It unraveled fast. Within days, almost every major city in the north fell. The Taliban fled Kabul for mountain hideouts in the east and south. Women came out of their homes. Children flew kites. Men shaved off their beards and danced in the streets. One man listened to music—banned under the Taliban—with a cassette player pressed to his ear. “We are free!” he shouted. A woman teacher said, “I’m happy because I believe now the doors of the school will be open for girls.”
I was overjoyed by the scenes of liberation. So was Laura. The Saturday after Kabul fell, she delivered the weekly radio address, the first time a First Lady had ever done so. The Taliban regime, she said, “is now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan—especially women—are rejoicing. Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering. … The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
Laura’s address prompted positive responses from around the world. The most meaningful came from Afghan women. Expanding opportunity in Afghanistan, especially for women and girls, became a calling for Laura. In the years to come, she met with Afghan teachers and entrepreneurs, facilitated the delivery of textbooks and medicine, supported a new U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council that mobilized more than $70 million in private development funds, and made three trips to the country. Just as I was feeling more comfortable as commander in chief, she was gaining her footing as First Lady.
With northern Afghanistan liberated, our attention turned to the south. George Tenet reported that an anti-Taliban movement was coalescing around a Pashtun leader, Hamid Karzai. Karzai was not a typical military commander. He grew up near Kandahar, earned a college degree in India, spoke four languages, and served in the Afghan government before it was taken over by the Taliban.
Two days after our bombing campaign began, Karzai hopped on a motorcycle in Pakistan, crossed the border, and rallied several hundred men to take Tarin Kot, a small city near Kandahar. The Taliban discovered Karzai’s presence and sent troops to kill him. With his position about to be overrun, the CIA dispatched a helicopter to pick him up. After a brief period, Karzai returned to lead the resistance. He was joined in late November by a contingent of Marines. The remaining Taliban officials fled Kandahar. The city fell on December 7, 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, two months to the day after my speech in the Treaty Room.
Driven out of their strongholds, the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda fled to Afghanistan’s rugged eastern border with Pakistan. In early 2002, Tommy Franks mounted a major assault called Operation Anaconda. Our troops, joined by coalition partners and Afghan forces, squeezed out the remaining al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan. CIA officers and Special Forces crawled through the caves, calling in airstrikes on terrorist hideouts and putting a serious dent in al Qaeda’s army.
I hoped I would get a call with the news that Osama bin Laden was among the dead or captured. We were searching for him constantly and received frequent but conflicting information on his whereabouts. Some reports placed him in Jalalabad. Others had him in Peshawar, or at a lake near Kandahar, or at the Tora Bora cave complex. Our troops pursued every lead. Several times we thought we might have nailed him. But the intelligence never panned out.
Years later, critics charged that we allowed bin Laden to slip the noose at Tora Bora. I sure didn’t see it that way. I asked our commanders and CIA officials about bin Laden frequently. They were working around the clock to locate him, and they assured me they had the troop levels and resources they needed. If we had ever known for sure where he was, we would have moved heaven and earth to bring him to justice.
Operation Anaconda marked the end of the opening phase of the battle. Like any war, our campaign in Afghanistan had not gone perfectly. But in six months, we had removed the Taliban from power, destroyed the al Qaeda training camps, liberated more than twenty-six million people from unspeakable brutality, allowed Afghan girls to return to school, and laid the foundation for a democratic society to emerge. There had been no famine, no outbreak of civil war, no collapse of the government in Pakistan, no global uprising by Muslims, and no retaliatory attack on our homeland.
The gains came at a precious cost. Between the start of the war and Operation Anaconda, twenty-seven brave Americans were killed. I read each name, usually in my early morning briefings at the Resolute desk. I imagined the pain their families felt when the military officer appeared at their door. I prayed that God would comfort them amid their grief.
Early in the war, I decided to write letters to the family members of Americans lost on the battlefield. I wanted to honor their sacrifice, express my sorrow, and extend the gratitude of the country. As I sat down to write on November 29, 2001, I remembered a letter Abraham Lincoln had written in 1864 to Lydia Bixby, a Massachusetts woman who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War.
“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming,” Lincoln wrote. “But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
My letter was addressed to Shannon Spann, the wife of Mike Spann, the CIA officer killed in the prison uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif and the first battlefield death of the war:Dear Shannon,On behalf of a grateful nation, Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathy to you and your family on the loss of Mike. I know your heart aches. Our prayers are with you all.Mike died in a fight against evil. He laid down his life for a noble cause—freedom. Your children must know that his service to our nation was heroic and brave.May God bless you, Shannon, your children, and all who mourn the loss of a good and brave man.Sincerely,George W. Bush
I sent letters to the families of every service member who laid down his or her life in the war on terror. By the end of my presidency, I had written to almost five thousand families.
In addition to my correspondence, I met frequently with family members of the fallen. I felt it was my responsibility to comfort those who had lost a loved one. When I traveled to Fort Bragg in March 2002, I met the families of servicemen killed during Operation Anaconda. I was apprehensive. Would they be angry? Would they be bitter? I was ready to share tears, to listen, to talk—whatever I could do to ease their pain.
One of the widows I met was Valerie Chapman. Her husband, Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman, had bravely attacked two al Qaeda bunkers in remote mountains during an enemy ambush, helping to save his teammates before laying down his own life. Valerie told me John loved the Air Force. He had enlisted when he was nineteen and had served for seventeen years.
I crouched down so that I was eye level with John and Valerie’s two daughters—Madison, age five, and Brianna, age three. I pictured my own girls at that age. My heart broke at the thought that they would grow up without their dad. I told them he was a good man who had served with courage. I fought back tears. If the little girls remembered anything of the meeting, I wanted it to be how much I respected their father, not a weepy commander in chief.
As the meeting wrapped up, Valerie handed me a copy of her husband’s memorial pamphlet. “If anyone ever tells you this is the wrong thing to do,” she said intently, “you look at this.” She had written a note on the pamphlet: