Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [204]
In later years, critics would pose questions as to why we didn’t immediately prepare to deploy 50,000, 100,000, or 150,000 American troops to Afghanistan. There were several reasons. If we were going to employ overwhelming force at the outset, we would have needed many months to build a large occupying army. This would have given the Taliban time to prepare for the conflict, and al-Qaida both the incentive and the opportunity to relocate. In addition, we would have risked additional terrorist attacks in the interim, and made it easier for our enemies to portray us as imperialist invaders and occupiers, like the Soviets and others before us. Finally, delay may have eroded popular support at home and abroad for the President’s counterterrorism strategy. It is also the case that large numbers of American troops in Afghanistan could have limited our ability to act elsewhere in the world if necessary. We had to keep in mind that other contingencies could arise, particularly if a would-be aggressor believed the United States military was stretched thin. This was Myers’, Franks’, and my assessment—and ultimately President Bush’s.
As such, the emerging war plan did not call for the kind of armored divisions and heavy artillery the Soviets had used in Afghanistan. Rather, it emphasized speed, flexibility, and precision. Air strikes and small helicopter-borne teams were arranged to execute quick responses to the changing circumstances on the ground. U.S. special operations forces would provide the technology necessary for our naval and air-strike aircraft to attack al-Qaida and the Taliban with unprecedented precision firepower.
The Army’s Special Forces, the Navy’s SEALs, and the Air Force’s combat controllers had not been previously entrusted with the lead in such a major mission. The few hundred men who were ready to risk their lives in the service of their country by going after the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists alongside the Northern Alliance forces were among the most highly trained, best equipped, and most experienced soldiers on the face of the earth. Some were fluent in the local languages and versed in the cultures they would be encountering. They had trained foreign militaries and understood how to get along with those who thought and fought differently. They were experts in the irregular guerrilla warfare that would be critical to success. They were trained in demolition, hand-to-hand combat, and mountain and desert warfare. American special operators would be the sharp tip of the spear in the first war of the twenty-first century.
The military services also found ways to adapt and contribute to our unconventional Afghan campaign. It took a creative, forward-leaning admiral to assist in a country three hundred miles from the nearest ocean. In Admiral Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, the U.S. Navy had such a leader. Within hours after the 9/11 attack, submarines and Arleigh Burke–class destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles were speeding toward the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Clark ordered a refit of the 60,000-ton USS Kitty Hawk from a fleet aircraft carrier designed for launching jet aircraft into a “lily pad,” a seaborne platform for helicopters carrying special operators. The ship was in the northern Arabian Sea and in position to send the special operations teams into Afghanistan by early October.
With the Soviet disaster still in many people’s minds, with winter approaching, and with our faith in a group of haggard yet battle-hardened Afghans, the United