Known and Unknown (44 page)

By the same token, we should have avoided personalizing the war around particular individuals—such as Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Though I was eager to see them in American custody or dead, I knew the war would not end with their capture or their deaths. We needed to go after their networks and their means of operating. Nonetheless, the war's progress was frequently measured by whether bin Laden was at large or not. He became the face of the enemy, which was likely exactly what he wanted.

We also could have engaged and asked more of the American public in the war effort. One of the common criticisms by Democrats and Republicans was that President Bush did not encourage the American people to make sacrifices in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. A myth arose that Bush simply encouraged citizens to “go shopping.” That is not what he said—he was actually urging people to get on with their lives—and I understood his logic. Nonetheless, I sensed that Americans were anxious to do something—to be involved, to help—just as so many did their part for the war effort during World War II, with Victory Gardens, war bonds, and rationing. But the twenty-first century versions of those public contributions were not clear.

The President might instead have pushed for more education and scholarship on Islam and more training in languages like Arabic, Pashtu, and Farsi. The administration might have mounted a serious and sustained effort on alternative sources of energy to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil. We might have more energetically encouraged young people to volunteer in a civilian reserve corps or in the U.S. military and intelligence services. Instead the President said that “one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: get onboard. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots…Take your families and enjoy life.”
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Also, in retrospect, I believe we might have put even greater pressure on some key partners, such as Saudi Arabia. Our relationship with the Saudis was a continuing concern for me in the months after 9/11. In memos to Cheney, Powell, and Rice, I urged that we develop a strategy to move that country in a better direction. Noting Saudi support for madrassas—Islamic schools that taught anti-Americanism and encouraged violence—I suggested Powell travel to the country to deal personally with these issues.
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I also asked my staff “how we would start going after them to get them to behave responsibly, stop supporting terrorism and also to start doing the kinds of things they are going to have to do if they are going [to] survive as a country.”
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The Saudi government eventually made reasonable efforts against al-Qaida and its affiliates, but we might have been able to get them to do more sooner had America intensified its diplomacy in coordination with our allies. There were dangers in pushing friendly governments too hard, but in retrospect I think we may have given those dangers more weight than they merited.

Some critics suggested that the administration overreacted to the 9/11 attack. Their contention was that the terrorism problem and the challenge of radical Islamism were not and are not large enough to have justified a war on terrorism. I disagree. Islamist totalitarian ideology fuels an international movement that considers the United States and the West as enemies—not just of their movement but of God. Adherents to their extremist ideology are passionate, often fanatical, and certain in their conviction that their holy mission is to destroy their enemies utterly and without mercy. They have the advantages of being able to use Western technologies, gain access to international travel, and exploit the openness of liberal democratic societies and free people, all of which enable them to cause us great harm—harm of a magnitude many multiples of what we experienced on 9/11.

Lenin once said, “The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.” By sowing fear, terrorists seek to change our behavior and alter our values. Through their attacks, they trigger defensive reactions that could cause us to make our societies less open, our civil liberties less expansive, and our official practices less democratic—effectively to nudge us closer to the totalitarianism they favor. I thought our priority should be to maintain our free society and our values, and to not be terrorized into altering our free way of life. I had learned in Beirut in 1983 that a terrorist can attack any place and at any time of his choosing, using any conceivable technique. It is not physically possible to defend against terrorists day and night in every location, against every method of attack. In order to maintain our civil liberties and the sense of security Americans take pride in, we needed to go on the offensive.

In a way we made it easier for critics to discount the danger of terrorism, because the administration succeeded in our strategic goal: preventing additional attacks on the United States. There were attempts, but they were foiled. The institutions, laws, and policies that the President initiated contributed to discovering and deterring those attacks. For all the criticism the administration received, some no doubt deserved, one fact remains: Anyone who lived through 9/11 never would have believed that almost a decade later there would not have been another successful attack on our soil. That this was avoided was not the result of good luck. Rather, it was the result of an aggressive, unrelenting offensive against the enemy. The ultimate credit for that belongs to President George W. Bush.

 

T
he Taliban had heard demands and complaints from American administrations before. Nothing significant had come of them. “We don't foresee an attack against us,” said the Taliban foreign minister, “because there is no reason for it.”
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Taliban officials undoubtedly believed that Afghanistan's forbidding geography would discourage anything but a cosmetic military effort. After all, they had heard President Clinton declare after a previous bin Laden attack in 1998 that Afghanistan had “been warned for years to stop harboring and supporting these terrorist groups. But countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens…. There will be no sanctuary for terrorists.”
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Things were different now. And if the Taliban believed America was bluffing, they miscalculated.

