Is The War On Terror A War of Attrition?

A war of attrition is a strategic plan to win a war under the concept of wearing one's enemy down to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel. The victor being the side with the greater such reserves at the end of the conflict.

notable examples of attrition warfare have been the Western Front during WWI where both sides found themselves in the trenches with the belief by both sides that victory could be attained by continually attacking one another head on until the other side was worn down. And most recently was the Vietnam War where again U.S. strategy was to wear down the enemy until they lost their will to fight.

In both cases, the strategy of attrition failed. In the case of trench warfare, neither side was ever able to wear down the opposition and both sides suffered tremendous losses with no real gain and in the Vietnam War the strategy failed because the U.S. severely underestimated the North Vietnamese government and their supporters determination to defeat their enemy no matter what the cost.

And now we find ourselves in a similar position with the so-called War on Terror. Except in this case we do not find ourselves facing off against a specific government or group. Of course the Bush administration likes to point to Al-Qaida as the current enemy but even if we were to eradicate every member of Al-Qaida in the coming year Bush knows that eventually another anti-American group would come along to pose a potential threat to our security and the War on Terror would go on.

Bush has positioned us into the worst possible war of attrition because the enemy could be anyone who has an agenda that is fundamentally opposed to that of the United States. The enemy could be foreign or domestic, they could oppose us based on religious, philosophical, political or economical reasons. The United States will always face the possibility of attack by groups or individuals for any number of reasons and it is precisely why declaring a war on terror is pointless.

If the leadership of this country was sincere in wanting to keep us safe we would never have stretched our military resources so thin and purposely destabilized a region of the world that has been a hotbed of anti-American activity for decades. Bush can be credited with a stroke of demented genius.