Taliban's Sept. 11 Surprise

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright September 11, 2011
All Rights Reserved.                                         

           Celebrating the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Taliban detonated a powerful truck bomb at a U.S. army Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in Eastern Afghanistan, injuring 80 U.S. troops.  Six-thousand miles west at New York City’s Ground Zero—the site of Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 attack—President Barack Obama commemorates the new Sept. 11 memorial to the 2,977 innocent victims of Bin Laden’s rampage.  When you total all the U.S. casualties from wars in Afghanistan [1,762] and Iraq [4,474] and add them to the 2,977, it totals 9,213 U.S. deaths, not to mention the incalculable numbers of disabling injuries, both medical and psychological.  Today’s latest Afghanistan suicide bombing adds to already intolerable U.S. military losses that keep piling up the longer the war drags on without any clear mission or definite exit strategy.

            Since Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar escaped Tora Bora in mid-December 2001, the Afghanistan mission has been obscured.  When Operation Enduring Freedom toppled the Taliban and drove them out of Kabul Nov. 14, 2001, U.S. authorities knew that the radical Islamic regime was not responsible for Sept. 11.  When Omar refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, former President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom Oct. 7, 2011.  Most Americans agree the U.S. had to do something after Sept. 11, realizing the world was watching for a coherent response.  “I think we did the right thing there, but I also think we learned a lot of lessons, and frankly, I don’t think you’re going to see the United States of America in another war in that part of the world,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.

            Most Americans agree that Bush did the right thing going after Omar and the Taliban, not because they planned Sept. 11 but because they harbored the mastermind of the most horrific attack on the homeland in U.S. history.  Since installing 54-year-old Hamid Karzai Dec. 7, 2004, the U.S. mission has been one of protecting his government from Taliban attacks, despite the fact that Karzai has close ties to the Taliban.  His half- brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has close ties to the Taliban and Afghan’s lucrative opium trade.  While the U.S. sacrifices blood and treasure protecting his regime, Karazi often makes disparaging remarks about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.  McCain claims the U.S. has “learned a lot of lessons” in Afghanistan but, so far, Obama hasn’t accelerated a methodical exist strategy.  Today’s bloody bombing of the military outpost validates costly U.S. losses.

            Like Vietnam where the U.S. confronted a nationalist movement led by communist Ho Chi Minh, the U.S. now fights an indigenous Islamic movement called the Taliban.  When the U.S. supported Bin Laden’s mujahedeen fighters in the ‘80s to fight Soviet Occupation, the Soviets battled the Taliban for nine bloody years to extinction, ending in failure Dec. 27, 1989, hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union in Dec. 1991.  While no one sees the collapse of United States of America, Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University Economist Joseph Stiglitz believes costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched the U.S. economy into the Great Recession.  Instead of deescalating the Afghan War, Obama surged 70,000 troops hoping to better contain the Taliban.  Today’s massive Sept. 11 suicide bombing should remind the president that the costs far outweigh any expected benefits.

            Former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney often warned about an imminent al-Qaeda takeover of Afghanistan and Iraq if the U.S. were to pull out.  They also said that any pullout would dishonor the dead and embolden the enemy.  Winding down the U.S. combat role in Iraq resulted in no such takeover.  Now Barack has a fateful decision before next year’s presidential election to do something about the impasse in Afghanistan.  Pentagon officials know that stationing over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan had nothing to do with the Special Forces that eventually got Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda figures.  “Each year, 9/11 reminds the Afghans of an event in which they had no role whatsoever,” said a Taliban communiqué. “American colonialism has shed the blood of tens of thousand of miserable and innocent Afghans,” vowing to continue attacking U.S. forces

            Sept. 11 is less than a month away from commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the Afghan war.  While U.S. casualties are far less than the Soviets who lost nearly 15,000 troops in nine years, more deaths and wasted U.S. tax dollars won’t end the U.S. war on terror.  Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while supporting both wars, advocated a more nimble U.S. military, capable of meeting terrorist threats without massive U.S. troop commitments.  “The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war,” said the Taliban.  “Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other empires of the past,” spewing the kind of rhetoric that stiffens U.S. resolve.  Since neither Afghan nor Iraq wars can assure U.S. national security, it’s time to end both wars, save our troops, contain excessive defense spending and better fight the war on terror.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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