Stardate 20011011.0555 (On Screen): This news report more clearly justifies Clausewitz's great insight than anything else I've seen so far. Clausewitz was the one to realize that you could not analyze the strategy and tactics of a war without understanding the politics behind it, and clearly that's the case here. The military has made a decision to deliberately not try to attack the Taliban forces currently holding positions just north of Kabul, for if they do so then the Northern Alliance will be able to take Kabul and there is no political solution in place yet to handle that when it happens. So until the political planning for a post-Taliban government is completed, Kabul will remain in Taliban hands.
If you were looking at this war from a strictly military standpoint, without regard to the political situation behind it, you'd probably strike when the iron is hot. Now that we control the air over Afghanistan, we'd go after Taliban troop concentrations and artillery installations and try to roll over them as fast as possible. But that would win the battle but maybe lose the war, by exchanging a bad situation for one which perhaps would be worst. The "Northern Alliance" is less than allied; it's more like they're temporarily cooperating to prevent them all from being annihilated by the Taliban. But once the threat of the Taliban was removed, there's every reason to believe that the four factions in the Northern Alliance would begin to fight each other, again, as they were doing before the Taliban showed up. So until that problem has been solved, we can't take out the one thing which is keeping them from fighting each other: the Taliban's army. Ironic, is it not? (discuss)
