Mac-Coleman

14 September 2011 –

Mr. ______,

I want to thank you again for taking the time to talk to me after the 8 September meeting of the _____________________. Your comments were spot on about the neocons in Bush’s administration. Their arrogance and resistance to intelligence advice and counsel indeed mirrored the actions of Robert McNamara’s “best and brightest” forty years before. I spent 1979 to 2009 in the Intelligence and policy business, lived on four continents, and worked in nearly eighty countries. I collected, analyzed, and repackaged intelligence to support everything from tactical operations to theater and national level strategic decision making. I saw first-hand that the weakness many smart men succumb to is that of self-confidence that calcifies into hubris. My personal dealings with the gentlemen we mentioned at the meeting—not to mention my dealings with those in the State Department who suffer from the same disease, but on the opposite end of the political spectrum—was painful at best. I learned a life lesson from my dealings with their ilk: a nation can indeed become powerful, but it will never be all-powerful. Nothing human is. Some things simply cannot be achieved at the moment, no matter how much a bright guy thinks it is a good idea.

Another blunt way to say it: The sheer force of one’s will can achieve anything—until it can’t. Painfully, the sheer force of these men’s collective will facilitated the deaths of 1,659 U.S. and 1,000 coalition soldiers. It probably cost a trillion dollars. Friends and compatriots are dead; their wives are widows; their children orphans. Why? Because these men allowed the emotion surrounding the events of 11 September 2001, to cloud their strategic vision. Their all-powerful mentality took over. Even President Bush succumbed to the thinking. The result has been a ten-year war with a failed strategy guiding it.

In President Bush’s book, Decision Points, the chapter on Afghanistan shows clearly the options available to the President and the thinking behind the options to stop terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its interests. On page 184, President Bush’s words are the clearest statement extant on the strategic objective for our initial military actions:

“Removing Al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan was essential to protecting the American people. We had planned the mission carefully. We were acting out of necessity and self-defense, not revenge.”

We indeed had a clear, narrow, obtainable strategy early in the war. The CIA already had a plan to include the approval to kill or capture Al Qaeda operatives as the operation unfolded (page 186). Military forces would be included as well to attack Al Qaeda sites and personnel. It looked like we were going to focus on pursuing the narrow strategy of eliminating Al Qaeda’s ability to attack the U.S. from Afghanistan.

Alas, by page 191, President Bush shows how clearly he had been herded into a much more difficult strategy. It was one with an open-ended pursuit that only hubris and foolhardiness could sustain:

“This time we would put boots on the ground, and keep them there until the Taliban and Al Qaeda were driven out and a free society could emerge” (italics are mine).

The objective fundamentally shifted from protecting the United States from terrorist attacks to helping Afghanistan become a free society. How does “freedom” in Afghanistan derive from the original objective except through a tangential chimera of hope—especially since freedom to Azaris means something different than freedom to Pashtuns or to any one of the other myriad tribes in the region?

Yup, President Bush thought he could do anything. By page 206, his words show his blunder:

“At the time, I worried about overextending our military by undertaking peacekeeping missions as we had in Bosnia and Somalia. But after 9/11, I changed my mind. Afghanistan was the ultimate nation building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral mission to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society (again, italics are mine).

May I posit that the temptation to use U.S. national power to achieve something great, in the form of succeeding in the “ultimate nation building mission”, overcame the President and most of the nouveau version of “best and brightest” advisors? May I posit that the President does not have “a moral obligation to leave behind something better” in another country? Instead, may I posit that he only has the narrow, moral obligation as Commander-In –Chief to protect the United States and its vital interests? Such a mission could have been achieved quickly. May I posit that the U.S.’s “strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society” does not stack up well against far more pressing reasons to use national blood and treasure? That is as far as his obligations go as an elected official with the authority to use all instruments of national power.

The military campaign to destroy terrorist camps and infrastructure in Afghanistan fulfilled the immediate goal of eliminating a base of support from which terrorists could attack U.S. interests. We should have stayed focused on that goal. In and out with brutality and a warning that we would suddenly be back if we heard even a hint of a renewed threat to our interests anywhere. But, no. We did what we have so often done in our recent history, we tried to do everything by the sheer force of our American wills. I never thought I would be quoting Bob Dylan: “When will they ever learn. When will they ever learn?”

Sorry, I got carried away. It happens more often now that I have many days free with a keyboard in front of me. Maybe we can have lunch sometime.

Again, good to meet you,

Mac Coleman