The Empire from within (Part two)
The leader of the Cuban revolution continues to review key ideas from the book by Bob Woodward, as the revelation of the existence of a covert army of 3 000 men in Afghanistan, created, organized and trained by the CIA as "special force", as well as divisions that the Afghan problem arises within the circles of power in United States
2010-10-13 | 09:43:13 EST
In yesterday’s Reflection there appears a key paragraph taken from
Woodward’s book: “One important secret that has never been reported in the
media, or anywhere else, was the existence of a covert army of 3,000 men
in Afghanistan, whose objective was to kill or capture Taliban and
sometimes venture into the tribal areas to pacify them and get support.”
That army, created and handled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
trained and organized as a “special force” has been made up on tribal,
social, anti-religious and anti-patriotic bases; its mission is the
follow-up and physical elimination of Taliban fighters and other Afghans,
described as extreme Moslems.A Saudi recruited and funded by the CIA to
fight against the Soviets when their troops were occupying Afghanistan has
nothing in common with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.When Vice President Biden
traveled to Kabul at the start of 2009,David Mckiernan, chief of American
troops in Afghanistan told him in answer to a question about Al Qaeda that
he hadn’t seen one single Arab in two years there. Despite the relatively
brief and ephemeral importance that the principal international press gave
to “Obama’s Wars”, without a doubt these did not shirk from recording this
revealing piece of news.
The American government was faced with an unsolvable problem. In one of
the last meetings of the National Security Council during the Bush
presidency, a report was approved that stated that the US could not keep
itself in Afghanistan unless three great problems were to be resolved:
improve governability, decrease corruption and eliminate the Taliban
sanctuaries...
One might add that the problem is more serious if one takes into account
the US political and military commitments with Pakistan, a country endowed
with nuclear weapons, whose stability in the midst of a tense ethnical
balancing act has been affected by Bush’s war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of
kilometres of mountainous borders, with populations having the same
origin, that are being attacked and massacred by unmanned planes, are
shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan. NATO troops, whose morale diminishes
day by day, cannot win this war.
Without enormous amounts of fuel, food and ammunition no army can move
itself. The very struggle of the Afghans and Pakistanis, on one side or
the other of the border, has discovered the weakness of the sophisticated
American and European troops. The long supply routes are turning into a
graveyard of enormous trucks and tankers destined for that task. Unmanned
planes, the most modern of communications, sophisticated conventional,
radio-electrical and even nuclear weaponry, abound.
But the problem is much more serious than these lines express.
However, let us continue with the summary of Woodward’s spectacular book.
CHAPTER 8
Jack Keane, the retired General, a man who is very close to Hillary
Clinton, advised that the strategy being followed in Afghanistan was
incorrect, that the high toll of victims wasn’t going to put an end to the
insurgency, that these were having the opposite effect, that the only
option was a counterinsurgent offensive to protect the Afghans. McKiernan
wasn’t interacting with the governors of the provinces.Keane told him that
they were resorting too much to the antiterrorist struggle and that the
counter insurgency strategy wasn’t keeping pace.
Keane proposed replacingMcKiernan with Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin
III, the second in command in Iraq; and he also proposed McChrystal,
adding that he was, without a doubt, the better candidate.
McChrystal had run good antiterrorist campaigns in Iraq but the tactical
successes did not translate into strategic victories. That was why
counterinsurgency was necessary.
CHAPTER 9
At his confirmation hearing as CIA director before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, Leon Panetta stated that the Agency would no longer be sending
alleged terrorists to another country to be tortured because this was
forbidden under the new president’s executive orders.He said that he
suspected that the CIA was sending people to other countries to be
interrogated using techniques that “were violating our norms”.
Hayden was watching him on TV and, bothered, he was wondering whether
Panetta had overlooked the conversation the two had had the month
before.Hayden contacted Jeff Smith, the former CIA general adviser who had
been assisting in the transition from Hayden to Panetta and he threatened
him, saying that either tomorrow he retract what he said in the public
testimony or they would have a show where the current CIA director tells
the future CIA director that he doesn`t know what he’s talking
about.Hayden said he would say it publicly and that it wouldn’t benefit
anyone. The next day it was Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the Republican head
of the Intelligence Committee, who asked Panetta whether he would retract
what he had said the previous day and Panetta said he would.
