A Bomb Here, a Bomb There.(Afghanistan Conflict)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

You see a typical stretch of Afghan countryside--treeless, barren except for a few ruined mud huts, the soil dry and dirty orange. A kilometer or so away, there's a bang and a cloud of smoke. The camera pans to follow a tiny silver plane in the sky, and a few hundred meters away there's another explosion. The TV commentator calls this some of the heaviest bombing of the war. Then in the foreground, an Afghan soldier from the U.S.-friendly Northern Alliance shouts into a walkie- talkie to the enemy less than a kilometer away. A song drifts back from the Taliban--"a song with bad words," the soldier explains, insulting the alliance's recently assassinated leader.

We drop a bomb here and a bomb there, and the enemy replies by singing songs? I've been to a number of fronts as a NEWSWEEK correspondent, including with the American military in Vietnam and Iraq, and if this tempo continues, Osama bin Laden will be in Afghanistan--and the Americans will be, too--this time next year. In Vietnam the sky would have been painted with the red flames and black smoke of napalm, the horizon would have been jiggling under "arc lights"--the force of three B-52s dropping 90 tons of bombs in unison. In the gulf war, the tank unit I accompanied, the Tiger Brigade, rolled into Kuwait only after three months of ferocious bombing. As we approached, terrified Iraqis tripped over each other to surrender. I don't see that happening with the Taliban. They're not under great pressure, and all they have to do is just sit there and stay alive.

The Americans' main problem is that, despite their denials, they are bound to a timetable. Whatever the administration may say, this campaign cannot drag on for years. The American people want action fast, and that means killing or capturing Osama bin Laden first, then dismantling the Taliban soon, not at some distant point when the Twin Towers have been rebuilt. At the same time, the United States must move fast in order to hold together its fragile Islamic coalition, already disturbed by Afghan civilian casualties. Washington needs to show some success before Ramadan--the Muslim holy month that this year begins on Nov. 17. The onset of winter, also next month, closes up high passes and many of the country's rudimentary roads, and traditionally brings fighting to a virtual standstill.

On the other hand, moving that fast militarily could create an equally dangerous diplomatic problem. Only the dreamers believe that in just a few weeks the United States, while running a war, and the United Nations, never ...