ABSTRACT
Nine days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in an address to the American Congress, US President George Bush demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban government close all terrorist-based training camps and turn over all Al Qaeda leaders within its borders. President Bush also called for US access to all existing Al Qaeda bases. On that same day, President Bush declared a “war on terror.” Convinced of the direct link between Mullah Omar’s Taliban government and the 11 September attacks, President Bush waged the first “battle” of the American war against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban. Since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 until 11 September 2001, the US
had suffered no direct attack on its homeland. But, unlike the attacks by Japanese warships in World War II (WWII), the enemy behind the 9/11 attacks was amorphous, hard to pinpoint, and, indeed, difficult to understand. The US military, well-practiced and comfortable at drafting war plans to face conventional forces, confronted an indistinct Afghan foe on an ill-defined battlefield. Arguably, plans for this unconventional war should have presented no challenge in the
US for two main reasons. First, the US has a long history in asymmetric conflict, dating from the Philippine conflict in 1898, through Vietnam, to as recently as Somalia and Bosnia. Second, the US military is unrivaled in terms of technological capability and the size and quality of its fighting force. This chapter assesses US effectiveness in the “irregular war”1 in Afghanistan from October 2001 to 2009,2 and explores the difficulties encountered by the US military in fighting (and winning) the ongoing war.