Hayden subsequently met with Panetta and told him that he had read his
work where he was saying that the Bush government had chosen the best
intelligence information to allege the existence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.Panetta had laid the blame for it upon a special
Pentagon unit that had been created by Rumsfeld.Panetta replied that it
wasn`t true, that it had been their error and he agreed that a
catastrophic lapse of intelligence had occurred in the agency of which he
was about to be the director.
On February 13, the president again met with the National Security Council
to discuss four options for the deployment of troops in Afghanistan.
1. To decide only after defining a strategy.
2. To immediately send17,000 troops.
3. To send the 17,000, but in two installments.
4. To send 27,000, thus filling Gen. McKiernan`s request.
Clinton, Gates, Mullen and Petraeus backed sending 17,000 troops
immediately.This was also Jones` recommendation.Richard Holbrooke, in a
security video, warned that 44 years ago President Johnson was discussing
the same thing with his advisors in the case of Vietnam. “We cannot forget
history”, he added.Vietnam had taught us that the guerrilla wins in an
impasse situation and so he was supporting sending the 17,000.Obama
finally notified the Pentagon that he had decided to send 17,000 troops.
CHAPTER 10
The objective for the Obama government was clear: dismantle and finally
defeat Al Quaeda and its extremist allies, its support structures and its
sanctuaries in Pakistan, and prevent its return to Pakistan or
Afghanistan.Jones, Gatesand Mullen were wondering whether they could trust
the Pakistanis.Biden was proposing reinforcing antiterrorist operations
and concentrating onAl Quaeda and Pakistan.Obama asked if sending 17,000
troops and 4,000 more later on would make any difference and the answer
was that it would.Obama asked how much this operation would cost and the
answer was that nobody knew, that this was just a study and that no budget
estimate had been made, but that the cost of stationing a soldier in
Afghanistan, including a war veteran pension, health insurance, the cost
of family care, food and weapons, would amount to approximately $25,000 a
year. The cost of an Afghan soldier in the terrain would amount to some
$12,000.Later Obama confirmed that Pakistan would be the centrepiece of
any new strategy.
At a meeting with the National Security Council, Obama said that he was
hoping on counting with popular support for his strategy for at least two
years.Biden stated that the die had been cast, even though he remarked
that he was in disagreement he assured that he would support the
president`s strategy.
CHAPTER 11
Petraeus was appearing to be worried.He was worried about becoming the
victim of his earlier successes in Iraq. Probably counterinsurgency was
not the correct strategy for Afghanistan, but Petraeus had assigned the
task of studying the matter to a group of experts in operations and
intelligence activities who held an opposing view.It seemed that the
president had not accepted his arguments in favour of counterinsurgent
operations.The president announced his strategy of dismantling and
defeating Al Qaeda in a speech.A Washington Post editorial praised the
plan with the headline: “The Price of Realism.” The speech surprised some.
The president had made changes to the wording himself.Obama had not
totally committed to sending all the troops requested by the army. Obama
said that he would analyze the matter again after the elections in
Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Gates appeared comfortable with the decision: two
days later he declared that he didn’t see the need to ask for more troops
or to ask the President to approve them until such time as the performance
of these could be seen.
The president of Pakistan met with Obama in his office. Obama told him he
didn`t want to arm Pakistan against India.He acknowledged that they had
moved forward in Swat but that the ceasefire had resulted in the
extremists subverting the legitimacy of the Pakistani government, and that
the government would be giving the impression that nobody was in
charge.Obama acknowledged that Pakistan was now acting more decisively,
something that had become evident by its performance in Swat and because
they had allowed the CIA to launch an average of one attack with unmanned
planes every three days during the course of the past month.The Pakistanis
had launched an operation with 15,000 troops, one of the best until that
time, against Taliban.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs realized that the solution to Afghanistan
was right before his eyes, walking through the hallways of the
Pentagon.McChrystal was already a legend.He had worked harder than anyone,
solving problems and not complaining.He would follow all orders to the
letter.Gates finally announced that McChrystal would be the new commander
of the troops in Afghanistan. “Our mission there,” he said, “requires new
thinking and new approaches from our military leaders”.Later Obama stated
that he had been in agreement with this decision because he trusted the
opinions of Gates and Mullen, but that he hadn’t had a chance to talk to
him in person.
On May 26, 2009, one of the most sensitive reports from the world of deep
intelligence appeared in the TOP SECRET/ CODEWORD Presidents’ Daily Brief.
