It took ten years, but rough justice was done to Osama in the wee hours of this morning Pakistan time. No, he didn't get Mirandized nor did he get a trial, but he opted to go down fighting when a team of Seals came for him in a compound in Abbottabad. This wasn't a remote village but the site of the Pakistani West Point, so local officials will likely have some 'splainin' to do as to how Osama was sitting under their noses.
It's not a happy-happy day. al Qaeda has largely metastisized into a loose coaltion that doesn't need a leader, but the changes over the last few years have made the group less able to run big operations like 9/11.
What is interesting is that it didn't take a big military footprint to do the job; a small special-ops unit was able to do the job. That might play to a strategy that leans more towards a criminal/SWAT team approach rather than a tanks and bombers approach, supplimented by good military special forces and CIA assets.
Small surgical teams worked here, but I don't think they're appropriate for every situation. Note that it took years of intel (probably a cast of thousands). They built a practice compound in the last month or two, which will happen only for the highest value targets. The two blackhawk choppers can take teams of 11; w/ pilots and all, probably closer to 20+ people were on this trip to take out one guy. The choppers took off from 'friendly' territory (Afghanistan), which requires boots on the ground to secure. They ended up on the USS Carl Vinson, which is a Nimitz-class carrier, and has a crew of 5600+. All this would have been a lot harder if they'd had a longer way to travel; see the botched 1980 embassy rescue attempt in Iran (Operation Eagle Claw).
The special forces guys on this trip were the very sharp point of our military's weaponry. They deserve a lot of credit for their work. But, they're effectively supported by a cast of tens of thousands who enabled them to spend more time on the mission, and less time worrying about things like logistics. When going after uber-high-value targets like OBL, this approach works. But, most organizations, including Al Quaeda, have more of a pyramid structure, where there's hundreds to thousands of mid-level people. I don't think that sending special forces after each of those would work. Tanks and bombers and boots on the ground are still the best way to take out the big fat part part of the enemy's pyramid.
Posted by: Nathan Mates | May 03, 2011 at 01:43 PM