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edglennthings · 9 years ago

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20 Things I’ve learned since 9/11

1. In the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but due to a re-scheduled meeting, I was there. I walked into the newly renovated wing where American Airlines Flight 77 was just about to hit (C-Ring, 5th floor). Nice digs. Took about 15 steps into the new wing, then it felt like an earthquake as the building moved for about 15 seconds. I kept my balance and glanced out the window to see the wave of dirt and debris go high over the building as the plane submarined into the base of the building at the helicopter pad. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS: When your instincts tell you to get out of a building, GET OUT OF THE BUILDING! On 9/11 my choices were to either go to the Pentagon Courtyard, or leave the building. In spite of being told not to leave the building by various “people who were in charge” and to huddle in the courtyard, I left the building with my co-worker. Later, when there was concern that there might be another plane headed toward the Pentagon (we learned later about Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania), all the personnel who had been unfortunately herded into the Pentagon courtyard, were hastily driven out and away from the building. I understand the concern of secondary attacks when leaving a building, but my instincts told me to get as far away from the building as possible. Also, for the conspiracy theorists out there, it was a plane. Not a missile, not a bomb. I picked up several pieces of debris as I was walking away from the building and based on my inspection of the debris, it was a commercial plane that hit the building. Case closed.

2. BASIS FOR THE 2003 IRAQ INVASION: I fully supported the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, although it was more a small force of CIA and U.S. Special Forces aligning us with various Northern Alliance Afghan warlords to help us rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. My support for our incursion into Afghanistan was based on the determination that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I fully supported President George W. Bush’s later call to invade Iraq based on the evidence presented regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) located in Iraq. I mean, who wouldn’t believe Secretary of State Colin Powell as he presented the best evidence of WMD in Iraq to the United Nations? Only much later did we learn that most of the evidence presented by Colin Powell to the U.N. was skewed in ways to present a better case (supporting the invasion of Iraq) to the U.N. and the world.

3. SOMETIMES WE GET IT WRONG. IF WE DO GET IT WRONG, THEN FOR GOD’S SAKE FIX IT: After we invaded Iraq and it became clear we were not finding any evidence of weapons of mass destruction and that the intelligence was either wrong, misrepresented, or outright lies, the Bush Administration changed the theme of the invasion from “Finding the weapons of mass destruction” to “Regime change.” This is where I withdrew my support for the invasion. Clearly, when there is a reason to invade a country and the basis for that invasion is determined to be completely wrong, it is time to pack up your troops in an orderly fashion and go home. Instead, we forged ahead in deposing Saddam Hussein and his Sunni followers, thus creating the anarchy that followed in Iraq.

4. FIX IT, PART II: I am tired of hearing Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats for our mistakes in the Middle-East. Yes, President George W. Bush is to blame for the 2003 invasion of Iraq on inaccurate/ginned up intelligence and President Barrack Obama is to blame for withdrawing our troops from Iraq too soon, enabling ISIS/ISIL to come back stronger. GET OVER IT! At this point, it really doesn’t matter who is to blame. What I am looking for in our politicians is something I haven’t seen in a long time, bi-partisan cooperation to get to a common goal. So, what I would like to see is a politician, or politicians (from either party) who says, we are where we are, but here is my plan to fix it. No more blame game, no more divisiveness, it solves nothing and gets us no further toward our goals, which at this point aren’t well defined and is also part of our bigger problem.

5. MISGUIDED ASSESSMENTS BY POLITICIANS AND WHAT WE NEED TO DO TO SUPPORT OUR VETS: Vice President Cheney was interviewed on Meet the Press on March 16, 2003. In that interview with Tim Russert, Cheney said that when we invade Iraq we will be greeted as liberators. Certainly, Vice President Cheney was not the only member of the Bush Administration that got it wrong about Iraq. Maybe Cheney believed what he said, but obviously we were never treated as liberators and our debt/cost for the War on Terror since 9/11 has been pegged at $3 trillion. Some peg it at more than $8 trillion. Let that sink in for a moment. What have we achieved for the cost in dollars? More importantly, the fact that we have not completely supported the veterans who have fought and died or veterans who have suffered a variety of wounds, to include PTSD is a national disgrace. The suicide rate of 20 vets a day is part of the tragedy that is ongoing. The lack of support for our veterans and veteran’s families is a travesty that we as a country must fix.

