Monday morning generals and the Tora Bora critique

Posted By Peter Feaver Monday, December 21, 2009 - 7:47 PM Share

By Peter Feaver

It is not every day that one gets a chance to rattle the cage of the boss, so when I read the contribution from ForeignPolicy.com czarina Susan Glasser to the Washington Post's compilation of "worst ideas of the decade" I knew I had to respond -- even if it means I can kiss my year-end bonus good-bye.

Glasser's argument is the conventional wisdom, painstakingly assembled over years of partisan arm-chair generalship: if only the United States had deployed more ground troops into Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, we may have killed or captured the al Qaeda leadership at Tora Bora. Grumbling about the Tora Bora mission could be heard within hours of the battle, but got much louder during the 2004 campaign when Senator Kerry made it a standard attack line. The failure to tamp down violence in Iraq after the fall of Saddam served to further fan the flames of this critique -- too-light-a-footprint caused us troubles in Iraq and that "proves" we had too light a footprint in Afghanistan. This fall, the critique got revived when Senator Kerry's committee published a report which purports to validate the argument.  

My problem with the Tora Bora critique -- both its generalized form and the particular form advanced by Glasser -- is that it conveniently forgets that the reason bin Laden was "trapped" in Tora Bora in the first place is that Secretary Rumsfeld and General Franks and CIA Director George Tenet defied both the conventional war plans and the conventional wisdom to mount the very light-footprint campaign that Glasser et al. are complaining about. If Rumsfeld and Franks and Tenet had used the conventional warplan that involved a heavy U.S. ground presence  instead of the rapidly deployable light-footprint that Glasser denounces, the invasion of Afghanistan would have happened some time in 2002, if then.  If Rumsfeld and Franks and Tenet had listened to the conventional wisdom during the early weeks when the light-footprint approach appeared to be faltering, they would have abandoned the Afghan effort long before the battle in Tora Bora.  

The Rumsfeld/Franks/Tenet approach was an innovative gamble that performed much better than anyone, especially bin Laden, expected. For this reason, and for this reason alone, there was a chance to capture/kill bin Laden at Tora Bora.

Pushed to its logical conclusion, the Tora Bora critique reduces to the claim made by Monday morning quarterbacks everywhere. The Tora Bora critics assure us in hindsight that they would have approved every pass that was successful and all the aspects of the game plan that worked, but they also would have known not to throw the pass that got blocked and they would have changed the game plan at exactly the right moment.  

It is unfortunate that bin Laden escaped. It may even be the case that redeploying the U.S. Rangers that were on the ground in a different fashion might have produced a different result. And I am certainly not going to defend every decision made by Rumsfeld or every scintilla of spin advanced by the Pentagon press shop. But before I am going to take seriously the conspiracy theory that we "allowed Osama to escape" just to prove a light-footprint theory of warfare, I want to hear the critics acknowledge that we had bin Laden within reach at Tora Bora precisely because we were willing to try the very light-footprint approach they denounce.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, AL QAEDA, BUSH ADMINISTRATION, MEDIA, MILITARY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, TERRORISM
 

JBHIKER

10:43 AM ET

December 22, 2009

I have read everything on this issue I can find

Mr. Feaver is correct in his conclusions about our (US Special Ops) response. Fast and light was the only chance. A large contingent into Afghanistan may never have made it to Tora Bora. We also had to deal with the other side of the mountain. Pakistan was none too thrilled about us invading their side of the border. And getting tribal chiefs to assist required much more than money. Many of them on the Pakistan side were unwilling to assist at any price and more than willing to shoot our troops if they tried. It is a sad chapter in the book on Afghanistan but let's be honest - we kicked their butts using Rumsfeld's strategy. The world changed when Iran captured Americans and held them as political hostages. That was the "Great Idea" heard round the Muslim world. A series of foreign policy blunders have followed every American President since. Now look at us!

 

F1FAN

3:21 PM ET

December 22, 2009

The Rumsfeld/Franks/Tenet : Overall, it failed

The Rumsfeld/Franks/Tenet may have been innovative and the reason that Bin Laden was forced to hole up in Tora Bora, but as for the stated mission of getting Bin Laden 'dead or alive' it did fail.

I don't know if anyone recalls, but that is the reason we allegedly went into Afghanistan in the first place.

