pen pals. After the carnage of Sept.
11, should not our Muslim allies be urging their people to seek out
American pen pals? We were the ones attacked, by Muslims invoking Islam.
Why are we are the ones required to demonstrate religious tolerance?

Nice is nice but this is war. We cannot fight it apologetically -- the very
talk of holding our fire during Ramadan is beyond belief -- with one hand
tied behind our back.

Half-measures are for wars of choice, wars like Vietnam. In wars of choice,
losing is an option. You lose and still survive as a nation. The war on
terrorism, like World War II, is a war of necessity. Losing is not an
option. Losing is fatal. This is no time for restraint and other niceties.
This is a time for righteous might.



© 2001 The Washington Post Company