The FRONTLINE Interviews
Jack Keane
Former Army Vice Chief of Staff
Jack Keane is a retired four-star general and served as the U.S. Army vice chief of staff. He is currently the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and a regular contributor to Fox News.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on April 6, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Global Reaction to 9/11
So let's start out, looking back, post-9/11.The world was, of course, very supportive of us.And as we go into Afghanistan, and with Enduring Freedom, talk a little bit about what it was like, how the world was in support of us, how it empowered President [George W.] Bush.If you can think about that period of time, what was it like?
Yeah, well, post-9/11, I think the world was stunned and shocked by what took place.You know, the assault on people who were going to work—this was not a military organization that was being attacked, except for the attack on the Pentagon, certainly.And I think that that galvanized the world, in many respects, in support of the United States and the loss of so many of our civilians all at one time.
And certainly the president had the wind at his back, and not only from his own government but from governments around the world, knowing full well that action would be taken.And action was taken.And I think it was quite remarkable, the course of action that President Bush selected.He didn't select a huge buildup of forces and then go into Afghanistan.He selected an option that took advantage of the ground forces that were already there, fighting the Taliban, and that was essentially the Northern Alliance tribes.
And with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had some historic relationship with some of these leaders, we were able to put in place small teams of special forces to help them with their ground plans and also to help them with airpower.And we were avoiding a large-scale buildup of U.S. forces.That was always another option if the first option did not work.But the first option worked remarkably well.Within two to three weeks, the Taliban regime was indeed defeated.
And the support of the world, how did it empower him?How did it empower Bush?
Well, I think the emotional and psychological support that he had for it was indeed there.And every president, certainly facing a strategic crisis like he was facing, you know, has to deal with his own fears in dealing with that crisis, just as other presidents had their own self-doubts in dealing with it.But here, the whole world was united that the United States, real critical harm was done to them.And listen, the [North] Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world's most successful political alliance that was formed post-World War II, had never conducted a military operation of any consequence.And it was only this time, the first time that they all signed to Article 5, which is: An attack on one is an attack on all.And NATO responded to join the United States as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation, led by the United States, to topple the Taliban regime and also to extinguish the Al Qaeda.Quite unprecedented.
The way Bush described the fight at that point was that this was for freedom; it was to spread democratic values.Looking back at it now, 20 years later, what are your thoughts on that?
I think that was misguided and not really strategically achievable.It doesn't take into consideration the part of the world that we're dealing with, and some of the historical norms and culture and the very nature of the tribes that are in the area in Afghanistan.And we're reaching for something that is—it is really beyond our reach, in my view.I mean, the mission had a clearly military application to it, to depose the Taliban.And obviously, once you do that, you own and have responsibility for what takes place after that.I'm not suggesting to trivialize that.It is rather significant.
But to push them towards a constitutional democracy, as we did there, and subsequently did in Iraq, I think was misguided.The situation called for: Give them some assistance with security forces, so they can maintain the security for their government and the services that they want to provide, and make certain that was right.Actually, we didn't do a very good job of doing that.Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld did not want to provide those forces, I thought, that were required and became an indicator of, I think, a U.S. policy failing over the long term, and that is not providing adequate resources to the mission.
Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden
And the consequences of bin Laden's escape at that early point?
I don't think that was surprising, given the fact that we were relying on a ground force and a militia force that was ill-trained to be able to do anything like that.To capture or kill somebody in a mountainous terrain and conduct an operation that would block the border would also deny bin Laden and his immediate cohorts an opportunity to move and have some mobility.That required an operation that was way beyond the scale of the locals who we were depending on doing it.
Despite the fact that we owned the air, the fact of the matter is, bin Laden and his people owned the ground a lot more than we did, in terms of how to navigate themselves and provide an escape route into Pakistan.
But the consequences that we didn't get him, that he would go on for years, sort of causing us more problems elsewhere—you look back at it now, and how damaging was that?
Well, I've always believed that one of the things that got us off-target is, in December of 2001—pay attention to the date, 2001, after we toppled the Taliban regime, prior to Thanksgiving—the administration, the Bush administration had made a decision, because it was reported to us as a four-star in the Pentagon, that they had made a decision to conduct an invasion of Iraq.And that was surprising to us.