Its title was: North American al Qaeda trainees may influence targets and
tactics in the United States and Canada.According to the report, around 20
Al Qaeda members with US, Canadian or European passports were undergoing
training in the sanctuaries of Pakistan in order to return to their
countries of origin and perpetrate high profile terrorist acts. Among them
there were half a dozen in the United Kingdom, several Canadians, some
Germans and three Americans.Their names were not known. Dennis Blair
thought that the reports were alarming and believable enough so that the
President should be informed.But Rahm Emmanuel didn’t agree.Blair replied,
as the president’s intelligence advisor, that he felt quite concerned and
Emmanuel accused him of trying to make him and the President feel responsible.
Upon leaving the White House, Blair was convinced that they were living on
different planets in terms of the matter.He was seeing, evermore, a flaw
in the government.
CHAPTER 12
General Jones was used to travelling to Afghanistan himself to make his
own assessments.It was his opinion that the US could not lose that war,
because people would say that the terrorists had won and this type of
action would be seen in Africa, South America and in other
places.Organizations such as NATO, the European Union and the United
Nations could be dumped into the trash bin of history.
Jones visits the wounded soldiers; he meets with the colonels and talks
with McChrystal.McChrystalconfesses to him that Afghanistan was much worse
than he had anticipated.He noticed that there were reasons aplenty for
worry and that if the situation did not soon turn around it would become
irreversible.Jones asked him to list the problems and McChrystal started
to quote a veritable litany: the number of Taliban in the country was much
higher than they thought (25,000). Jones commented that that was the
result of the treaty signed by Pakistan with its tribes because it was
there that the new Taliban could train without interference.The number of
Taliban attacks was close to 550 a week and in the last few months they
had almost doubled.Bombs going off by the side of the highway were killing
approximately 50 soldiers from the coalition troops each month, as
compared to eight reported the previous year.
Jones was insisting that the new strategy had three stages:
1. Security
2. Economic development and reconstruction
3. Governance by the Afghans under the rule of law.
Jones was insisting that the war was not going to be won by the army
alone, that during the next year the part of the strategy that would be
starting to work was economic development, and if this wasn’t done well
there wouldn’t be enough troops in the world to achieve victory.Jones
pointed out that this was a new phase and that Obama was not going to give
all the forces the army commanders were asking for, like Bush used to do
during the Iraq war. Jones added that the president knew that he was
treading on the razor’s edge, meaning that times were not just difficult
and dangerous but that the situation could move forward in some other
different direction.
In Helmand province, Jones made clear that the Obama strategy was designed
to reduce US envolvment and commitment, that he didn’t think Afghanistan
should be only an American war, but that there had been a tendency to
Americanize it.
Upon his return, Jones informs Obama that the situation is disconcerting;
that there was no relationship between what he was being told during the
last few months and what General McChrystal was facing.Finally Obama asks
him how many troops are needed and Jones informs him there is no definite
number yet.He thought it was necessary to complete the first two phases of
the strategy –economic development and governance –otherwise Afghanistan
would simply swallow up any additional number of troops.
The reaction was very different at the Pentagon.Jones was accused of
wanting to set limits on the numbers of troops.He was claiming that it
wasn’t fair for the president to make the decision he took in March, and
before reaching the number of 21,000 troops stationed there, to decide
that since the situation was going so bad, 40,000 to 80,000 additional
troops were needed.
The chasm between the White House and the Pentagon was growing deeper and
this was happening only four months after the President informed of his
new strategy.
CHAPTER 13
Some US government officials were describing the Obama government using
Afghan terminology and they were saying that the presidency was populated
by “tribes”, representing its divisions.The Hillary tribe lived in the
State Department; the Chicago Tribe occupied Axelrod’s and Emmanuel’s
offices; the presidential campaign tribe was occupying the National
Security Council that was headed by the cabinet chief Mark Lippert and the
director of strategic communications Denis McDonough.This group was known
as the “insurgency”.
The Taliban defeat required more men, money and time than its
dismantling.Defeat meant unconditional surrender, total capitulation,
victory, winning in the broadest sense of the word, completely destroying
the Taliban.
Richard Holbrooke was looking pretty pessimistic closet o the August 20th
elections in Afghanistan and stated: “If there are 10 possible outcomes in
Afghanistan, 9 of them are bad.They range from civil war to irregularities”.
As soon as the polling booths shut down on August 20th, there were reports
of voting fraud.Many officials from the UN and the State Department did
not leave their residences to visit the voting locations for security reasons.
