Defeating Al Qaeda Takes Ingenuity

Some of our best young men--Special Forces, Rangers, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne--are risking their lives this very moment in the mountains of Afghanistan, and several of them already have paid the highest price possible. The problem is with the price--the casualties.

Al Qaeda has some built-in advantages: They hold the higher elevation, they know their little caves, their attack routes and escape channels. They are used to the terrain and the weather, and their needs are few. Their weaponry is neither new nor old and can suffice their tactical needs. Most of them are Arabs, and as the old Arab saying goes, “When you push a cat into the corner, it becomes a tiger.”

We are better trained and our equipment is unmatched. Nevertheless, if I were commanding a battalion, moving uphill in those rugged mountains and chilly weather, trying to wipe out many little outposts and caves that house fanatics who are engaged in a psychological fervor of suicidal martyrdom, I would be concerned. I would feel that I was walking in the footsteps of the Soviet units that were the previous evicted tenants of those mountains. If there is one thing I would not do, it is to follow their tragic path.

But Special Forces are no strangers to special thinking.

There are at least three things that we should do that Al Qaeda can’t:

* We should operate in these mountains only at night. We are well equipped for night fighting, which they know nothing about and certainly are not outfitted for. Every shot fired in the dark by an Al Qaeda fighter will extradite his position, which is not necessarily the case during daytime. At night, he can’t see us, but we can see him.

* We should command the mountain peaks from the top down. Don’t crawl up from the valley or expose big helicopters to fire; instead drop in those tough small military skydiver units that can land on a dime on a mountain peak. They can take position and start sniping their way in the right direction: from top to bottom.

* We should use gas. Not nerve gas or mustard gas but sleeping gas. There’s no reason why we can’t use C-130 planes to cropdust them with sleeping gas. Explosions of sleeping gas will neutralize the enemy for several hours while our young men put their gas masks on and get their handcuffs ready to arrest the snoring foe. The clouds of sleeping sedatives would infiltrate every trench hole, bunker and cave.

The days of fixing bayonets are over. The days of fixing new thinking have arrived. We are almost guaranteed technological superiority against any feasible enemy, and we should use it fully to our advantage, and to the benefit of the American mothers and fathers who send their sons into battle.