Reply #23: Quote Army War College and General Odom [View All]

[roseBudd]

"Bounding the Global War on Terrorism" --
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.htm - was
issued in December 2003 by the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the
Army War College. The SSI is the U.S. Army's think tank for the
analysis of national security policy and military strategy. SSI
provides direct analysis for Army and Department of Defense leadership,
and serves as a bridge to the wider strategic community. The report was
written by Dr. Jeffrey Record, professor at the Air War College and
long-time defense expert who is a visiting research professor at SSI.
In his summary of the report, Dr. Record writes:

"Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein's Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was
a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical
differences between the two in character, threat level, and
susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has
been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq
that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism
and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American
homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war
against Iraq was not integral to the , but rather
a detour from it."

--

SUMMARY

The author examines three features of the war on terrorism as currently
defined and conducted: (1) the administration's postulation of the
terrorist threat, (2) the scope and feasibility of U.S. war aims, and
(3) the war's political, fiscal, and military sustainability. He
believes that the war on terrorism--as opposed to the campaign against
al-Qaeda--lacks strategic clarity, embraces unrealistic objectives, and
may not be sustainable over the long haul. He calls for downsizing the
scope of the war on terrorism to reflect concrete U.S. security
interests and the limits of American military power.




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also:




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