The day after the elections, Holbrooke and the American ambassador met
withKarzai, and they asked him what he would do if there were a second
round.Karzai said that he had been reelected and that there would be no
second round.
After the meeting Karzai called the State Department operations centreand
asked to speak to either Obama or Hillary.The American ambassador
recommended that the president not take the call since Karzai had taken
the offensive saying that a second round was impossible.Obama agreed not
to speak with him.
Intelligence reports would describe Karzai as a person who was
increasingly more delusional and paranoid.Karzai told them:“You guys are
oppossing me. It’s a British- American plot.
In August, a group was created to interview the members of General
McChrystal`s strategic group who had just returned from Afghanistan in
order to know what was happening in the terrain, how the war was going,
what was working and what was not. McChrystal gave the group three
questions as a guide for his study: Is the mission achievable?; if so,
what needs to be changed to accomplish the mission?; are more resources
necessary to complete the mission?
McChrystal told the group to be pragmatic and focus on things that would
actually work.
The group came to the conclusion that the army understood relatively very
little about the Afghan population. They couldn’t understand how the
intimidation campaigns launched by the Taliban were affecting the
population.The intelligence information gathering was a disaster. The
group discovered that 70 percent of the intelligence requirements were
enemy-centric.Some group members thought that within one or two years the
war would be completely Americanized.The Americans preferred that the NATO
allies supplied money and advisors for the Afghan security forces, instead
of wandering throughout the country asking for air support to attack
suspicious-looking Afghans.
The group had only bad news forMcChrystal. They could carry out the best
counterinsurgency campaign in the history of the world, and even so it
would fail because of the weakness and corruption existing in the Afghan
government.McChrystal looked as if he’d been hit by a train.In any case,
he thanked the group.
McChrystal told Gates he would need 40,000 more troops.After lengthy
discussions, Gates promised to give him as many troops as he could, while
he could. “You’ve got a battle space over there and I’ve got a battle
space over here”, he told him.
“CHAPTER 14
“Biden had spent five hours trying to design an alternative for
McChrystal, something he called ‘counterterrorism plus’.Instead of an
intensive amount of troops, the plan concentrates on what he believed was
the real threat: Al Qaeda. This strategy emphasizes the destruction of the
terrorist groups by the murder or capture of its leaders. Biden thought
that it was possible to dissuade Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan,
and so to avoid getting involved in the costly mission of protecting the
Afghan people.
“Biden thought that Al Qaeda would take the path of least resistance and
that they would not return to their former places of origin if:
“1.The U.S. mantained at least two bases- Baram y Khandahar- so Special
Operations Forces could raid anywhere in the country.
“2.The U.S. had enough manpower to control Afghan air space.
“3.Human intelligence networks inside Afghanistan provided targeting
information to Special Operations Forces.
“4.The CIA’s elite, 3,000-Afghan-strong-Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams
(CTPT) could move freely.
“Afghanistan had to become a slightly more hostile environment for Al
Qaeda than Pakistan so that they would decide to not return.
“Obama needed someone to guide him. He had been in the Senate for only
four years and Biden had been there for 35. The President thought that the
military couldn’t put pressure on him, but they could crush an
inexperienced President.Biden came to Obama’s aid and Obama said to him:
‘You know these guys. Go after it. Push’.
“Later Obama confessed that he wanted his vice president to be an
aggressive detractor, and that he said exactly what he was thinking, that
he would ask the most difficult questions, because he was convinced that
that was the best way to serve the people and the troops, establishing a
strong discussion about these matters of life or death.
“Obama called on a small group of the most experienced members of his
national security staff in order to analyze the 66-page classified
assesment written by McChrystal which, in summary, said that if more
troops were not going to be sent it was probable that the war would likely
end in a failure in the next 12 months. The President added that the
options in this case were not good and he made it clear that he would not
automatically acceptthe solution proposed by the general or by anyone
else. ‘We need to come this with a spirit of challenging our assumptions’.
“Peter Lavoy, the deputy for analysis in the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, believed that behind the attacks of the unmanned
planes, Bin Laden and his organization had been beaten, beseiged, but not
finished off, that Al Qaeda had become the Taliban leech.
“Obama wanted to know if it were possible to defeat Al Qaeda and how; if
it were necessary to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda; that it could
occur in the next few years; what kind of presence was it necessary to
have in Afghanistan in order to be able to have an efficacious
antiterrorist platform.
