by Dick Cheney
Much of what the president said about Afghanistan in 2009 was true. American security did depend upon defeating al Qaeda and denying them a safe haven. Those things were still true two years later when the president chose to withdraw the majority of American forces from the field of battle.
By the spring of 2011, the president had lost the will to fight and win the war in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Gates has written about the deep concern he felt sitting in an NSC meeting in March 2011, listening to the president describe his determination to draw down American troops:
As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.
On June 22, 2011, President Obama announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would begin coming home in July, and that all of the surge forces he had announced in the December 2009 West Point address would be home by the summer of 2012.
It was a timetable with no military justification. In fact, it hampered the mission the president had established because the requirement to bring all the surge forces home by the end of the summer in 2012 meant they would have to begin withdrawing before the spring 2012 fighting season. They would lack the time necessary to accomplish their objectives in eastern Afghanistan—fully clearing out the Taliban and going after the Haqqani Network between Kabul and the Pakistani border. The timeline did ensure, however, that the surge forces would be home before the 2012 reelection campaign. The president could then campaign on the notion that “the tide of war is receding.”
Six days after the president’s announcement of the timetable for withdrawing the surge forces, Marine Lieutenant General John Allen, who had been nominated as the new commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, was testifying under oath in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Lindsey Graham asked him whether the withdrawal pace chosen by the president was “one of the options presented to the president,” by General Petraeus, who had taken over command in Afghanistan in June 2010. This exchange ensued:
ALLEN: It is a more aggressive option than that which was presented.
GRAHAM: My question is, was that an option which was presented?
ALLEN: It was not.
General Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen both also testified that the drawdown plan announced by Obama was “more aggressive” than they had hoped. Petraeus went on to say that the time frame was the result of “broader considerations” beyond military ones.
In the years since, the president has continued to draw down our forces regardless of conditions on the ground. As we write this, nearly 10,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan. Despite a decision by the president to slow the rate of withdrawal, he has remained determined that all American forces will be out by the end of 2016, leaving only “an embassy presence by the end of next year,” he said, “just as we’ve done in Iraq.”
In February 2015, General John Campbell, commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, testified that as the United States continues to draw down, Taliban, al Qaeda, and al Qaeda affiliates will “undoubtedly attempt to reestablish their authority and prominence in Afghanistan,” and “present a formidable challenge” to the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF). Campbell explained that as the United States withdraws from its base in Kandahar Province, the Taliban’s historic stronghold, the departure of coalition forces “would provide the Taliban momentum” to expand offensive operations throughout the country.
The first months of 2015 have seen an increase in Taliban violence in key regions across the country and in Kabul. This has occurred even in regions like the south, where the ANSF has attempted to undertake operations to clear the Taliban. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the current security situation in Afghanistan has “begun to reflect the strategic landscape before the 2010 surge. ANSF units are increasingly confined to their bases and security checkpoints, unable or unwilling to go out on patrol in the community.”
ISIS has also expanded its operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, through the establishment of the “Wilayat of Khorasan.” A wilayat is an ISIS administrative unit through which operations are conducted in a particular geographic area. As of this writing, ISIS has a presence in at least eight of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces, and the group is actively recruiting fighters from Afghanistan to travel to Iraq and Syria.
Despite the resurgence of America’s enemies, President Obama continues to insist on taking our forces off the field of battle. He is no longer interested in prevailing in what he once said was the necessary war. He is interested only in leaving. What has caused this change? Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former advisor on Afghanistan for President Obama, offers this explanation:
It was to court public opinion that Obama first embraced the war in Afghanistan. And when public opinion changed, he was quick to declare victory and call the troops back home. His actions from start to finish were guided by politics and they played well at home. But abroad, the stories we tell to justify our on again, off again approach to this war do not ring true to friend or foe. They know the truth: that we are leaving Afghanistan to its own fate. Leaving even as the demons of regional chaos that first beckoned us there are once again rising to threaten our security.
THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
In a complex and heroic operation, members of SEAL Team Six launched into Pakistan from Afghanistan on May 1, 2011, and killed Osama bin Laden. They performed brilliantly. President Obama deserves credit for ordering the raid. Members of our military and intelligence community, including interrogators in the enhanced interrogation program, deserve credit for finding bin Laden. It was just and right that the man responsible for the attacks of 9/11 met his demise at the hands of the United States armed forces.
In the aftermath of the successful raid in Abbottabad, the Obama administration increasingly claimed al Qaeda was in decline or had been defeated. In hundreds of speeches during the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama said some version of “The war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.” The message was clear. President Obama’s actions had diminished the threat of a terrorist attack, and al Qaeda was on the ropes. The reality was somewhat different—while Obama was proclaiming al Qaeda’s demise, it and other militant Islamic terrorist groups were resurgent across the globe.
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, offered this view as he was leaving his post:
When asked if the terrorists were on the run, we couldn’t respond with any answer but “no.” When asked if the terrorists were defeated, we had to say “no.” Anyone who answers yes to either of those questions either doesn’t know what they are talking about, they are misinformed, or they are flat out lying.
A RAND Corporation study published in 2014 confirmed what General Flynn was saying. It found, for example:
Beginning in 2010, there was a rise in the number of Salafi-jihadist groups and fighters, particularly in Syria and North Africa. There was also an increase in the number of attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Between 2010 and 2013, according to the study, there was a 58 percent increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist groups. And more groups meant more attacks:
There was a significant increase in attacks by al Qa’ida-affiliated groups between 2007 and 2013, with most of the violence in 2013 perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (43 percent) . . . al Shabaab (25 percent); Jabhat al-Nusrah (21 percent); and al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (10 percent).
The study also addressed the status of “core al Qaeda,” the group President Obama has claimed repeatedly to have defeated. Noting that the “broader Salafi-Jihadist movement has become more decentralized,” the report explained, “using the state
of core al Qa’ida in Pakistan as a gauge of the movement’s strengths (or weaknesses) is increasingly anachronistic for such a heterogeneous mixture of groups.”
We now know, in addition, as a result of the documents captured in the bin Laden raid, that Obama’s claims about the condition of “core al Qaeda” were untrue. Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn reported:
At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.”
On September 6, 2012, as he accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the president said this:
Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and we have. We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
Five days later, on September 11, 2012, an al Qaeda–affiliated group attacked two American facilities in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. Not only was al Qaeda not on the path to defeat, it was resurgent across the Middle East and had just carried out a brutal and well-planned attack against the United States, on the anniversary of 9/11.
In the days and weeks following the attacks, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and other administration officials misled the American people about what had happened, attempting to cast the attacks as spontaneous uprisings in response to an anti-Islamic Internet video, though there was no evidence for such a claim. Here is a sampling of what they said:
SECRETARY CLINTON: “We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American Embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is unacceptable.” (September 15, 2012)
AMBASSADOR RICE: “The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent.” (September 16, 2012)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. Now I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity.” (September 25, 2012)
They made these claims despite evidence to the contrary, including:
• The State Department Operations Center had reported on September 11, 2012, at 6:08 P.M., while the attacks were still under way, that an al Qaeda–linked group had already claimed credit.
• The CIA station chief in Libya reported on September 12 that the U.S. facilities in Benghazi had been the target of a terrorist attack by Islamic militants.
• The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs had informed the Libyan government on September 12, 2012, that an al Qaeda–affiliated group had been involved in the attack.
• There was no protest or demonstration or gathering of people angry about a video, or anything else, at the consulate prior to the attack. The CIA station chief in Libya had notified CIA deputy director Mike Morrell of this on September 15, prior to Ambassador Rice’s claims. The Accountability Review Board tasked to investigate the attack also concluded, “There was no protest prior to the attacks.”
• There was no mention of any Internet video sparking these attacks in any of the reporting from Libya or in the talking points prepared about the attack by the CIA.
• The initial talking points prepared by the CIA included the assertion that the U.S. government “knows that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attacks.”
