More than 1,000 members of two Marine expeditionary units were not far away in Kandahar, but their commander’s request to move to Tora Bora to encircle Bin Laden was rejected. Roughly the same number of troops from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division was split between southern Uzbekistan and Bagram air base, a short helicopter ride from Tora Bora. Instead, Gen. Tommy Franks left the job to a motley collection of Afghan militiamen and Pakistani Frontier Corps paramilitary fighters who never showed up.
Franks and his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, were determined to succeed in Afghanistan with a light footprint. They justified limiting the number of U.S. troops by saying they wanted to avoid stirring up anti-American sentiment and creating a protracted insurgency. Unfortunately, in failing to get Bin Laden, we wound up with exactly what we had hoped to avoid in Afghanistan — and a virulent insurgency across the border in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally.
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