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Chapter 5: Easier to Topple than Rebuild

141 “Karzai has no power”: “Afghan warlord rejects Kabul’s ultimatum to end rebellion,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 5, 2002. See also “Eastern Warlord Rejects Afghan Government’s Warning,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, August 5, 2002.

143 “antagoniz[ing] the Afghans”: Point paper on “U.S. Role in the Gardez Situation ,” prepared by Office of the Secretary of Defense, Near East and South Asia office, May 6, 2002, which Rumsfeld distributed at the May 9, 2002, Principals Committee meeting.

149 “We’re not going to repeat that mistake”: George W. Bush, “President Outlines War Effort: Remarks by the President to the George C. Marshall ROTC Award Seminar on National Security,” Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia, April 17, 2002.

151 from the recipient country: For restrictions on security assistance, see “United States Arms Transfers Eligibility Criteria.” Eligible countries are those whose security “will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace” and that cannot maintain their own security (Section 503 FAA); recipient countries must agree to such provisions as “guaranteeing ‘substantially the same degree’ of security that the U.S. provides its own articles and services” (Section 505(a) FAA).

153 retained high popularity among the Afghan people: According to a 2005 ABC News poll, 87 percent of Afghans polled considered the overthrow of the Taliban “good for their country,” and 83 percent expressed a “favorable opinion of the United States.” Gary Langer, “Poll: Four Years After the Fall of the Taliban, Afghans Optimistic About the Future,” ABC News, December 7, 2005.

157 blamed for opposing it: See Mike Jendrzejczyk, “Afghanistan: A Major U-Turn in U.S. Policy on Peacekeeping,” International Herald Tribune, September 7, 2002; Ivo H. Daalder or James M. Lindsay, “US Must Work to Keep Victory from Unraveling,” Baltimore Sun, March 1, 2002.

157 “as a substitute for ISAF”: Rodman memo to Rumsfeld, “Brahimi Idea of a ‘UN ISAF,’” March 27, 2002.

157 funds to make it possible: See, e.g., June 26, 2002, hearings on “Building Stability, Avoiding Chaos” of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at which the witnesses included Deputy Secretary of State Armitage and Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz.

158 appropriated annually to Defense: Office of Management and Budget, 2003 Report to Congress on Combating Terrorism, September 2003, p. 9.

159 greater flexibility for military commanders: For example, in 2003, Congress gave commanders Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds that they can use to fund urgent humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. Also in 2003, Congress approved my office’s proposal for a “small rewards” program that allows combatant commanders to pay rewards for items such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and weapons caches or for information for force protection. Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense and for the Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, 2004, Public Law No. 108-106, Section 1110, 117 Statute. 1209 (2003).

162 wrote up some talking points: Douglas J. Feith, “Points for 2/4/02 NSC Meeting on Geneva Convention,” February 3, 2002. I quoted this memo at length in a newspaper article I wrote after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. See Douglas J. Feith, “Conventional Warfare,” Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2004, p. A14.

164 the President’s position on the Third Geneva Convention: Ari Fleischer, “Statement by the Press Secretary on the Geneva Convention,” February 7, 2002.

165 to head the problems off: Critics of the Bush Administration have claimed wrongly that the President’s decision not to give prisoner-of-war treatment to the detainees at Guantanamo signaled hostility to the Geneva Conventions. A New York Times editorial asserted that the Abu Ghraib abuses in Iraq “grew out of President Bush’s decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions” (“Abu Ghraib Swept Under the Carpet,” New York Times, August 30, 2007, p. A22). In the first place, there was never any doubt that the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq. Second, even those detainees who were judged not covered by the Geneva Conventions—the al Qaida in Afghanistan—were nevertheless supposed to be accorded humane treatment. That decision was respectful of the letter and the spirit of the Conventions. (See Chapter 2 for a discussion of the “laws of war” requirements of the Geneva Conventions in relation to terrorist fighters.) The abuses at Abu Ghraib were abuses of U.S. policy as well as of international law.

165 the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense: See Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, U.S. Public Law 107-314, 107th Congress, 2nd Session (December 2, 2002), Statute 116.2485.

166 the department’s homeland defense strategy: See U.S. Department of Defense, Strategy of Homeland Defense and Civil Support, June 2005.

166 were assigned in our government: For this reason, the Defense Department’s Homeland Defense Strategy highlighted what the department was and was not responsible for: “It is the primary mission of the Department of Homeland Security to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States. The Attorney General leads our Nation’s law enforcement effort to detect, prevent, and investigate terrorist activity within the United States.”  Defense, it continued, is not responsible for stopping terrorists from entering the country, preventing them from hijacking aircraft inside or outside the United States, or seeking out and arresting terrorists in the United States”—responsibilities that belonged to the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense respectively. Strategy of Homeland Defense and Civil Support, p. 5.

167 “the momentum of freedom”: “President Delivers State of the Union Address,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House, January 29, 2002.

169 the sovereignty of God: Mary Haback gives a detailed account:

"The entire concept of democracy comes in for special condemnation by jihadists. Unlike Islamists, who agree that there should be no separation between religion and politics but who do not necessarily reject democratic governance, jihadis want nothing to do with “man-made” laws or men legislating according to their own choices and desires. . . . Jihadis today have made a critique of democracy the centerpiece of their ideology."

Mary Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 72–74 (references omitted). See also Mary Habeck, “Islamist Extremism in Europe ,” Statement to Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, April 5, 2006.

174 “the Office of the General Counsel reported”: “[Defense Department Office of the General Counsel,] “Department of Defense Responses to Senator Carl Levin . . . in his letter of 22 February 2002 to the Secretary of Defense Regarding the Office of Strategic Influence,” April 15, 2002, sent under cover letter from Douglas J. Feith to Levin, April 6, 2002.

175 “to the foreign press or any press”: Donald Rumsfeld, “Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability in Utah,” February 20, 2002. When the public controversy about OSI arose, Rumsfeld alluded to military deception as an integral part of warfare, but he also declared that Defense Department officials do not lie. He was not being inconsistent. Military deception does not require lying to the public. Misleading the enemy about combat plans has been a venerable military practice since at least the days of the Trojan horse; General Patton’s 1944 decoy invasion force, which appeared to be readying to land at the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy, is just one modern example. As both Odysseus and Patton demonstrated, one does not actually have to lie to the public—or even say anything false to anyone—to deceive an enemy for strategic purposes. That can be accomplished through actions—for example, visible actions that reinforce the enemy’s inaccurate assumptions.

175 “nor the domestic public, nor to the press”: Douglas J. Feith, “Under Secretary Feith Breakfast with Defense Writers Group,” Transcript of breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C., with the Defense Writers Group, published by U.S. Department of Defense, February 20, 2002.

176 was behind OSI’s demise: Franklin Foer, “Flacks Americana,” The New Republic Online, May 20, 2002; Paul M. Rodriguez, “Disinformation dustup shrouded in secrecy—political notebook—Department of Defense—Brief Article,” Insight on the News, May 6, 2002; David E. Kaplan, “How Rocket Scientists Got Into the Hearts-and-Minds Game,” U.S. News & World Report, April 25, 2005.

178 this is where we’ll find it: Douglas J. Feith, “The War on Terrorism—America’s War and Israel’s War,” Speech to American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington, D.C., April 21, 2002.

 

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