Is Osama bin Laden the strategic genius of our time? He just may be, but if he is he's getting a lot of help from Uncle Sam.
For the price of some box cutters and one-way flight training bin Laden crippled the U.S. economy, pulled the nation into an unsinkable protracted war, and watched in quiet amusement as the United States abdicated its moral authority in the world. With Americans throwing away their freedoms faster than tokens into a slot machine, we might just have to admit that bin Laden is a genius.
As a former Green Beret with 15 Years of hands-on experience in Special Operations, I have been trained by the best in the world to plan and conduct insurgent (even terrorist) operations. If I had briefed my superiors that I was going to attack the strongest nation in the world with utility knives, shoe bombs, and Maxwell Smart exploding underwear -- and only one of the attacks was going to actually work, but I would cost the enemy TRILLIONS: kill thousands of enemy soldiers in a war fought by surrogates, estrange the enemy country from the international community, and change the very culture of the enemy nation to fit my desired end-state, I would have been laughed out of the briefing room and probably escorted off Fort Bragg. But this is exactly what bin Laden has done, and like a Zen master, he used our power and culture against us to make us come unglued.
This is a five-part series examining the way bin Laden has systematically dismantled our nation and changed our culture in just nine short years.
Part One: Innocence lost, Innocence taken
What bin Laden accomplished on 9/11 was unprecedented in the history of modern warfare. With weapons around since the Bronze Age he hijacked the international symbol of American freedom, the billion dollar airline industry, and crashed it into America’s international symbol of financial power -- closing down the nation and sending its leadership scrambling to the sky in fright and confusion, an attack of symbolic and strategic genius.
The tragic loss of life witnessed by millions on 9/11 was horrific, war is horrific. A critical question that must be considered when contemplating the multiple attacks of that spring day is; were they ethical -- were the targets legitimate military targets, and were they engaged appropriately? American politicians and talking heads like to equate surprise with ethics, but to the military surprise is just good tactics. The fact that we were caught unaware on 9/11 does not mean the tactics were unethical. Besides, bin Laden gave us much more warning he was at war with us than Japan did before launching their attack on Pearl Harbor.
However, the question remains; were they military targets? There is no question, according to U.S. targeting doctrine, the Washington targets were military targets -- examples from recent U.S. attacks bare this out. President Clinton ordered a surprise cruise missile attack on an Iraqi command and control building similar to our Pentagon. We were not at war with Iraq at the time and we launched the attack at night when we were sure to kill almost exclusively civilians, not the military leaders we really had issue with. Next, the U.S. bombed Muammar Kaddafi's private residence in an attempt to assassinate the Libyan President, at the time of the bombing we knew we would probably kill his children -- we were also not at war with Libya. So not only were the Pentagon and the White House legitimate military targets, but they were targets we ourselves would have picked to attack. Now what about the World Trade Center?
In all wars the U.S. has fought we always target our enemies financial and economic centers, the economy after all is the fuel that powers the engine of war. During the first few hours of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, America used some of its most expensive weapons systems to destroy several Iraqi banks. Banks, by the way, that were occupied by innocent civilians. Think of it this way; Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to temporarily shift the balance of power in the Pacific. Bin Laden's attack on our financial center shifted our economic power, disrupting the engine of the U.S. war machine. Was the World Trade Center a viable target -- absolutely, we would have done it to our enemies.
The passengers and crew aboard the four doomed aircraft suffered a horrific fate, hours of uncertainty and fear followed by moments of terror and remorse. Many had the sad chance to call a loved one before their tragic end, an opportunity most in war don't get, and many wouldn't want. Surely the civilians that were fated to ride bin Laden's cruise missiles to their deaths were victims of a barbarous act of terrorism. But were they? The U.S. military teaches its Special Operations forces to adapt to their environment and use what the enemy gives you. They teach things like how to make a nuclear reactor meltdown, knock out a hydro-electric dam, or close an airport for 96 hours -- all using primitive techniques and what the French resistance called sabotage, what we call terrorism. Any of these operations would kill civilians on a grand scale. On 9/11 America learned a lesson of war that most of the world has known for hundreds of years -- tragically, innocence is often the first casualty of war.
Each army fights with the tools it has. Bin Laden does not have an air force, cruise missiles or precision bombers, no squadron of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He is essentially fighting a war with WW II era technology. The only means bin Laden had to project power and attack the continental United States was our own airplanes -- he was fighting with what he had, what we gave him. During WW II the U.S. fire bombed cities in Japan and Germany, knowingly killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Bomb technology was crude during WW II and we were fighting with the tools we had. In contrast, today we have smart bombs, stealth fighters, and missiles that can hit a cigarette on a football field launched from a thousand males away.
So why has the U.S. killed more civilians in our war against terrorism than the terrorist bin Laden did on 9/11? We have killed wedding parties, funeral parties, commuters going to work, aid stations, and women and children in their homes. To lower the ethical bar, the CIA, without responsible oversight, continually lob bombs from UAVS into buildings in Pakistan on the ''tip'' that a ''target'' (think human being) is in the residence. But who else is in the building a mother, wife, child...others? Collateral civilian death is not a consideration of the "Pattern of life" target matrix for UAV assassinations. Think about your pattern of life for a second - when would it be a good time for you to get bombed ... in your house, car, business, taking your kids to soccer practice? At least the Israelis positively ID someone before they murder them. What kind of world have we become that condones state sponsored murder? The slaughter of innocent life has become common place -- we kill them siphoning gas, they explode a car bomb in a market, we kill a family driving behind a convoy, they attack a hotel -- everyone is participating in the madness, so it must be OK. I was taught in Special Forces training that if you kill a civilian it is like recruiting a battalion for the enemy. You kill a woman or a child and you've recruited a brigade that will fight you for 100 years.
The tragic loss of life on 9/11 was sad, but we continue to repay that sadness with interest in Iraq, Pakistan Somalia,Yemen, and dozens of other nameless countries. A debt paid by innocents that had nothing to do with our losses that terrible day, just so we can have revenge and some how feel better about ourselves. We have long lost the ability to cry moral outrage for what happened that day. As a Green Beret, I lived in the fog of war for nearly 15 years, I know that with our extensive training and technology there are only two reasons for the mass civilian killings by U.S. Soldiers, Airman, and Marines -- indifference and fear.
Catch the second segment -- FEAR -- of this five-part series next week.
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