6. THE 2003 INVASION OF IRAQ WAS JUST THE BEGINNING OF OUR MISTAKES COMPLICATING THE IRAQI SITUATION: The imposition of the Coalition Provisional Authority in the form of L. Paul Bremer was our biggest mistake in Iraq. In my opinion, it was an even bigger mistake than changing our Iraqi mission from finding WMD to regime change. Sending the Sunni bureaucrats and military personnel working for Saddam Hussein home, with no job, no income, no prospects and not expect that to come back and bite you? Idle hands created the time and effort necessary for the payback that we got by not enlisting all groups (Kurds, Sunnis, Shias and others) to participate in the re-building and re-structuring of Iraq after Saddam Hussein was gone. In other words, even though the mission changed and we were going for regime change vice the original WMD mission in Iraq, we could have gotten it right had we involved all parties in the re-building of the Iraqi nation. The ruling Sunni’s (both military and bureaucrats) being thrown to the curb, displaced and discarded was the basis for Al Qaeda in Iraq and the later transformation to ISIS/ISIL. We created that monster and have been fighting it ever since. By the way, has anyone ever found the $400 million that Bremer’s Provisional Authority spent in Iraq, but was never accounted for? Bags and bags of cash that were spent by Bremer with proclivity, but which bought us nothing in return. Also, does anyone think that after spending $750 million to build a new embassy in Iraq that we will ever pull all of our troops out of Iraq? Not a chance, we are far too invested.

7. FINISH IT! The surge Iraq in 2008 worked only because we made amends with some of the Sunnis to support our war efforts in Iraq to weed out the insurgents attacking U.S. troops. We paid our Sunni allies good money to support us. We also knew that many of them had previously been targeting and killing our troops, to include the use of IEDs in those efforts. However, General Petraeus also knew he could not accomplish his goal of rolling up the insurgents without the help of the Sunnis. So yes, our country does make deals with “bad actors” if the ends meet our needs. Once the surge ended, we ended our relationship with the Sunnis and started to withdraw the last of our troops, but we had not wiped out the insurgents. ISIS/ISIL then re-grouped and came back stronger than ever. Finish what you start, or you’ll keep doing the same thing over and over and keep getting the same sad ineffective results.

8. YOU CAN’T KILL YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS. What this means is that the ideas that formulate the basis for groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda (various versions in different areas of the middle-east, Africa and elsewhere in the world) and ISIS/ISIL will always be there. What happens when the next group pops up after ISIS/ISIL? Are we ready? What is our plan? This leads into my next point.

9. THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE A PLAN. The politicians send the U.S. military to fight various wars, but they do not have a plan and do not have an end-game. In the words of Robert Gates (former DCI and SECDEF): “Then what?” What Secretary Gates meant by this phrase is, if you do “this,” what happens next and then what do you do? This isn’t a singular event, or question. There are multiple and divergent paths that follow from each event. Our politicians (this includes the President and Congress, Democrats and Republicans), in conjunction with our military leadership need to map out in a flow chart (again, not a one-time event, but done on a continuing basis based on changes that occur), to indicate what we’re going to do, what a particular action causes to happen and then speculate what will happen next and what our reaction needs to be. By the way, “take no action” is an acceptable response because at some point we need to extricate ourselves from the continuous “do-loop” we are in.

10. WHY DO THEY HATE US? Some ask this question about the basis for extremist radical terrorist attacks and yes, this does primarily emanate from a small minority of Muslims who misuse the Islamic religion as the basis for their actions. I am a patriot. I love this country. I love what our military personnel have done and continue to do each day to protect our country and our freedoms. WE AS A COUNTRY ARE NOT WITHOUT FAULT. Example: Back in 1953, the CIA had a hand in the overthrow of a duly elected Prime Minister in Iran, Mohamed Mosaddegh. We put the Shah of Iran in Mossadegh’s place as the leader of Iran. This was done to protect access to oil in that country. OMG, is anyone surprised? You should not be. The Brits were also involved in the overthrow of Mosaddegh. Do we think the Iranians forgot this event? It led directly to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and the holding of American hostages. I don’t agree with what the Iranians did in reaction to our meddling in their country and for us not turning over the Shah of Iran to them (that was the linchpin that led to the student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran), but if we think that our meddling with another country’s government, to the point of overthrowing that government is not noticed and won’t lead to blowback at some point in time, then we’re not being realistic. Everything we do has a consequence. The “Then what?” methodology of Robert Gates comes to mind. Very recently, we have strong evidence that Russian hackers, at the behest of Vladimir Putin, hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer systems and stole data. Who doesn’t think that Vladimir Putin directed this action to potentially influence the upcoming Presidential election in November 2016? We do “things” to others and others do “things” to us. Again, not a surprising finding. However, we need to be aware of the consequences of our actions as a country and to be prepared for the fallout should we take certain actions.

