After 9/11 attacks, a military transformed — and exhausted focus 08/26/2011

After 9/11 attacks, a military transformed — and exhausted

focus

08/26/2011
WASHINGTON — After the 9/11 attacks, the US military found itself ill-prepared for waging war against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, forcing a costly transformation that has left the force exhausted after a decade of combat.
It took only weeks to topple the Taliban in Kabul and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, but American troops soon found themselves in a protracted battle that they had not trained for against insurgents using crude but lethal weapons.
The Bush administration went to war with an “exaggerated confidence in the efficacy of high-tech warfare to cope with low-tech adversaries and an aversion to the whole concept of nation building,” wrote James Dobbins, a former US ambassador now at the RAND Corp. think tank.
Having discarded counter-insurgency tactics after the Vietnam conflict, the military’s captains and majors had to learn again how to fight militants armed with kalashnikovs and homemade bombs.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110826com3.html