“What wasn’t said and what everyone knew was that a President could not
lose a war nor could he be perceived as losing it.Obama said that it was
going to be necessary to work for five years and he was proposing that
other national priorities be considered.
Fidel Castro Ruz
October 11, 2010
6:00 p.m.
Woodward’s book: “One important secret that has never been reported in the
media, or anywhere else, was the existence of a covert army of 3,000 men
in Afghanistan, whose objective was to kill or capture Taliban and
sometimes venture into the tribal areas to pacify them and get support.”
That army, created and handled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
trained and organized as a “special force” has been made up on tribal,
social, anti-religious and anti-patriotic bases; its mission is the
follow-up and physical elimination of Taliban fighters and other Afghans,
described as extreme Moslems.A Saudi recruited and funded by the CIA to
fight against the Soviets when their troops were occupying Afghanistan has
nothing in common with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.When Vice President Biden
traveled to Kabul at the start of 2009,David Mckiernan, chief of American
troops in Afghanistan told him in answer to a question about Al Qaeda that
he hadn’t seen one single Arab in two years there. Despite the relatively
brief and ephemeral importance that the principal international press gave
to “Obama’s Wars”, without a doubt these did not shirk from recording this
revealing piece of news.
The American government was faced with an unsolvable problem. In one of
the last meetings of the National Security Council during the Bush
presidency, a report was approved that stated that the US could not keep
itself in Afghanistan unless three great problems were to be resolved:
improve governability, decrease corruption and eliminate the Taliban
sanctuaries...
One might add that the problem is more serious if one takes into account
the US political and military commitments with Pakistan, a country endowed
with nuclear weapons, whose stability in the midst of a tense ethnical
balancing act has been affected by Bush’s war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of
kilometres of mountainous borders, with populations having the same
origin, that are being attacked and massacred by unmanned planes, are
shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan. NATO troops, whose morale diminishes
day by day, cannot win this war.
Without enormous amounts of fuel, food and ammunition no army can move
itself. The very struggle of the Afghans and Pakistanis, on one side or
the other of the border, has discovered the weakness of the sophisticated
American and European troops. The long supply routes are turning into a
graveyard of enormous trucks and tankers destined for that task. Unmanned
planes, the most modern of communications, sophisticated conventional,
radio-electrical and even nuclear weaponry, abound.
But the problem is much more serious than these lines express.
However, let us continue with the summary of Woodward’s spectacular book.
CHAPTER 8
Jack Keane, the retired General, a man who is very close to Hillary
Clinton, advised that the strategy being followed in Afghanistan was
incorrect, that the high toll of victims wasn’t going to put an end to the
insurgency, that these were having the opposite effect, that the only
option was a counterinsurgent offensive to protect the Afghans. McKiernan
wasn’t interacting with the governors of the provinces.Keane told him that
they were resorting too much to the antiterrorist struggle and that the
counter insurgency strategy wasn’t keeping pace.
Keane proposed replacingMcKiernan with Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin
III, the second in command in Iraq; and he also proposed McChrystal,
adding that he was, without a doubt, the better candidate.
McChrystal had run good antiterrorist campaigns in Iraq but the tactical
successes did not translate into strategic victories. That was why
counterinsurgency was necessary.
CHAPTER 9
At his confirmation hearing as CIA director before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, Leon Panetta stated that the Agency would no longer be sending
alleged terrorists to another country to be tortured because this was
forbidden under the new president’s executive orders.He said that he
suspected that the CIA was sending people to other countries to be
interrogated using techniques that “were violating our norms”.
Hayden was watching him on TV and, bothered, he was wondering whether
Panetta had overlooked the conversation the two had had the month
before.Hayden contacted Jeff Smith, the former CIA general adviser who had
been assisting in the transition from Hayden to Panetta and he threatened
him, saying that either tomorrow he retract what he said in the public
testimony or they would have a show where the current CIA director tells
the future CIA director that he doesn`t know what he’s talking
about.Hayden said he would say it publicly and that it wouldn’t benefit
anyone. The next day it was Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the Republican head
of the Intelligence Committee, who asked Panetta whether he would retract
what he had said the previous day and Panetta said he would.
Hayden subsequently met with Panetta and told him that he had read his
work where he was saying that the Bush government had chosen the best
intelligence information to allege the existence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.Panetta had laid the blame for it upon a special
Pentagon unit that had been created by Rumsfeld.Panetta replied that it
wasn`t true, that it had been their error and he agreed that a
catastrophic lapse of intelligence had occurred in the agency of which he
was about to be the director.
