Still Looking

John Kerry has recently been accusing the Bush campaign of losing Bin Laden in Tora Bora. The charge is that we had him surrounded before Bush got distracted by Iraq and left the job of catching Bin Laden to Afghan warlords.

The problems are that, (1)We had no real idea where Bin Laden was and (2) At the time, Kerry praised the strategy of incorporating the warlords.

Kerry supporter Mickey Kaus has been pleading for somebody to provide him with contemporaneous Kerry criticism of the strategy, to prove that Kerry doesn't operate entirely on hindsight.

So far, no luck. Even that supplied by the Kerry campaign reflects badly on Kerry.

KERRY CALLED FOR MORE BOOTS ON THE GROUND TO GO AFTER BIN LADEN. In an appearance on John McLaughlin's One on One on November 16, 2001, Kerry said that "we need to put some ground people in there in order to do the very things that I've just talked about, and ultimately, to do what we're doing now, which is ... chasing Osama bin Laden and moving the process forward. ... They have moved to the hills, moved to caves, to isolated areas. We have, I think, an extraordinary ability to isolate them there." MR. MCLAUGHLIN: "You're talking air attack." SEN. KERRY: "Not just air attack. No, no. I'm talking about people on the ground, the very people I talked about earlier, the level of engagement here with either rangers or Special Forces…" [John McLaughlin's One on One, 11/16/01]

I'm not sure this does the trick. First, it's a deceptively truncated quote. Kerry is defending his previous criticism of insufficient U.S. boots on the ground--but he gives the impression, at least, that his criticisms have been addressed and he's now satisfied. Here's the complete quote:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, why did you criticize the administration for failing to put in expeditionary forces earlier?

SEN. KERRY: I didn't criticize them for failing to put expeditionary forces in, John. I said we need to put some ground people in there in order to do the very things that I've just talked about, and ultimately, to do what we're doing now, which is --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you are --

SEN. KERRY: -- which is chasing Osama bin Laden and moving the process forward. [Emphasis on deceptively truncated section added]

Second, are "rangers" and "Special Forces" what you would use to block escape routes in a large mountainous area? Don't you need lots of troops for that--hence the need for Afghan proxies? [Update: U.S. Special Forces were in fact used at Tora Bora. But the Christian Science Monitor's account suggests a small number of additional U.S. troops might have been helpful, if not sufficient: "Pir Baksh Bardiwal, the intelligence chief for the Eastern Shura, which controls eastern Afghanistan, says he was astounded that Pentagon planners didn't consider the most obvious exit routes and put down light US infantry to block them."]

Finally, the Kerry camp may regret calling attention to that McLaughlin transcript. Earlier in the interview--which, remember, took place two months after 9/11, in the middle of our Afghan campaign against the Taliban--McLaughlin asks Kerry "What do we have to worry about [in Afghanistan]?" Here's the last part of Kerry's answer:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]

Wait--I thought shifting the focus to Saddam was a "diversion" and distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda! Not, apparently, when Kerry saw an opportunity to score political points by advocating it. [But would he have rushed to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace!-ed. Maybe not. But, given Kerry's recent he-took-his-eye-off-the-ball rhetoric, it's embarrassing that he brought up pivoting to Iraq "now" long before the Afghan campaign was over--indeed, when the Tora Bora battle against bin Laden's men had barely begun.]