The battle of Gardez, currently being fought between mostly American troops and al-Quaida and Taliban warriors in the mountains of Afghanistan, will probably result in an American victory, of sorts. In the end, we will control the terrain, and the enemy will have suffered heavier casualties than we did (though current claims, like all claims in combat, are undoubtedly inflated).

Both were also true of the battle of the Ia Drang, the American army's first major battle with the Vietnamese communists, a battle brilliantly memorialized in the book "We Were Soldiers Once… And Young," which is soon to be a movie. The United States regarded the Ia Drang battle as a victory But the Vietnamese communist forces did not consider it a defeat. On the contrary, the main lesson they drew from the engagement was that despite American technological superiority, they could stand up against U.S. forces; as they did, for another ten years.

Could the battle of Gardez be another Ia Dang? Very possibly. Again, we are likely to win, in a narrow sense. But the Islamic forces fighting us have already had one significant success: for the first time in the war, they have fought us rather than hiding or fleeing. And, while few details are available yet, it seems as if they were able to fight with some success, perhaps as much as the Vietnamese obtained at the Ia Drang.

Remember, the Islamics, like the Vietnamese, can take much heavier casualties than we can and keep fighting, because what is to us a limited war is to them a war for survival.

If the results of the battle of Gardez are such as to lead the Taliban and al-Quaida to conclude that they can fight us, the Afghan war may just be starting. That alone should concern us. A greater concern is the Bush Administration's strategy, which can be summed up as looking for fights wherever they can be found. Georgia, Yemen, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kosovo - in all those places and soon, no doubt, more, we are doing our best to give people reasons to attack America. Is this a strategy for keeping America safe? If so, I suspect it will work as well as Israel's strategy to keep its people safe.

In a world of Fourth Generation warfare, one of the most important rules is the law of conservation of enemies: don't create any more enemies than you absolutely have to. On the other hand, if the goal is not domestic peace and security but instead a vast increase in government power and defense spending, then looking for fights is the way to go. Of course, we all know a Republican Administration would never have those as objectives?

Or do we?

William S. Lind is the director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.

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