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Friday, September 19, 2008

Redeployment of the enemy

Now that combat has died down in Iraq, irregular warfare is on the rise in Afghanistan. I would expect irregular warfare to expand into new areas. For our enemy, Iraq was a real losing situation with high loss rates. Now that the losses they have been taking have dropped off, they can deploy new effort into areas that are more tactically sound.

The only way to stop the spread of these attacks is to engage them in the open. We need a new front. It must not be a defensive one. We must place more troops into Afghanistan, but a major effort there will not win the war. Governments within the Middle East must be changed, by force. Syria and Iran would be the next obvious move. This is very unlikely at this point. The problem here is political will is not able to allow us to do this. Africa offers additional chances for conflict but like Afghanistan, the war will not be won there. Africa offers opportunity to drain our enemy of valuable resources and support. It is a place where an expanding enemy ideology can be stopped or reversed. Political will for conflict in Africa may be available. Once again, the problem is that time is not on our side.

The populations that support the ideology of our enemy is so large that this war will not end within the foreseeable future. The cultural changes that are required to end this war are to large. This process will take generations and will not end without serious escalation. A nuclear attack will most likely be the next large escalation. This can only be a matter of time.

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