11. LEADERSHIP CHANGE IS NOT A PANACEA. We’ve come to realize that regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Libya to name just a few countries, is not necessarily a good thing. The peace dividend of the Arab Spring never came to fruition. We got it wrong. The Muslim Brotherhood was elected in Egypt and botched things up so badly that they are now back to a military dictatorship in that country. If leadership change was a requirement on what we should do in the world we would’ve invaded North Korea a long time ago. A BAD DICTATOR IN PLACE AND THE ORDER AND STABILITY HE BRINGS IS SOMETIMES BETTER THAN THE REPLACEMENT, OR THE ANARCHY THAT FOLLOWS IF YOU REPLACE THE CURRENT LEADER. Iraq and Libya are two good examples of how regime change has not worked and has made the situation worse in both countries. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to work to bring about change in the world, but be careful about what change can bring to a country. Change in leadership does not always lead to a better government, or friendlier government, or one that is predisposed to be “with us” in their way of thinking and actions.

12. TERRORISM IS A WAY OF LIFE. Get used to terrorist attacks. This is the way it is going to be into the foreseeable future. Not just in the U.S., but elsewhere in the world too. In September 1973, my professor of International Studies at American University said that terrorism is the way that groups who are disenfranchised, will get their message heard by those who are not listening. It was true back then and it is true today. While we have done our best to thwart future 9/11 attacks by airplanes used as missiles, the terrorists are very creative and inventive. They will take what you give them and they are not afraid of dying. Paris, France; San Bernardino, CA. Nice France, etc., etc. Using military style weapons, using a refrigerator truck as a method to mow down people, terrorists have proven adaptable and have used the Internet to radicalize and promote others to perform heinous acts to terrorize and threaten the stability of countries. Using asymmetric warfare keeps us at bay. We never expected hijacked planes to do anything but return to the airport before 9/11 once terrorist demands were met. Who expected anyone to use a large refrigerator truck as a method to kill and maim a large number of people? Probably no one prior to the attack in Nice, France would have thought of this methodology. What is the next big thing for terrorists to use? I don’t know, but trust me they are constantly thinking, scheming and developing surprising new ways to kill us. We shouldn’t believe that we’ve completely sealed off air travel from terrorist events. The terrorists are adaptable and will take advantage of what they’re given. So the use of planes as terrorist weapons in the future is always a possibility. Using planes as a WMD is less of possibility to be sure, but not a zero chance event. Our efforts to thwart terrorism have been successful many times in preventing tragic events from occurring, but the terrorists only have to be right one time out of a thousand to be considered successful. Terrorism is going to happen and it will continue to happen in spite of our best efforts to stop the terrorists. Furthermore, it is simply not realistic to think that all terrorist events can be stopped.

13. RESPECT YOUR ENEMY: Osama Bin Laden’s goal on 9/11 was not simply to crash planes into significant landmark buildings in the United States. Bin Laden’s ultimate goal was to crash the world’s economy. He damn near succeeded. Another way to look at what he did was to put out bait for us to follow. Bin Laden knew that we would follow him to Afghanistan and when we let him slip across the border into Pakistan (we stopped our bombing campaign long enough for Bin Laden and his Pakistani allies to go back into Pakistan), we missed an opportunity to end the whole thing very quickly. Bin Laden invited us into Afghanistan and hoped we wouldn’t just stop there. We didn’t. Now we’re involved in a 15 year quagmire that has no end in sight. When we went into Afghanistan after 9/11, we had the backing of almost the entire world. Fifteen years later, who’s on our side now? We need to respect the power of our enemies and their ability to shape world events. Bin Laden is dead, but his legacy continues to live on. You don’t have to like our enemies. I certainly don’t, but I respect their ability to reach out and touch us in horrific ways. Let’s also be mindful that by doing what’s expected of us, like invading Iraq on false pretenses, or ginned up intelligence and then not knowing enough to cut our loses and getting out plays right into what our enemies want us to do. Careful planning on our part should come before the commitment of armed forces to any situation. Otherwise we commit our country into a long drawn out war with goals not achieved and no end in sight.

