The Nation: A 50-year War?

[amborin]

"Let us say, hypothetically, that American forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, enabling President Obama to declare victory and bring our troops home. Would he? Not according to the Pentagon's plan for a fifty-year "Long War" of counterinsurgency spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond.

....Military intellectuals envision a prolonged cold war against Al Qaeda, with hot wars along the way. It happens that the Long War is over Muslim lands rich with oil, natural gas and planned pipelines. The Pentagon identifies them as hostile terrain where Al Qaeda and its affiliates are hidden.

Among the top experts responsible for this fifty-year war plan, concocted in 2005 in windowless offices in the Pentagon, is Dr. David Kilcullen, a former Australian soldier, an anthropologist, former top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and current aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal....presents the case for a Long War of fifty or even 100 years' duration...

Kilcullen testified recently before the Senate that Afghanistan and Pakistan will require two more years of "significant combat," plus another decade of nation building at an additional cost of $2 billion per month. Given the current military cost of $4 billion per month, that could mean more than $80 billion annually for Afghanistan alone, or $1 trillion if Obama serves two terms, not counting long-term costs like veterans' healthcare.

/snip

Without his acknowledging it, Kilcullen's plan plays directly into what he believes is Al Qaeda's strategy of exhausting the United States militarily and economically. And yet he thinks the Long War is inevitable."

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/hayden>