And it was at that point, I believe, that we were taking our eye off the ball, because the task should have been to crush the Al Qaeda in place in Afghanistan.And I believe strongly that, given the wind that President Bush had at his back, and given the world's support he enjoyed at the time, that we could have levered the Pakistanis, to tell them in no uncertain terms that after 3,000 dead, as the Al Qaeda crossed that border, you can join with us in pursuit of them, or we are going to do it without you.And that should have been our focus, and stay on it until we finished them once and for all.
We would never finish the ideology.I'm not suggesting—not naive.This is people who join a movement because they want to find purpose and meaning in their life, but we could have destroyed those leaders very quickly after deposing the Taliban regime if we stayed focused on it.
Twenty Years Later
… Afghanistan, you look back now, 20 years later.Are you surprised by where we are today?Does it define something about a misunderstanding of the enemy or a misunderstanding of the war that we had taken upon ourselves after 9/11?
Well, I think the implication is, it's 20 years later, and we still are involved in Afghanistan, something likely that no one conceptualized at the outset.But I believe there's two reasons why we've been involved primarily in a protracted war.One is that Pakistan provided refuge and sanctuary for the Taliban leadership all of these years, and is still doing to this day.Not only do they provide sanctuary, but they provide intelligence on U.S. and NATO and Afghan operations, and they provide valuable resources.That has been outrageous for two decades, when we consider that Pakistan is also an ally, and we've provided excess of a billion dollars per year in military aid to them.That behavior should have been changed a long time ago.The second reason for the protracted war is U.S. policy decisions of never, not one time, ever matching the resources to the mission at hand, and that lasted throughout these 20 years.
Through three presidents.
Yes.Bush moving the operation to Iraq, and the resources that had to follow that from Afghanistan or could not be applied to Afghanistan, that permitted the reemergence of the Taliban.We never got consequential resources back in Afghanistan until the surge was successful in Iraq, and that was 2008.Obama came in, recognized that we needed to escalate, that we did not have enough troops.Generals [David] Petraeus and [Stanley] McChrystal requested a minimum of 40,000 troops, and Obama cut it by 25%.That was the minimum force required to succeed by our two most competent counterinsurgency generals we likely have had in our history, and he cut them 25%.
That protracted the war, as well as his decision, “I'm going to pull them out in 15 months anyway,” which absolutely happened.And here we are, today, 20 years later, with not ever achieving all the results that I think were definitely obtainable.
The Dark Side
So let me also ask you.The country's unbelievably shaken after 9/11, fearful of the next attack, and the decisions made in the White House—and the vice president was the one that defined it first, was this idea of a "dark side," going to the dark side; a secret war with black sites, with enhanced interrogation, with the idea of establishing Gitmo.Looking again now, back this many years, what's your overview of what that did, the misunderstanding of the way it would be perceived? …
Yeah.Well, I do have some empathy for the decision-makers at the time, because they were seized with the fact that they believed other attacks were coming; that this was the beginning, not a solitary isolated attack.And so based on that and the pressure they felt, they were trying to get leaders who could give them some understanding of what was taking place.I do believe that once they had that resolution, that the enhanced interrogation techniques, as it was being called at the time, should have stopped. …
Did it damage us, though, in the eyes of the world, in the idea of what America stood for, and our values, and the values that we were attempting to establish in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere?
Yeah, I do believe it did.And certainly our adversaries used it considerably, you know, in terms of propaganda, and also, you know, as a recruiting tool.
And is the cause of it a misunderstanding of the enemy?
No, I don't think it's a misunderstanding of the enemy.It took us a while to come to grips with this enemy.They had declared war on us in the early 1990s.They attacked two of our embassies in the late '90s and killed 400 people, both of those embassies in Africa, and they blew up one of our warships in 2000, and we still hadn't taken any consequential action against them, which I believe incentivized Osama bin Laden and his cohorts to actually plan something as ambitious as the 9/11 attacks were, because he thought the United States was back on its heels.It did not have the moral fortitude to even come for them after they killed 400 of us.Most of the people who were killed were local nationals from the countries involved, to be sure, but nonetheless, people associated with the United States in those embassies.
Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Mission in Iraq
How much of U.S. credibility was tied to the Iraq weapons of mass destruction issue before we went in, and [Colin] Powell's role in selling it?How much of our credibility was tied up into this argument?
Yeah, well, I think a considerable amount of it was, because the focal point for it became WMD. I remember the first time that we received an explanation by the administration in terms of the objectives that we were trying to achieve in Iraq, and there were several of them, but certainly WMD was on that list.And I think once the testimony was provided by the secretary of state at the U.N., the only issue that was being provided from that point on, that I could detect, as to why there was an invasion in Iraq, was WMD. It became the issue as opposed to one of the issues, and it became the seminal reason for going in there.
And obviously, also, we knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the past, because he used them on his own people.What we didn't know is that he chose to get rid of them.
… In April '03, the Saddam statue coming down—you might have been in Iraq at this point.And I don't know.But that statue comes down, and there's huge symbolism to it.But people look back at it now, and I'd like to get your sort of overview of it.We saw that, and I suppose some people, many people saw that as the fact that Saddam's removal meant that democracy was coming to Iraq, that it was going to be simple.But I wanted to get your sort of understanding on this, of how we misunderstood that time, how we misunderstood the symbol of that statue being taken down.
Yeah.Well, the symbology of that certainly was a vivid signal that the regime had been deposed.Saddam Hussein, we had not captured him yet, but the regime clearly was gone.And we recognized after the fact that the reason why his so-called Republican Guard, his best troops, which had fought us during the Gulf War in 1991, in Desert Storm, didn't put up much of a fight at all this time.And the reason is, the leadership had already fled, and they certainly—that had leaked out to them, so they left the battlefield as well.
And what we were not prepared to do very well—and this is where we didn't have the detailed plans for the follow-on to the invasion that we had for the actual invasion itself.So when the war was terminated, we deposed their military; there was the civil servant bureaucracy that they had was also extinguished, and so was their military.Their military had left the battlefield.
But we had contact with their generals.And the envoy at the time, appointed by President Bush, made a decision not to bring back the military for security purposes, which is what we wanted to do, use it as a labor force, bring back all the police and bring back the civil servants to keep the bureaucracy of the government working, because the expectations of the people were not realistic.They felt now that America has come to their aid, everything that's good about America, that they see on television, is going to happen to them overnight, in terms of supermarkets and the rest.
And what did happen was everything got worse.There was no security.There was no police.There was no civil servants to help administer the government services that were not being provided at all. …
Why did Rumsfeld get that so wrong?I mean, was that hubris?Was that a misunderstanding of U.S. power?Was it the fact that this was a Cold War military?What were the reasons, do you think, that we got those decisions so wrong?
I'm not certain that I would put that just on Rumsfeld.I think the decisions that were being made, in terms of not bringing back the army and not reinstituting the civil bureaucracy and the interior police forces, I believe those decisions were socialized at a much higher level in the White House itself.And I think the national security team collectively was dealing with those decisions and likely were collectively supported.And although I cannot attest that there were not people who may have in fact disagreed with those decisions,I'll leave it for them to speak for themselves.
So that's the White House, Bush and Cheney, working through [Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul] Bremer?
Yeah, absolutely.Mr. Bremer was appointed by the White House, if you recall.We had a three-star retired general who he replaced, that Secretary Rumsfeld had appointed to deal with post-conflict operations.And much to our surprise, almost overnight, there was a replacement for that general with Mr. Bremer.
… The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found, was this a turning point in some ways?What were the damaging effects on the trust, the American people's trust in our president and vice president, in our Congress, in the media, and what the media had been telling them?How much of a turning point was it when weapons of mass destruction were not found?
Well, I think it was a significant blow to the United States and to the Bush administration, certainly, because it became the very foundation of why we were going to war in Iraq.And that foundation was destroyed by the fact that Saddam Hussein had removed those weapons, and our intelligence system was not able to pick any of that up and advise us accordingly.And we had—I think it's fair to say we oversold it at the United Nations as being the central point of why the United States needed the support of the United Nations to go to war in Iraq.And we never really recovered strategically, you know, from that reality.
Looking back, let's talk about the insurgency and Rumsfeld's view on it.What should we have known about the insurgency?And what were the consequences of the fact that we misunderstood the enemy to this extent?
