Bush At War Part 20

"Franks needs to push the Afghan people on the need to choose - freedom for themselves or to continue under the illegitimate Taliban regime," Rumsfeld said. He wanted the general to a.s.sist in the political task of motivating the Afghans. Rumsfeld said that 70 percent of the strikes would be in support of the opposition today. Fahim was still not moving, but he said he had received the message to focus on supporting the opposition. "We're going to re-supply Dostum today, Khalili tomorrow. And we're going to try to get stuff to Karzai tomorrow. And we're still getting in our teams.

"We're dividing our air campaign 60-40 between Mazar-e Sharif and the Shamali Plains for later this week. That's the plan." Despite the suggestions from Powell and others that they ma.s.s at one point, the secretary said, "We cannot concentrate in any one place. There are just not enough targets." He liked preplanned targeting, but the truly important targets were going to be identified :r. the battlefield by the CIA and his Special Forces teams.

The president had a question. "How do we make sure our teams are strong enough to avoid getting run over by the Taliban?"

The CIA and Special Forces teams of several dozen men were out in some pretty rough places, and alone. They could be attacked, run over, slaughtered or kidnapped and held hostage. It was not for the meek. Suppose one of the teams met the fate of Abdul Haq?

Rumsfeld and Tenet had exfiltration plans if a team got into extremis.

"Are they robust enough to be able to defend themselves?" Bush asked.

The answer was yes and no.

"They could be hit by the enemy or by friendly fire," Rumsfeld said.

"People get bought off," Tenet reminded. "Our people are at risk. We need to look at our extraction capability. We need to make sure we can protect our people."

The biggest protection were the teams' radios that could be used to call in precision strikes on an attacking enemy.

It was getting very gloomy.

RICE CALLED HADLEY to her office and they closed the big, heavy, dark door.

Was he all right working at a potential and likely Ground Zero?

Yes, he said, but he hoped that if anything happened, it wouldn't be something that would get his family, just him. Was she comfortable?

"Yes, you know," she said, "I'm a minister's daughter. I made peace about that a long time ago."

They agreed they should talk to the NSC staff, and made arrangements to do so one night. The staff, made up mostly of foreign service and military officers who had served in dangerous parts of the world, did not want to be moved.

AT THE PRINc.i.p.aLS' meeting Monday night, without the president, there was lots of jousting about what to do. If they were going to try to take Mazar, then what were they doing bombing the Shamali Plains? Rumsfeld continued to insist that there just were not enough targets unless they went beyond the Mazar targets.

Powell worried again that it was bombing for bombing's sake, unconnected to a military objective. He had been a junior infantry officer in Vietnam and knew personally the limits of airpower. He also worried that the United States was playing superpower bully, trying to move the opposition forces, the Northern Alliance and the various warlords, around on the chessboard as if they did not have a stake in this war. At one point, he asked, "Do they have any ideas about what they want to do, as opposed to what we think they ought to do?"

The question of the political objective lingered. Who would rule Afghanistan if the Taliban were deposed? How? What was the mechanism for some kind of democracy in a country dominated by tribal factions? The experts pretty much agreed that after the Soviets had been thrown out in 1989, the mistake was that the United States walked away. How did the political objective, whatever it was, relate to the military objective? Were they married up?

"We can't afford to lose," Rice said. "The Taliban proved tougher than we thought."

Tenet said they had dropped supplies to Dostum and Attah, but in the south the only person doing much - and that wasn't a whole lot - was Karzai, who had 400 to 500 fighters.

Rumsfeld lamented that in Mazar the Taliban had at least double and perhaps triple the forces of the Northern Alliance.

Powell took the floor to argue against Americanizing the war. "I'd rule out the United States going after the Afghans, who have been there 5,000 years." It could take all the airlift capacity of the American military to move the necessary force. Unless it was possible to intercept the Taliban's communications, they would be elusive. "They will not be there when you get there," he said. "It's a glitch in our thinking. We expected too much of the opposition. I don't know that the opposition can take Mazar, much less Kabul. What we have is First World airpower matched up with a Fourth World army." It would be better to build the Northern Alliance opposition up over the winter to at least a Third World capability to use later with U.S. airpower.

Rice returned to the immediate military problem on the ground and suggested they go back and try to examine three options: 1. Go for Mazar. 2. Go for Kabul. 3. What if they could do neither?

THE NEXT EVENING, Tuesday, October 30, the president flew up to New York to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks. At the stadium, he went to the bullpen area to warm up. It was difficult to throw in the bulletproof vest he had agreed to wear, and he wanted to keep his arm loose.

"Are you going to throw from the rubber or the base of the mound?" asked Derek Jeter, the Yankees' star shortstop. The rubber, the highest point of the mound, was used by the regular pitchers, but it was 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, a long throw.

