In late September, George Tenet reported that the first of the CIA teams had entered Afghanistan and linked up with the Northern Alliance. Tommy Franks told me he would be ready to deploy our Special Forces soon. I threw out a question to the team that had been on my mind: “So who’s going to run the country?”
There was silence.
I wanted to make sure the team had thought through the postwar strategy. I felt strongly that the Afghan people should be able to select their new leader. They had suffered too much—and the American people were risking too much—to let the country slide back into tyranny. I asked Colin to work on a plan for a transition to democracy.
On Friday, October 5, General Dick Myers told me the military was ready to launch. I was ready, too. We had given the Taliban more than two weeks to respond to the ultimatum I had delivered. The Taliban had not met any of our demands. Their time was up.
Don Rumsfeld was on his way back from the Middle East and Central Asia, where he had finalized several important basing agreements. I waited for him to return before I gave the official order. On Saturday morning, October 6, I spoke to Don and Dick Myers by secure video-conference from Camp David. I asked one last time if they had everything they needed. They did.
“Go,” I said. “This is the right thing to do.”
I knew in my heart that striking al Qaeda, removing the Taliban, and liberating the suffering people of Afghanistan was necessary and just. But I worried about all that could go wrong. The military planners had laid out the risks: mass starvation, an outbreak of civil war, the collapse of the Pakistani government, an uprising by Muslims around the world, and the one I feared most—a retaliatory attack on the American homeland.
When I boarded Marine One the next morning to return to Washington, Laura and a few key advisers knew I had given the order, but virtually no one else did. To preserve the secrecy of the operation, I went ahead with my previously announced schedule, which included attending a ceremony at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I spoke about the 343 New York City firefighters who had given their lives on 9/11, by far the worst day in the history of American firefighting. The casualties ranged from the chief of the department, Pete Ganci, to young recruits in their first months on the job.
The memorial was a vivid reminder of why America would soon be in the fight. Our military understood, too. Seven thousand miles away, the first bombs fell. On several of them, our troops had painted the letters FDNY.
The first reports out of Afghanistan were positive. In two hours of aerial bombardment, we and our British allies had wiped out the Taliban’s meager air defense system and several known al Qaeda training camps. Behind the bombs, we dropped more than thirty-seven thousand rations of food and relief supplies for the Afghan people, the fastest delivery of humanitarian aid in the history of warfare.
After several days, we ran into a problem. The air campaign had destroyed most of the Taliban and al Qaeda infrastructure. But we were having trouble inserting our Special Forces. They were grounded at a former Soviet air base in Uzbekistan, separated from their landing zone in Afghanistan by fifteen-thousand-foot-high mountains, freezing temperatures, and blinding snowstorms.
I pressed for action. Don and Tommy assured me they were moving as fast as possible. But as the days passed, I became more and more frustrated. Our response looked too much like the impotent air war America had waged in the past. I worried we were sending the wrong message to the enemy and to the American people. Tommy Franks later called those days a period “from hell.” I felt the same way.
Twelve days after I announced the start of the war, the first of the Special Forces teams finally touched down. In the north, our forces linked up with the CIA and Northern Alliance fighters. In the south, a small team of Special Forces raided Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s headquarters in Kandahar.
Months later, I visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where I met members of the Special Forces team that had led the raid. They gave me a brick from the remnants of Mullah Omar’s compound. I kept it in the private study next to the Oval Office as a reminder that we were fighting this war with boots on the ground—and that the Americans in those boots were courageous and skilled.
The arrival of our troops did not quiet doubts at home. On October 25, Condi told me the slow pace of operations, which was producing a drumbeat of criticism in the media, was affecting the national security team. The war was only eighteen days old, but some were already talking about alternative strategies.
In times of uncertainty, any indication of doubt from the president ripples throughout the system. At a National Security Council meeting the next morning, I said, “I just want to make sure that all of us did agree on this plan, right?” I went around the table and asked every member of the team. They all agreed.
I assured the team that we had the right strategy. Our plan was well conceived. Our military was capable. Our cause was just. We shouldn’t give in to second-guessing or let the press panic us. “We’re going to stay confident and patient, cool and steady,” I said.
I could sense the relief in the room. The experience reminded me that even the most accomplished and powerful people sometimes need to be reassured. As I later told journalist Bob Woodward, the president has to be the “calcium in the backbone.”
I was glad we had stiffened our spines when I saw the New York Times on October 31. Reporter Johnny Apple had written an article headlined “A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam.” His opening sentence read, “Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ‘quagmire’ has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.”
In some ways, this was predictable. The reporters of my generation tend to see everything through the prism of Watergate or Vietnam. Still, I was amazed the Times couldn’t wait even a month to tag Afghanistan with the Vietnam label.
The differences between the two conflicts were striking. The enemy in Afghanistan had just murdered three thousand innocent people on American soil. At the time we had almost no conventional forces in Afghanistan, compared to the hundreds of thousands that had been in Vietnam. America was unified behind our troops and their mission. And we had a growing coalition at our side.
None of those distinctions mattered to the media. The debate about the so-called quagmire continued on the editorial pages and cable TV. I shrugged it off. I knew most Americans would be patient and supportive, so long as we delivered results.
In early November, results arrived. Supported by CIA officers and Special Forces, Northern Alliance generals moved toward Taliban positions. The Afghan warriors led the ground attacks, while our Special Forces used GPS units and laser guidance systems to direct airstrikes. Northern Alliance fighters and our Special Forces mounted a cavalry charge and liberated the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Residents poured into the streets in celebration. The most modern weaponry of the twenty-first century, combined with a horse charge reminiscent of the nineteenth century, had driven the Taliban from their northern stronghold.
I was relieved. While I had confidence in our strategy and dismissed the quagmire talk, I had felt some anxiety. There was no way to know for sure whether our approach would succeed. The fall of Mazar reassured me. “This thing might just unravel like a cheap suit,” I told Vladimir Putin.