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Subject:
Revolutionary Warfare
Jason@efreedomnews.com
5/27/2002 11:31:58 AM
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Revolutionary Warfare: Afghan War in Guerilla Phase
Jonathan Rhodes May 13, 2002
link
Five "individuals" in the hometown village of Mullah Omar took the foolish step of firing on a US Special Forces team and were killed. Thirty-two others were detained. Dehrawd, 30 miles north of Kandahar in Uruzgan province, is a village where the fundamentalist Taliban's supreme leader, was raised.
Members of the 101st Airborne rapid reaction force based at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul were sent to Khost after four rocket attacks had occurred at the Khost airfield over the past month. During their patrol, two more rockets were fired at the airbase. The rocket attacks are sporadic, poorly aimed and fired with crude timers. Battalion commander Lt. Col. Patrick Fetterman, said there was no enemy contact, but troops found burn marks on the ground and fuse casings where rockets had been recently launched. In a classic Mujahedeen technique, the missiles are aimed by wooden stakes and then attach a time. During the patrol, two rockets wired to a crude water-based timer were found aimed at the base.
The British-led "Operation Snipe," ended after succeeding in destroying "a vast arsenal of weaponry," according to Brig. Roger Lane, the top British commander in the coalition. "It is true to say that we did not encounter the enemy during this operation. From a strategic perspective, this is an encouraging sign". The fact that al-Qaida had been forced to abandon one of the most strategically well-placed and easily defended locations in Afghanistan speaks volumes for the military and psychological impact of the coalition's operations."
Lane said the aim was "to destroy any al-Qaida forces with whom we came into contact, to destroy any terrorist infrastructure and deny the area as a base for terrorist activity. I believe that these objectives have been achieved," he said. "In doing so we have delivered a significant blow to the ability of al-Qaida to plan, mount and sustain terrorist operations in Afghanistan and beyond."
Guerrilla War: Revolutionary War
With the war now in a new phase of protracted guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operation in the mountains, the US Military must return to the lessons learned in Vietnam. Precision Guided Munitions from the air have proved to be an awesome military weapon - when the enemy is massed in an area suitable for attack in this manner. In a guerrilla war, the enemy will not be found in such a favorable position. In Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Kabul and Kandahar there were no conventional US troops positioned to cut off the Taliban and al-Qaida retreat. The Afghan "proxy" troops that were there followed a time-honored Afghan tradition of letting their opponents retreat, probably for a price. In a classic Guerilla movement, the enemy force melted away into the population and the terrain.
The renowned author Bernard Fall described revolutionary warfare as follows: "This formula for revolutionary warfare is the result of the application of guerrilla methods to the furtherance of an ideology or a political system." The terrorism that we are facing is a tool of guerilla warfare, irregular warfare, now called asymmetric warfare by the Pentagon, used to further the ideology of radical militant Islamic fundamentalism. Professor Fall also taught us the primary definitive dictum of revolutionary warfare: To win, "the people and the military must emerge on the same side." [Bernard Fall Street Without Joy Stackpole 1961 p.375]
Professor Fall goes on: "Any sound revolutionary warfare operator... most of the time used small-war tactics--not to destroy the [German] Army, of which they were thoroughly incapable, but to establish a competitive system of control over the population...the insurgency problem is military only in a secondary sense, and political, ideological, and administrative in a primary sense."
Although we are tactically in a "Guerilla" phase of the war in Afghanistan, the overriding basis for the very existence of the terrorists is, again - they are irregular combatants in a war of ideology - a revolutionary global war. To have the military and the people on the same side we must embrace, befriend and fight with the moderate elements of the Islamic world. There are secular and moderate people of Islam, and there are extremist militant Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world. The Islamic peoples remain divided and we must help the non-militant, non-extremists within that world to rally and support their people - to take away from the terrorist the "political, ideological, and administrative in a primary sense."
We can keep some of the Taliban and al-Qaida penned up in the mountaintops of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If we want to employ the manpower and muscle we could sweep through and destroy every living thing in both countries, including these enemies. We could turn these nations into nuclear wastelands. But al-Qaida operates worldwide. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism operates worldwide. Yes, we must use military force where it is most effective, but even more importantly, we must use every tool of government, of our economy and of our people towards the strategic goal of uniting the people of the world who want a civil, growing, peaceful, freedom loving society against the repression and tyranny of radical, militant Islamic Fundamentalism.
I believe President Bush fully understands this lesson.
I see this understanding in his present diplomatic handling of the Israeli/Palestinian Crisis.
I see this understanding in his words from September 20, 2001:
"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.
These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.
We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.
Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.
This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom."
[UP]
Bernard Fall Links:
The Theory and Practice of
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency (Naval War College Press)
Bernard Fall Books:
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
Street Without Joy
The Viet-Minh Regime
The Viet-Nam reader; articles and documents on American foreign policy and the Vi |
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