Well, we were very slow to recognize what was taking place, that there was targeted violence against the United States forces, and the violence had a similar pattern that began with ambushes of our vehicles.And as we defeated most of that rather handily, the enemy then moved away from close-in ambushes of our vehicles and traffic, military traffic, to using remotely exploded devices, where the trigger person would be connected to a wire, and the explosive device would be on the road, and remove themselves, you know, from the danger of that.That proved to be successful in the sense that we were taking casualties somewhat systematically every week.And then it began to be almost every day.
And we were very slow to come to the recognition that we really did have an insurgency on our hands.I was there in late June/early July, as the acting chief of staff of the Army.And I came to grips with it very quickly [at] Gen. [Ricardo] Sanchez's headquarters when I was being briefed.And I told them, “Guys, we have a low-level insurgency on our hands.
"You may not be able to identify who is in command and control of it, and the network that those leaders have, but by virtue of the fact that we have similar events and a pattern of behavior by an enemy that's operating in multiple places, doing simultaneously the same thing to our forces, indicates that we have a low-level insurgency on our hands, which will likely grow in size and scale.” That was around the Fourth of July weekend.I reported the same to the Joint Chiefs when I returned.The Pentagon never really came to grips with it until the fall of the year.We were still dealing, in the Pentagon's mind, with dead-enders and people that the United States were going to be able to deal with, not someone that was being driven by an ideology.And I think it took the White House almost to the end of the year to come—this was the end of 2003—to come to grips with the fact that the United States was fighting and facing a different kind of enemy, and required a completely different approach to deal with an insurgency.
Meanwhile, as all 2003 comes to a close, the Al Qaeda leadership now in Pakistan, hiding from us, calls for a fatwa, where Osama bin Laden is asking all the fighters of the world, all the brothers of the world, to join them in Iraq to expel the United States from the region.He saw that as a huge opportunity, that the United States was involved in a war now that they didn't want to have, having fought the war that they did want to have, in deposing the military in Iraq.We're now about to undertake something that could be protracted for them.And he saw advantage, particularly strategic advantage, in calling for that.And that exponentially grew the insurgency by having the Al Qaeda fighters fall in on the Sunni-led insurgency.
Abu Ghraib
… In April of '04 you got Abu Ghraib.The pictures come out of Abu Ghraib.What did those pictures cause?Again, people have said that this was another turning point in the war, in that it fueled the insurgency.It demoralized soldiers on the ground.Back home, you know, it was on the front pages everywhere.It was a demoralizing event, and it sort of defined strategies that became then very tied to what the CIA was doing around the world.When you remember those days, you must have had some pretty strong feelings at the time when that happened.Looking back now, what's the effect of Abu Ghraib?
Well, I think you're making too much of it.I mean, it was a horrible event.It did not demoralize our troops on the ground.I was visiting them during that time.They were completely focused on the mission.They saw that as an aberration that—the troops are interesting.I mean, they got a pretty good feel for why things happened.And they know, when you have a breakdown like that, that's fundamentally a breakdown in leaders who are not properly organized, who are not properly disciplined, who are not in control of their troops and their other subordinate leaders.It's fundamentally that kind of a problem.
I don't want to minimize it, but I don't want to give it a false sense of credit here in our discussions, in terms of United States military and how it was performing.Our problem in 2004 and 2005 is that the insurgency is growing, and we don't have the right strategy.Our strategy, fundamental strategy, was to use the Iraqi security forces to eventually defeat this insurgency, and once we were able to transition to them, the United States would leave.That was our plan.
Legacy of the Bush Years
… When you look back, by 2008, as the Bush years are ending, and we're about to move over to Obama, what had changed from that post-9/11 period of time, where everyone was in support of the mission we were on?How did the war change?How did the wars change America, so that by the time of 2008, where we were?
