More ground troops, more bombs, no pause for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan: Amid criticism it had pulled its military punches in Afghanistan for political reasons, the US this week intensified its war there.
American forces began carpet bombing Taliban positions north of the capital Kabul and the Pentagon laid plans to put more elite troops on the ground, sharply increasing bomb targeting and other support for anti-Taliban forces.
Meanwhile, entreaties that Washington halt its anti-terrorism war during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, were turned aside because it would allow Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network of Islamic militants and Afghanistan's Taliban leaders to regroup.
To some US officials and analysts, such developments reflect a shift in strategy to refocus primary attention on aggressively pursuing military objectives, unfettered -- or less fettered -- by political goals.
"I think there have been too many people who thought they could calibrate the force levels with political outcomes," one senior Bush administration official said.
"It's now increasingly clear that at least in Afghanistan we're going to do what we need to do in terms of force levels and the politics are going to have to take a back seat," said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The comments are a small hint of a debate between civilian and military leaders at the Pentagon, as well as within the Bush administration, since Washington launched the anti-terror war.
The Taliban has refused to surrender bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
One manifestation of the US debate: the decision, now reversed, to hold off for several weeks on bombing Taliban frontlines north of Kabul.
The US had also been simultaneously helping organize opposition Afghan factions into a post-Taliban government, under UN auspices.
There had been fears that if the US devastated Taliban frontlines too soon, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, a loose grouping of ethnic minority militias, would rush to take control of Kabul and undermine establishment of a broad-based coalition that might have a chance of governing the country.
The US envisioned that a new government, not the alliance, would take control of Kabul and other major cities when they were seized from the Taliban.
But the political government-building effort has foundered and there is growing unease about reported civilian casualties in Afghanistan and the apparent resilience of the Taliban in the face of US military might.
"War is a miserable business. Let's get on with it," Senator John McCain wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week in an apparent attempt to steel American resolve.
The senator, a Vietnam veteran and former Republican presidential candidate, bluntly acknowledged that innocents would be killed and economies damaged. But he stressed that bin Laden and his associates started this fight, not the US.
Other analysts say it is ironic officials like Secretary of State Colin Powell might be waging less than all-out war on an enemy the US cannot allow to prevail.
That is because Powell and other critics of NATO's 1999 war in Kosovo faulted the US for initially not prosecuting that conflict with a clear determination to win, for employing inadequate air power and for ruling out use of ground forces.
"US and British leaders are now prosecuting a war in Afghanistan for far more serious ends. The initial effort bears a disturbing resemblance to the Kosovo war," according to Ivo Daalder and Michael O'Hanlon, senior scholars at the Brookings Institution.
Although events of the week suggest the Bush team is intensifying the military campaign, other officials insisted this does not mean abandonment of US political goals.
Washington has a comprehensive strategy to pursue both political and military tracks simultaneously, a senior US official said. But he acknowledged progress is uneven and "what we're not going to do ... is hold some things back on the military [side] completely unless the political things go on."
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,