simpleton

As everybody now knows, the 75th Rangers Regiment's raid into Afghanistan on October 20 was a fruitless near-disaster that met unexpectedly hard resistance, revealed serious faults in intelligence-gathering, and dampened US enthusiasm for daring raids against what are advertised as relatively safe targets. The tireless Sy Hersh is apparently going to report in tomorrow's New Yorker that a commando attack also launched on the 20th against one of Mullah Muhammed Omar's compounds ended with a ferocious Taliban counterattack that "scared the crap out of everyone" and injured 12 Americans. The realization that our enemies are stronger and more knowledgeable than expected has apparently prompted a general re-thinking of the policy of raiding into enemy territory.

But a survey of recent precedents - some familiar, some barely known in the west - makes it clear that what happened is part of a tactical pattern that has been used repeatedly by our current enemies. That the planners of these recent missions were seemingly unprepared for these very familiar tactics is evidence of incompetence or criminal negligence.

Guerrilla warfare means not engaging your enemy directly, not providing him with any real targets, and knowing more about his tactics and whereabouts than he knows about yours. Above all of these, it means knowing how to use your enemy's size against him through ambush, hit-and-run tactics and various nasty surprises. None of these tactics involve stopping your enemy from going where he wants to go. In fact, they demand that you let him move around freely, and even provide him with incentives to go where you want him to go. Consider this Drudge synopsis of the attack on Omar's compound:

The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar's complex, but found little of value, Hersh reports, and then, "as they came out of the house, the shit hit the fan," one senior officer says. "It was like an ambush. The Taliban were fighting with light arms and either [rocket-propelled grenades] or mortars." The team immediately began taking casualties and evacuated.

Now consider how Grunts.net describes a similar trap, the famous 1993 ambush of the 75th Rangers in Mogadishu, Somalia:

The Rangers conducted numerous missions against Aidid's forces and captured may of his top leaders. On October 3, the Rangers conducted a day time raid into the heart of Aidid's compound and succeeded in capturing more of his leadership cadre. During their extraction, several of the helicopters were shot down. Several dozen Rangers were trapped. Aidid's forces quickly attacked and a furious battle raged. Wave after wave of Somalian guerillas attacked the Rangers, but each was defeated. A rescue mission from 2nd BN 14th Infantry was sent to rescue the Rangers but was ambushed and turned away. The Ranger Rapid Reaction force from the Mogadishu airport made several attempts to reach their comrades but could not reach them.

Even in this account, whose author wants to put the best face on things, it's clear that the guerrillas wanted to get the Americans into position before laying into them. What's not mentioned here is that the Americans had based their raid on disinformation promising the whereabouts of Aidid; the Rangers thought they were heading in to arrest a fugitive.

The similarity here (other than the fact that al Qaeda or its affiliates are involved every time) is the bait-and-switch. In all three cases - the Rangers' raid on the Qandahar airfield, the Delta attack on Omar's compound, and the attempt to arrest Aidid - a conventional army (and no matter how special we think our Special Forces are, they're still more conventional than not) expected to claim a prize. In every case, they were allowed to enter unopposed and only attacked once they thought they'd claimed the objective. The pattern that began in Somalia will only become more pronounced in Afghanistan; the most reliable truism of the Soviet war was that the Afghans will let you come in but won't let you leave.

Now here is another story, one that does not involve the US military, but is still instructive. On New Year's Eve 1999-2000, a Lebanese army company walked into an ambush at a terrorist base probably affiliated with al Qaeda, in the North Lebanon county of Dinneyeh. The story never made big international news (I only know about it because my sister in law lives in the town of Kfar Habou, where the battle took place), but the gunfight killed 11 Lebanese servicemen, three civilians, and at least 20 Islamic militants. It also involved some grim hostage incidents; and it remains unclear how many of the militants were involved, and how many got away.

What is clear is that the Lebanese army gets its training and equipment from the United States, and thus was unprepared in the same way the US Army has been unprepared to meet the current crisis. Again, they were lured in with a false promise: They thought they were going to make a few arrests and break up an extremist radio station. The ambush shocked everybody in its size and ferocity, yet even in a country with a 20-year history of militia-level combat, contemporary news accounts described the exchange in largely conventional terms:

The gunmen had entered Kfar Habbou village in the Marbatah area and seized its people and clashed with the army forces who besieged them.

According to assertions made by people of the area, the Lebanese Army on Sunday had continued imposing a cordon on a mountainous area to which 150 armed extremist Sunnis had resorted in northern Lebanon.

The Lebanese Army, which had sent reinforcements to the region, cut off the supply line for the armed men and established barriers on the roads leading to the hill.

Citizens from Seer al-Dhenyeh town, the largest town in the region, said that the hill is full of mountainous routes which link it to al-Qurna al-Souda summit, the highest summit in Lebanon, 3,080 meters above sea level.

In news reports which were not officially confirmed, the citizens said that the army was preparing to launch an attack taking into account the good weather, while the Lebanese weather forecasting center expected snowfall within 48 hours.

With all this talk of supply lines, cordons and counterattacks, you'd think they were fighting the Czar's army, rather than an agile, slippery and unconventional force. Worst of all, a force with a unique ability to make its enemies believe they are winning.

In all four of these cases, a conventional force goes after an unconventional foe, using methods and intelligence that are guaranteed to fail. Hoodwinking the American army may be bin Laden's greatest talent, and there seems to be very little recognition of this fact. It casts a pall over that inevitable day when America's finest swoop in on what they no doubt have been promised is the greatest prize of all - the cave of OBL himself. It's also worth remembering every time your governor or attorney general puts out a general terrorist threat alert, based on intercepted cell phone messages that were almost definitely put into the airwaves for our benefit. They're laughing in their caves every time we scramble.

We have here an enemy that publishes a 7,000-page manual on tricking your enemies and waging unconventional war in all sectors. If we go out one way against them, we'll end up fleeing seven ways before them. The Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have so far showed an unhealthy ability to think in old-fashioned terms of command and control, logistics, and "weakening" of opposition. General Tommy Franks' comment that he hadn't realized Afghans were tough fighters is even more worrisome. If this really is the New Kind of War we keep hearing about, why are we fighting it the same old way?