Check out these recent news reports:
The Taliban cannot stand against the US/coalition forces in conventional warfare, but the coalition forces cannot eradicate the Taliban nor stop their guerrilla attacks on the coalition forces.
To your knowledge, has any superpower ever defeated a country, no matter how small and militarily insignificant, when that country employed the use of guerrilla tactics? Not to mine, but I'd like to know if it's ever happened.
Guerrilla fighters are regular people most of the time, who occasionally sneak out, launch a couple hundred dollars' worth of mortar rounds at US military bases costing the US a couple million dollars in damaged supplies and equipment and possibly maiming or killing some troops, then sneak back home; or they wait until troops are passing by, pick up a grenade launcher and start killing them, etc. Sometimes you can catch them in the act and kill them, but not nearly often enough. They blend in to the general public.
Russia couldn't win in Afghanistan after ten years of trying, and the US couldn't win in Vietnam. There is a way to win a war against guerrilla fighters, but it means killing everyone in that country old enough to carry a bomb so you make sure you kill all the guerrilla fighters, but of course you'd be killing all the innocent people as well. Maybe some countries are capable of that, but I think the US would consider that too high a cost, at least in terms of PR.
Same thing in Iraq, but replace al Qaeda/insurgents with the Taliban.
I am only seeing two options for the US at this point: Continue fighting and expending national resources at an unprecedented rate until our economy collapses, or withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan and let the Taliban and/or al Qaeda take over (or at least instigate civil wars.)
If the US withdraws and Osama attacks us again, he'll lose the support of the Muslim clerics, because he promised a truce if the US withdrew their troops from the Mideast. The Muslim clerics sharply criticized him for the
9/11 attacks because they believed he should have given the US adequate warning and time to comply with his demands. However they did not withdraw their support for him at that time, though they seemed close to doing so.Losing the support of the clerics doesn't mean al Qaeda would be destroyed, but it would substantially reduce the amount of help they receive from the people in their area. That would help covert agents gather intelligence on and assassinate key members of the group.
On the other hand, if the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be saying that terrorists can get whatever they want by attacking the US. Obviously, this is not acceptable.
What's the solution?