The New York Times recently reviewed
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S.
Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, a book by Doug
Stanton about how small units of elite Special Forces soldiers
and CIA paramilitary operatives joined with the Northern Alliance
forces in late 2001 to fight the Taliban.
“In the weeks after 9/11, Fifth Group soldiers scrambled to
prepare for the coming war in Afghanistan,” explains
Times reviewer Bruce Barcott. “Intelligence on the
Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Northern Alliance was so thin that the
men resorted to old Discovery Channel shows and back issues of
the National Geographic.”
With all the hundreds of billions of tax dollars that we spend on
intelligence, why would information on this key part of the world
be so thin? Doesn’t it say volumes about the absolute lack of
competency in the U.S. government when its top fighters have to
resort to watching TV and reading back issues of magazines in
order to get vital information before going into battle?
It’s not as though Afghanistan was on America’s back burner in
terms of its strategic importance, or that Afghanistan was
someplace new for U.S. intelligence agencies and military forces.
In 1980, during its final year in office, the Carter
administration began providing intelligence and covert military
assistance to the mujahideen (“Islamic guerrilla fighters waging
a jihad,” as defined by Merriam-Webster) in Afghanistan in order
to roll back the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of the
country.
Upping the ante, Ronald Reagan began providing Stinger missiles
to the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan in 1986 in order to
increase Soviet air losses and expand the Soviets’ overall cost
of occupation. The portable surface-to-air Stinger missiles were
especially proficient in blowing Soviet helicopters out of the
sky.
On the ground, Reagan escalated the covert supply of advanced
weapons, intelligence and money to the anti-communist,
anti-Soviet rebel forces and deployed CIA paramilitary officers
to provide training and battle strategies.
In 1988, at the close of Reagan’s two terms in office and
following nearly a decade of escalating U.S. military and
intelligence support to the anti-Soviet guerrilla forces, Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet
troops from Afghanistan.
Fast-forward 13 years to 2001, and with hundreds of billions more
in tax dollars having been spent on intelligence, especially in
relation to the expansion of Islamic radicalism, and here’s how
Times reviewer Barcott describes a problem that U.S.
Special Forces had when they arrived in Afghanistan following the
9/11 terrorist attacks to fight alongside the Northern Alliance
against the Taliban: “There was only one problem. Nobody told the
Special Forces guys about the horses. Northern Alliance soldiers
traveled and fought on horseback.”
Barcott quotes Special Forces Capt. Mitch Nelson on his impromptu
training lesson to the U.S. Special Forces as he climbed on a
horse: “‘Listen up,’ Nelson croaked. ‘Here’s how you make this
thing go.’ He heeled the horse in the ribs and it walked a few
steps. ‘And here’s how you turn,’ he said, pulling a rein and
drawing the narrow muzzle around. ‘And here’s how you stop.’ He
pulled back on the reins and sat looking the guys. ‘Got it?’
We spent billions on intelligence, in short, and off to battle we
went and still didn’t know about something as obvious as the
horses.
We also don’t know as taxpayers, by design, how much we’re
spending, or wasting, on intelligence. The information is widely
“classified.”
On occasion, we’re told about some of the spending, but there’s
always something off the books, behind the curtain, too secret
and too vital to “national security” to reveal to those of us who
are picking up the tab.
In 2007, for instance, we were told that the U.S. intelligence
budget was $43 billion, not counting the clandestine spending by
various front companies or the price of the cloak-and-dagger
guys. That was the first time in a decade that a figure was made
public.
All told, some 100,000 people in 16 federal agencies are
reportedly laboring at intelligence on a daily basis. And still,
they missed the horses. And they didn’t connect the dots when
they were told before 9/11 that there were Arab students in U.S.
flight schools who only wished to learn how to take off, not to
land.
And this same government is going to
straighten out the car industry and effectively run our
health care?
