In the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. commanders understood they confronted a new enemy: one without borders, but capable of projecting power around the globe. Over the next 10 years the American military would confront terrorists and insurgents across a vast international battlefield who were no match for America’s technology, but who were adept at fighting an asymmetrical, open-ended war.
That challenge would force significant changes to America’s warfighting doctrine. Young military commanders who began their careers expecting to fight conventional wars were confronted with rebuilding communities and winning hearts and minds, while fighting a relentless, shape-shifting insurgency.
Thomas W. O’Connell, former assistant secretary of defense, told The Washington Examiner that the current counterinsurgency operations, such as drone attacks in Pakistan and targeting al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, were based on operations established as early as the late 1960s in Southeast Asia.
In the post-Vietnam era, O’Connell said many U.S. military theorists worked behind the scenes on the problems of fighting insurgents.
“There are a lot of unsung heroes from the ’80s and ’90s trying to put together and sustain the organization who subsequently were successful,” O’Connell said.
At first, it appeared America’s edge in technology would overcome all the dangers of fighting insurgents in Asia — that “shock and awe” would prevail. The early days of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq saw lightning successes. The Taliban fell to a relatively small force of opposing Afghans aided by U.S. bombing strikes and special operations forces. In Iraq, U.S. Army and Marine divisions steamrolled opposition and captured Baghdad and the rest of the country, shattering Saddam Hussein’s army. Saddam’s sons went down fighting and he was captured, tried and executed.
But both wars then deteriorated to guerrilla fights, with a steady stream of American and civilian deaths attributed to sniper fire, suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices. By 2007, Iraq was teetering on the brink of an all-consuming civil war, and the Taliban safely outside U.S. reach across the Afghanistan border into tribal Pakistan.
It was time for the counterinsurgency theorists O’Connell described who had worked for years in anonymity to emerge. Gen. David Petraeus, who is now head of the CIA, brought together some of those theorists as he supervised the Army’s new Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
In 2007, President George W. Bush took the advice of senior officers who said the time was right for a surge of toops into Iraq. Working with Sunni Iraqis who’d wearied of al Qaeda’s methods, U.S. troops were able to achieve enough stability in Iraq to begin a long drawing-down process that is set to culminate at the end of the year with only token American forces left behind.
After years of stalemate in Afghanistan, an aggressive campaign using Predator drones to attack al Qaeda targets in Pakistan began to wear down that organization. Then, on perhaps the happiest day in a 10-year war, Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan in May.
Still, the Afghanistan war drags on without clear resolution, and Iraq is hardly the stable bastion of Middle East democracy envisioned in 2003 by American political leaders.
Critics say the country’s politicians and Pentagon strategists made avoidable mistakes in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Retired Army Gen. Paul Vallely, who had worked in counterterrorism for more than 15 years, told The Examiner, the military went astray in 2002, “when we started to inject conventional forces and counterinsurgency campaign changes in the military, which we should of known from Vietnam doesn’t work.”
Retired Air Force Lt.Gen. Tom McInerney agreed that “the counterinsurgency doctrine to win the hearts and minds in Afghanistan is the wrong strategy.” Along with many others, he advocates a counterterrorism war in Afghanistan, focused around special forces operations and drone strikes, without the use of large conventional troop blocks.
“Bottom line is we are fighting against their strength and our weakness,” he said.
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
This piece is a part of the Washington Examiner’s special series The Legacy of 9/11.
The Legacy of 9/11
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by Michael Barone
All of us old enough to remember know exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the awful news. We remember the stunning feeling that suddenly everything had changed, that nothing would be the same. Read more…
9/11 triggered revolutionary changes in America’s military
by Sara A. Carter
In the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. commanders understood they confronted a new enemy: one without borders, but capable of projecting power around the globe. Read more…
Still mourning at Ground Zero
by Brian Hughes
There is a hazy line between remembrance and fixation for New Yorkers contemplating the 10th anniversary of the deadliest attack ever committed on U.S. soil. Read more…
A sense of loss at the Pentagon
by Liz Farmer
Bernard Curtis Brown, Michele Heidenberger and Angie Houtz were three of the 184 people who perished when terrorist hijacked United Airlines Flight 77 out of Washington Dulles International Airport and crashed it into the west side of the Pentagon. Those left behind to pick up the pieces say the 10th anniversary of that attack on Sunday doesn’t change anything. Read more…
A small town with a big heart
by Lisa Gartner
There are a dozen roads, tops, in Shanksville; a smattering of houses, log cabins and red barns. And not far away from the town center is a rolling field of yellow and white wildflowers. Because of what happened in this field, Washington still has the Capitol. It still has the White House, and it has the confidence to fight. Read More…
