Stardate 20011010.1917 (On Screen): We're not talking about the same thing. The United States claims that the first phase of the air assault has succeeded; Ambassador Zaeef says it failed. The United States claims that it now has air supremacy over Afghanistan and can fly anywhere any time that it wishes; Ambassador Zaeef says that the Taliban's anti-aircraft defenses have not been destroyed.
They're both right about that latter, actually. But Ambassador Zaeef is not correct that phase 1 failed. It was never the goal to totally destroy anti-aircraft defenses. The point was to destroy all the anti-aircraft defenses capable of reaching jets at 10,000 feet or higher i.e. their SAMs and the radars that guide them. The guns don't matter; there was no point in attacking those, and since many of them are in the middle of densely populated areas there was considerably political risk involved in attacking them because of the danger of causing excessive civilian casualties. So phase 1 didn't fail because of it not knocking out the guns, because it was never intended to knock out the guns. It succeeded in gaining air supremacy, as proved by the fact that we are now making attacks during the day. And Ambassador Zaeef as much as admits that in the press conference. He's in the position of having to try to put the best face on events that he can, but it's a thankless and hopeless task, and his performance so far has been pitiful (and it's going to get worse as things progressively deteriorate for the Taliban).
It may eventually be necessary to go after some guns, if we finally start using helicopters in a big way, because they'll operate low enough for guns to reach. But helicopters aren't going to be operating anywhere near the cities, and any guns in the countryside can be attacked later if need be. The only case I can think of in which it might be necessary to take out guns in the cities would be if we were moving ground forces into the area, because anti-aircraft guns are also rather good anti-tank guns. (discuss)
