Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Take out bin Laden, or he will try to deny another opportunity
Commentary by Pat Payne

“All I fear we have done is awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

— Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, Imperial Japanese Navy Commander-in-Chief, on the occasion of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 8 (Tokyo time), 1941

We had always assumed that World War III would open — and close — with a mutually destructive volley of nuclear warheads. Instead, we may have seen World War III begin with something as innocuous, we believed, as aircraft.

Exactly four weeks ago, as everyone now knows, four planes were hijacked. Two crashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

The war began Sunday with an odd opening volley: As we are conducting strikes to try to halt the Taliban’s air power, we will soon be sending billions in food and medical aid to the Afghan people.

In the same vein that World War III opened unconventionally, it will most likely be fought unconventionally. We had promised retaliation if the country of Afghanistan did not turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile millionaire thought responsible for the attacks. The Taliban leadership has thus braced for invasion. They’re gonna wait a while.

This will not be a “go in, fight our way to the Rhine and spank Hitler” style of operation. If anything, it will probably resemble the exploits of Merrills’ Marauders in the Pacific, or the British Long-Range Desert Group and the Special Air Service (still in existence today) against the Afrika Korps. Both were small groups of commandos who fought a guerilla war, equipped, armed and trained for long stretches in territory that is hostile in every sense of the word.

There will most likely not be an invasion of Afghanistan in the same way we attacked Iraq during the Gulf War. History is against that course of action. Afghanistan’s terrain is mountainous, especially in the eastern districts, including the capital of Kabul. This is territory that — while inhospitable — the natives know like the back of their hands.

The Afghans put this knowledge to good use during the prolonged Soviet invasion of 1979-1988. The Soviets were eaten alive by the Mujahideen soldiers who were, ironically, armed by the United States. Those soldiers now form the core of the army of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s de facto leadership.

So there will be no reinstatement of the draft.

We won’t have troops marching triumphantly down Kabul’s streets.

This will be a war unlike any other, and as secret a war as possible. We are looking at a war fought from both the air and the shadows, where public airstrikes to destroy the terrorists’ training and logistical capability will be merely a supplement to a war of assassination and sabotage.

I have no illusions that we will “rid the world of evildoers,” as President Bush suggested. What we can hope to do instead is perhaps make these men, who are so willing to die for Allah or bin Laden or anyone else — as well as the men and governments who finance them — think twice before trying something as audacious and outrageous as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

All I can say is this: Now that we have gone in, we had better go straight for the head of the snake and cut it off entirely. Osama now knows that we are coming after him.

We had better take him out this time, because it is almost certain he will try to deny us a second chance.

Pat Payne is a columnist for the Oregon Daily Emerald at the University of Oregon. This column was distributed by U-Wire.