On September 11th, 2001, a day that will live on in US History as a black cloud day, we, the American public was attacked in broad daylight by terrorists from the group Al-Qaeda.
The American people were so outraged at this attack, that we blindly accepted the reasoning from the current President, and then allowed our representatives to acknowledge the war against an unseen enemy was a real and earth shattering event, met only with bringing the fight to our invisible foe.
To this day, the only face for this organization has been 1-3 people, from Bin Laden to Zawahiri, and back again. Not a day has gone by to put the millions of faces that fight with these guys against the American public. Not one.
What I find strange, and almost prophetic is the amount of people that were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the amount of soldiers that have died in this 13 year war, is almost at the ten thousand mark, combined, and now wonder if that is the mark that has been set for withdrawal from the war itself.
Three thousand citizens died on the day of the attacks, and sixty seven hundred soldiers since then. So, my question is this, is the withdrawal from a battle that we have lost, in two countries, now set on a course to be complete after or before we hit the ten thousand dead line?
If 2014 comes and goes, and we are not completely withdrawn from Afghanistan, I have to believe that the date line has moved to the casualty line of departure. If we are not at 10,000 dead, we will not leave. This is the new line of departure from Afghanistan, and the war on terror.
During this war, we have thrown every imaginable kind of weaponry at the archaic nemesis in Afghanistan, from bombs to radar, we have tried, and it has failed.
Do you know why? My theory is this, if a occupying force that is staunchly for conventional war fighting attacks a force of unconventional fighters, in the indigenous population country, the outcome is going to be a disaster. The occupiers might gain ground incrementally, but at a cost that would feed the reverse three to one formula.
Stanley McChrystal understood the mechanism of the fight when he was in command. Unfortunately, he was not able to continue the fight in these terms, due to not letting his actions speak for him.
A conventional force structure works great when fighting another force that is utilizing conventional warfare. This kind of warfare works great when fighting a force that is attacking your position, but has a negative effect if the indigenous population is using unconventional methods.
