The United States has not been involved in a shooting war like the current one since 1945. That was the last time we fought an enemy who, unchecked, wanted to destroy us. It also was the last time we fought what amounted to an unlimited war. When the Germans and the Japanese faced us, they knew that if they lost their governments would be destroyed. Since 1945 there has been endless speculation that the war might have ended earlier had the Allies not demanded unconditional surrender—sometime in 1944, when it became clear that the Axis was losing. The counterargument has been that without unconditional surrender, the stage would merely have been set for World War III, with the surviving cores of the enemy governments preserving just enough determination and firepower to try once more.
In recent weeks, the Taliban in Afghanistan have shown considerable determination and resilience. At the outset, there was some hope that a display of U.S. firepower would cause desertions on such a scale that anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan would find it easy to win. The larger hope was that the Taliban themselves would not see the war as unconditional, and that they would choose to give up Osama bin Laden and his terror network to survive. Against this hope had to be set the real possibility that Osama is integral to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and his troops are the main prop of an increasingly unpopular regime. The Taliban presumably hoped that any assault by outsiders would unite their disparate population in a patriotic war. It now seems that the Taliban have decided that the war is indeed unconditional and that surrender will equal their death. The U.S. government probably has come to a similar conclusion. Osama's terrorists may well operate from many other countries, but Afghanistan has become his base, and it is indispensable to him. Moreover, Osama's destruction probably would dismay, and might even neutralize, many who sympathize with him throughout the Muslim world.
Moreover, to the extent that the Taliban regime's protection made bin Laden's attacks possible, it is vital to destroy that regime as a warning to others who may be willing to harbor future bin Ladens. Much has been made of the willingness of suicide attackers to die, hence of the impossibility of deterring them. That is certainly true on an individual basis. It also seems to be the case that some aspects of Islam make it easier to convince a potential bomber to accept a suicide mission. However, the key to deterrence is those who do the convincing. They and their protectors are the appropriate targets, and the Taliban seem to fill this bill. It is also arguable that the corrosive effect of modern culture will eliminate the fanatic suicide bomber problem within a few decades, so that anything that restrains our enemies now is well worth our while.
Unlike the wars the United States fought in the latter half of the 20th century, this one needs little explanation: two strategic attacks against the United States were all the proof that Americans needed that the enemy was serious. It is interesting, in retrospect, that previous attacks, which caused fewer casualties, did not have anything like the same effect. While it is true that the United States has pursued bin Laden at least since 1998, and probably since 1996, in retrospect that pursuit has been halfhearted. He was no more than one among many terrorists. The 1998 U.S. cruise missile attacks against his training camp and against the factory in the Sudan he supposedly owned seem to have been significant mainly as a way of boosting his standing among the many who hate the United States.
The character of this war highlights some important weaponry issues. At least since Vietnam, the trend in U.S. weapons has been toward greater precision. Initially the argument was that stand-off weapons could drastically reduce the exposure of air crews attacking key targets such as bridges and power stations in North Vietnam: often one or two sorties could be substituted for hundreds, and the bombs could be released further from their targets. Then there was increased attention to precision as a way of making attacks more surgical, on the moral ground that it was important to reduce collateral damage. If stand-off attacks are the modern way of war, then it is almost as important to spare civilians as to hit the things that prop up the enemy regime or its ability to fight. Most recently the cry has been that increased accuracy makes it reasonable to reduce the explosive power of weapons, not merely to avoid collateral damage but also to pack bombs into the internal bays of stealthy aircraft.
The question the current war raises is whether this is anything like the whole story. In Afghanistan, for excellent reasons, the United States wants to limit the role of its own ground troops. The introduction of foreign troops would, as the Taliban hope, tend to unite Afghans against us. We have no great interest in a Soviet-style occupation of Afghanistan; all we want is to destroy our particular enemies there. That raises the question of just how we are attacking. Our initial attacks were directed at the Taliban in hopes that they would get our message and change their ways. Limited wars end in compromise solutions. In this one, the hope was that the Taliban would recognize that handing over bin Laden would end the attacks. We would do enough to push them in that direction, without convincing them that we meant to destroy them. That fine-tuning is appealing to political strategists, but it often fails on the ground.
