In one of the largest and most brazen attacks of its kind, suspected Taliban insurgents with heavy weapons attacked two truck stops in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, destroying more than 150 vehicles carrying supplies bound for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
The predawn attack on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar left the grounds of the truck terminals littered with the burned-out shells of Humvees and other military vehicles being transported by private truckers. At least one guard was reported killed.
Early today, a second attack on Western supplies was reported in the same area. A security guard said 50 containers had been burned and some vehicles destroyed by rocket fire.
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By the time the Soviets left Afghanistan, only about a third of their supplies were getting to their destination. When they tried to use Mi-24s to guard the convoys, the Afghanis would shoot them down from the natural fortifications in the surrounding heights using RPGs (gunships have the thinnest armor on the top surfaces and the props are sitting ducks) or from below using the Stinger missiles we gave them.
As I've said many times, I don't care what kind of force you have on the ground. If you can't resupply them, they're ineffective at best, dead at worst. Afghanistan in particular is the last place you want to have resupply problems. The Khyber Pass, and the entire mountain range they are a part of, is a natural obstacle to resupply and has played a big part in the death of armies for the last few centuries.
The only alternative route is over land is through the 'Stans, via Russia or China (overhead) and the terrain on that side is almost as unforgiving. The Russians and Chinese (were they to help us) present their own set of problems. Air resupply is about as iffy as a convoy in that terrain, the cargo aircraft easy targets for mostly the same reasons (vulnerability on takeoff and landing from shooters on the high terrain, and during the offload/onload process sitting on the ground - one idiot with a mortar can make life miserable on the flightline).
I hope President-elect Obama receives good counsel from his staff before he decides to send more troops to the area. He could take a hundred thousand from Iraq, yet if he can't get them food, fuel, and bullets they're useless. Before we commit another unit to the battle, we'd better take a long look at what our mission really is; at what we're trying to achieve there.
If we are going after al-Qaeda, we have to have the cooperation (real cooperation) of the Paks. Without it, without being able to get a credible force in the tribal areas, we have no chance of getting Osama or the rest. If we are trying to build a 'western democracy' in Afghanistan, we might as well forget it. The culture would never accept it. In all the years we've been there, we've barely brought democracy to the city of Kabul and once you leave the city limits, it becomes the lawless place it's been since the British tried to tame it.
With the new administration comes a time to reassess, and the war in Afghanistan (or whatever its become now) has to be reassessed as well. We have to sit back and look at what we want to accomplish and whether the costs are worth it - in lives and money. Throwing a division or two at the problem might not be the best idea when the Soviets had over a hundred thousand on the ground and still failed. I hope President Obama takes that into consideration before committing more U.S. troops and capital to what is now a no-win situation.
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