Enduring Freedom

The balloon went up in Afghanistan three years ago, I was in and out of the Pentagon, the part that was open, holding one of the many lines on the balloon.

The first wave included air strikes from land-based B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers; carrier-based F-14 and F/A-18 fighters; and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from both U.S. and British ships and submarines.

The ships and submarines and carriers had sped at flank speed to the launch points in the Northern Arabian Sea. Special Operations Forces had slipped across the border, in the south, and the Agency had dispatched operatives to the North who had worked with the Mujahadeen against the Russians, older guys now, but savvy.

It was to be a strategic partnership with the Northern Alliance , and we were going to include hay and saddles for irregular cavalry on the transport planes that were revving their engines on the tarmac.

Timing is everything. To have a man on the ground with a laser designator can take a few days. It can take a half a day for an airplane to fly from Louisiana to a point high over the mountains of the Hindu Kush. It is two hours by tactical jet from the ship to Kabul ; depending on the course of flight, the same time for a Tomahawk cruise missile erupting with white hot intensity from a tube beneath the waves.

The simultaneous arrival of all these moving parts is a complex business, all the refueling aircraft and jammers and support missions to be on station at their many places at precisely the right instant. All arriving at dawn, and then in waves that would not cease until the caves at Tora Bora were pounded with two thousand pound bombs.

Many conquerors have arrived at the passes to Afghanistan  through the centuries, but none have arrived quite this way. At twenty-thousand feet and on horseback.

A pilot described Afghanistan as a giant pile of brown to light brown rocks, bordered south and north by huge deserts and to the east by an even bigger pile of rocks. The only signs of life are Toyota SUVs moving on the three main highways, and as the dawn came up, some lights in the smaller towns at night. And Taliban tough guys, improbably small dots, running like ants from their Toytoas just before multiple weapons detonated among them.

It had only been two weeks since the authorities permitted a small working party to enter my old office in the Pentagon. It was near the point of impact. They had to wear gas masks, hard hats and construction boots. They were granted fifteen minutes to scoop up personal stuff left behind, purses and the like. A nasty green slime was growing on the walls and desks.

It happened fast, the cause and effect. The country fell and a new Prime Minister was installed. Kipling would have understood it, but it is the staying that is the hard part in Afghanistan .

I recall thinking that the rehabilitation of the country was going to be a challenge, but that at least we were committed to making the desert bloom again. We would not repeat the disengagement that followed the expulsion of the Russians and permitted the rise of the Taliban and their al-Qaida guests.

Or would we? If you had told me the Marines would be bunking in Saddam's palaces the next year, and that Osama would still free this morning, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra