President Barack Obama's decision last fall to "surge" U.S. forces by 30,000 more troops, bringing the total to around 100,000, has led to a further spike in American casualties, with the total death toll now exceeding 1,200.
However, the bottom line for the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan is that Obama's escalation may well be a case of too little, way too late. The opportunity to stabilize Afghanistan and to eradicate al-Qaeda appears to have been squandered in late 2001 when the Bush administration pivoted prematurely to Iraq.
Shifting Attention
Even as bin Laden and his top lieutenants were cornered in the Afghan mountains at Tora Bora in fall 2001, the attention of Bush and his neocon advisers had already shifted toward Iraq, which the neocons considered a greater threat to Israel's security. Neocon theorists also held that by taking Iraq, regime change could then be pressed against Syria and Iran, thus eliminating all of Israel's major Islamic enemies.
So, when the small American Special Forces team pursuing bin Laden called for reinforcements to seal off his escape routes to Pakistan and to mount an assault on al-Qaeda's mountain strongholds, their appeals fell mostly on ears already listening to White House demands for Iraq war plans, said an analysis of the Tora Bora battle by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Instead of staying focused on capturing bin Laden and destroying al-Qaeda, Central Command Gen. Tommy Franks was instructed to begin planning for the invasion of Iraq.
"On Nov. 21, 2001, President Bush put his arm on Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld as they were leaving a National Security Council meeting at the White House. "I need to see you,' the president said. It was 72 days after the 9/11 attacks and just a week after the fall of Kabul. But Bush already had new plans."
Citing Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, the Senate report quoted Bush as asking Rumsfeld, "What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?"
In an interview with Woodward, Bush recalled instructing Rumsfeld to "get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to."
In his memoir, American General, Franks said he got a phone call from Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, after the Defense Secretary had met with the President, and was told about Bush's interest in an updated Iraq war plan.
At the time, Franks said he was in his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida working with one of his aides on arranging air support for the Afghan militia who were under the guidance of the U.S. Special Forces in charge of the assault on bin Laden's Tora Bora stronghold.
Franks told Rumsfeld that the Iraq war plan was out of date, prompting the Defense Secretary to instruct Franks to "dust it off and get back to me in a week."
"For critics of the Bush administration's commitment to Afghanistan," the Senate report noted, "the shift in focus just as Franks and his senior aides were literally working on plans for the attacks on Tora Bora represents a dramatic turning point that allowed a sustained victory in Afghanistan to slip through our fingers. Almost immediately, intelligence and military planning resources were transferred to begin planning the next war in Iraq."
Losing Bin Laden
The CIA and Special Forces teams, calling for reinforcements to finish off bin Laden and al-Qaeda, "did not know what was happening back at CentCom, the drain in resources and shift in attention would affect them and the future course of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan," the Senate report said.
Henry Crumpton, who was in charge of the CIA's Afghan strategy, made direct appeals to Franks to move more than 1,000 Marines to Tora Bora to block escape routes to Pakistan. But the CentCom commander rebuffed the request, citing logistical and time problems, the report said.
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