On February 13, the president again met with the National Security Council
to discuss four options for the deployment of troops in Afghanistan.
1. To decide only after defining a strategy.
2. To immediately send17,000 troops.
3. To send the 17,000, but in two installments.
4. To send 27,000, thus filling Gen. McKiernan`s request.
Clinton, Gates, Mullen and Petraeus backed sending 17,000 troops
immediately.This was also Jones` recommendation.Richard Holbrooke, in a
security video, warned that 44 years ago President Johnson was discussing
the same thing with his advisors in the case of Vietnam. “We cannot forget
history”, he added.Vietnam had taught us that the guerrilla wins in an
impasse situation and so he was supporting sending the 17,000.Obama
finally notified the Pentagon that he had decided to send 17,000 troops.
CHAPTER 10
The objective for the Obama government was clear: dismantle and finally
defeat Al Quaeda and its extremist allies, its support structures and its
sanctuaries in Pakistan, and prevent its return to Pakistan or
Afghanistan.Jones, Gatesand Mullen were wondering whether they could trust
the Pakistanis.Biden was proposing reinforcing antiterrorist operations
and concentrating onAl Quaeda and Pakistan.Obama asked if sending 17,000
troops and 4,000 more later on would make any difference and the answer
was that it would.Obama asked how much this operation would cost and the
answer was that nobody knew, that this was just a study and that no budget
estimate had been made, but that the cost of stationing a soldier in
Afghanistan, including a war veteran pension, health insurance, the cost
of family care, food and weapons, would amount to approximately $25,000 a
year. The cost of an Afghan soldier in the terrain would amount to some
$12,000.Later Obama confirmed that Pakistan would be the centrepiece of
any new strategy.
At a meeting with the National Security Council, Obama said that he was
hoping on counting with popular support for his strategy for at least two
years.Biden stated that the die had been cast, even though he remarked
that he was in disagreement he assured that he would support the
president`s strategy.
CHAPTER 11
Petraeus was appearing to be worried.He was worried about becoming the
victim of his earlier successes in Iraq. Probably counterinsurgency was
not the correct strategy for Afghanistan, but Petraeus had assigned the
task of studying the matter to a group of experts in operations and
intelligence activities who held an opposing view.It seemed that the
president had not accepted his arguments in favour of counterinsurgent
operations.The president announced his strategy of dismantling and
defeating Al Qaeda in a speech.A Washington Post editorial praised the
plan with the headline: “The Price of Realism.” The speech surprised some.
The president had made changes to the wording himself.Obama had not
totally committed to sending all the troops requested by the army. Obama
said that he would analyze the matter again after the elections in
Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Gates appeared comfortable with the decision: two
days later he declared that he didn’t see the need to ask for more troops
or to ask the President to approve them until such time as the performance
of these could be seen.
The president of Pakistan met with Obama in his office. Obama told him he
didn`t want to arm Pakistan against India.He acknowledged that they had
moved forward in Swat but that the ceasefire had resulted in the
extremists subverting the legitimacy of the Pakistani government, and that
the government would be giving the impression that nobody was in
charge.Obama acknowledged that Pakistan was now acting more decisively,
something that had become evident by its performance in Swat and because
they had allowed the CIA to launch an average of one attack with unmanned
planes every three days during the course of the past month.The Pakistanis
had launched an operation with 15,000 troops, one of the best until that
time, against Taliban.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs realized that the solution to Afghanistan
was right before his eyes, walking through the hallways of the
Pentagon.McChrystal was already a legend.He had worked harder than anyone,
solving problems and not complaining.He would follow all orders to the
letter.Gates finally announced that McChrystal would be the new commander
of the troops in Afghanistan. “Our mission there,” he said, “requires new
thinking and new approaches from our military leaders”.Later Obama stated
that he had been in agreement with this decision because he trusted the
opinions of Gates and Mullen, but that he hadn’t had a chance to talk to
him in person.
On May 26, 2009, one of the most sensitive reports from the world of deep
intelligence appeared in the TOP SECRET/ CODEWORD Presidents’ Daily Brief.
