Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  It was an amazing conversation. I told Vladimir I appreciated his willingness to move beyond the suspicions of the past. Before long, we had our agreements with the former Soviet republics.

  In late September, George Tenet reported that the first of the CIA teams had entered Afghanistan and linked up with the Northern Alliance. Tommy Franks told me he would be ready to deploy our Special Forces soon. I threw out a question to the team that had been on my mind: “So who’s going to run the country?”

  There was silence.

  I wanted to make sure the team had thought through the postwar strategy. I felt strongly that the Afghan people should be able to select their new leader. They had suffered too much—and the American people were risking too much—to let the country slide back into tyranny. I asked Colin to work on a plan for a transition to democracy.

  On Friday, October 5, General Dick Myers told me the military was ready to launch. I was ready, too. We had given the Taliban more than two weeks to respond to the ultimatum I had delivered. The Taliban had not met any of our demands. Their time was up.

  Don Rumsfeld was on his way back from the Middle East and Central Asia, where he had finalized several important basing agreements. I waited for him to return before I gave the official order. On Saturday morning, October 6, I spoke to Don and Dick Myers by secure video-conference from Camp David. I asked one last time if they had everything they needed. They did.

  “Go,” I said. “This is the right thing to do.”

  I knew in my heart that striking al Qaeda, removing the Taliban, and liberating the suffering people of Afghanistan was necessary and just. But I worried about all that could go wrong. The military planners had laid out the risks: mass starvation, an outbreak of civil war, the collapse of the Pakistani government, an uprising by Muslims around the world, and the one I feared most—a retaliatory attack on the American homeland.

  When I boarded Marine One the next morning to return to Washington, Laura and a few key advisers knew I had given the order, but virtually no one else did. To preserve the secrecy of the operation, I went ahead with my previously announced schedule, which included attending a ceremony at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I spoke about the 343 New York City firefighters who had given their lives on 9/11, by far the worst day in the history of American firefighting. The casualties ranged from the chief of the department, Pete Ganci, to young recruits in their first months on the job.

  The memorial was a vivid reminder of why America would soon be in the fight. Our military understood, too. Seven thousand miles away, the first bombs fell. On several of them, our troops had painted the letters FDNY.

  The first reports out of Afghanistan were positive. In two hours of aerial bombardment, we and our British allies had wiped out the Taliban’s meager air defense system and several known al Qaeda training camps. Behind the bombs, we dropped more than thirty-seven thousand rations of food and relief supplies for the Afghan people, the fastest delivery of humanitarian aid in the history of warfare.

  After several days, we ran into a problem. The air campaign had destroyed most of the Taliban and al Qaeda infrastructure. But we were having trouble inserting our Special Forces. They were grounded at a former Soviet air base in Uzbekistan, separated from their landing zone in Afghanistan by fifteen-thousand-foot-high mountains, freezing temperatures, and blinding snowstorms.

  I pressed for action. Don and Tommy assured me they were moving as fast as possible. But as the days passed, I became more and more frustrated. Our response looked too much like the impotent air war America had waged in the past. I worried we were sending the wrong message to the enemy and to the American people. Tommy Franks later called those days a period “from hell.” I felt the same way.

  Twelve days after I announced the start of the war, the first of the Special Forces teams finally touched down. In the north, our forces linked up with the CIA and Northern Alliance fighters. In the south, a small team of Special Forces raided Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s headquarters in Kandahar.

  Months later, I visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where I met members of the Special Forces team that had led the raid. They gave me a brick from the remnants of Mullah Omar’s compound. I kept it in the private study next to the Oval Office as a reminder that we were fighting this war with boots on the ground—and that the Americans in those boots were courageous and skilled.

  The arrival of our troops did not quiet doubts at home. On October 25, Condi told me the slow pace of operations, which was producing a drumbeat of criticism in the media, was affecting the national security team. The war was only eighteen days old, but some were already talking about alternative strategies.

  In times of uncertainty, any indication of doubt from the president ripples throughout the system. At a National Security Council meeting the next morning, I said, “I just want to make sure that all of us did agree on this plan, right?” I went around the table and asked every member of the team. They all agreed.

  I assured the team that we had the right strategy. Our plan was well conceived. Our military was capable. Our cause was just. We shouldn’t give in to second-guessing or let the press panic us. “We’re going to stay confident and patient, cool and steady,” I said.

  I could sense the relief in the room. The experience reminded me that even the most accomplished and powerful people sometimes need to be reassured. As I later told journalist Bob Woodward, the president has to be the “calcium in the backbone.”

  I was glad we had stiffened our spines when I saw the New York Times on October 31. Reporter Johnny Apple had written an article headlined “A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam.” His opening sentence read, “Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ‘quagmire’ has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.”