14. FRIENDS vs. ENEMIES: When you think of our enemies in the Middle-East, certain countries come to mind, Iran Syria, Libya are examples and certainly they fit the mold. Let’s not forget that there are factions in other counties who are out to see us fail. We count Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as our allies in the war on terror. However, there are factions in those countries who are contributing to terrorist groups and who would like nothing more than to see us fail in our efforts to bring peace to the Middle-East. The Pakistani ISI (their version of the CIA) was responsible for establishing the Taliban in Afghanistan, pre-2001. We do count Pakistan as our ally today and we contribute untold billions of dollars of military equipment to that country (and out military commitment to Saudi Arabia is the same). Nevertheless, prior to the raid to capture/kill Bin Laden, there was a proposal to coordinate our mission with the Pakistani authorities. That idea was quickly nixed because we knew that before we got to the Bin Laden compound, he would have been notified by someone in Pakistan that we were coming. While we need allies and need to have a coalition of countries in our efforts to fight terror, we also need to carefully evaluate what each country brings to the table and know to a certainty that there are factions who are working against us in each of those countries, both in the existing government and also, outside of the government. Only then will we truly appreciate that not every person in every country we count as an ally is truly with us in our efforts to achieve our goals.

15. RELIGIOUS WAR AND THE RESULT OF REGIME CHANGE IN IRAQ: It has been said that if we take a step back and look at the Middle-East, the big picture shows a war of hegemony between Iran (Shia) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni). It is more of a religious war than anything else. When Iraq was under the control of Saddam Hussein (Sunni), he was a natural counter to the Shia Iranian forces. Now that Saddam Hussein and his Sunni factions have been ousted and the Shia factions control the Iraqi government, there is no counter to the Iranians. It has been said that since Saddam Hussein’s ouster, the Iranians have been controlling most of what goes on in Iraq. Had we looked at the big picture before totally messing up Iraq, we may have seen that ousting Saddam Hussein was not something we wanted to do. However, it is too late for that now. We can’t go back. What we must do is to figure out what our plan is and what goals we need to accomplish.

16. LONG TERM vs. SHORT TERM STRATEGY: Our country has devolved into a short term gratification mindset. We live our lives and fight our wars for short term gratification. Our enemies know this and are willing to take their time and place their efforts to affect us in the worst possible ways. Our enemies go after the American public and public opinion to affect the government and military and how we fight our wars. We fought the Germans and Japanese in WW II and were dedicated as a whole country and people to seeing this war to the very end. WW II had to be fought and fought successfully and yet today, Germany and Japan are two of our closest allies. We fought in Vietnam to save a government that was destined to fail. We negotiated a peace with the North Vietnamese in Paris and extricated ourselves from Vietnam. The North Vietnamese in very short order took over the entire country. The North Vietnamese said their original goal was freedom and liberty for their country. If you look at the history of Vietnam, the Chinese, the French and the British all tried to subjugate the Vietnamese people without success. Why did we think the outcome would be different with the U.S. as the lead country fighting the North Vietnamese? Yes, it is true that North Vietnam had tremendous amounts of military and intelligence help from the Soviet Union and China, but still, I’m not sure our goal (stopping communism in Vietnam and stopping the fall of dominoes in the region) was any more achievable than the goals of the Chinese, French and Brits before us. Where are we now? Recently, our country negotiated a commitment to provide military equipment to Vietnam because they are in conflict with the Chinese in the South China Sea. SOMETIMES WARS MUST BE FOUGHT (example: WW II), BUT REMEMBER THAT TODAY’S ENEMY IS TOMORROW’S FRIEND. We need to think long term, vice short term in our planning strategies and before we commit our military to fighting. Negotiation and the use of sanctions where feasible should be a first step. However, first and foremost, we must be able to answer the question: What are we trying to achieve? Unless we can lay out in clear detail what our goals are (militarily, diplomatically and otherwise) and how we hope to achieve those goals, then we should not impose the use of military force on a situation. In any event, the use of military force while clearly necessary in some cases, should always be a last resort. Our elected officials need to be more judicious in the use of our military and also, less partisan when it comes to the goals we want to achieve for our country (the President, Congress, Democrats and Republicans should be on the same page).

17. EMPLOY AN OVERWHELMING MILITARY FORCE, ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS, THEN WITHDRAW: If we’re going to employ military force then I agree with Colin Powell, go in with an overwhelming military force, accomplish your goals and then withdraw your military forces from the country. What we’re doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya is trying to use the minimal force necessary to decimate the enemy. It is working, but working way too slowly. Worse yet, we are unable to articulate what it is we want to achieve other than to take out ISIS/ISIL. What happens when the next group comes along to replace ISIS/ISIL? At this point we would be better served by having the overwhelming force in place and using that in conjunction with a coalition of countries fighting against ISIS/ISIL. Using the coalition model of the first Gulf War should be our example. The more countries involved in and invested in the outcome, the greater our ability to achieve success in the collective goals we seek. WE CAN’T FIGHT THE WAR ON TERROR ALONE, NOR SHOULD WE. Finally, the fight against terrorism will not be won on the battlefield, it will be won at the negotiating table, but only with the maximum number of countries involved in the process. Our commitment to the stability of countries after the battles are fought will determine the ultimate outcome of our war on terror.

