Letter from The Plains
September, 2021
By
Anthony Wells
- The retreat from Afghanistan has subjected us all to a media blitz. Analysis-paralysis on steroids seems to have been the defining characteristic of every so-called expert in the field of US-Afghan political-military affairs, bombarding us with their interpretation of events. The UK press has been vitriolic in its criticism. With this in mind, I am very loath to even consider writing about the events of the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, August 14-15, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The only reason that I have written this Letter about the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan is solely because I may have something new of interest to offer based on several decades of experience, and which has not, to my very best knowledge, been mentioned or reported on in the various media. This may shed light on our somewhat fractured approach to Afghanistan and its dismal failure, and final denouement with the distressing scenes at Kabul airport.
- Up front I have to state that I was very much against both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The invasion of the latter was based on false intelligence and a concocted raison d’être, culminating in Secretary of State Collin Powell’s total misrepresentations to the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and, although a totally nasty human being, Saddam Hussein had two aspects to his policies that were very much in the interests of the United States and our allies. He was a critical buffer against and opponent of Iran, and number two he would not tolerate any presence or influence of Al Qaida in Iraq. If an Al Qaida cell or operative appeared in Iraq they were quickly erased. The 911 nineteen terrorist bombers who seized control of the four commercial aircraft after takeoff were not Iraqis. They were mostly Saudis. Please bear all this in mind.
- We the United States were 100% within our rights to attack Osama Bin Laden’s various cave-based strongholds in Afghanistan, to which he had retreated from the Sudan after the bombing of the East African embassies. In addition, the mission to prevent further terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan was indeed both necessary and legitimate in protecting the vital national interests of the United States and those of our allies. Full scale invasion, and so called “Nation Building” are different, totally separate issues. I tend to agree with President Biden that the United States should have departed Afghanistan years ago and hence his disagreement with President Obama when he was Vice President over not staying. No one President is guiltless. President Clinton could have ordered the attack on Bin Laden’s compound in the Sudan, before the West African bombings, destroying him, his extended family, and his terrorist entourage, all in one single location. President Clinton chose not to order the attack. Huge mistake. If this attack had been ordered and executed there would have been no 911 and the world would be a very different place. Please know that I was 100% in favor of such an attack using Tomahawk cruise missiles from our covert and stealthy nuclear powered attack submarines, at night. Bin Laden and his evil coterie while they slept would never have known what hit them. There would have been nothing left of the Bin Laden compound. Most of the world would have gone on, unknowing.
- Operation Enduring Freedom, the immediate response to the 911 attacks, had important characteristics of relevance to recent events in Kabul. Beginning on October 7, 2001 we systematically devastated the Taliban regime while also destroying Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan. By December, 2001 the United States and its Coalition Allies had achieved overall success. Key to this success were sea-based US carrier strikes by our nuclear powered aircraft carriers (CVNs) and special forces operations. The US CVNs’ long range aircraft attacks, together with precision missile strikes, and US Air Force heavy bombers, so denuded the Taliban that they fled to Pakistan and into the wilds of Tora Bora. In effect, the Taliban collapsed. They were defeated. Several CVNs were involved: USS Enterprise, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, John C. Stennis, and the conventionally powered Kitty Hawk. US Air Force and Royal Air Force tankers provided in flight refueling. This campaign’s detailed operations and the analyses that followed now bear serious remembrance in retrospect. We know how to do these operations. Our Navy, Special Forces, Air Force, and allies, particularly our principal ally, the United Kingdom, are brilliant at executing these operations. But, and here’s the “But”, they need political direction and that direction needs sound, clever, and original thinking from the military-intelligence leadership. The President cannot be expected to think up original schemes and their plans when he has a massive infrastructure that is supposed to think through, plan, and recommend courses of action.
- The rush to be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary date of the 911 attacks was a Presidential decision. I will not go into the pros and cons of this. You have all been subjected to intense media coverage so you do not need me to add to it. Here is my view of the world prior to the disastrous weekend in Kabul that could have gone in a completely different direction. Here is Anthony Wells’ plan if I had been advising the President and in charge of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, working closely with the National Security Council key staff and the Intelligence community of record, and most important, in total concert and cooperation with our allies, particularly the United Kingdom.