  In some ways, this was predictable. The reporters of my generation tend to see everything through the prism of Watergate or Vietnam. Still, I was amazed the Times couldn’t wait even a month to tag Afghanistan with the Vietnam label.

  The differences between the two conflicts were striking. The enemy in Afghanistan had just murdered three thousand innocent people on American soil. At the time we had almost no conventional forces in Afghanistan, compared to the hundreds of thousands that had been in Vietnam. America was unified behind our troops and their mission. And we had a growing coalition at our side.

  None of those distinctions mattered to the media. The debate about the so-called quagmire continued on the editorial pages and cable TV. I shrugged it off. I knew most Americans would be patient and supportive, so long as we delivered results.

  In early November, results arrived. Supported by CIA officers and Special Forces, Northern Alliance generals moved toward Taliban positions. The Afghan warriors led the ground attacks, while our Special Forces used GPS units and laser guidance systems to direct airstrikes. Northern Alliance fighters and our Special Forces mounted a cavalry charge and liberated the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Residents poured into the streets in celebration. The most modern weaponry of the twenty-first century, combined with a horse charge reminiscent of the nineteenth century, had driven the Taliban from their northern stronghold.

  I was relieved. While I had confidence in our strategy and dismissed the quagmire talk, I had felt some anxiety. There was no way to know for sure whether our approach would succeed. The fall of Mazar reassured me. “This thing might just unravel like a cheap suit,” I told Vladimir Putin.

  It unraveled fast. Within days, almost every major city in the north fell. The Taliban fled Kabul for mountain hideouts in the east and south. Women came out of their homes. Children flew kites. Men shaved off their beards and danced in the streets. One man listened to music—banned under the Taliban—with a cassette player pressed to his ear. “We are free!” he shouted. A woman teacher said, “I’m happy because I believe now the doors of the school will be o
pen for girls.”

  I was overjoyed by the scenes of liberation. So was Laura. The Saturday after Kabul fell, she delivered the weekly radio address, the first time a First Lady had ever done so. The Taliban regime, she said, “is now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan—especially women—are rejoicing. Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering. … The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”

  Laura’s address prompted positive responses from around the world. The most meaningful came from Afghan women. Expanding opportunity in Afghanistan, especially for women and girls, became a calling for Laura. In the years to come, she met with Afghan teachers and entrepreneurs, facilitated the delivery of textbooks and medicine, supported a new U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council that mobilized more than $70 million in private development funds, and made three trips to the country. Just as I was feeling more comfortable as commander in chief, she was gaining her footing as First Lady.

  With northern Afghanistan liberated, our attention turned to the south. George Tenet reported that an anti-Taliban movement was coalescing around a Pashtun leader, Hamid Karzai. Karzai was not a typical military commander. He grew up near Kandahar, earned a college degree in India, spoke four languages, and served in the Afghan government before it was taken over by the Taliban.

  Two days after our bombing campaign began, Karzai hopped on a motorcycle in Pakistan, crossed the border, and rallied several hundred men to take Tarin Kot, a small city near Kandahar. The Taliban discovered Karzai’s presence and sent troops to kill him. With his position about to be overrun, the CIA dispatched a helicopter to pick him up. After a brief period, Karzai returned to lead the resistance. He was joined in late November by a contingent of Marines. The remaining Taliban officials fled Kandahar. The city fell on December 7, 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, two months to the day after my speech in the Treaty Room.

  Driven out of their strongholds, the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda fled to Afghanistan’s rugged eastern border with Pakistan. In early 2002, Tommy Franks mounted a major assault called Operation Anaconda. Our troops, joined by coalition partners and Afghan forces, squeezed out the remaining al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan. CIA officers and Special Forces crawled through the caves, calling in airstrikes on terrorist hideouts and putting a serious dent in al Qaeda’s army.

  I hoped I would get a call with the news that Osama bin Laden was among the dead or captured. We were searching for him constantly and received frequent but conflicting information on his whereabouts. Some reports placed him in Jalalabad. Others had him in Peshawar, or at a lake near Kandahar, or at the Tora Bora cave complex. Our troops pursued every lead. Several times we thought we might have nailed him. But the intelligence never panned out.

  Years later, critics charged that we allowed bin Laden to slip the noose at Tora Bora. I sure didn’t see it that way. I asked our commanders and CIA officials about bin Laden frequently. They were working around the clock to locate him, and they assured me they had the troop levels and resources they needed. If we had ever known for sure where he was, we would have moved heaven and earth to bring him to justice.

  Operation Anaconda marked the end of the opening phase of the battle. Like any war, our campaign in Afghanistan had not gone perfectly. But in six months, we had removed the Taliban from power, destroyed the al Qaeda training camps, liberated more than twenty-six million people from unspeakable brutality, allowed Afghan girls to return to school, and laid the foundation for a democratic society to emerge. There had been no famine, no outbreak of civil war, no collapse of the government in Pakistan, no global uprising by Muslims, and no retaliatory attack on our homeland.