 

CEOUNICOM

7:08 PM ET

December 22, 2009

Reasons...

I thought it was to deny Al Q a "safe haven"

Your comment does speak to my point though that people often juggle what the "objective" in Afghanistan was depending on the point they want to make. No one seems to be sure what the point was anymore.

 

SIR_MIXXALOT

3:39 PM ET

December 22, 2009

What will happen when we

What will happen when we catch OBL?

Will that be the end to the GWOT?

Of course not -- we....must....have....some...enemy... even if it is Ahmedinejed, who is equivalent to Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid in Iran (in political clout -- not wrinkles or viagra intake...)

OBL is a distraction. In fact I would not put it beyond Cheney to LET him have escaped so that we could perpetuate the GWOT.

What a bummer if we caught him in 2 months? No Iraq War then.....

Mission Accomplished boys.

Go read Andrew Bacevich. Get a clue.

 

RKERG

4:30 PM ET

December 22, 2009

Yeah, right

The idea that Rummy and Cheney
were too concerned with American
forces having too large a footprint in
Afghanistan is absurd. They were contemptuous of that kind of thinking, being the poster boys for American exceptionalism.
No, it is quite likely that the two of them were so caught up in their plan for invading Iraq that they let Bin laden escape fearing that his killing or capture would have toned down much of the war fever in America. He was more valuable to them alive and free.

 

JBHIKER

5:45 AM ET

December 23, 2009

RE: Yeah Right

your assertion about the brave strategy of Rumsfeld and Cheney are not backed up by their own words. Read Rumsfelds Autobiography and you will find that he and his " Old Pal Cheney" talked the talk but sat out the walk. Pressure from Russia and Pakistan kept us from landing troops anywhere near the other sidee of Tora Bora. For Russia, it was Payback. For Pakistan, it was about political survival.

 

RKERG

4:51 PM ET

December 23, 2009

Rummy

The book that Rummy wrote was an attempt to spin his errors and duplicities into heroic actions.
As journalist Peter Bergen says, there were more media people at Tora Bora than there were American military.
We can argue over weather the failure to
get BL was due to incompetence, hubris,
or plain, old political motivation, but, the fact that no urgent effort was made to get the guy who lead the 9/11 attacks speaks volumes to me.

 

CEOUNICOM

7:03 PM ET

December 22, 2009

Depends?

I seem to remember from my readings that the ground war in Afghanistan following operation 'Jawbreaker' - our initial CIA-run sweep of the Taliban from northern Afghan and the capitol - was transitioned to the DoD and Rummy, and that the slowness of the transition from the "light & fast" CIA run campaign to conventional military units was what was to blame for letting vast #s of Al Q & Taliban slip over the mountains.

I am not sure how accurate this is, but I do recall interviews on Frontline with a bunch of CIA people who thought that we'd blown the initiative because Rummy was so pissed about CIA having been given control of the invasion that he basically ignored all the input provided by the people who'd initially broken Taliban resistance and started them running. As much as the "light and fast" warfare theory has been bandied about by armchair generals, I have failed to see its reality ever take shape; ultimately, control of a theater relies on superior force. If you just want to blow some stuff up and run away, fine, it's great, but for anything more, there is not a significant difference with ways armies have fought wars for the last few generations. Mobility and firepower will always trade off with one another, and this is no real innovation; the 'small footprint' concept however I think was stillborn - there is no such thing as a small footprint if your ostensible goal is securing a country.

Which leads to the larger question: what *was* the goal of the war?

Was it to bash heads & run? Capture bin laden? Or stay and try and reorder the country for some sort of longer term?

If you can decide which of these it is (most people dont ever seem to really try), then you can evaluate whether it was successful.

In order, the results would be: Failure (we didnt run), Failure, Failure.

Easy enough.

 

STUDENTOFLAW

7:13 PM ET

December 22, 2009

if i'm not mistaken, the

if i'm not mistaken, the critique is that they refused to provide necessary back up when bin Laden was within reach.

in other words, the criticism is not of the strategy as a whole, it is of the stubborn refusal to deviate from that strategy when it would have been clearly beneficial. a stubborn refusal that, interestingly, allowed the Bush administration to continue to use bin Laden as a rallying cry for their war games.

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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