Pace of U.S. Campaign Stirs Unease

In a distant echo of Vietnam, some leading conservatives are quietly questioning whether the Bush administration is allowing its political goals in Afghanistan to excessively shape military strategy.

After 10 days of bombing, the fear is that the administration is restraining its attacks on Taliban forces, especially around the capital, Kabul, until a coalition can be assembled to replace the fundamentalist Islamic regime if it is driven from power.

“Most Republicans want to give the administration the benefit of the doubt,” says Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a hawkish think tank in Washington. But “I think there is a very quiet but nonetheless very real sense of unease about [the military campaign in Afghanistan] seeming to take a little bit longer than it should.”

A former senior Republican official experienced in the region adds: “I think it’s a very serious problem. I think the view of most of the military people is that the objective is to win a victory over the Taliban. . . . I think that’s what the military would like to do, and they are getting a lot of political interference.”

These complaints, which activists say are rumbling through Congress and parts of the Pentagon, reprise the long-standing charge from conservatives and many in the military that political considerations hampered the U.S. effort in Vietnam. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, during his military career, was among the most forceful in insisting that the United States should never again fight “a halfhearted half-war,” as he put it in his memoirs.

A low buzz of criticism on the right is accusing Powell of endorsing just such an approach in Afghanistan as he and other U.S. officials work to assemble a new governing coalition. Powell’s visit to Pakistan this week seemed to hasten that process, with reports indicating that the outline of an interim post-Taliban government is beginning to emerge.

Administration Denies Pacing Afghan Attacks

The administration has publicly denied that it is calibrating its attacks on the Taliban forces, particularly the troops dug in north of Kabul, to prevent the Northern Alliance alone from taking the capital and establishing a new government.

But many experts in the region say such a strategy by the U.S. would be appropriate because the Northern Alliance has too narrow a base of support to consolidate control over the entire country. The group has appeared to acknowledge that point by entering into discussions to form a broader opposition coalition.

“The goal is to work for a stable Afghanistan, so three years from now we are not faced with the same problem again,” says New York University professor Barnett R. Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan.

This debate is occurring amid the fog of war. Outside the Pentagon, few know for certain which targets have been struck and whether operational considerations can explain why some have been hit rather than others.

But leaders of the Northern Alliance, both in Washington and Afghanistan, have repeatedly said that the pattern of U.S. attacks seems to be encouraging them to move west to attack Taliban forces around Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north-central part of the country, rather than south, to confront the Taliban forces defending Kabul.

Privately, senior administration officials have cautioned that even with more targeted U.S. air support, the Northern Alliance is not nearly as capable of taking Kabul as its representatives suggest.

A senior Defense Department official recently told reporters that 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers the Taliban has stationed north of Kabul are a force much greater than the Northern Alliance can field. In addition, the official said, “the Taliban have a lot of their armor in that area; they have a fair amount of artillery.”

At a news briefing Monday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said there had been no “conscious” effort to discourage a Northern Alliance offensive on Kabul. He said U.S. airstrikes had not focused on Taliban forces north of Kabul because “we have had less-than-perfect targeting information.”

He added: “I suspect that in the period ahead, that’s not going to be a very safe place to be.” And on Tuesday, Pentagon officials said they had struck the Taliban positions north of Kabul on Monday, as the air campaign intensified.

But officials in the Northern Alliance, and the critics at home, believe that the Bush administration has been influenced by a reluctance to create conditions that could allow the rebel forces to advance into Kabul. Pakistan, which has become a key U.S. partner in the region, has repeatedly indicated its opposition to an Afghan government led by the Northern Alliance.

Also, the alliance’s factions disintegrated into a chaotic civil war when they ran Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. Many U.S. analysts fear that they would again prove unable to pacify and unify the country.

The conservatives growing uneasy over the administration strategy don’t dispute that conclusion. But they argue that it is premature to focus on it while the Taliban still has a large force in the field. At this point, they argue, the principal goal should be destroying as much of the Taliban military as possible, regardless of the implications for a possible successor government.

“Ultimately, the first priority is getting rid of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, so you can’t let your fastidiousness over what the next government in Kabul is going to be overwhelm your first priorities,” Schmitt says.

Conservative analysts believe that the United States could face at least three distinct risks if it doesn’t accelerate its attacks.

The former senior GOP official says the most obvious danger is that the Taliban will use this period to disperse and dig in.

“In a case like this, the sensible thing is the straightforward thing: If you have Taliban units and you are positioned to attack them effectively, you do it,” the former official says. “Tomorrow you might not be able to get at them.”

Risks Seen in a Protracted Operation

Analysts also warn that the longer the military operation takes, the greater the risk of instability in Pakistan, which has already been racked by protests against the war. “This is a time-urgent issue,” says Kim Holmes, director of international studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Finally, the critics fear that the current U.S. strategy could leave the Taliban with a formidable guerrilla force, even if it is driven from the capital.

Despite these concerns, conservative analysts such as Holmes and Schmitt say it’s too early to reach a final judgment on how the administration is weighing its competing political and military goals. But the discontent on the right is likely to grow louder in the days ahead if the military campaign doesn’t produce more rapid progress.

“If in a couple of weeks we are still where we are right now, I think you’d start to worry,” Holmes says.

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Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus contributed to this report.