Its title was: North American al Qaeda trainees may influence targets and
tactics in the United States and Canada.According to the report, around 20
Al Qaeda members with US, Canadian or European passports were undergoing
training in the sanctuaries of Pakistan in order to return to their
countries of origin and perpetrate high profile terrorist acts. Among them
there were half a dozen in the United Kingdom, several Canadians, some
Germans and three Americans.Their names were not known. Dennis Blair
thought that the reports were alarming and believable enough so that the
President should be informed.But Rahm Emmanuel didn’t agree.Blair replied,
as the president’s intelligence advisor, that he felt quite concerned and
Emmanuel accused him of trying to make him and the President feel responsible.
Upon leaving the White House, Blair was convinced that they were living on
different planets in terms of the matter.He was seeing, evermore, a flaw
in the government.
CHAPTER 12
General Jones was used to travelling to Afghanistan himself to make his
own assessments.It was his opinion that the US could not lose that war,
because people would say that the terrorists had won and this type of
action would be seen in Africa, South America and in other
places.Organizations such as NATO, the European Union and the United
Nations could be dumped into the trash bin of history.
Jones visits the wounded soldiers; he meets with the colonels and talks
with McChrystal.McChrystalconfesses to him that Afghanistan was much worse
than he had anticipated.He noticed that there were reasons aplenty for
worry and that if the situation did not soon turn around it would become
irreversible.Jones asked him to list the problems and McChrystal started
to quote a veritable litany: the number of Taliban in the country was much
higher than they thought (25,000). Jones commented that that was the
result of the treaty signed by Pakistan with its tribes because it was
there that the new Taliban could train without interference.The number of
Taliban attacks was close to 550 a week and in the last few months they
had almost doubled.Bombs going off by the side of the highway were killing
approximately 50 soldiers from the coalition troops each month, as
compared to eight reported the previous year.
Jones was insisting that the new strategy had three stages:
1. Security
2. Economic development and reconstruction
3. Governance by the Afghans under the rule of law.
Jones was insisting that the war was not going to be won by the army
alone, that during the next year the part of the strategy that would be
starting to work was economic development, and if this wasn’t done well
there wouldn’t be enough troops in the world to achieve victory.Jones
pointed out that this was a new phase and that Obama was not going to give
all the forces the army commanders were asking for, like Bush used to do
during the Iraq war. Jones added that the president knew that he was
treading on the razor’s edge, meaning that times were not just difficult
and dangerous but that the situation could move forward in some other
different direction.
In Helmand province, Jones made clear that the Obama strategy was designed
to reduce US envolvment and commitment, that he didn’t think Afghanistan
should be only an American war, but that there had been a tendency to
Americanize it.
Upon his return, Jones informs Obama that the situation is disconcerting;
that there was no relationship between what he was being told during the
last few months and what General McChrystal was facing.Finally Obama asks
him how many troops are needed and Jones informs him there is no definite
number yet.He thought it was necessary to complete the first two phases of
the strategy –economic development and governance –otherwise Afghanistan
would simply swallow up any additional number of troops.
The reaction was very different at the Pentagon.Jones was accused of
wanting to set limits on the numbers of troops.He was claiming that it
wasn’t fair for the president to make the decision he took in March, and
before reaching the number of 21,000 troops stationed there, to decide
that since the situation was going so bad, 40,000 to 80,000 additional
troops were needed.
The chasm between the White House and the Pentagon was growing deeper and
this was happening only four months after the President informed of his
new strategy.
CHAPTER 13
Some US government officials were describing the Obama government using
Afghan terminology and they were saying that the presidency was populated
by “tribes”, representing its divisions.The Hillary tribe lived in the
State Department; the Chicago Tribe occupied Axelrod’s and Emmanuel’s
offices; the presidential campaign tribe was occupying the National
Security Council that was headed by the cabinet chief Mark Lippert and the
director of strategic communications Denis McDonough.This group was known
as the “insurgency”.
The Taliban defeat required more men, money and time than its
dismantling.Defeat meant unconditional surrender, total capitulation,
victory, winning in the broadest sense of the word, completely destroying
the Taliban.
Richard Holbrooke was looking pretty pessimistic closet o the August 20th
elections in Afghanistan and stated: “If there are 10 possible outcomes in
Afghanistan, 9 of them are bad.They range from civil war to irregularities”.
As soon as the polling booths shut down on August 20th, there were reports
of voting fraud.Many officials from the UN and the State Department did
not leave their residences to visit the voting locations for security reasons.
The day after the elections, Holbrooke and the American ambassador met
withKarzai, and they asked him what he would do if there were a second
round.Karzai said that he had been reelected and that there would be no
second round.