FEBRUARY 15, 1989

O
ne after another, Soviet soldiers boarded military convoys. Their final withdrawal from Afghanistan was underway. A few waved good-bye as they looked at that country for the last time. Just across the border, in Uzbekistan, the returning troops received flowers, were serenaded by a military band, and sat at long, linen-draped tables for a banquet in their honor.
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Though it was likely not lost on any of the soldiers that the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan had ended in failure, their commander, General Boris Gromov, saluted his men for fulfilling their “internationalist duty.”
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General Gromov had arranged to be taken back into Afghanistan by helicopter so he could be the last member of the Soviet military to depart the country, making a dramatic exit by walking alone across the inaptly named Friendship Bridge that connected Afghanistan to the Soviet Union. “There is not a single Soviet soldier or officer left behind me,” he declared. “Our nine-year stay ends with this.”
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The Soviet “stay” in Afghanistan officially came to a close on February 15, 1989, at five minutes before noon local time. Appropriately, the USSR's final act in the war was another miscalculation: Gromov's choreographed departure occurred two hours later than had been planned.
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The Soviet Union put a brave face on its humiliation. But it was obvious to people around the world—and to the Soviet people in particular—that Afghanistan was the rock on which the last empire of the twentieth century had foundered. Lasting just less than a decade, the war had claimed the lives of fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers.
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It disillusioned a generation of young Russians who had been led to believe that the Soviet Army was invincible. Even General Gromov, while distancing his military from the failure, later acknowledged the depth of the calamity, admitting that “the war was a huge and in many respects irreparable political mistake.”
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The legacy of the decade-long Soviet misadventure would not be erased easily. The Soviets had brutalized the country's people, killing one million and displacing five million more. They had also destroyed much of the land, stripping its forests of trees. The prospects of survival for the puppet regime they left behind in Kabul were exceedingly poor. Once the Soviets withdrew, opposition forces, known collectively as the mujahideen (“holy warriors” in Arabic), quickly closed in on Kabul and seized power.

For most of the 1980s the U.S. government channeled funds and materiel to various mujahideen groups as part of the largest covert operation in CIA history.
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As the Soviets completed their retreat, the CIA station in Islamabad, Pakistan, cabled the headquarters at Langley, Virginia, two words: “We won.”
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Not long afterward, American activities in Afghanistan ended. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton turned their attention away from Cold War preoccupations. In the chaos and civil war that consumed the country after the Soviet departure, the United States embassy in Kabul closed its doors. As America lost interest in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan poured in millions of dollars to fund roads, clinics, radical Wahhabi madrassas and mosques. The Pakistani government cultivated Afghanistan's Pashtun warlords and, beginning in 1996, supported the regime that became known as the Taliban. None of this caused any noticeable concern at the senior levels of the U.S. government. Few American policy or intelligence officials imagined that they would ever have to concern themselves again with that distant, poor, and abused land.

W
hen U.S. military action against the Taliban regime and its al-Qaida guests was imminent in late 2001, I mulled over the lessons of the Soviet defeat. The Red Army was only the most recent in a long line of foreign forces that had attempted to secure the country. Afghanistan's tough, martial people and land-locked, mountainous terrain had undone the plans of even the most intrepid invaders. Alexander the Great was nearly killed by the arrow of an Afghan archer. Though Genghis Khan managed to extend his empire into Afghan territory after savage warfare, his successors could not hold it. In 1842, Afghan resistance forced the British military to make an ill-fated retreat from Kabul to its garrison in the city of Jalalabad, a little more than one hundred miles away. Some sixteen thousand British soldiers and camp followers began the trek. Only one man made it to safety.
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After 9/11, analysts in the United States and abroad wondered aloud if American armed forces would also stumble similarly.
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Since President Bush had decided to confront Afghanistan, the challenge was to strike our enemies in such a way that it would shock terrorist networks worldwide. We wanted to not only destroy al-Qaida in Afghanistan, but to cause al-Qaida and its affiliates everywhere to scramble for cover, to coerce their sponsors to sever their ties with them, and to persuade our allies and friends to join us in our efforts. Afghanistan would be the opening salvo—our nation's first major foray into a global, unconventional war aimed at preventing terrorists from launching future attacks against Americans.

By the end of September 2001, we had not yet determined exactly how we could best achieve our goals. Some administration officials at State and the CIA argued in favor of allowing the Taliban to stay in power in the interest of maintaining regional stability. But a question, at least in my mind, was whether this might be a time when the United States had an interest in instability if it might bring about needed changes.