Bush said that he was probably going to throw from the base of the mound, some six to 10 feet closer. He didn't want to throw a wild pitch.

"If you throw from the base of the mound," Jeter said, "they are going to boo you. You really need to take the rubber."

Do you think the fans would really boo me? Bush asked - the president, in the middle of a war, launched after the attack here?

"Yeah," Jeter said. "It's New York."

"All right, I'll throw from the rubber."

He went to the dugout and was about to be announced when Jeter tucked in behind him. "Don't forget, Mr. President, if you throw from the rubber and bounce it, they'll boo you."

The president emerged wearing a New York Fire Department windbreaker. He raised his arm and gave a thumbs-up to the crowd on the third base side of the field. Probably 15,000 fans threw their arms in the air imitating the motion.

He then threw a strike from the rubber, and the stadium erupted.

Watching from owner George Steinbrenner's box, Karl Rove thought, It's like being at a n.a.z.i rally.

RICE AND THE others were on edge as the administration was being murdered in the media. Earlier in the week, a military a.n.a.lyst on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had leveled the unkindest cut of all, saying that Bush was practicing "the Bill Clinton approach to warfare ... thinking small."

On Tuesday morning, two leading conservatives, Bush's normal allies, had blasted the war effort on the op-ed page of The Was.h.i.+ngton Post. William Kristol said, "It's a flawed plan" because of too many self-imposed constraints. Charles Krauthammer said the war was being fought with "half-measures."

On Wednesday, October 31, some war cabinet members read a news a.n.a.lysis by R. W Apple Jr. of The New York Times.

"Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not."

Since Rumsfeld had just disclosed publicly that small units of U.S. military Special Forces were operating in northern Afghanistan to provide liaison to "a limited number of the various opposition elements," Apple wrote that "their role sounds suspiciously like that of the advisers sent to Vietnam in the early 1960s." He noted that the former Soviet Union, "with good tanks in great numbers, was nonetheless stalemated and eventually defeated by Afghan rebel forces."

AT HIS WEDNESDAY morning meeting with senior staff, Bush expressed his pique at the media.

"They don't get it," the president said. "How many times do you have to tell them it's going to be a different type of war? And they don't believe it. They're looking for the conventional approach. That's not what they're going to see here. I've talked about patience. It's amazing how quickly people forget what you say, at least here in Was.h.i.+ngton." The quagmire stories made little sense to him. They had a good plan. They had agreed to it. "Why would we start second-guessing it this early into the plan?"

"WE'RE LOSING THE public relations war," the president began at the NSC meeting at 9:30 A.M. "We're not getting credit for what we are doing for the Afghan people. We need a humanitarian donors' conference as we head into Ramadan. We ought to be calling on the Taliban to let trucks pa.s.s," the convoys bringing in food and other a.s.sistance. "And if they don't, that will violate the principles of Islam."

Andrew Natsios, the head of AID, had brought a map showing areas of malnutrition, famine and privation in Afghanistan. They were mostly in the north where there had been a drought of several years. In the Pashtun-dominated south, where Taliban roots were strongest, there was adequate food, the map indicated.

"It's hard," Natsios said. "We're not well positioned. We're getting good cooperation from CENTCOM." Bush had the American military delivering the goods to send the political message.

"But our footprint and ability to deliver aid into the north is limited. We've got one airport in Turkmenistan, one airport in Uzbekistan, and we do not have the kind of land bridges we need."

"Prior to the conference," Bush said, "we need to get out to the world the facts about the situation as we found it. And what we are doing to counter it."

They had a long discussion about the role of the United Nations, and the question of who might lead Afghanistan after the Taliban.

Bush then turned to several sensitive issues with his war cabinet members.

First, Cheney wanted to discuss a CIA a.n.a.lysis that concluded that inadequate airpower was being directed at the Taliban. "Do we need more sorties?" he asked.

They saw dramatic increases in available targets when the Special Forces teams got into Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said. But he was having truly serious trouble. The teams weren't getting in. "We still have eight teams waiting. None went in yesterday."

"What's keeping them out?" Cheney inquired. Was it an unwillingness to take risks? Was it weather? "If we get hit again will we look too timid?"

Rumsfeld said that part of the problem was weather. The Uzbeks were also causing delays. In one case, Fahim was raising objections to another team.

Most of the others in the room were dumbfounded.

"Franks needs to lay out a winter scenario," the president said.

Rumsfeld was working on it.

"The longer it takes us to get al Qaeda," Cheney said, "the greater our risk. What would it take to hit 50 caves in 48 hours?" In case anyone missed his message, he wanted to kill more people. "What could we do with more force?"

