How can the U.S. fulfill its mission in Afghanistan without dusting off and employing nuclear weapons?

I'm not talking about using the big boys capable of wiping out the entire country. I'm referring to low-yield nukes that will clear entire regions of combatants quickly and efficiently without having to expose our troops to danger. Strategic nuclear weapons are effective, compact and easily delivered.

There is a formula to war; expend abc to accomplish xyz.

For example, in Iraq the U.S. spent $2 trillion, lost 4,209 military lives, killed over 1 million Iraqis, destroyed billions of dollars in property and materiel, and spent six years doing so. Might it not be better in Afghanistan to reduce the costs when the outcome will be the same, by employing highly effective, if controversial, nuclear weapon technology?

That's what nukes are good at; efficient killing with the minimum of effort. The Afghan mission can be accomplished with nothing more than the cost of gas from our Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean to Afghanistan and back. Admittedly surviving Afghan sheep may grow six legs for a few hundred years or so but that's a small price to pay to save our soldiers lives, and spare Afghanistan at large, further turmoil and torment.

War, by definition is a deadly business. There is nothing fair about it. The guy with the bigger stick usually wins. The trick is to do so without getting harmed yourself.

A war in Afghanistan is impossible to win by conventional means. As previous conflicts have shown, mere manpower is not enough. As seven years of carpet and strategic conventional bombing have shown, that too is not enough. With all the resources of technology and the instruments of death at our fingertips, we have not yet so much as disturbed a hair on the head of our declared enemy, Osama Bin Laden. Why?

Because we are not using all of the resources at our disposal. For some reason we - and our politicians - seem to think that there is a humane way to wage war. There isn't; dead is dead. Our enemies in Afghanistan are not so gentle and are restrained only by their lack of access to more deadly technology. Otherwise our cities would be smoldering piles of masonry as 9/11 amply demonstrated.

The hills and valleys of Afghanistan are scattered with the debris of previous wars, civil and incursive. The mountain terrain bears silent witness to the ghosts of invaders who have come and gone. The British in the mid 18th century were faced with an invisible enemy as were the Soviets in the 1980s. Both were world superpowers of their times. Both, despite all of modern technology available to them, left the country with their tails between their legs, their soldiers demoralized, shocked and shaken. America can't afford an experience like that.

Afghanistan is a merciless region inhabited by tribesmen toughened through hard living and generations of battle. As devout orthodox Muslims these warriors believe that killing the enemy (us) is their sole mission at the cost of their own lives. It's hard to fight someone who is not afraid to die; to whom life has no value. They have no qualms about using and hiding behind civilians; their concept of life is alien to us, as ours is to them. The Taliban, the guardians of Al-Qaeda, believe that they can kill other Muslims too if they do not measure up to their orthodox measure of Islam. Life is cheap; education for women forbidden; modern accoutrements banned. There is no law other than tribal which tends to be rudimentary, swift and brutal.

There are few more hostile environments on earth. Past invaders feared the night, fearing above all else being left wounded on an Afghan battlefield. As recounted in a a poem written by Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier," in 1892, "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

The USSR spent nine years in the rugged country during the 1980s. We (the U.S.) have been there seven. The borders of the country are porous; the tribes freely cross and mingle with brethren in Iran, and the four 'stans'; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan where we cannot follow. They are heavily armed, thanks to the United States; the result of the U.S. pouring money and weaponry into the area during the Soviet invasion.

The Soviets fought an all-out war against this enemy using every conventional means at their disposal and lost. With a rotated Soviet troop presence of over 100,000, a local Afghan army of over 300,000, all of the military might of the Soviet bloc, and free from the restrictions imposed by a critical media, the Soviets could not stop Afghanistan becoming their Vietnam.

The result; 14,000 Soviet deaths, 465,000 injuries and illness from lack of hygiene. Over 1 million Afghans were killed, 4.2 million wounded and maimed. Despite the catastrophic losses the tribesmen came out victorious. There's a warning for us there.

As was learned in Iraq and countless previous conflicts, civilian casualties are part of the business of war. It's unfortunate; a fact nonetheless and once committed to war we tend to forget. As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy; one million a statistic.

Over the course of our invasion of Iraq, we killed, by the calculation of a British Research firm Opinion Research Business (See 1 below), over one million Iraqis, combatants and civilians alike. It is safe to assume that the same will happen in Afghanistan except this time the terrain works against us increasing the odds in favor of the enemy.

The decision therefore is how much we are willing to spend in terms of our manpower to accomplish our mission. Indeed, what is our mission? If the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are our enemy and their goal is the destruction of our culture and lifestyle, we cannot leave without their total destruction or they will continue their methodical attempts to destroy us. They're in no hurry and can wait for technology to come to them. Iran's rush for nuclear weapons could well be the harbinger of things to come in that region; and ours.

One American life lost is too many. Fighting the tribesmen in their mountain locations will be slow, tedious and by historic record, impossible. So why bother?

Nukes allow us to fight a hands-off war, on our own terms. After all what is a nuke but a large bomb? Conventional explosives make mushroom clouds too. Both types of bomb kill, burn and dismember. However to do the job of one nuke we would have to send in 1,000 bombers laden with convention explosives risking men and equipment.

Why not use nukes? Their use is barbaric? That's what war is. Have you ever seen what a bullet does to a person? Or high explosives? Or an artillery shell? Let me repeat, dead is dead; whether it's accomplished with a jagged hole in the head or the complete disintegration of a body.

If killing is our business let's use the most effective technique we have and be done with Afghanistan. We'll accomplish our mission; scare the shit out of our remaining enemies, have our soldiers back with their families where they belong, and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.

References:
(1) http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88

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