In My Time - Dick Cheney [177]
Tim and I also talked that morning about the likely duration of the war. I told him that this would be a long-term struggle, one that would take years. We talked about the importance of vigilance and the power of this great nation to face this challenge and prevail.
Tim closed the interview with a remembrance of Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department. Father Mike was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 by falling debris as he administered last rites to a first responder. Tim told of the firefighters who carried Father Mike’s body to their firehouse and who together with Father Mike’s fellow Franciscans sang the prayer of St. Francis. “May the Lord bless and keep you and show his face to you and have mercy on you.” “That,” Tim said, “is the way of New York. That is the spirit of America.” The Meet the Press crew members stood and applauded at the interview’s end.
ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, the president signed a joint resolution that had been passed by Congress authorizing the use of military force “against those responsible for recent attacks launched against the United States.” That Friday, I joined the president and Secretary Rumsfeld to discuss what that military force might look like. We met in the Treaty Room on the second floor of the White House residence, the same room where the president’s father and I had met to discuss my becoming secretary of defense twelve years earlier. General Shelton, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and his successor, General Dick Myers, were both there, as was General Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, and General Dell Dailey, commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. The Defense Department team had been working since our meetings at Camp David to improve their war plan, and they presented an innovative idea: linking our special operations forces with forces from the Afghan Northern Alliance in a way that would take maximum advantage of our communications and technological capabilities. Our forces would be able, fighting side by side with the Afghans, to call in air strikes on precise targets they’d located together. This approach would effectively utilize our precision-guided munitions. We’d hit the targets identified on the ground with deadly accuracy.
The president asked General Franks and General Dailey when they could begin to operate. They told the president they could go whenever he wanted, displaying an impressive can-do attitude. But I knew from my time at the Pentagon that various factors play into selecting an optimal start date. I also thought that sitting with the president in a room where Abraham Lincoln had held cabinet meetings might not be the situation most likely to elicit that kind of information, so I tried to help out. I knew, for example, that we have a tremendous advantage fighting at night. “Given our night-vision capabilities,” I asked, “wouldn’t it be better to go during a moonless period?” Yes, said General Dailey, “our advantage is always best when the nights are darkest. General Franks then explained the advantage he hoped to gain from putting special forces into Afghanistan simultaneously with the beginning of air operations. This would take more time, he explained. We couldn’t begin within days as we could if we launched air attacks alone. It would be two weeks before special operations forces were staged in Uzbekistan, ready to enter Afghanistan, Franks said. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, two weeks seemed a long time, but the president went with the best judgment of his military leaders.
THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THIS period, and for a good period of time thereafter, I was often in “undisclosed locations.” I was surprised by the intensity of the media interest in this fact. I suppose it was partly the result of presidents and vice presidents never having operated on the assumption that being in the same place