CNN.com - Maj. Gen. David Grange:

Maj. Gen. David Grange: Ground ops shake up Taliban


David Grange is a retired U.S. Army major general and a military analyst for CNN.

Update: I think that the special ops operation -- the two raids -- really shook them up a bit. They originally really thought that we did not have the guts to put troops on the ground like this -- that we only could fight at 10,000 feet. We could not fight eye-to-eye, face-to-face. This really broke that myth that they have been propagandizing within their own forces saying, "We're going to beat the Americans. They're not going to put boots on the ground. They're not going to fight us as men. They are going to fight us from the sky."

Impact: We went to (Mullah Mohammed) Omar's house. We brought the fight to them like they did to the trade center. That means we have the initiative. We have the offensive instead of defensive, reactive posture. We went into one of his command posts where he also lives. That's their stronghold. That's like right in their pea-patch. That really got them. Consequently you're seeing propaganda coming out to try to reverse the effect that we had on them -- maybe not so much the kinetic effect of death, but the psychological effect. So they are saying we shot down so many aircraft and we killed so many people. That is a good indicator we were successful because we rattled them.

The other two things that came from the raid was a great confidence builder for our soldiers. And some of these rangers were probably some of the rangers from Mogadishu and Somalia in 1993. So this was a great morale lift because there has been speculation that some of bin Laden's guys helped in Mogadishu. If that's the case, it was almost like payback.

And the raids affected the coalition in the world. The countries that are with us on this thing know that we are not going to do this like the Kosovo thing--78 days of bombing and nobody on the ground. They know that we mean commitment. When you put people on the ground, you have truly committed yourself. The rest of the world knows we are committed to winning this fight and we can walk our talk.

Tactics: On the air strikes, that is showing we are starting now to really pick up the targeting of ground forces -- vehicles and troops and supply depots -- directly helping the anti-Taliban alliance. We are starting to pick up the support of those guys to help the ground fight. Before they were more targets that were totally al Qaeda-oriented. Now there are targets that are more Taliban maneuver force oriented that would affect the fight between the Taliban and the anti-Taliban forces. If that's the case, we would probably have Special Forces with the anti-Taliban as coordinators. (Anti-Taliban forces) know how to do guerilla warfare, they have done it for years, but (special forces) are advising on how to call in air strikes and coordinate combined arms fighting. It looks like it's focused more in possible support of a ground swell.

Don Shepperd is a retired major general of the U.S. Air Force and a military analyst for CNN. His briefings on the war against terror will appear daily on CNN.com.

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