Well, what happens, I think, protracted wars really are a test of the resolve of democracies.But by nature, the wars that we fight, we'd like to get them over as quickly as we possibly can, end the killing, and get some kind of stability operation in place.When you're fighting these kind of protracted wars, they are very challenging.And I think we have done just a horrific job of handling the 9/11 wars with the American people, to be just quite frank about it.It's transcended all of our presidents that have been involved in it.Not a single one of them has ever accepted the mantle of leadership, where: "I'm going to report to you, the American people, we're involved in a war that's going to take some time to complete.I'm going to give you periodic updates and assessments on how we're doing, why we're having setbacks, what we're doing about those setbacks, and what adjustments I'm making."[They] can't obviously give classified information to the American people, but they can give them a sense of what is taking place, and particularly why things are taking place.That was never done.
And it was a huge mistake on the Democratic and Republican presidents, because the frustration the people had is they don't see any progress being made.It looks like, well, we're there, and we're still taking casualties.But that looks like what it looked like last year.And then all of a sudden, something horrific happens, and it looks like it may in fact be getting worse, which is what was happening in 2006, certainly in Baghdad and Iraq.
But we didn't do that.And I think if you want an American democracy, the people, to support protracted war, let's learn the lesson that we have an obligation—that our leaders have—to report to them and be frank to them about a conflict that has huge ramifications to it and is very complicated, and unpack that complication for the American people so they can get a grip on what has taken place.
And obviously, if we're not making any progress, and there's a sense of futility there, then something is fundamentally wrong.And that is what finally, after two years, the Bush administration came to grips with, in late 2006, that they knew they were dealing with abject failure, that Iraq was about to go off the cliff, and the United States was about to suffer a humiliating defeat.
Now, I give the president significant credit and courage for facing not just the political reality of no support from the Democrats, and losing most of the support that he had from the Republicans—you saw that in the November 2006 election, which led to Secretary Rumsfeld being fired—but he also came to grips with the military failures that were taking place.And over the objections of his field commanders, over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he stepped in and said, “I still think we have an opportunity to end this favorably for the American people, that we still have an opportunity to win this if we put in place a new strategy.” And he did just that, and he deserves the credit for that.
And the erosion, also, of support, how much of it was due to events and decisions made?I mean, the weapons of mass destruction, the Abu Ghraib, the information that came out about interrogations, the way the world viewed it, how much of it was also due—and the inability to understand the insurgency early enough, the fact that Al Qaeda was still getting larger, started out with 200 guys in caves and now it was larger and in more places in the world?How were there mistakes made in decision-making in charge, also, of how support was deteriorating?
Listen, the American people know things go wrong in war, and they understand that, and they'll have some tolerations for people making mistakes, as long as we see those mistakes for what they are, and we correct them, and we explain to them, you know, why they took place.The overriding reason for the loss of support was from the American people's conclusion, rightfully so, that it doesn't seem to be making any progress.They'll stick with the war year after year if there seems to be progress, and it's heading towards some kind of an end state that makes sense to them.And that is the frustration that they had dealing with Iraq, and also dealing with Afghanistan.
The Obama Years
So let's talk about Obama.Obama is elected due, to a large extent, because of Iraq, because of the reaction of the American public towards what they had been watching.His promises—and he, during the campaign, certainly juxtaposed himself versus Bush, and away from the idea of, you know, towards democratic values, away from the dark side.What were the American hopes when Obama wins?
Yeah, I don't think the Obama administration properly embraced what was actually happening in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, when the war was being completely turned around.And it was.And what those generals did in concert with our troops—here's a military deployed on a battlefield, and in stride, they change the strategy overnight.We were behind the fortresses, protecting ourselves and going out and conducting these four-vehicle patrols on a regular basis that were being attacked.And what President Bush was asking the military to do is change that strategy.The generals did, and the application of that was to come out from inside those fortresses where they slept at night and sleep in the city itself, in the neighborhoods, and patrol there largely on foot during day and at night, along with the Iraqis.
What a change operationally for the troops on the ground.And I'll tell you what.I saw that firsthand.I was with the first unit who took that mission on after they were there for a day or so.I saw how they responded to it.And they were uplifted, because they felt that they had a winning hand, and that they were being dealt now something that they could work with.So the troops responded very positively.
I don't think the Obama administration really came to grips with the turnaround that took place, and the opportunity it provided, because once you reduce the violence by 90%, and the Al Qaeda is essentially reduced to a very small faction, and the Sunni insurgency is defeated, once that takes place, then the opportunity for a stabilized military situation to help the political growth of the country, which is what was desperately needed, to help bring the Sunnis and the Shias together now, given that the precondition for that, stability and security, has finally, after all these years, been established, that was not recognized.