- We the United States would have planned and executed the most significant deception operation since World War Two. What would this have involved? We would have announced to the world, and therefore the Taliban, that we would leave Afghanistan at a date that would be consistent with the operational planning described below, with one sole time line objective kept extremely secret and closely held, namely to allow several United States Pacific Fleet CVNs to assemble off the littorals similar to the Fall of 2001, and also for the US Air Force to prepare for the largest bombing raids against the Taliban since the Vietnam War. The Air Force would provide in flight refueling for Navy aircraft. We could and should have deceived the Taliban into moving their whole force towards Kabul to meet our evacuation schedule that would in due course be well announced. As the Taliban proceeded en masse towards Kabul, on open roads, bringing their supply train of fuel and weapons with them, the United States could have executed the biggest single blow ever to the Taliban. The United States has all the necessary tactical intelligence capabilities to pinpoint and target in real time such forces, day and night, in all weather. This would resemble US and Alliance attacks in October, 2001 and after the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait during the First Gulf War. A combination of massive US Navy, Air Force, cruise missile, and drone strikes could have decimated the approaching Taliban Forces. They would have entered our deception trap. What was left of their forces would have retreated. Suddenly Kabul, instead of being the end of US influence and the beginning of Taliban rule, could have become Afghanistan’s “Stalingrad”, the turning of the tide against the German Wehrmacht by Soviet forces, brilliantly executed by General Vasily Chuikov, fully supported by General Georgy Zhukov, trapping the Germans in a battle that they could not win and leading to the beginning of the end of World War Two, with the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings.
- Following these airborne operations the United States could then later have departed Afghanistan with a victory, with an orderly departure for every element, and with dignity that the world would observe. Our allies would have been directly and jointly involved in the true military sense of “Joint”. After this decimation of the Taliban the Afghan government would be solely left to its devices, with possible undercover Special Forces left in place. The latter, again in my opinion, would concentrate on assisting the Afghan government totally undermining the Taliban’s prior sources of funding and weapon supplies, mainly derived from the drug trade and taxes levied on Afghan businesses and people in areas previously controlled by the Taliban. Without funding and money to buy weapons the Taliban would have major issues, aspects that the United States never effectively addressed.
- No one in the Pentagon and our Intelligence community ever thought of such a “Deception Plan”. You may well ask, “Who is in charge?” Good question. Part of the back-up plan would also have been to take extra precautions and increased presence in the South China Sea to ensure that China does not make rash moves against Taiwan, exploiting possible reductions in US force levels during the above operations.
- In my humble opinion the senior Defense and Intelligence leadership responsible should offer the President their Letters of Resignation. They are not paid to fail. In military operations poor advice, poor planning, and poorly conducted operations, are neither rewarded nor overlooked. The price of failure is resignation. In 1982 after the invasion of the Falkland Islands I recall well the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, a distinguished man by any standards, resigning because his organization had failed. Mrs. Thatcher, the Prime Minister, accepted his resignation without a second thought.
- We have an incredibly capable Navy and Marine Corps, and the finest Air Force in the world. I do believe that the US Army, with a massive number of incredibly fine dedicated fighting men and women, needs to be revitalized with greater strategic clarity and sense of fighting purpose in the face of a resurgent China, and the aftermath of the Afghan debacle. Gone are the days of a General David Petraeus during this period. There are many lessons to be learned from these twenty years of precious taxpayer’s dollars and, far more important than any money, precious American and allied lives being lost. I will not address these simply because it will be repetitious of the media blitz that we are all enduring. The above are my thoughts, and what I would have both advised the President, and hopefully implemented, if I could have played the appropriate roles during these crucial moments in time, when indeed to coin the words of that famous song, “The Answers are all up to me”. These are “My Answers”.
- Let us all be thankful for the men and women of our Armed Forces and those of our allies who executed the mission in Afghanistan for twenty years. They are the real heroes. We should remember with loving care those who died, American and allies, and those who still live with their injuries. Politicians come and go, “Here today and gone tomorrow”, whereas our fine men and women of the US Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, together with our allies, are the sustaining bedrock and continuity of our security and well being. I have had the great privilege to serve at sea in two US warships and a nuclear-powered submarine, work alongside the US Marine Corps and Navy SEALS, with the US Air Force on Joint Stars, and all Services at the National Reconnaissance Office. They are the best, along with our British allies.