Mac-Coleman

11 September 2014 –

Thirteen years ago today. 

11 September 2001, Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.  I was the Director of Intelligence for Operation NORTHERN WATCH.  We flew combat missions to enforce the military no-fly zone over Northern Iraq, a hold-over operation from Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM more than ten years before.  Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq, but we restricted what he could do militarily against opponents in his country and the region. 

Our mission was straightforward, our working conditions and quarters were good, Turkish food was magnificent, and the Brits and Turks we worked with were competent and professional.  In fact, we invited them all to our July 4^th festivities.  In return, the Brits invited us to a Benedict Arnold birthday party.   We flew our mission as was expected of the best air forces in the world.

 

Then, in one day, the world turned upside down. 

I was in the senior staff’s weekly security brief when a sergeant ran into the room, turned on the TV, and yelled that we had to see something.   We watched the airliner fly into the second World Trade Tower.  Everyone in the room went stiff and silent.  Our commander then calmly conducted a contingency planning meeting for what could be our new mission.

The death and destruction in New York, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania were horrible; we American Airmen in Turkey didn’t dwell on it.  We immediately got to work to begin again serving our country in a crisis.  We quickly went from patrolling Iraqi airspace to facilitating the movement of thousands of men and women, and billions of dollars of equipment, weapons, and supplies through Turkey to Central Asia in preparation for combat operations in Afghanistan.  We knew who and where the enemy was, and we were fixin’ to kill’em.    

The forces of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, many of whom flowed through Turkey, quickly crushed the Taliban’s and Al-Queda’s ability to export terrorism out of Afghanistan.  In doing so, we lost fewer than thirty Americans in Afghanistan from November 2001 to February 2002.  Flush with success, the Bush administration thought it could also use our military to nation-build on a fault line between civilizations that has never yielded to being a cohesive nation.  Another 530 Americans were killed from March 2002 to the end of 2008 in the Bush administration’s pursuit of an unrealizable goal. 

Since then, in an even more tragic waste of life, the present administration has doubled down in fruitless nation-building.  Since 2009, nearly 1,700 more Americans have been killed in a “country” that looks and acts the way it did in 2001.  All this under the wrong strategy for the wrong place at the wrong time, and using the wrong instruments of national power.    

The administrations’ strategies in Iraq have been a faulty and tragic waste of American lives.  We didn’t have to invade Iraq and topple the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.  Not because Saddam Hussein was a good guy; no, he truly deserved to die.  But, shouldering the inevitable responsibility for nation-building in a state with artificial borders and intractable cultural and religious divides would be next to impossible with the military forces allocated.  Correctly, our leaders in 2007 bet that a surge of additional forces would establish enough stability in the country’s critical regions and within its governing mechanisms to create potential for future nation-building.  Sadly, that lengthy process cost over 4,200 American military lives and more than 3,400 American civilian contractors’ lives. 

After 2009, the present administration abandoned its responsibilities in Iraq and wasted another 500 American military lives.  Its rejection of prior commitments, inattention, and deficiency in leadership showed the world that it could not be trusted. This has led directly to the burgeoning war with ISIL.   

 A lot has changed since the first 9-11, thirteen years ago.  But as I have mentioned, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The world is still a bad place.  We still have implacable enemies who kill Americans in horrifying ways.  But, our military men and women still know who the enemy is and know how to kill him.  They continue to stiffen their resolve, train and plan, and then show the moral and physical courage to rise to any occasion. 

Our leaders must display that same decisiveness and courage that they ask of the Americans who execute their plans.  Only then will these “leaders” prove themselves worthy to visit the graves of the fallen.