With the announcement expected this evening from the United States Commander in Chief that he is
sending additional troops to Afghanistan
to help the Afghan government defeat the Taliban to prevent it from becoming a
safe harbor again for al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists, it is an
appropriate time to consider the length of the war.
Earlier this year, it was widely
reported that the Afghan War became the longest war in United States
history. The war, which began in 2001,
has lasted nearly sixteen years, longer than the Vietnamese War (1959-1975),
which held the previous record. This
report proves my point in 2010 that the war in Afghanistan and the Global War on
Terrorism, of which it is a battle, was not the longest American war, as had
been widely claimed at the time. See my
post from June of that year, Afghanistan
is Not the Longest Ever U.S. War, http://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2010/06/afghanistan-is-not-longest-ever-us-war.html.
There are differences in the
definitions of major and minor wars and whether to count separate campaigns or
incidents in a series of conflicts as one war or separate ones. The “Indian Wars” lasted from American independence
until 1890. The Cold War between the U.S. and International Communists led by the Soviet Union lasted for four and a half decades, from the
post-Second World War period until 1991, with the Korean and Vietnamese Wars as
major campaigns within the war, in addition to many minor wars and other
incidents.
The Liberation of Iraq, which began
in 2003 and has continued intermittently, has been subsumed by the War on
Terrorism as a battle in the latter war both because it was intended to remove
a terrorist-sponsoring regime from power and because Islamist terrorists fought
against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
However, the Liberation of Iraq could be viewed as the second campaign
of a longer war, as Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein never regarded the 1991
Liberation of Kuwait to have ended, which resulted in frequent Iraqi cease-fire
violations and other clashes between the Baathist regime and the coalition led
by the Americans over the twelve-year period between the two campaigns. Both the Iraqi wars and the War on Terrorism
are themselves part of a long war between militant Islam and the rest of the
world, including the United
States .
The U.S. has fought
militant Muslims, who have been motivated at least in part by Islamic holy war,
since the Barbary Wars of the early Nineteenth Century to the early 1980s, with
the rise of terrorism and other militant attacks directed against Americans
because of the Iranian Revolution, as well as clashes with Libya , Syria and other Islamist
militants.
After the September 11, 2001
Terrorist Attacks on the United States, Afghanistan became on October 7 the
first foreign battlefield of the War on Terrorism. The Taliban de facto regime that had harbored
the al-Qaeda Islamist terrorists responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack
in history was toppled by 2002. After
some subsequent mopping up of the retreating Taliban and al-Qaeda, the Afghan
War has transitioned from a major war to a minor one, from the American
perspective, with occasional significant flare-ups. The war has continued to be a major one for
Afghans, as the Taliban, with the help of Iran ,
Russia
and Islamists, has put up stubborn resistance.
After President Barack Obama declared an end to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan , American military
personnel, and those of its international coalition allies, have continued to
advise, train and assist the Afghan government against the resurgent Taliban,
as well as al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the “Islamic State.”
The Afghans have fought the Taliban
and the Islamists valiantly, but the war cannot be won without the additional
American combat troops being sent to Afghanistan in order to prevent any
other terrorist attacks, especially as deadly as September 11. Although the Afghan war may eventually end in
a victory of Islamist terrorists and their allies, the War on Terrorism will
likely continue, not only in Iraq and Syria against al-Qaeda and the Islamic
State, where the enemy has been in steady retreat, but as at least an
intermittent minor war around the Islamic world, especially with frequent drone
or missile strikes and occasional covert or overt commando raids
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