18. MILITARY vs. POLICE: We’ve turned our military into police forces around the world and at the same time our country’s police forces have become more and more militarized. Think for a moment about what has happened in our country in the last year, or so over police vs. citizen encounters and how those events have turned out. We need police protection and we need the police who are there for us, but the focus needs to be on police community relations and how police forces support the citizens they serve. Police departments also need to weed out certain “bad actors” who have no business with a badge and a gun. On the other side, we need to get back to using our military for the express purpose of executing military missions and understand that trying to impose a military force as a police force will not have unintended consequences. There will certainly be time when the use of peacekeeping forces will be required, but we should be working through the U.N., or a coalition force when that becomes a necessity.

19. GUANTANAMO BAY – CLOSE IT: When Barrack Obama was elected as President in 2008, he vowed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Eight years later he has reduced the prisoner count, but has been unsuccessful in closing this prison. The Congress has not given him the authorization to do so. Worse yet, Guantanamo Bay Prison is being used as a recruiting tool for various radical terrorist groups. We need to eliminate this opportunity for recruiting. There has to be a way to either transfer the remaining prisoners to other prisons in the U.S., or to overseas prisons and close Guantanamo Bay. The lack of bi-partisan cooperation on this issue is not helping. Furthermore, closing Guantanamo Bay allows the U.S. an opportunity to relinquish our legal claim to using that base and to cede it back to the Cuban government. The Guantanamo Bay Base is also a point of contention between the U.S. and Cuban governments and has been so for quite a long time. If we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, there is no reason to not go a step further and cede the base back to Cuba. It goes in keeping with our recent rapprochement with Cuba that we should turn over the Guantanamo Bay Base to Cuba as a matter of good will.

20. END GAME: How do we achieve our goals in the Middle-East? I’m not sure we can, but here’s my take on things that have to happen. There has to be some give and take between the various Sunni and Shia factions. The fighting for Middle-East hegemony between Iran and Saudi Arabia needs to cease. The Iranian government needs to cease its incessant talk of violence toward the U.S. and Israel. The Iranians also need to cease fighting proxy terrorist wars using Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups to target the Israelis, our soldiers and others with terrorist attacks. We need to find a peaceful solution in Syria (after routing ISIS/ISIL from the country) so that Syria can settle down and take away the need for the Syrian people to flee their country. Whether Bashar Assad stays, or leaves as the ruler of Syria is up for discussion (and at some point, a leadership change will be necessary), but if he leaves, there has to be a ruler, or ruling coalition that keeps the peace and keeps the country from further falling into anarchy. We need to root out ISIS/ISIL in Libya and a ruler, or ruling faction needs to take over imposing peace and order in that country. Finally, Israel and the Palestinian people need to come to a peaceful agreement so that both sides have what they need (land and peace). All of this is going to be extremely difficult to achieve. If it were easy someone would have already done it by now. There will always be radical terrorists in the Muslim world who want to see the demise of Israel and Israeli people. Without the support of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries, Israel cannot achieve its goals. This has been tried many times before and without much long-term success. To truly achieve any goals in the Middle-East, all countries in the Arab world must participate. France, Britain, Canada and the U.S. must participate. We must involve the Russians and the Chinese in the process and yes, I do know how that sounds, but we will need the involvement of the world community writ large to ensure that once the process starts, that all parties have a vested interest in a successful outcome. Barring that, our ability to achieve our goals of peace in the Middle-East will continue to be limited in its scope and success.

SUMMARY: I don’t expect you to agree with everything I’ve said here. Some people will disagree with everything I say. I don’t care, what I want to do is to start a dialogue on these issues. Our elected officials in Washington don’t seem to be working for us, they have their own agenda. I would like to think that when it comes to the security of our country the Democrats and Republicans could work together, but they don’t seem to be able to do that. Each person needs to make contact with your elected representative and let that person know what you want him/her to do on your behalf. If we do not take the first step of letting our elected officials know what we want them to do with respect to the security of our country, we have no reason to complain about what they do, or don’t do on our behalf.

P.S.: Contacting your elected official is not a one-time event. You have to be on their case constantly, letting them know your position on various issues. Only when we do that will we make some headway in getting Washington politicians out of the gridlock they’re currently in now.

P.S.2: If we keep electing the same damn politicians and sending them to Washington, keep expecting the same anemic results we’ve been getting. It is time for a change in the elected officials we send to Washington and it is also high time for term-limits.

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