Pentagon Uses Afghan War as Model for Iraq

Rowan Scarborough

Senior Pentagon policy-makers are discussing action against Iraq that would mirror the campaign in Afghanistan: air strikes, special-operations forces and indigenous opposition armies to do the ground fighting.

U.S. officials said in interviews that civilians working for Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, have discussed the early outlines of such a campaign.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is said to favor such an approach. Mr. Wolfowitz, one of the administration’s leading figures, advocates that the United States cannot win the global war on terrorism until Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is removed from power. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as interested in some type of military plan to oust Saddam.

Officials said the Pentagon is so pleased with how the strategy has worked in Afghanistan that they are examining whether to apply it to Iraq. They added, however, that neither the Pentagon nor President Bush has approved strikes on Iraq as part of the war on terrorism.

‘With the civilian side [at the Pentagon], that is the way they are thinking’, said one U.S. official. ‘First, the fight will be with the chiefs, then with the State Department.’

The ‘chiefs’ is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military leaders have been reluctant to get involved with resistance groups, especially in Iraq.

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, said the campaign in Afghanistan proves that if you remove a tyrant’s defense structure, public support slips quickly.

‘The lesson being drawn from the Afghan experience is this: In both Afghanistan and Iraq, what you have are tyrants, and tyrants have little support’, the source said. ‘When you threaten that tyranny and when it looks like it can’t stand, then what happens is those who may be aligned with it for practical reasons, for survival reasons, start to abandon it.’

In Afghanistan, the Bush administration has waged a war on three fronts to topple the ruling Taliban militia and destroy Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.

First, air power was used surgically, based on rich sources of intelligence, to strike Taliban and al Qaeda military and command sites.

Second, a CIA paramilitary force and special-operations forces were deployed to build up anti-Taliban forces in the north and south. Some commandos found targets for air strikes; others directly engaged in combat.

Third, the indigenous forces were left to do much of the ground-taking, seizing major cities and pushing bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders into the hills.

Pentagon planners believe the same approach could work against Saddam, although it would require a much larger operation.

Source: The Washington Times, 12/4/2001