Rumsfeld said they had increased the force a number of times, but he would check about what more could be done. They had had some bad luck and foul-ups. On a recent aerial resupply effort to Fahim, half the parachutes had not opened, causing a disaster.

"This will all take time," the president reminded everyone. "We cannot have false expectations about how long it will take. We need to condition the United Nations to be patient. The key to success will be how strong we are in the good times and in the bad, and whether we can stay focused. You keep a coalition together by being clear that we are going to win. The U.S. determination will be the key. We cannot let the world whine because we are under attack today."

As if he were speaking to an uninformed public instead of his war cabinet, he said, "This is a two front war. America is under attack. We need to fight the war at home through the homeland security. We need to fight it overseas by bringing the war to the bad guys."

Bush said he had been talking to a European leader who said the way to maintain the coalition was to have lots of consultation, for the U.S. to show responsiveness, take account of the views of others and understand their reasoning.

"Well," he said, "that's very interesting. Because my belief is the best way that we hold this coalition together is to be clear on our objectives and to be clear that we are determined to achieve them. You hold a coalition together by strong leaders.h.i.+p and that's what we intend to provide."

This was all consistent with Bush's belief that he is an agent for change - that he must state a new strategic direction or policy with bold, clear moves. And because it would be the policy of the United States, the only superpower, the rest of the world would have to move over, would adjust over time.

RICE THOUGHT BUSH was convinced that he didn't come here to leave the world the same way he found it. In private conversations with some heads of state, most recently j.a.panese Prime Minister Koizumi, he was outlining a broader view of his responsibility to act. "History will be the judge," he told Koizumi, "but it won't judge well somebody who doesn't act, somebody who just bides time here." judge well somebody who doesn't act, somebody who just bides time here."

Bush also didn't want to do things that would have small impact, Rice concluded. The country could sit on its unparalleled power and dispense it in small doses, or it could make big strategic power plays that would fundamentally alter the balance of power. Bush planted himself in the visionary camp. "I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals," he said in an interview. "There is nothing bigger than to achieve world peace."

He had come to believe that a president should not store up political capital, that a president gets more from spending it.

Rice admired what Truman and his secretaries of state had done after World War II. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the policy of containment were smart, effective uses of political capital.

When I later asked Bush about big strategic plays, he referred to the Civil War and the Vietnam War. "The job of the president is to unite a nation to achieve big objectives. Lincoln understood that, and he had the toughest job of all uniting a nation." Vietnam, in contrast, was divisive and ugly. Whatever capital Johnson and his advisers had was squandered. "They couldn't achieve big goals."

RUMSFELD HAD BEEN working for several weeks on a TOP SECRET paper outlining a broad strategy for Afghanistan. It was designed to make as certain as possible that they avoid a quagmire. He dictated a TOP SECRET - CLOSE HOLD memo to Wolfowitz, Myers, Vice Chairman Pace and policy undersecretary Feith, 10 numbered paragraphs on two pages in the large 13-point type that he preferred because it was easy to read.

Subject: "Ideas to be fed into the various sections of Afghan strategy paper." He wanted to make sure they addressed intelligence, humanitarian a.s.sistance, that they engaged NATO, and attempted to open the land bridge to Uzbekistan.

"Urgently," he dictated, using a rare emphasis, "bring in Special Forces units." It was still driving him crazy that they were so slow in getting men on the ground - the major promise and symbol of the new war the president and he were set on delivering.

Another point marked: "Contingency Planning. What if we suffer a setback?"

Rumsfeld had declared publicly that day that he was following the news commentary about the alleged stalemate or quagmire in Afghanistan. "I must say that I find those differences of views often helpful and interesting and informative and educational," he had said at his regular Pentagon briefing, trying to avoid a defensive tone.

To his senior staff he had referred once to the authors and television talking heads as "K Street pundits," former government officials and hangers-on who occupied the downtown corridor of K Street that housed seemingly endless consultancies and think tanks. To Rumsfeld, K Street was a low-life refuge for those who couldn't get real jobs, or didn't have the independence of spirit to leave Was.h.i.+ngton once they were through.

"Of course that's what they are saying," he had said. "They've got the attention span of gnats." The news business manufactured urgency and expectation. He was convinced that the public was more realistic, more patient.

He was doing some research to frame the historical context of one of his favorite subjects - Pearl Harbor and World War II.

THAT EVENING WAS Halloween. Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, were stashed away at the undisclosed location but he had been in meetings all day. After 37 years of marriage, Lynne Cheney, who holds a Ph.D. in English literature and has been chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, still marveled at the little thing inside her husband's head that allowed him to concentrate on what was important. These days he was worried about nothing less than the future of the world.