The more we considered a policy toward the Afghan regime, the more persuaded I became that there was little prospect of an acceptable accommodation with them. The Taliban leaders were brutal totalitarians who had imposed an extremist Islamic ideology on the Afghan people. Women could not attend school, could not leave their homes without a male family member, and could not see male doctors, which made medical treatment for them next to impossible. Citizens could be jailed for owning a television. A man could be imprisoned in Afghanistan if his beard were not long enough. It was illegal for youngsters to fly kites. Afghan soccer stadiums were used for public stonings and beheadings. The so-called Ministry of Vice and Virtue patrolled the streets, beating any who violated the Taliban's laws. In an act of deliberate and barbaric vandalism, the Taliban dynamited two monumental, carved Buddhas in Bamiyan in March 2001, turning the magnificent sixth-century statues into rubble.

If the Taliban remained in power, we risked sending a message to other nations that harbored and aided terrorists that they could assist a group like al-Qaida and then negotiate a “grand bargain” with the United States. Indeed, over the years, a number of governments had successfully bargained with terrorist groups in order to keep their own countries from being attacked. But in my view, rewards of security guarantees and aid in return for dubious promises of better behavior in the future were not the best means of deterring more terrorist attacks.

In the weeks after 9/11, work went forward at the Defense Department on an unconventional military campaign. As we began planning, I came to rely on the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dick Myers. As a matter of principle that was informed by my experience in the Ford administration, I felt strongly that the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff needed to be closely linked, especially in wartime. And with Myers, it was easy to put that principle into practice. I believe we averaged three or four hours a day together while we held our posts.

Myers and I began working closely with the officer who would lead the military effort in Afghanistan: General Tommy Franks, who had been appointed by President Clinton to head the U.S. Central Command. A big, tall, earthy man with a quick smile, Franks had a colorful manner of speaking—though he could on occasion complete a sentence without an expletive. Born just after the close of World War II, Franks was adopted by a couple in Oklahoma, and the family later moved to Midland, Texas. In 1965, he enlisted in the Army as a private and moved up through the ranks to become a four-star general. He lacked the polish of some of his fellow generals, who had graduated from West Point and spent many years learning the ways of Washington, D.C. But on the battlefield Franks was a leader.

We had worked together very little in the eight months I had been in office; as a result, it took some time for us to get used to each other. My habit of asking probing questions was new to Franks; he needed to become comfortable with my queries and confident of my regard for him. After several weeks of daily contact, and at least one sushi dinner, we developed an effective working relationship.

President Bush took to Franks from the start. Once, when Bush asked him how he was doing, Franks replied, “Mr. President, I'm sharper than a frog hair split four ways.”
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That was the kind of folksy manner they both liked. He and Franks would occasionally joke about how far “two boys from Midland” had come.

Franks knew something about the history of Afghanistan and its long record of defeating outsiders attempting conquest. He also knew that when seeking cooperation from Afghanistan's neighbors in the weeks ahead he would be having many cups of tea with the political and military leaders of the twenty-six countries in CENTCOM's area of operations.

Franks' immediate task was to develop a war plan. Though even the best one off the shelf would have required substantial updating to fit the new realities we faced, the fact was that there was no existing war plan for Afghanistan. Further complicating matters, there was scant current intelligence on the country. Steep and damaging budget cuts to our intelligence community during the 1990s had resulted in American operatives being moved to other matters after the Soviet withdrawal. By 2001, our intelligence personnel did not know the extent to which tribal leaders would tolerate, let alone welcome, American forces into the country. We didn't even have an up-to-date picture of the terrain. In some cases our analysts were working with decades-old British maps. The early information we did receive was spotty: one site might or might not have been an al-Qaida safe house; another may or may not have been a Taliban weapons facility. In addition, few intelligence operatives and analysts spoke the Afghan languages.

We faced other planning issues. The use of our Navy would be limited in landlocked Afghanistan. The high altitudes and dust would make helicopter operations challenging. Ground forces would have a difficult time trying to operate in the unfamiliar and inhospitable Afghan terrain in the approaching winter months. The United States did not have even modest working relationships. with most of Afghanistan's neighbors.
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The Department of Defense would need to rapidly organize a campaign—in which it could cooperate with local militias, conduct manhunts, and operate with agility—as the enemy reacted and adapted in an environment it knew far better.

Several days after 9/11, I asked Franks how long he thought it would take CENTCOM to craft a plan for Afghanistan. We both knew he would need considerably more detail than the sketchy options presented by Shelton at Camp David on September 15.

“Two months,” Franks responded.

The President was not going to wait patiently for another two months to take action. Daily threat reports provided by the intelligence community cautioned that additional terrorist attacks were likely. Therefore, we needed to begin putting pressure on their networks as rapidly as possible. Additionally, the passes through the towering Afghan mountains would soon be blanketed with snow, rendering them impassable.

