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 ictory
makes everything look different.
What appears
to be the Northern Alliance's extraordinary rout of the Taliban
in the north and west may be temporary, as the Afghan way of war
sometimes features armies running away in headlong retreat, then
running right back again as the other side, in turn, runs away in
headlong retreat.
But be that
as it may, you can feel the forces beneath the international status
quo buckling a bit, as the application of American power turns the
world a little plastic, makes possible fundamental reorderings that
would have been unthinkable otherwise.
What is Saddam
thinking right now as he sits in Baghdad, perhaps a marked man?
The mullahs of Iran, as they sit above a powder keg of domestic
unrest? Yasser Arafat, as he watches what a dollop of American power
has wrought in Afghanistan?
What they should
be thinking is, "Oh, s---," and if the U.S. plays to that
fear — increasing and manipulating it — we will able to
effect serious change in the Middle East.
The last couple
days have been a vindication of the strategic shift the administration
made in response to the failure of its initial strategy, of bombing
the south in hopes of prompting Pashtun defections. Instead, as
NR had urged for weeks, the administration began killing Taliban
troops in the north, with delightful results. There is no substitute
for destroying your enemies.
There's also
no substitute for taking and holding ground. Relying on the Northern
Alliance to do it was a risk,
as I wrote last week, but once we began to bomb Taliban troops
in earnest and arm the Northern Alliance, there was little doubt
about the ultimate result (although I, of course, had no idea how
quickly things would work out in the north).
R.W. Apple's
piece in the New York Times about how
Afghanistan could be another Vietnam looked silly at the time,
but seems positively ridiculous now.
Of course,
there is much work to be done. In most wars, we kill people to take
territory. In this war, we are taking territory to kill people —
the Taliban military and leadership, and Osama bin Laden.
That goal may
still be months — or even longer — away. That goal may
yet take an appreciable American force on the ground. But it is
now closer, and that is a wonderful thing.
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