As a matter of fact, they walked away from any opportunity in 2009, when they were in charge, to create that unified government.They washed their hands of it and then pulled away from Iraq completely, with the military forces.And as a result of that, we lost all the leverage with that political entity.By the way, the same political entity that we had established in Iraq, the constitutional democracy, now we washed our hands of it, and we no longer wanted to influence it.That was a huge strategic mistake on the part of the Obama administration.
So the policy on Iraq was: disengage militarily, disengage politically.With the results of the rise of ISIS? I mean, what were the results of the decisions made by the Obama administration upon taking power?
Yeah.Well, we're out of Iraq in 2011.And [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, because there's a civil war taking place in Syria, he is now the leader of several hundred Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq.And he sees an opportunity in eastern Syria because of the stalemated civil war there, the possibility that he could establish a sanctuary for himself and his fighters, and actually grow this insurgency.This is the most consequential decision that Baghdadi makes.And he moves into Syria in the summer of 2012, taking over an area that were well known now, in the area of Raqqa, in eastern Syria.And in 18 months, largely on the internet, he recruits a force close to 30,000, which he establishes from a base of several hundred Iraqi fighters.Now, this fighting force has come from all over the jihadist world, mainly through the Turkish border and flights into Istanbul, etc.
So yes, that opportunity that Baghdadi had in Syria, and the fact that we were not on top of that, and preventing that from getting to the point where it finally did, is really unfortunate.But the opportunity that Baghdadi had, and seized upon it, was really pivotal for that movement.
Why did Obama underestimate the threat of ISIS? I mean, he called them the "JV team."Looking back, this misunderstanding of the enemy, how important was it, and why? …
Well, I think President Obama was so wedded to Iraq being a "bad war," he had run a campaign and got elected, not singularly, but quite largely around that issue.And I think anything associated with it, he wanted to maintain some distance from it.So when ISIS began to be formed, and it was clearly an outgrowth of Al Qaeda ideology by another name—after all, Baghdadi was an Al Qaeda leader, and began to express itself with its barbarism and fanaticism—and certainly when it invaded Iraq in 2014, in January, when it just ran down the Euphrates River Valley from Syria and into Anbar province, [Nouri al-]Maliki was asking for emergency assistance that January, we did nothing.
When they invaded Mosul in the early summer of the same year, 2014, he was still crying for airpower support, we did nothing.We never provided any airpower to him until August of that year, and then we provided a minimal amount of support and minimal amount of forces to assist with the Iraqi security forces.People in the White House were doing something that Secretary Rumsfeld had a tendency to do, and that is assign the mission but then also take control of the numbers in support of the mission, which is something the military commanders pushed back on, for obvious reasons.Give me the mission and then let me size the force to that mission that you've assigned to me.And we were micromanaging those forces.
And as a result of it, you know, we slowed our response to dealing with ISIS. I think we could have cut that head off very early if we made them—the major effort should not have been in Iraq; it should have immediately been in Syria, where his caliphate was, and go in there, and take down that caliphate immediately.We would not have gone through the following two years and the fanaticism that the world got exposed to as a result of it.
Obama’s Use of Drones
… In Afghanistan, one of the elements we're looking at a lot is the use of drones, and in Pakistan of course.… What was your sort of overview of why they were specifically interested in use of drones?And how effective, in fact, were they?Did they reduce the threat?Did they shorten the war?
Well, President Obama had an Afghanistan surge.So he added 30,000 forces, ground forces.It wasn't what Generals McChrystal and Petraeus had asked for; he cut them 25%.But there was very much a ground war going there.I don't agree with a drone war, an emphasis on drones.We were using drones, one for surveillance, and two, when we found a high-value target, that we had some certainty that that individual was actually there, we would use a drone against that target.A lot of times, we just went in and kicked the door down with our Tier I forces to do that very mission on the ground.
So the drones I think were a small part of what was actually taking place throughout Afghanistan, with the surge forces and with the 300,000 Iraqi security forces that were on the ground.I understand that I believe President Obama used drones more against high-value targets than his predecessors did, but I don't believe it was disproportionate to the overall effort that was taking place in Afghanistan.