  The gains came at a precious cost. Between the start of the war and Operation Anaconda, twenty-seven brave Americans were killed. I read each name, usually in my early morning briefings at the Resolute desk. I imagined the pain their families felt when the military officer appeared at their door. I prayed that God would comfort them amid their grief.

  Early in the war, I decided to write letters to the family members of Americans lost on the battlefield. I wanted to honor their sacrifice, express my sorrow, and extend the gratitude of the country. As I sat down to write on November 29, 2001, I remembered a letter Abraham Lincoln had written in 1864 to Lydia Bixby, a Massachusetts woman who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War.

  “I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming,” Lincoln wrote. “But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

  My letter was addressed to Shannon Spann, the wife of Mike Spann, the CIA officer killed in the prison uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif and the first battlefield death of the war:

  Dear Shannon,

  On behalf of a grateful nation, Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathy to you and your family on the loss of Mike. I know your heart aches. Our prayers are with you all.

  Mike died in a fight against evil. He laid down his life for a noble cause—freedom. Your children must know that his service to our nation was heroic and brave.

  May God bless you, Shannon, your children, and all who mourn the loss of a good and brave man.

  Sincerely,

  George W. Bush

  I sent letters to the families of every service member who laid down his or her life in the war on terror. By the end of my presidency, I had written to almost five thousand families.

  In addition to my correspondence, I met frequently with family members of the fallen. I felt it was my responsibility to comfort those who had lost a loved one. When I traveled to Fort Bragg in March 2002, I met the families of servicemen killed during Operation Anaconda. I was apprehensive. Would they be angry? Would they be bitter? I was ready to share tears, to listen, to talk—whatever I could do to ease their pain.

  One of the widows I met was Valerie Chapman. Her husband, Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman, had bravely attacked two al Qaeda bunkers in remote mountains during an enemy ambush, helping to save his teammates before laying down his own life. Valerie told me John loved the Air Force. He had enlisted when he was nineteen and had served for seventeen years.

  I crouched down so that I was eye level with John and Valerie’s two daughters—Madison, age five, and Brianna, age three. I pictured my own girls at that age. My heart broke at the thought that they would grow up without their dad. I told them he was a good man who had served with courage. I fought back tears. If the little girls remembered anything of the meeting, I wanted it to be how much I respected their father, not a weepy commander in chief.

  As the meeting wrapped up, Valerie handed me a copy of her husband’s memorial pamphlet. “If anyone ever tells you this is the wrong thing to do,” she said intently, “you look at this.” She had written a note on the pamphlet:

  “John did his job, now you do yours.”

  I remembered her words, and others like them, every time I made decisions about the war.

  Over time, the thrill of liberation gave way to the daunting task of helping the Afghan people rebuild—or, more accurately, build from scratch. Afghanistan in 2001 was the world’s third-poorest country. Less than 10 percent of the population had access to health care. More than four out of five women were illiterate. While Afghanistan’s land area and population were similar to those of Texas, its annual economic output was comparable to that of Billings, Montana. Life expectancy was a bleak forty-six years.

  In later years, Afghanistan would often be compared with Iraq. But the two countries started from vastly different points. At the time of its liberation, Afghanistan’
s per capita GDP was less than a third of Iraq’s. The infant mortality rate in Afghanistan was more than twice as high. Helping the Afghan people join the modern world would clearly be a long, arduous undertaking.

  When I ran for president, I never anticipated a mission like this. In the fall of 2000, Al Gore and I debated the most pressing issues facing America. Not once did the words Afghanistan, bin Laden, or al Qaeda come up. We did discuss nation building. “The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops,” I said in the first debate. “… I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.”

  At the time, I worried about overextending our military by undertaking peacekeeping missions as we had in Bosnia and Somalia. But after 9/11, I changed my mind. Afghanistan was the ultimate nation building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society. The terrorists took refuge in places of chaos, despair, and repression. A democratic Afghanistan would be a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists.

  The first step was to empower a legitimate leader. Colin Powell worked with UN officials on a process for the Afghan people to select an interim government. They decided to hold a traditional Afghan gathering called a loya jirga, or grand council. Afghanistan was not a safe enough place to convene the meeting, so Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany generously offered to host the council in Bonn.

  After nine days of deliberations, the delegates selected Hamid Karzai to serve as chairman of the interim authority. When Karzai arrived in Kabul for his inauguration on December 22—102 days after 9/11—several Northern Alliance leaders and their bodyguards greeted him at the airport. As Karzai walked across the tarmac alone, a stunned Tajik warlord asked where all his men were. Karzai responded, “Why, General, you are my men. All of you who are Afghans are my men.”