Yet nothing like that happened. Taliban military resources have been severely damaged, possibly even fatally damaged if the United States and our allies can continue the war into the winter. On the other hand, Taliban troops seem to have been encouraged by the limited character of the attacks. Few of them have been killed in bombing raids. Clearly they had expected something much worse. Many of them probably have experienced more massive attacks by the Soviets more than a decade ago. Individual soldiers may not be terribly impressed that a fuel-- storage depot or an arms dump is destroyed.
Those we hope will fight the Taliban have had roughly the same military experience. They too expect massive barrages. The virtues of precision are lost on them. War is as much psychological as material, and it may be that in our search for efficiency we have entirely lost sight of the psychological effects of heavy bombardment, and that we need to relearn it.
That will not be easy. The bulk of the strikes against Afghanistan have been flown by naval aircraft, for the simple reason that we control the sea, whereas semi-enthusiastic coalition partners control airfields closer to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Navy, like the other services, bought into the doctrine that replaced weight of fire with precision. To the Navy's credit, that acceptance was not entirely willing. In the 1980s the Navy tried hard to press for a program to develop a new gravity (dumb) bomb. It lost out to the Air Force, which had long had a doctrine emphasizing precision and the dramatic effects to be gained by destroying key targets. Now the Navy finds itself delivering limited numbers of strikes, and its most valuable deep-strike platform is the old F-14 Tomcat, doomed to retirement. Other resources, also scheduled for early disposal, such as S-3 tankers, also are proving unexpectedly valuable.
Obviously, Afghanistan is an unusual case. It is about as far from the sea as a potential battlefield can get, yet our ability to reach it from the sea probably has been decisive. Anyone reading the newspapers can see that our coalition partners around Afghanistan are uncomfortable. Many in their populations see us as the great problem, and anything that humbles us cannot but be popular. No government faced with a population thinking that way can lightly provide us with crucial air base support. Conversely, if we can say that all of the air campaign is being supported by the fleet, then governments can provide subtler but vital forms of support, such as intelligence.
The lessons already learned in Afghanistan suggest that aircraft are more important than ever, simply because they can deliver loads of ordnance and then return for more. Long-range missiles cannot possibly offer the same sort of sustained pressure, because so much more is expended each time a missile is fired. By extension, the burden is likely to fall most heavily on tactical aircraft near the battle zone, simply because their turnaround time is short. Long-- range bombers can carry much greater loads, but they cannot sustain operations; they cannot keep up a continuous presence over a battlefield. It follows that carriers are increasingly important and that any supplemental money released to fight the war might well go into building back the numbers of strike aircraft (and tankers) per carrier. Is it time to go to the desert and rescue some mothballed A-6s?
As the war becomes more tactical, moreover, human pilots may become much more important because they can spot and attack fleeting targets. No matter how good the information grid, it seems that the sheer time required to take decisions remote from the battlefield will be crippling. Moreover, the ruling fact of the military world is surely Murphy's Law. Satellite communications, on which any kind of remote control depend, work only most of the time. Some atmospheric and space conditions interrupt them. Murphy's Law surely implies that such interruption usually would occur just as an unmanned vehicle picked up a really important target quite close to something absolutely not to be attacked, wouldn't it?
It is easy to imagine that a war fought in a remote place such as Afghanistan is peripheral and that the important wars are the ones for which we have been preparing, in Korea and in the Gulf. However, even if our forces were defeated in both Korea and the Gulf, we would not likely suffer the sort of casualties at home that Osama bin Laden, operating out of that remote place, inflicted on us—and is likely to try to inflict again before he is destroyed. The first purpose of our forces is to protect our country by destroying or deterring potential enemies. This war, then, turns out to be just a bit more important than the scenarios for which our forces have been built, and the other scenarios that seem to justify transformation. Maybe the Afghan war will turn out to be a wake-up call to remind us that "legacy" platforms such as carriers and F-14s should not be transformed away.