So to ask an oversimplified question, the Afghan Obama strategy, why did it fail to win the war?What didn't Obama's people see?What did they mistakenly do?Did they misunderstand who they were fighting or how you can win a war like that?
I can't really put my finger on what was going on in their minds.But certainly there was adequate discussion.They had reviewed the Bush analysis of the war in Afghanistan that was provided to the Obama transition team in 2008.They conducted two reviews of the Afghan war themselves prior to making a decision, to change the strategy, change the commander—this was when McChrystal was brought in as a counterinsurgency expert, having spent five years in Iraq—and then give them the resources to do the job.
But the problem I've had from Afghanistan, from the outset, is we never once gave the commanders the resources they needed to do their mission.Petraeus and McChrystal, I'll say it again, wanted a minimum 40,000 troops to be able to accomplish the mission.We cut them 25% and pulled those forces out 15 months later.That doomed us to a protracted war in Afghanistan and why things are the way they are today.
Was Obama naive?
I don't know.I think he made a fundamental mistake, and I don't know how this got in there.But he didn't trust the military.I think maybe he thought we were manipulating him, and probably some guys did.Some guys leaked information, you know, of their own advantage.I'm not suggesting we don't have people that do that.But as a group, I think he had some of the best generals this country has ever produced serving him and providing advice and counsel to him during this period.And yet he chose to walk away from it.And I think the consequences are pretty obvious, what happened as a result of it.
… If you had gotten Osama when he was in Tora Bora, it would have really stunted the growth of Al Qaeda in a significant way.But by the time that we killed Osama, it was a blip on the screen.And then Al Qaeda kept growing, and it didn't seem to make that much of a difference.But did it affect the way Obama viewed the war?And what's your conclusion, looking back now, on that event?
Well, I think, in so many respects, the killing of Osama bin Laden—and clearly, I mean, more than a decade after we were in pursuit of him, certainly, that took much longer than anybody wanted to happen.The Pakistani government was protecting Osama bin Laden inside of Pakistan, taking occupancy just down from one of their prominent military bases, and in a community where many retired generals were living.And let's face the facts for what they really are here.But I think politically and strategically, the Obama administration made a mistake, because in killing Osama bin Laden, they declared victory over the Al Qaeda.
And our intelligence services were not saying that.We killed the Al Qaeda leader, an iconic figure.… Certainly killing Osama bin Laden was a victory in of itself, but it did not destroy this ideological movement, and this organization, you know, thrives to this day.I think they're a mere shadow of their former self.But nonetheless, they are still out there as a threat.
The Election of Donald Trump
How important was it to President Trump's election, was the way the American public had perceived the previous years and the distrust of Washington over the ways that they had been run and the decisions made?Was this seed for the rise of Donald Trump to become president, do you think?
No, I think—listen, I'm not a political guy, but I will say that he was running against a defense hawk in Hillary Clinton.And I know that for a fact, because I provided national security advice to her for a number of years.And I don't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, if you want to talk to me about the national security, I'll be more than happy to talk to you.And I was very conversant with those views.And I think, when I look at that election—again, I'm not in my lane here—I think it was mostly about America's image in the world and mostly about domestic issues inside of America.I don't think foreign policy and national security, which I pay a lot of attention to, was decisive in President Trump's election.
… What's the legacy, as far as Trump?Why was he unable to disentangle the United States in the ways that he thought he might be able to, very similar, in some ways, to sort of what Obama thought about it in the very beginning?What's your sort of overview, looking back, at that?
Well, I see three presidents—President Bush, President Obama and President Trump—take pretty much the same view.They got to the same endpoint.And by that I mean is there are 40 to 50 radical Islamic movements that are taking place in the world today as we speak.However, ISIS has had serious setbacks in its caliphate being removed, and Al Qaeda has also had serious setbacks and is a mere shadow of what it used to be.
And what the United States has chosen to focus on—and I think this is the maturation of our evolving national security and foreign policy in dealing with radical Islam.So the 40 or 50 movements are not the United States' problem.What are the United States' problem?And there are five of them.And why are they the United States' problem?Because they threaten the American people.They have aspirations to hurt the United States again.
