Bush under pressure to intensify campaign

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, OCT. 29. The Bush administration is coming under increasing pressure to expand the scope of the operations in Afghanistan. A prominent Republican Senator, Mr. John McCain, has said that Washington should unleash all its might; and that there was a major difference between the Vietnam War and the present campaign against terrorism.

``I think what we are going to have to put in is numbers of forces that are capable of maintaining a base for a period of time, relatively short, so they can branch out and move into certain areas where we believe the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks are located'', the Arizona Republican said on Sunday. Senior Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives have said that should the President commit ground troops, their support will be readily forthcoming.

The point that senior law makers are making is that air power alone will not do in the current operations and that the situation in Afghanistan is vastly different from that in Yugoslavia where a continuous bombing campaign for 78 days brought Mr. Slobodan Milosevic to his knees.

``It is going to take a very big effort and probably casualties will be involved and it won't be accomplished through air power alone'', Mr. McCain argued. But officials of the Bush administration are quite guarded when it comes to deploying land forces. ``Let's not go there yet'', the President's Chief of Staff, Mr. Andrew Card, maintained. Pentagon officials, civilian and military, are not saying much on the subject.

One of the criticisms against the current American gameplan is that the military strikes are not having the kind of muscle they should and that this was emboldening the Taliban. The perception is that the administration is somehow holding back from going all out to attack the Taliban militia and the Al-Qaeda network. ``We are not holding back at all. We'll do what we have to do to win'', Mr. Card said.

Law makers on both sides of the political divide are brushing aside the comparison of Afghanistan to the American involvement in Vietnam. ``The Vietnam War never had the wholehearted support of the American people, and in fact as it went on, fewer and fewer Americans not only didn't support it but actively opposed it'', Mr. McCain argued, going on to make the point that in the present instance, Americans have been affected in a dramatic way and that their patience and support is permanent.

The general impression is that Washington is holding back from fully backing the forces of the Northern Alliance because a political alternative to the Taliban is yet to take shape in spite of hectic efforts. And the big worry is that openly backing the Northern Alliance would force the ethnic Pashtuns to rally behind the Taliban, a clearly undesirable proposition.

Further, the U.S. and many in the international community are well aware of the Northern Alliance's track record of governance in the post-Soviet phase. This has made the security environment in the post-Taliban period especially worrisome to many in the United Nations Security Council.

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Section  : International
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