The Importance Of Getting Revenge Download.zipl
Edelberto White
When you first heard about the September 11 terrorist attacks, what wasgoing through your mind? Obviously, with your position, you must have beenthinking what the response might be down the road.
My thoughts were probably about the same as a great many Americans. When thefirst plane hit the first of the trade towers - I looked at it and sort ofwondered what would cause that. But obviously, in my line of work, and beingresponsible for the region that I'm responsible for, my first thought was, "Iwonder if this is a terrorist attack? It probably is." Then as we watched liveand saw the second plane hit the tower, there was of course no question in mymind, and I think not in the minds of a great many Americans. We thought, "Thisis a terrorist act." ...
Almost immediately [I was] speaking with Secretary Rumsfeld and talking aboutit. Of course the conclusion, I think, by a great many of us at that time wasrelated to Al Qaeda; at least some form of sponsorship. There was immediateconsideration, beginning on Sept. 12, of operations that we might need toundertake in Afghanistan. Secretary Rumsfeld told me on Sept. 12, "Preparecredible military options and bring them to me."
We do that [by] being blessed by the service of a great many very, very smartpeople who were operating from here in Tampa and a number of other locations.[They were] putting their heads together; considering time-distance factors,scoping the mission, so that we could describe the appropriate mission to thesecretary; [and] ultimately, the president -- thinking their way througheverything from the application of kinetics, and what size force would berequired to do what -- the normal approach to military planning. ...
The options that we prepared were presented to the secretary. I presented themto the secretary on Sept. 19 or Sept. 20. He approved them. We took them to thepresident on, if my memory serves, Sept. 21, and the president approved theoptions. ... We described what we thought was the appropriate approach to themission in Afghanistan. The president approved it in concept and said, "Moveout and set conditions to begin operations in Afghanistan. Let me know whenyou're ready."
As commander in chief of U.S. Central Command for the Middle East andCentral Asia, Gen. Franks is the head of all U.S. military operationsin Afghanistan. Here, he describes for FRONTLINE the development of theunconventional military campaign which relied on small Special Forces teamsworking with Afghani opposition forces, and gives his assessement of theoutcome. This interview was conducted on June 12, 2002.
How did the military actions of the 1990s shape your planning? I'm thinkingin particular of Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and theattacks on Afghanistan by the Clinton administration, as well. This was verydifferent from those. How did that experience shape what you thought would beeffective?
I won't say that they didn't affect the thinking that went on in the minds ofour planners: I will say that those operations were not considered in my mind.What was considered in my mind is the history of Afghanistan. What we workedthrough in our central command was the terrain of Afghanistan; historicalapproaches by the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to what they have always referredto as invading forces; the enemy set as we thought we saw it at that time, theTaliban; time-distance factors associated with where we had U.S. forces -- air,naval, and land forces, as well as Special Forces positioned; and the timeframewe thought we could have those forces in play in Afghanistan. And last -- butcertainly not least -- the fact that whatever we chose to do would be adecisive operation. Those were the factors I think we looked at.
It's always been somewhat entertaining to me to see the views of some of thepundits who have suggested the introduction of large conventional forces inAfghanistan. I think a great many people are aware, and I know you're aware ofthe fact that for some 10 or 11 years of Soviet experience in Afghanistan, theyintroduced 625,000 people on the ground, and had 15,000 of them killed and55,000 of them wounded. So we took that as instructive -- as a way not to doit.
I think one of the great blessings of this country is that there are a greatmany academics and others as well who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan,studying Afghanistan and knowing many Afghans. So we literally brought themforward, and we brought think tanks and a variety of other-- I'll call them"experts." We brought them here to this command, listened to what they had tosay, and factored their views into our planning.
No, did not, did not. This plan was cut from whole cloth, as I think thesecretary described it then, and described it accurately -- but cut from wholecloth between Sept. 12 and when it was briefed to the president a week or tendays later. ...
You'd have probably saw the long report that Bob Woodward did in theWashington Post. He quotes President Bush as saying, during that initial planning period, thatthe military was being asked to think in a way that it hadn't thought in thepast decade or so: essentially, fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.And that required a change of thinking.
