Instead, senior officers are gloating that their first battle was waged and won on the Pentagon's terms, not in reaction to the politicians or the press. Put together hurriedly after 9/11, the first battle has proceeded with an almost religious adherence to a schedule that ignored diplomatic, media and political distractions. "This war is going exactly as we wanted it to go," one Pentagon official boasted. "We're doing exactly what we wanted to do. And we're doing it on our timetable, not the 24-hour news cycle."
A new kind of war?
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In other parts of the Pentagon, military strategists are mulling the possibility that the Afghan battle will be a template for a revolution in warfare against rogue nations. In the future, precision air attacks and bombs much smarter than the ones dropped during Desert Storm will be guided to their targets by small commando contingents on the ground. The air-commando force will destroy strategic centers of gravity with few U.S. casualties. There won't be a need for so many conventional Army divisions, particularly the heavy ones with tanks that take forever to get to foreign battlefields. The Army, as you can guess, is not too excited about this idea.
The elusive mastermind
Despite the near-euphoria over battle successes, bin Laden remains a loose end for the Pentagon. The generals know he eventually has to be found (dead or alive) for the military victory to be complete. There are positive signs: U.S. intelligence believes that senior al-Qaeda operatives posing as foot soldiers are sprinkled among the some 1,000 prisoners controlled by anti-Taliban forces. American commandos and Afghan fighters are still rooting through the caves of Tora Bora; they've checked more than a hundred so far. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has promised the White House his forces are watching the border with Afghanistan and will turn bin Laden over to the U.S. if he's caught.
But that's still a big if. There are still several hundred more caves to be checked, and even in those that have been searched, U.S. commandos can't be sure that they've covered every entrance or exit. Spotting bin Laden, if he tries to cross the border into Pakistan, may be difficult. In one part of Tora Bora alone, a U.S. intelligence source tells me, there are some 240 roads and trails leading to Pakistan. "It's going to be a while before we find him," this source predicts.