As Stephen F. Hayes has reported, after an interagency meeting at the White House on September 15, 2012, the CIA removed all references to Islamic extremists, jihadists in Cairo, previous attacks on foreign interests in Benghazi, possible surveillance of the American facilities in Benghazi, and warnings about al Qaeda in Libya. In other words, they removed anything that suggested the involvement of al Qaeda affiliates in an attack on U.S. interests, and anything that suggested the State Department should have been aware of the danger. The new version of the talking points also softened the word “attacks” to “demonstrations.”
There was an important video released on the Internet the day before the attacks. It was not, however, the one Secretary Clinton and President Obama attempted to blame for the attacks. It was a video released by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, on September 10, 2012. Zawahiri confirmed the death of his number two, Abu Yahya al-Libi, at the hands of the Americans. He urged his followers to puncture the “arrogance” of the “evil empire, America.” Perhaps it was this video on which the president and secretary of state should have been focused.
One might ask why the administration worked so hard to ignore evidence and peddle a false narrative about what happened. The answer is the calendar. In the middle of an election campaign in which President Obama was claiming every day that al Qaeda had been defeated or was diminished, he could not admit to an al Qaeda attack on U.S. personnel and facilities on the anniversary of 9/11. His reelection was on the line. He had to find another story.
The outlines for the new story were in place by Friday, September 14, 2012, when Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes sent an email setting out goals for Ambassador Rice to achieve during her appearances on September 16 on five Sunday shows. She should, he wrote, “Underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” She should also, he emphasized, “Reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” The Obama team’s spin was clear.
They knew that a preplanned al Qaeda attack on American personnel and facilities would raise the question of whether senior officials had spent so much time claiming al Qaeda was defeated that they had failed to adequately guard against the possibility of an al Qaeda–linked attack. The facts, in this regard, are not helpful to either President Obama or Secretary Clinton. We know now:
• The attacks were preplanned, well organized, and carried out by the same al Qaeda affiliate that had launched previous attacks on U.S. and Western interests in Benghazi in the months immediately preceding September 11, 2012.
• There had been at least twenty attacks in Benghazi in 2012, in the midst of a rising wave of violence.
• The American facilities had been the target of al Qaeda–affiliated surveillance.
• Ambassador Chris Stevens had asked for additional security and been turned down. Secretary Clinton’s State Department cut U.S. security staff in Libya prior to the attacks.
• The Libyan government had asked for additional security assistance just two months before the attacks, and the Obama administration had failed to provide anything meaningful.
• Al Qaeda’s number two issued a video on September 10 calling on his followers to avenge the death of his number two, a Libyan operative, by attacking America.
• There were no demonstrations and no evidence that an anti-Muslim Internet video had anything to do with these attacks.
The steady drumbeat of evidence indicating that the president and the secretary had misled the American people came to a head when Secretary Clinton testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2013. As the senators tried to determine what Secretary Clinton knew and when she knew it, she responded angrily:
With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?
This response was stunning because the alternative scenarios Secretary Clinton offered did not include what actually happened—the American facilities in Benghazi were the target of an al Qaeda–affiliated terrorist attack. Equally remarkable was her assertion (posed as a rhetorical question) that what caused the American deaths makes no difference—when, of course, it does. It is the difference between dismissing what happened as a one-off event and understanding it as part of an ongoing threat that we must guard against. Understanding what happened affects everything from how we assess what went wrong in the past to how we conduct ourselves to defeat the terrorists, to how we protect our people in the future.
At the most fundamental level, though, it is the difference between being honest about what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, and adopting a false narrative because it serves political purposes. It is the difference between lying to the American people and dealing with them truthfully—which is what we deserve.
THE RISE OF ISIS
In March 2014, the authors of this book visited with a number of key leaders in the Middle East. One Arab head of state unfolded a map in front of us on his conference table and drew an arc with his finger from Raqqa in Syria to Anbar Province in Iraq. “The terrorists will control this entire territory if America doesn’t act,” he said. “Why won’t your president act?” We could not answer the question. Not only was President Obama doing nothing consequential to stop the spread of ISIS across the Middle East, the rise of this most dangerous terrorist group was a direct result of his policies in Iraq and Syria.