A Contrast in Levels of Strategic Competence — Getting Bin Laden Special Forces-Style versus Invading Two Countries at Unproductively High Cost

© 2011 Peter Free

 

02 May 2011

 

 

Intelligence-gathering and networking takes time — but the precise targeting of resulting military special forces operations avoids the costs associated with indiscriminately launched wars

 

Patience is a virtue that American geopolitical strategists and the public would do well to learn.

 

Today, Osama bin Laden (architect of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States) is reportedly dead, killed by American Special Operations forces in an attack on his hideout in Pakistan.

 

Though Islamic nations may not like American military targeting of terrorists on their soil, there is little reasonable they can say to criticize the justice of this narrowly-targeted military operation.

 

Bin Laden’s death is unlikely to have a very significant detrimental impact on Al Qaeda’s operations. But it demonstrates the targeted action at a distance that gains a superpower respect.

 

 

Consider the strategic contrast in geographic scale and human and financial costs between (a) indiscriminate wars of invasion and (b) precisely targeted special forces operations

 

The geographically constrained and targeted precision of Osama bin Laden’s capture by American special forces presents a stark contrast with the geopolitically counterproductive and unjustifiably costly wars of invasion that the United States launched in Afghanistan and Iraq in (alleged) pursuit of him.

 

The disproportion in balancing appropriate means with the attainment of (articulable) strategic goals in Afghanistan and Iraq should be obvious.

 

Most of the world, even if reluctantly, understands bringing justice to a murderer/terrorist.  It does not so easily understand killing thousands of innocents and leveling a nation in pursuit of the same result.

 

 

Patience

 

As the Chinese have known for centuries, patience and foresight are the keys to personal and geopolitical success.

 

If the United States is going to compete successfully with sophisticated and subtle minds in the Twenty-First Century, we Americans will need to learn the value of patiently planned intelligence-gathering and genuine (not pretend) military precision.

 

 

Police and military philosophies should merge

 

Today, military operations should pattern themselves more on the strategic considerations that underlie law enforcement’s use of tactical teams.  The Twentieth Century’s idea that large-scale wars of aggression are suited to the attainment of strategic goals is mostly obsolete.

 

 

Backlash — even to a well-done operation

 

Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan may come at a price, given the necessarily two-faced policies regarding him that Islamic nation arguably had to pursue in order to survive.

 

 

Last, a contrast in courage

 

Once again, we see the marked contrast in courage between our military/intelligence forces and our politicians.