After the meeting Karzai called the State Department operations centreand
asked to speak to either Obama or Hillary.The American ambassador
recommended that the president not take the call since Karzai had taken
the offensive saying that a second round was impossible.Obama agreed not
to speak with him.
Intelligence reports would describe Karzai as a person who was
increasingly more delusional and paranoid.Karzai told them:“You guys are
oppossing me. It’s a British- American plot.
In August, a group was created to interview the members of General
McChrystal`s strategic group who had just returned from Afghanistan in
order to know what was happening in the terrain, how the war was going,
what was working and what was not. McChrystal gave the group three
questions as a guide for his study: Is the mission achievable?; if so,
what needs to be changed to accomplish the mission?; are more resources
necessary to complete the mission?
McChrystal told the group to be pragmatic and focus on things that would
actually work.
The group came to the conclusion that the army understood relatively very
little about the Afghan population. They couldn’t understand how the
intimidation campaigns launched by the Taliban were affecting the
population.The intelligence information gathering was a disaster. The
group discovered that 70 percent of the intelligence requirements were
enemy-centric.Some group members thought that within one or two years the
war would be completely Americanized.The Americans preferred that the NATO
allies supplied money and advisors for the Afghan security forces, instead
of wandering throughout the country asking for air support to attack
suspicious-looking Afghans.
The group had only bad news forMcChrystal. They could carry out the best
counterinsurgency campaign in the history of the world, and even so it
would fail because of the weakness and corruption existing in the Afghan
government.McChrystal looked as if he’d been hit by a train.In any case,
he thanked the group.
McChrystal told Gates he would need 40,000 more troops.After lengthy
discussions, Gates promised to give him as many troops as he could, while
he could. “You’ve got a battle space over there and I’ve got a battle
space over here”, he told him.
“CHAPTER 14
“Biden had spent five hours trying to design an alternative for
McChrystal, something he called ‘counterterrorism plus’.Instead of an
intensive amount of troops, the plan concentrates on what he believed was
the real threat: Al Qaeda. This strategy emphasizes the destruction of the
terrorist groups by the murder or capture of its leaders. Biden thought
that it was possible to dissuade Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan,
and so to avoid getting involved in the costly mission of protecting the
Afghan people.
“Biden thought that Al Qaeda would take the path of least resistance and
that they would not return to their former places of origin if:
“1.The U.S. mantained at least two bases- Baram y Khandahar- so Special
Operations Forces could raid anywhere in the country.
“2.The U.S. had enough manpower to control Afghan air space.
“3.Human intelligence networks inside Afghanistan provided targeting
information to Special Operations Forces.
“4.The CIA’s elite, 3,000-Afghan-strong-Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams
(CTPT) could move freely.
“Afghanistan had to become a slightly more hostile environment for Al
Qaeda than Pakistan so that they would decide to not return.
“Obama needed someone to guide him. He had been in the Senate for only
four years and Biden had been there for 35. The President thought that the
military couldn’t put pressure on him, but they could crush an
inexperienced President.Biden came to Obama’s aid and Obama said to him:
‘You know these guys. Go after it. Push’.
“Later Obama confessed that he wanted his vice president to be an
aggressive detractor, and that he said exactly what he was thinking, that
he would ask the most difficult questions, because he was convinced that
that was the best way to serve the people and the troops, establishing a
strong discussion about these matters of life or death.
“Obama called on a small group of the most experienced members of his
national security staff in order to analyze the 66-page classified
assesment written by McChrystal which, in summary, said that if more
troops were not going to be sent it was probable that the war would likely
end in a failure in the next 12 months. The President added that the
options in this case were not good and he made it clear that he would not
automatically acceptthe solution proposed by the general or by anyone
else. ‘We need to come this with a spirit of challenging our assumptions’.
“Peter Lavoy, the deputy for analysis in the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, believed that behind the attacks of the unmanned
planes, Bin Laden and his organization had been beaten, beseiged, but not
finished off, that Al Qaeda had become the Taliban leech.
“Obama wanted to know if it were possible to defeat Al Qaeda and how; if
it were necessary to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda; that it could
occur in the next few years; what kind of presence was it necessary to
have in Afghanistan in order to be able to have an efficacious
antiterrorist platform.
“What wasn’t said and what everyone knew was that a President could not
lose a war nor could he be perceived as losing it.Obama said that it was
going to be necessary to work for five years and he was proposing that
other national priorities be considered.
Fidel Castro Ruz
October 11, 2010
6:00 p.m.
