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> So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their

by whakim 5y ago

> So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy. The problem was, real intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden and Al Qaida in general was extremely rare. It was the vigorousness with which we pursued Al Qaida that helped really poison the relationship with local Afghans. You had local elites claiming that their rivals were somehow related to Al Qaida, which usually resulted in innocent people being taken into custody, tortured and/or killed. You had some legitimate leads (but often on mid-level operatives at best) that resulted in extremely risky special forces operations in remote and treacherous terrain - often resulting in both US and civilian casualties. You do this enough and people hate you, you've got an insurgency. > We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located, blown up, and dismantled). Real "training centers" were something of a white whale for the military in Afghanistan. A lot of the supposed Al Qaida "training" was taking place in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, in particularly inhospitable terrain. We'd run military operations in these remote Nuristani valleys, US troops would die, we'd almost never capture anything of value, and local people would slowly get fed up with their husbands/children/etc. getting accidentally blown up in airstrikes.

dragontamer 5y ago
The Battle of Tora Bora, taking place in December 2001, has been subject to US Senate debate and discussion. Bin Laden wrote his last will and testament on December 14, 2001, coinciding with the battle. The commandos who stormed Tora Bora were met with fierce resistance... not by Taliban, but by US Troops who refused to drop bigger bombs or deploy sufficient forces to attack the mountainous terrain. -------- Donald Rumsfeld himself was worried that too many troops in Afghanistan at this time would fuel anti-American sentiment. Our problem was half-assing it in the early days of the war, when it mattered. https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S%20Prt%20111-35%20Tora%20Bora%20Revisited%20How%20We%20Failed%20to%20Get%20Bin%20Laden%20and%20Why%20it%20Matters%20Today.pdf https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S%20Prt%20111-3... When the Afghan forces complied with the Taliban / Al Qaeda cease fire, there was nothing for US troops to do anymore but let Bin Laden go. There wasn't sufficient strength to attack. Perhaps intelligence on the ground was insufficient to allow a bigger military footprint at the time. But given the next 20 years of fighting and insurrection, a bit more force used in December 2001 could have prevented a lot of the force we used later.
- whakim 5y ago
  Yes, we narrowly missed Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001. But "just send more troops" and "use bigger bombs" betrays a lack of familiarity with combat in the mountainous and inhospitable parts of Afghanistan. There's only so much air power can do in these places. It's incredibly hard to insert troops into places like these. You need to be able to medevac the WIA and KIA when things go wrong. There were no roads. In 2001, we were often literally using Russian maps. The history of these big mountain operations in Afghanistan is basically one of "let's send more troops/use bigger bombs/etc. etc." and it never got us anywhere. These operations pretty much always failed and we almost never got whoever we were going after.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > The history of these big mountain operations in Afghanistan is basically one of "let's send more troops/use bigger bombs/etc. etc." and it never got us anywhere. Except in the Battle of Tora Bora, where the commanders on the ground said that the 100 troops deployed to the area were insufficient to push into a heavily fortified mountainous region. And they're right. If those 100 troops pushed in, they would have been massacred. More troops absolutely would have helped at that time. Plenty of airplanes dropped plenty of bombs. But the use of air-deployed land mines was not authorized, which could have also helped (GATOR mines self-detonate after 15 days, to minimize risks to the local population after battle. They are further battery-operated, and are designed to run out of battery in case the self-detonation fails) The gloves were still on. We could have easily used more force in that battle, but decided against it. --------- Traditionally, you need to outnumber your opponent 3 to 1 if you wish to lay siege to an enemy in their home territory. At some point, just raw manpower is what you need. As you said: we dropped plenty of bombs in that battle, but bombs aren't boots on the ground. You need people there to know if the bombs are in fact hitting their mark.
    - whakim 5y ago
      You're getting fixated on the specifics of Tora Bora. Zoom out and look at the other big mountain operations over the following 15 years; you'll hear similar excuses "we needed this technology/we needed more men at this spot." With that context it's easy to see that Tora Bora probably wouldn't have been a success even with GATOR mines or more men.

by whakim 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

The Battle of Tora Bora, taking place in December 2001, has been subject to US Senate debate and discussion. Bin Laden wrote his last will and testament on December 14, 2001, coinciding with the battle. The commandos who stormed Tora Bora were met with fierce resistance... not by Taliban, but by US Troops who refused to drop bigger bombs or deploy sufficient forces to attack the mountainous terrain. -------- Donald Rumsfeld himself was worried that too many troops in Afghanistan at this time would fuel anti-American sentiment. Our problem was half-assing it in the early days of the war, when it mattered. https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S%20Prt%20111-35%20Tora%20Bora%20Revisited%20How%20We%20Failed%20to%20Get%20Bin%20Laden%20and%20Why%20it%20Matters%20Today.pdf https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S%20Prt%20111-3... When the Afghan forces complied with the Taliban / Al Qaeda cease fire, there was nothing for US troops to do anymore but let Bin Laden go. There wasn't sufficient strength to attack. Perhaps intelligence on the ground was insufficient to allow a bigger military footprint at the time. But given the next 20 years of fighting and insurrection, a bit more force used in December 2001 could have prevented a lot of the force we used later.

whakim 5y ago
Yes, we narrowly missed Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001. But "just send more troops" and "use bigger bombs" betrays a lack of familiarity with combat in the mountainous and inhospitable parts of Afghanistan. There's only so much air power can do in these places. It's incredibly hard to insert troops into places like these. You need to be able to medevac the WIA and KIA when things go wrong. There were no roads. In 2001, we were often literally using Russian maps. The history of these big mountain operations in Afghanistan is basically one of "let's send more troops/use bigger bombs/etc. etc." and it never got us anywhere. These operations pretty much always failed and we almost never got whoever we were going after.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > The history of these big mountain operations in Afghanistan is basically one of "let's send more troops/use bigger bombs/etc. etc." and it never got us anywhere. Except in the Battle of Tora Bora, where the commanders on the ground said that the 100 troops deployed to the area were insufficient to push into a heavily fortified mountainous region. And they're right. If those 100 troops pushed in, they would have been massacred. More troops absolutely would have helped at that time. Plenty of airplanes dropped plenty of bombs. But the use of air-deployed land mines was not authorized, which could have also helped (GATOR mines self-detonate after 15 days, to minimize risks to the local population after battle. They are further battery-operated, and are designed to run out of battery in case the self-detonation fails) The gloves were still on. We could have easily used more force in that battle, but decided against it. --------- Traditionally, you need to outnumber your opponent 3 to 1 if you wish to lay siege to an enemy in their home territory. At some point, just raw manpower is what you need. As you said: we dropped plenty of bombs in that battle, but bombs aren't boots on the ground. You need people there to know if the bombs are in fact hitting their mark.
  - whakim 5y ago
    You're getting fixated on the specifics of Tora Bora. Zoom out and look at the other big mountain operations over the following 15 years; you'll hear similar excuses "we needed this technology/we needed more men at this spot." With that context it's easy to see that Tora Bora probably wouldn't have been a success even with GATOR mines or more men.