For Halloween, they had brought their three young grandchildren with them, ages two, three and seven. They all had carved pumpkins; not her husband, of course, but she and the children. The kids dressed up in costumes, but there was no neighborhood for trick-or-treating, so she sent them around to knock on the doors of staff members in the bunker. One Secret Service agent pulled his coat up over his head and b.u.t.toned it so he looked like the Headless Agent. He then blinked the lights on and off furiously. It was the most fun she could wring out of the evening for the kids. She found it a depressing time. When her husband had been in the Ford White House, or Congress, or when he was secretary of defense, she used to say to him at night, "Tell me everything." Not anymore. She didn't really want to ask.

GOOD AFTERNOON," RUMSFELD said, stepping before the news media in the Pentagon briefing room for his televised session with the news media the next day, Thursday, November 1. "I've reflected on some of the questions that were posed at the last briefing about the speed or progress and questions about the patience of the American people if something didn't happen immediately."

He then gave a history lesson, setting up the conflict between the press, which didn't understand the current war, and the public, which did. "Today is November 1st. And if you think about it, the smoke at this very moment is still rising out of the World Trade Center, or the ruins of the World Trade Center, I should say. And with those ruins still smoldering and the smoke not yet cleared, it seems to me that Americans understand well that despite the urgency in the questions that were posed at the last briefing, we're still in the very, very early stages of this conflict.

"Consider some historical perspectives." His tone edged on condescension. "After December 7th, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, it took four months before the United States responded to that attack with the Doolittle Raid in April of '42" on Tokyo. It was eight months before the first land attack on Guadalca.n.a.l, he noted. j.a.pan was bombed for three and a half years before capitulating, Germany was bombed for five years, he reminded them.

He said that on October 7, when the U.S. bombing campaign began, he had stated their limited objectives, and insisted that they did not expect the "possibility of instant victory or instant success."

He listed the six goals designed to change the military balance in Afghanistan over time - not this month, not necessarily this year - very limited, very understated goals. "Now those were the goals I put out on October 7th. That was 24 days ago - three weeks and three days; not three months; not three years, but three weeks and three days. And we have made measurable progress against each one of those stated goals from October 7th.

"In the end, war is not about statistics, deadlines, short attention spans or 24-hour news cycles. It's about will, the projection of will, the clear, unambiguous determination of the president of the United States - and let there be no doubt about that - and the American people to see this through to certain victory."

History was on their side. "In other American wars, enemy commanders have come to doubt the wisdom of taking on the strength and power of this nation and the resolve of her people. I expect that somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan there's a terrorist leader who is at this moment considering precisely the same thing."

There was a certain amount of hostility in the atmosphere. A reporter asked, "Your opening statement today wasn't about prosecuting war. Increasingly, it seems to be about selling the war, telling the American people why it's taking as long as it is, and to have patience. How big a part of your job is the sales effort? What sort of time are you dedicating to that? Are you dedicating too much time to it? And are the people that you're talking to buying?"

Speaking somewhat through clenched teeth, Rumsfeld said that he spent less than two hours out of his average 13 hour day answering media questions. "As a percentage of the day, it's relatively modest."

"IT IS IMPORTANT we show results before the winter," Cheney said at the November 1 princ.i.p.als' meeting at 5:30 P.M. "It's important we have a sense of urgency."

Rumsfeld said it took time to set up the targets by the Special Forces teams, and he reminded them of the continuing trouble getting more teams in. There was ground fire that was dangerous for the teams.

Powell said that over the winter they would be able to train the Northern Alliance to fight a conventional war. For example, it would be possible to train some of them as forward air controllers to call in the F-15 strikes themselves.

"I have a sense of urgency," Cheney said, meaning he didn't see it in others. "There will be a low tolerance after the next hit." He envisioned a political explosion in the United States if there was another attack, and if the administration had not done everything possible.

Rice said they needed to talk to Franks and the president about urgency.

Powell said they should focus on Mazar.

It's risky to focus on one place, Rice said. "What do we need to do if we have to take Mazar in a month?"

It was okay to focus on Mazar, Cheney said. "But if we don't get them, they'll get us." They really needed to kill more of these people, he believed. Maybe they should send out "hunter-killer" teams to stalk down the terrorists in Afghanistan.

Rice promised they would address the urgency issue with the president the next day.

As long as they were only hitting military forces and targets, Powell said they would maintain support for the war effort in most of the Muslim world.

"WELL, THERE'S BUZZING in the press," Powell said at the beginning of the NSC meeting the next day, Friday, November 2.

"Buzzing" was an understatement that brought some half-chuckles around the table. "The countries in the coalition are still with us," he added somewhat confidently.

"We have 410 trucks in northern Afghanistan, they've got snowplows. We've got about another month to bring in food." When the snow started in several weeks it would be more difficult to get food into the north.