Tora Bora Hindsight?
“Once conventional wisdom congeals, even facts can’t shake it loose.“
– Paul Bremer, May 17, 2007
It’s so obvious now. If only the United States had sent a few more troops into Afghanistan at the start of the war, Osama bin Laden would have been caught or killed in 2001. And the course of history would have been changed. The failure to dispatch special operations commandos to hunt for bin Laden when he was cowering in a cave in Tora Bora in December of 01, was “one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history,” argues my old colleague at CNN Peter Bergen in the current New Republic.
Or maybe not.
The proposition that more troops would have cut off bin Laben’s escape might be debatable, but so far as the punditocracy is concerned that debate is over. Noted military thinker Maureen Dowd just accompanied Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a trip to the region, and as she writes, “I asked Bob Gates, as we flew over the notorious terrain, if he had any insights into why such a bellicose team as W., Cheney and Rummy flinched at the very moment they could have captured our mortal enemy. Gates, who said there hasn’t been any good intelligence on Osama’s whereabouts in years, said “it’s just hard to find somebody who has a sympathetic network and local support.”
Yes, actually, the old spymaster Gates, ever the pragmatist and fully aware of the shortcoming of “good intelligence” got it exactly right. The idea that bin Laden was cornered, and several hundred U.S. troops could seal off his escape route is highly suspect.
I know many in the military were convinced bin Laden was in fact “trapped like a rat” back in December of ’01.. In his 2005 book “Jawbreaker” former CIA agent Gary Bernsten writes about his request for 800 troops to be deployed along the Afghan border was turned down. Bernsten, who led an undercover manhunt was certain the al Qaeda leader was in a relatively manageable area, and could have been smoked out in a cave-by-cave search.
Instead, according to a recent The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, “On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.” Allowing bin Laden to escape was one of the “worst ideas of the decade,” according to a Washington Post decade-end review.
I think this much IS certain with hindsight. The U.S. could and should have done quite a bit more to increase its chances of getting bin Laden, but whether a different strategy would have produced different results is far from certain, and history suggests it was far from a sure thing. It’s also pretty clear that killing bin Laden, would not have dealt a death blow to al Qaeda. As Donald Rumsfeld said at the time, “My attitude is that if [bin Laden] were gone tomorrow, the same problem would exist. He’s got a whole bunch of lieutenants who have been trained and they’ve got bank accounts all over some 50 or 60 countries.” It’s not popular to endorse anything Rumsfeld ever said, but he was probably right about that.
You may recall that in 1993 the U.S. was convinced it knew the whereabouts of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, and dispatched Delta Force commandos to capture or kill him. In one raid, Aidid’s personal compound was leveled by an AC-130 gunship. Numerous subsequent snatch missions were launched, all based on “solid intelligence. ” But Aidid always managed to slip away. Why? Because he was surrounded by a large number of sympathizers who were protecting him.
You might also recall that the United States and it allies had over 100-thousand troops in Iraq, and could not find Saddam Hussein for months (I originally wrote more than 2 years, because I erroneously “remembered ‘his capture as being in 2005, not 2003. See my comment below.), until someone gave him up. Why? Because he was surrounded by large number of sympathizers who were protecting him.
The fact of the matter is that in the rugged terrain of Tora Bora, the idea of sealing the border is problematic at best. Might the U.S. troops stationed at key crossing points have picked bin Laden out from the other refugees fleeing to Pakistan? Maybe, with some luck. Should the U.S. have tried harder? Probably. Would it have worked? Probably not.
In fact its easy to imagine a converse narrative in which the pundits, in hindsight, reflect on the foolish hubris of the U.S. thinking it could capture bin Laden by sealing a border that has never been sealed. A Senate report, authored by a critics of the administration, might, in this imaginary scenario, have suggested a major opportunity was missed to work with Afghan and Pakistani allies who knew the area, instead of using a heavy-handed American approach that alienated local afghans and motivated bin Laden sympathizers to aid his escape.
But whether you are a pundit or politician, the smart thing to do from a PR standpoint is to embrace conventional wisdom whenever it calcifies around a generally accepted consensus. For your image and reputation, it’s better to join it than to fight it. Arguing against the collective judgment of all those smart people can make you look inflexible, and unwilling to face reality. But conventional wisdom is so often, well, “conventional”, that is it’s oversimplified and lacking in any serious consideration of nuance or imponderables. Still, if you just go with the collective judgment of the punditry, while you may not always be right, you’ll always be in good company.
(polls)
Tags: Blunder, Conventional Wisdom, Osama bin Laden, Tora Bora
