Walkingshadow would call it a distortion of the facts. The Northern Alliance is hardly a cadre of "just recruited and trained" soldiers. They have been actively engaged in the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan for decades. In fact, they had ruled the country about 10 years ago until the Taliban pushed them back to their northern power base in 1996. Now the Northern Alliance is faced with a similar uphill battle: the south is the Taliban stronghold, where they are likely to get aid from the Pushtun tribes in that area, which have no love for the Northern Alliance. It should be kept in mind that the victory in the north, while encouraging, merely demonstrated that the Northern Alliance was actually capable of successfully carrying out an offensive with American help---in their own stomping grounds, that the Taliban were never able to dislodge them from in 1996. A toe-to-toe battle in the Taliban strongholds of the south with no sympathy from the Pushtuns or anyone else in the region [in fact, these are probably more likely to side with the Taliban] is not likely to go so smoothly. The Northern Alliance just won the easiest battle they are likely to find themselves in.
In other words, the Northern Alliance will never accomplish what we want to accomplish in Afghanistan. The only thing that will accomplish that is American ground troops. Lots of them, likely 100,000 or more.
Although it might put you at an unaccustomed low spot on your "common sense scale", you may want to research this a tad instead of making it up as you go along. Here's one recent piece, for example:
latimes.com
WS |
