Aircraft Carriers - What is their future?

[Dill]

(07-20-2017, 12:21 PM)Benton Wrote: Eh, we're probably going to veer off top a little here. But — in my opinion as an arm chair general — we never should have engaged in that ground war. 

We can handle a clear battle with definable lines. When you're fighting a group that doesn't really care about holding specific positions, you've got to change your tactic. We didn't. We took mostly the same approach of 'occupy here, bomb there, move; occupy here, bomb there, move.' Our military leaders should have listened to our intelligence community before 9/11 and they should have let them handle it after 9/11.

Benton! Thanks for that response. It was substantive, well informed and well expressed.  I want to respond in two posts. In this one I just want to address your remarks on Afghanistan.

First, The bolded remarks puzzle me. I don't understand how the US could have defeated Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without going and rooting them out.  Sending in a naval task force with aircraft carriers to send out fighter bombers and cruise missles would have done little damage over all and left the Taliban in charge of the country.

Except for the fact the US did not block the Pakistan border fast enough, and relied too much upon Pakistani's to tell them who was Al Qaeda, I don't have a big problem with the initial phase of the war, which accomplished its goal of taking down the Taliban and rooting out Al Qaeda.

Second, had the US simply left Afghanistan without an occupation, both the Taliban and Al Qaeda would have simply reconstituted themselves, and dug in more deeply.  Your remarks above seem to assume either that this reconstitution would not occur or, if it it did, would no longer pose a threat to the US, so we would not have to come back.
I'm pretty sure that if we leave A-stan now, we leave another broken state--a haven for ISIS and Al Qaeda, or whatever new group we'll see forming from their remnants over the next 5 years.

Third, the occupation following the US victory arguably failed (or partially failed) because Bush/Cheney supported Rummy's doctrine of lean and mobile force, and because all three were against "nation-building." After the victory, they basically turned the country back over to the warlords--creating the conditions rather like those which gave rise to the Taliban in the first place. The lack of commitment to creating a stable A-stan has led to our present dilemma.

When the US is attacked by an adversary which doesn't really offer "defined positions" to bomb and fight, it can hardly respond saying, "well, we aren't good at that so we can't fight those guys."  It has to figure out how to fight them, which may take years.
Just for the record, the US did not bomb and "move" in A-stan (if I have understood your point). They set up many FOBs to project power in the southern provinces and those bordering Pakistan. These did not "move" though there were not permanent either.

One larger point I hope to make with this post and the next is that we suffered the Bush era disasters in large part because people who ignored history and diplomacy came to power with the idea they could manage international problems simply and cheaply. The lesson to take from that is not that we should disengage from international problems, but that we should choose our leaders more wisely. Unfortunately, we seem to have gone in the opposite direction, as now some look back on the Bush era and, confusing the Bush team with "experts," claim expertise got us bogged down in Iraq and A-stan, so let's get an outsider in the top position, someone who lacks experience--how could he do any worse?