I’m hardly an expert on modern warfare, but this New York Times op-ed is pretty clearly silly and deserving of refutation. Defense consultant Lara Dadkhah is discussing the way that NATO air forces have voluntarily drawn down their airstrikes and are thus tying one hand behind their back. She argues that this is incredibly harmful since “America does not have the manpower to fight the Taliban one-on-one”. Well, let’s begin by pointing out that NATO soldiers outnumber the Taliban 12 to 1
More to the point, the use of less firepower against the Taliban is a feature rather than a bug. The point of the American offensive is not to obliterate the town of Marja or to drive a hostile occupying army out of it. The Taliban are really very lightly armed, few in number, and militarily amateur. The ideal outcome for them is that the US bombards Marja and turns impressionable Afghan civilians to their cause. The US is deliberately taking more risk on its fighting forces by eschewing air power in order to not alienate the population. That’s the reason that America deployed so many more troops to Afghanistan in the first place. With all due respect, Ms. Dadkhah’s suggested strategy of punishing strikes into Taliban country supported by air power has been tried before. It was called the Vietnam War.
This war is definitely not a self-evidently justified one at this point. It seems strategically unnecessary and entailing much more potential downside (and actual downside) than potential upside. But it doesn’t help anyone to go about it stupidly, especially by being determined to repeat the mistakes of an old war.