374 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 2 / 2013 Even when Kandahar was occupied, military logic prevailed and the result was optimal employing a little more than a month to control the country by the warlord’s militias, with minimal deployment composed of the CIA and Special Army Forces. Even so, it was found that the land phase was the most expensive to execute, with little time preparation time. Also, aerial bombing over fixed targets had the risk of leaving the military without any initiative in the operation pursued. They were very risky, because there was always the possibility that the bombs could fall in the wrong places and cause dreaded collateral damage. “There was the need to reduce the bombing has returned the predominance to the ground forces rather than to air activity actions that causes more damage to self-image and civilian casualties than those of the insurgency”.46 Three weeks after the first bombings, Vice President Richard Cheney raised the need to achieve a military objective when the U.S. seemed bogged down in meaningless air activities: “We want to create a sensation that victory is inevitable, in order for people to move to our side”. On the 31st of October, with the strategy stuck in the bombings and the press talking about Vietnam, President Bush opened the meeting of the National Security Council that morning with this statement: “We are losing the public relations war. They do not appreciate what we are doing in Afghanistan “.47 With the military and occupation of the main towns of the country, it seemed that the mission could be considered as have been carried out. In fact, once Karzai was sworn in as the interim president and ISAF began their mission in the zone as of January 2002, military operations are reduced to specific missions in the south and east of the country against Taliban who have taken refuge in the mountains, where the Al-Qaida leader, Osama Bin Laden was hunted down without any success. The problem of the interests of the coalition began when the Taliban stronghold and Al-Qaida that had remained hidden in the country during those months begin to reorganize. This happen relatively soon, in the summer of 2002, with a first attach aimed at leaving the government without a leader. Karzai survived an assassination attempt on September 2002. All throughout that whole second half of the year, the attacks become more and more continuous. It is no coincidence that when the insurgents began to come out of hiding and to reorganized. Then the first unfortunate incident starts to undermine the credibility of 2009 • LAWRENCE, B (ed.) Messages to the World: the Statements of Osama Bin Laden. New York, Verso, 2005 • WOODWARD, B. Bush en guerra. Barcelona, Península, 2003 46 ARTEAGA, F. “Terrorismo, contrainsurgencia y opinión pública”, en JORDÁN, J., POZO, P. y GUINDO, M.G. (coords.) Terrorismo sin fronteras. Actores escenarios y respuestas en un mundo global. Cizur Menor: Aranzadi Thomson Reuters, 2010, p. 219. 47 WOODWARD, B. Bush en guerra. Barcelona: Península, 2003, p. 293.
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