Myers is thoroughly guilty for 9-11 - caveat lector
copied from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25588-2002Nov7.html
Afghan War Faltering, Military Leader Says
Myers Cites Al Qaeda's Ability to Adapt
By Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 8, 2002; Page A01
The U.S. military is losing momentum in the war on terrorism in
Afghanistan because the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban have proven
more successful in adapting to U.S. tactics than the U.S. military has
to theirs, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said this week.
Gen. Richard B. Myers also said there is a debate taking place within
the Pentagon about whether the United States needs to change its
priorities in Afghanistan and de-emphasize military operations in favor
of more support for reconstruction efforts.
"I think in a sense we've lost a little momentum there, to be frank,"
Myers said in after-dinner comments Monday night at the Brookings
Institution. "They've made lots of adaptations to our tactics, and we've
got to continue to think and try to out-think them and to be faster at
it."
Myers, the nation's top military officer, suggested it may be time for
the military to "flip" its priorities from combat operations aimed at
hunting down al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to "the reconstruction piece
in Afghanistan," a notable shift in priorities for an a Pentagon that
has eschewed nation-building exercises.
The CIA, in a recently released assessment, called security "most
precarious in smaller cities and some rural locations" and said:
"Reconstruction may be the single most important factor in increasing
security throughout Afghanistan and preventing it from again becoming a
haven for terrorists."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently launched an anti-corruption
campaign aimed at cracking down on provincial leaders who continue to
challenge the authority of the country's central government.
Myers issued his call for faster and more flexible approaches in the
counterterrorism war a day after the United States conducted its
first-ever airstrike in Yemen, using an unmanned aircraft to do it. A
CIA-operated Predator drone on Sunday attacked a vehicle believed to be
carrying six al Qaeda members with Hellfire missiles, obliterating the
vehicle and its passengers. Yemeni authorities said among the passengers
was Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader and one of the
terrorist network's top figures in Yemen.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a retired Army colonel and Pentagon
consultant who directs the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, said Monday's attack in Yemen cannot mask the continuing
instability in Afghanistan and the lack of strong counterterrorism
relationships between the United States and countries such as Malaysia
and Indonesia.
Wayne A. Downing, a retired Army general who until June served as the
White House special adviser on combating terrorism, disagreed, saying
that the United States has matched al Qaeda in adjusting its operations.
"Getting this guy in Yemen was huge -- and a significant escalation in a
different place," he said.
Downing said he expects the military to play a smaller role in the war
on terrorism, with diplomacy and intelligence cooperation becoming more
important. He also predicted that actions like the one in Yemen will be
more characteristic of the campaign.
Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, called a
shift in priorities by the military in Afghanistan away from pursuing al
Qaeda and toward reconstruction "noteworthy and extremely important."
But Daalder said he doubted whether Myers or Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld would commit U.S. forces to "tackling the fundamental security
problem in Afghanistan, which is not al Qaeda, but a byproduct of the
way we fought -- arming the warlords."
"What needs to be done is to take away the power of the warlords and
give it to the central government, and that requires real military
force," Daalder said. "Are we prepared to take on the very guys we
empowered? I don't see any evidence that is the case."
In his remarks at Brookings, Myers said al Qaeda has proven to be an
agile adversary, adapting its electronic communications to prevent
intercepts and securing the way it passes money. His comments, released
by Brookings on Wednesday, reflect a concern that many senior U.S.
officials have expressed privately in recent months that the military
establishment has been too slow to adapt in its response to the al Qaeda
threat, both in its special operations tactics and its weapons
procurement.
One official close to Rumsfeld said this week that, in his view, the
military still is largely geared to changing at the glacial pace of the
Cold War, during which shifts in military doctrine and weaponry in the
Soviet Union occurred generationally. Al Qaeda and its allies have shown
"an ability to change by the month," the official said.
A detailed analysis just released by the U.S. Army War College reported
that al Qaeda fighters have been quick to adapt to the high-tech
weaponry the United States used in its attack on the network. When the
United States first began bombing in Afghanistan last October, the
report said, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters made easy targets, even
standing on ridges where they were visible to Special Operations
spotters miles away.
Stephen Biddle, the report's author, wrote that by March, during the
last major U.S.-led offensive against al Qaeda in southeastern
Afghanistan, "Al Qaeda forces were practicing systematic communications
security, dispersal, camouflage discipline, use of cover and
concealment, and exploitation of dummy fighting positions to draw fire
and attention from their real positions."
Added one senior officer: "It's the general consensus within the
[special operations] community that al Qaeda is extremely adaptive and
very cagey. These guys are not weekend terrorists."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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