Right. I think the president's observation that this would be an unconventionalwar was precisely to the point. I think it was an accurate observation, and Ithink in each of the mini-sessions that I've had with the president since westarted this operation, I have seen the same sort of appreciation of themilitary operations in Afghanistan.
I think all of us recognized that there are a variety of ways to either applyforce or threaten the application of force. One is cruise missiles. Another isthe introduction of large conventional forces. The Soviets tried it, and didn'tlike it. Another approach is an unconventional approach, which seeks to leverageoperational forces, air-to-ground forces, air support, that sort of kineticactivity by putting people on the ground close enough to observe the targetsone would like to destroy. That approach is certainly unconventional at thelevel at which the operation in Afghanistan moved forward.
I recall other wars in other places where we have had people on the ground --adjust fire, if you will -- provided by indirect means, either aircraft orartillery or mortars or whatever. But the scale and the scope of theintroduction of Special Forces in this particular effort, and what they wereable to do by directing the kinetic work by a great many different types ofaero platforms, [is] unprecedented, to my knowledge.
ED. NOTE: For an opposing analysis, read this commentary by AndrewBacevich, director of the Center for International Relations at BostonUniversity and author of American Empire (forthcoming, HarvardUniversity Press). Bacevich believes that the military operations inAfghanistan suffered because they were not unconventional enough, mirroring tooclosely US military actions taken over the last two decades.
Once you got the plan approved and started gearing up for actually puttingit in place and getting the air campaign, there must have been a number ofthings to put in place - like, how do you work with other coalition forces? Towhat extent do they get involved? ... How did you, at your level, go aboutpractically piecing together the coalition? And if a country bought into thecoalition and was involved in Afghanistan, what was the chain of command? Werethey all going through you? Who chose targets, and how did you choose thetargets?
Right. Coalition operations [are a] remarkable feat in this case. Beginning onSept. 12, having worked our way to a plan which we executed or started toexecute on Oct. 7, by the time we reached the endof September, we had a coalition here in Tampa of senior nationalrepresentatives of some 15 or so nations. By the middle of October, thatcoalition had grown to 20 or so. By the end of October, more yet; and as westand today, there are 34 national flags with us in this coalition here.
When we started to work with these coalition national representatives, one ofthe first things we did was describe the fact that the mission we chose toundertake would define the coalition -- that the coalition nations would not bepermitted to assist in defining the mission. We've stayed with that since thevery earliest days.
The coalition nations represented here, who placed their forces into OperationEnduring Freedom, placed their forces -- naval forces, air forces, specialoperations forces, ground forces -- under our operational control. They remainthat way today, very, very effective, and managed through some of the bestcoordination that I've seen between our own State Department, between thiscommand, between the office of the secretary of defense, the joint staffinvolved in Washington. ...
The war begins with the bombing. Then, at some point, there is the insertionof Special Forces with the warlords of the Afghan allies. It started up in thenorth to begin with. How much confidence did you have in the Afghan allies thatwe were working with at that point, before we knew what the hell was going tohappen?
I think we were positive about it; a great deal of hope. But there is amilitary saying that one should never try to turn hope into a course of action.Think about Afghanistan for a minute. Recognize that when we started combatoperations on Oct. 7, about 80 percent or so of Afghanistan was under thecontrol of the Taliban. The standing military forces that opposed the Talibanwere rightly called the Northern Alliance, because the enclaves where theseforces were located -- the ones who turned out to be friendly to us -- were upin the north along the Central Asian states area. Since about 20 percent ofAfghanistan was controlled by the Northern Alliance, it made perfect sense tous that this would be a place to see what we could leverage, which oppositionforces we could support, link up with, provide assistance to, gain leveragewith -- in order to accomplish our mission. ...
It's a very difficult mission. But the mission itself was not exceedinglycomplex. It had to do with the destruction of the Taliban as a government andthe destruction of terrorist networks inside Afghanistan. So the planning thatwe executed worked along about six or eight lines of operation.
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