Please tell me this isn't shocking people? We continually observe borders that our adversaries do not and this isn't limited to our current conflicts. We suffer from some sort of phobia about image tarnishing and public fallout from possible failure in regards to missions that aren't fully rehearsed and prepped for...read Richard Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts" and his observations from his time in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. The special forces troops on the ground were continually constrained from timely action due to "higher headquarters" requirements to provide CONOPs and getting approvals from hundreds of miles away. We still suffer from the memories of Desert One and the bad day in '93 in Mogadishu, Somalia...despite our mantras and claims by the President we're not attacking foes "...anywhere, anytime..." nor do we "..make no distinctions between the terrorists and those who harbor them...". Not too mention, history tells us that Vietnam was run from D.C. and Saigon, I would argue that this war is also run from D.C. and Bagram and Baghdad and Balad. Our special forces continually suffer from too much oversight and staff requirements from higher to effectively do their missions.
As far as allies go, I am still wondering why we even sided with the Pakistanis in the first place? Musharraf aborted CIA attempts in October 1999 to capture Osama Bin Laden in Tarnak Farms according to numerous open source articles. Musharraf refused to honor the deal between the CIA and the Pak government (that was formulated under then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who was overthrown in a coup led by Musharraf that same month) that would have provided Pakistani commandos to assist in such a raid to capture Osama Bin Laden should he be detected by CIA Predator drones (which he was). This was prior to the strike capability of the Predator, I believe had that mission gone off we would have seen UBL hauled to the Hague to stand trial for the '93 WTC attack, the '98 Tanzania-Kenya bombings, and possibly avoided the Oct '00 bombing of the USS Cole.
This article is a sad commentary on how we fight wars and in some form or another I hope to someday find out why we sided with Pakistan in the first place. Plus, I won't even comment on how this alliance flys in the face of the so-called "spreading democracy" doctrine once touted by this administration.
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