“General, I'm afraid we don't have that much time,” I told Franks. I asked him to come up with a first cut of a plan in a few days.

 

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n September 21, 2001, Franks and I drove over to the White House to present his initial operational concept. Wanting the meeting to be as confidential as possible, Bush restricted the group to four senior generals—Shelton, Myers, Franks, and Major General Dell Dailey, head of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The President also parted from his normal practice of meeting in the Situation Room and had us meet in his private residence on the second floor of the White House.

Bush was informal, his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. At one point he lit a cigar as he listened to Franks and Dailey. The President's black dog, Barney, ambled around the room.

As Franks prepared to outline his initial concept, I reminded President Bush: “You are not going to find this plan completely fulfilling. We don't.”

Bush said he understood that this was a work in progress.

Franks and Dailey led the briefing. Bush would need to be working with them closely in the months ahead, and I thought it important that the Commander in Chief get to know them early on.

A key element of Franks' plan involved linking American special forces teams with Afghan forces. This was a departure from the first concept that had been outlined at Camp David, which focused on using conventional U.S. military might. Wolfowitz and I encouraged Franks to take full advantage of our special operators.
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General Dailey briefed the President on targets that could be handled by the elite squads.

The President asked how soon a campaign could begin. Franks responded that under this type of plan, his forces could begin to attack in the following two weeks.
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Bush liked that answer. He ended the meeting saying that he would continue to counsel patience to the American people. We were all aware that passions were running high.

 

W
hile the imminent operations in Afghanistan would be challenging, we did have some advantages. An active opposition movement—the Northern Alliance—had been trying to liberate the country from the Taliban and al-Qaida for five years. Joining up with these opposition forces would ally us with seasoned local fighters who knew the languages and the terrain. But this approach also had risks. For years these fighters had been unsuccessful. Some intelligence officials, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan in particular, cautioned that if America allied with the Northern Alliance militias, which were dominated by ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara fighters, we ran the risk of uniting the ethnic Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan against us and planting the seeds of a north-south civil war. This was one reason some recommended a continuing role for the Taliban in postwar Afghanistan.

Franks and I looked for opportunities to manage those risks. Though we understood well the need to also reach out to anti-Taliban Pashtuns in the south, the Northern Alliance, comprising some twenty thousand Afghans, remained the most credible and best-organized opposition force in the country. At first glance they appeared to be a ragtag band of unsuccessful, poorly armed guerrilla fighters on the verge of defeat. But they were also tough, motivated, and battle hardened.

For years the Northern Alliance had been led by the “Lion of Panjshir,” Ahmad Shah Massoud. Through his audacious combat against Soviet forces during the 1980s and his force of personality, Massoud commanded the respect of millions of Afghans, and he had pulled together several ethnic groups under the banner of his leadership. To this day Massoud's image, with his signature woolen pakol hat and checkered scarf, remains emblazoned on posters, tapestries, and murals in homes and public places across much of Afghanistan. Massoud struggled to keep his outnumbered Northern Alliance forces in the fight against the Taliban. He had repeatedly asked Western countries for military and financial support. The United States had been less than forthcoming. As a result, the Northern Alliance had an arsenal that was a small fraction of the Taliban's. During the Clinton administration, CIA officers advised Massoud not to kill bin Laden if the oppurtunity arose. “You guys are crazy,” Massoud reportedly responded. “You haven't changed a bit.”
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While Massoud's importance as a leader of the Afghan people was largely lost on Western governments, it was not lost on al-Qaida. The terrorist organization sent operatives into Massoud's camp disguised as reporters. Once in his presence, they detonated explosives hidden in their equipment, killing him. The assassination occurred on September 9, 2001.

As al-Qaida had intended, the death of Massoud left the Northern Alliance forces with a leadership vacuum. But other leaders emerged, including: General Fahim Khan, a Tajik and heir apparent to Massoud; General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek; General Ismail Khan from Herat in western Afghanistan; Abdul Karim Khalili of the Hazara minority; Muhammed Mohahqeq; and Muhammed Attah.
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These men were not saints, but saints are in short supply in the world. Though moral considerations in American national security policy are of critical importance, warfare continually poses excruciating moral trade-offs. I recalled Winston Churchill's famous retort to criticism of his alliance with Stalin, an acknowledged butcher of millions, against Nazi Germany. “If Hitler invaded hell,” he said, “I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

My willingness for our forces to work with the Northern Alliance was based on my conviction that we would be making a mistake if our military effort appeared to the Afghans as an American invasion aimed at taking control of their country. I concluded it would be far better to position ourselves as the allies of indigenous Afghan forces. I saw this as the best way to avoid the heavy-handed errors of Afghanistan's past invaders and occupiers.