So what am I talking about?I'm talking about the Al Qaeda in Yemen, which we conduct direct actions against for the reasons just stated; the Al Qaeda al-Shabab in eastern Africa, where we have 700, 800 forces and a maritime taskforce doing the very same thing; ISIS in Syria; Al Qaeda in Syria; and ISIS in Iraq—same reason, aspirations to hurt Americans; and finally, Afghanistan, where there still remains a threat from Al Qaeda, a growing ISIS threat.Both organizations have aspirations to target America.
We have reduced the level of forces to a very small number to deal with that threat, and that is not about nation building.It is a maturation of an evolving strategy to how do we deal with radical Islam.The thought, in the early days, where we had people in the State Department trying to come up with alternative ideology to offer to young people in the Muslim world, those days are gone.The ideology of that movement belongs to the people in those countries.It's their community leaders, it's their mothers and fathers, it's their teachers, etc., to offer young people a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives as an alternative to this fanaticism and barbarism.
We have walked away from trying to change the ideology.We have focused in a very limited way on five threats where the American people can be hurt.And I think as long as those threats are there, with those aspirations, we stay focused on them with modest amount of forces.
What Biden Inherits
… So Biden comes in, and he inherits the presidency with an America that seems very different.You tell me.How different is the America that Biden inherits leadership of compared to the America that existed on 9/11?
Well, the 9/11 America is an America that was attacked, and a significant surprise attack on America, not—the other surprise attack that we experienced was obviously at Pearl Harbor, which, while there were civilians killed, the preponderance of that attack was against the United States military.In this case, the preponderance of the attack was against civilians.Even in the Pentagon, the majority of the people in the Pentagon are civilians who represented the larger amount of people who were killed there.So that was a shocker for America.And it galvanized America, and I think brought America together.
So the degree of political unity that we had may have been at its highest, at any time, except going back to the beginning of World War II. And what we just have witnessed in the last election is the complete opposite.You know, we have a divided country with—not only divided politically, but a polarization that is much more deep-seated than anything that I've experienced in my adult life, and to the point where you can make a case where we're politically dysfunctional.And it may be the number one problem that America is facing—not its economy, not the threat from China, all of which are real issues.We need to recover our economy.We need to get our people back to work.We need to get our kids in school.We need to deal with this threat that China, who wants to take over the world, all of those—those are all very serious things.
But the thing that may be the most significant thing that's troubling America, because it so impacts on our ability to do the other work that must be done on behalf of the American people, is we're so extraordinarily politically dysfunctional.
… How difficult a situation is it going to be for Biden to move this country beyond from this era?
Well, I think he was on the right theme during the campaign, and also at his inauguration speech, expressing a degree of what he wanted to do was unity, which began to solve some of the problem.But I think that the direction the president is taking is not going to lead to that kind of unity.I mean, it seems to be a very partisan agenda where no credit is given whatsoever to anything that took place in the previous administration.While the previous administration had made some mistakes dealing with COVID-19, there's also a lot of good things that they've done, and there's no acknowledgment of any of it.And there's also so many good things that have been done in national security and foreign policy, the lane that I pay attention to, and there's no acknowledgment of any of it.
And while that—and some people would say, “Well, that's superficial anyway.” But no, it's much more than that.It's giving credit to your predecessor who was serving the country in the best way they possibly could.Certainly made some mistakes, but certainly did some very good things for the nation.And the nation has benefited from those very good things.And those are the things you can build on.
And you don't have to go over the top in terms of how good your predecessor was.I'm not suggesting that.I'm a realist living in this world, too.But at least acknowledge some of the things that have taken place that you are providing continuity to; you're building on that.And I think we should do much, much more of that, and Republicans and Democrats.I'm not talking about just President Biden here.I'm talking about us as a nation and the respect that we should have for one another, and the differing political views that this country rightfully should have.That's the health of our democracy is the fact that we have different political views, and we have different solutions for them.And that's what elections are about.
But it appears it's very difficult for us to come together now, after an election.Certainly 9/11 was the last time we ever so dramatically have come together.But we shouldn't need that kind of an event to bring America together, to work towards a common purpose.
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