PhotoDude.com

Tue. Aug 13, 2002

Al Qaeda’s Mass Escape

Al Qaedas Mass Escape – [NOTE: To anyone directed to this entry by the slightly inaccurate sidebar link at Chris Matthews’ Hardball site, you’ll find dozens of links on McKinney vs. Majette in the Politics category] ... (via Sgt. Stryker ...as Glenn Reynolds notes, ”The Shooting War Must Be About To Start: Sergeant Stryker is back”) This Newsweek story provides more detail about an aspect I’ve lamented since the first of this year, ”The Last Mile,” in which I said, "Everybody involved now admits hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters made it across that porous border, and it seems clear the supposed negotiations for surrender were merely to buy time for the rear guard action we saw as the main fight. Yes, those that remained fought to the death, likely so that others could escape. We’ll never know how many, or exactly who, but this in some ways reminds me of the Persian Gulf War, in which we went all the way around the world to fight, but didn’t go the last mile to finish the job completely. That Last Mile nags at us a decade later."

Indeed it does. And I have a feeling not going the Last Mile in Tora Bora will haunt us as well. This angle was confirmed in March, and now we have much more detail from Newsweek: "Some Afghans now claim that Qaeda leaders paid off another (supposedly pro-American) warlord to allow safe passage. Others blame American forces: the B-52s, they say, dropped their 2,000-pound ordnance on the wrong escape route [...] What is not in dispute is that by mid-December, 1,000 or more Qaeda operatives, including most of the chief planners and almost certainly Osama bin Laden himself, had managed to escape [...] ’Perhaps we could have got them wholesale,’ says one senior Defense official. ’Now we’re doing it retail. In the end, it doesn’t make much difference. We’re getting them.’ "

That last line is the sorriest attempt at putting lipstick on a pig I’ve ever heard, and I expect better for my tax dollars. If you’re going to try and con me, make it pseudo-believable, and check with your boss first: "Mr. Rumsfeld is described by aides as frustrated that military operations in and around Afghanistan have reached a plateau without the elimination of Al Qaeda."

Mr. Rumsfeld apparently thinks it does make a difference. I’m betting Mr. Rumsfeld would be a very happy man if the bag had been closed tightly last December, wholesale. He just doesn’t strike me as a retail kind of guy.

The article attempts to make excuses, saying "there were only about 1,300 U.S. troops in country, spread among 17 areas, and hardly a third were acclimated to the altitude. The low ground at Tora Bora is a mile high, and the mountain passes where the Arabs were getting away are more than two miles up. Keeping the U.S. presence as small as possible had been a conscious decision. For one thing, the Pentagon desperately wanted to avoid a replay of the Soviets disastrous Afghan experience."

I’m somewhat reluctant to say how that makes me feel, as this is the media representing what the military was thinking. It may not be accurate, so I hate to rip military leadership based on that, or in any way imply anything less than total respect for the men and women who serve. Regardless, I have to address a couple of the above points.

I don’t know about that ”1,300” figure. I know we supposedly had about 1,000 troops from the 10th Mountain Division either in Khazakstan or at the Baghran base just north of Kabul. They would seem to be the perfect troops for the assignment of blocking the high altititude exit routes into Pakistan. As for ”two miles up,” I hesitate to say this, but at twice the age of those young troopers, I’ve been on a photo safari that took me from 200 feet below sea level to 11,500 feet above (more than ”two miles up”), and from 45 degrees to 119 degrees, all in one week. I know, it isn’t a fair comparison because I wasn’t facing enemy fire, with an eighty pound pack on my back. But it also isn’t a fair comparison because I didn’t have the motivation of a chance at catching the sorry wastes of skin responsible for 9-11. If you’d asked those young troopers ”are you ready to go catch Al Qaeda, even though it’s two miles up,” you would have heard, overwhelmingly, ”sir, yes, sir.”

And if it’s true our military leadership has a mindset of keeping troop commitment low out of fear of a ”Soviet Vietnam,” I can only shake my head sadly. If we had the chance to ”close the bag,” and didn’t because we either weren’t willing or weren’t prepared to apply a larger force, we have lengthened the war on terror. As I said, I’m hesitant to second guess, based on what someone said someone else thought, but the evidence becomes more clear as time goes by. We had the cat bagged up, we failed to seal the bag for one reason or another, and now we’re chasing kittens all over the place.

But that doesn’t give it the proper weight. Regardless of the cause (bad decision or lack of resources), by failing to prosecute war fully at the critical juncture, we have lengthened the war. There is hardly a worse sin.