Exceptional (19 page)

It was a timetable with no military justification. In fact, it hampered the mission the president had established because the requirement to bring all the surge forces home by the end of the
summer in
2012 meant they would have to begin withdrawing before the spring 2012 fighting season. They would lack the time necessary to accomplish their objectives in eastern Afghanistan—fully clearing out the Taliban and going after the Haqqani Network between Kabul and the
Pakistani border. The timeline did ensure, however, that the surge forces would be home before the 2012 reelection campaign. The president could then campaign on the notion that “the
tide of war is receding.”

Six days after the president's announcement of the timetable for withdrawing the surge forces, Marine Lieutenant General John Allen, who had been nominated as the new commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, was testifying under oath in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Lindsey Graham asked him whether the withdrawal pace chosen by the president was “one of the options presented to the president,” by General Petraeus, who had taken over command in Afghanistan in June 2010. This exchange ensued:

ALLEN:
It is a more aggressive option than that which was presented.

GRAHAM:
My question is, was that an option which was presented?

ALLEN:
It was not.

General Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen both also testified that the drawdown plan announced by Obama was “more aggressive” than they had hoped. Petraeus went on to say that the time frame was the result of “broader considerations”
beyond military ones.

In the years since, the president has continued to draw down our forces regardless of conditions on the ground. As we write this, nearly
10,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan. Despite a decision by the president to slow the rate of withdrawal, he has remained determined that all American forces will be out by the end of 2016, leaving only “an embassy presence by the end of next year,” he said, “just
as we've done in Iraq.”

In February 2015, General John Campbell, commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, testified that as the United States continues to draw down, Taliban, al Qaeda, and al Qaeda affiliates will “undoubtedly attempt to reestablish their authority and prominence in Afghanistan,” and “present a formidable challenge” to the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF). Campbell explained that as the United States withdraws from its base in Kandahar Province, the Taliban's historic stronghold, the departure of coalition forces “would provide the Taliban momentum” to expand offensive operations
throughout the country.

The first months of 2015 have seen an increase in Taliban violence in key regions across the country and in Kabul. This has occurred even in regions like the south, where the ANSF has attempted to undertake operations to
clear the Taliban. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the current security situation in Afghanistan has “begun to reflect the strategic landscape before the 2010 surge. ANSF units are increasingly confined to their bases and security checkpoints, unable or unwilling to go out on patrol
in the community.”

ISIS has also expanded its operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, through the establishment of the “Wilayat of Khorasan.” A
wilayat
is an ISIS administrative unit through which operations are conducted in a particular geographic area. As of this writing, ISIS has a presence in at least eight of Afghanistan's thirty-four provinces, and the group is actively recruiting fighters from Afghanistan to travel to Iraq and Syria.

Despite the resurgence of America's enemies, President Obama
continues to insist on taking our forces off the field of battle. He is no longer interested in prevailing in what he once said was the necessary war. He is interested only in leaving. What has caused this change? Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former advisor on Afghanistan for President Obama, offers this explanation:

It was to court public opinion that Obama first embraced the war in Afghanistan. And when public opinion changed, he was quick to declare victory and call the troops back home. His actions from start to finish were guided by politics and they played well at home. But abroad, the stories we tell to justify our on again, off again approach to this war do not ring true to friend or foe. They know the truth: that we are leaving Afghanistan to its own fate. Leaving even as the demons of regional chaos that first beckoned us there are once again rising to
threaten our security.

In a complex and heroic operation, members of SEAL Team Six launched into Pakistan from Afghanistan on May 1, 2011, and killed Osama bin Laden. They performed brilliantly. President Obama deserves credit for ordering the raid. Members of our military and intelligence community, including interrogators in the enhanced interrogation program, deserve credit for finding bin Laden. It was just and right that the man responsible for the attacks of 9/11 met his demise at the hands of the United States armed forces.

In the aftermath of the successful raid in Abbottabad, the Obama administration increasingly claimed al Qaeda was in decline or had been defeated. In hundreds of speeches during the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama said some version of “The war in Iraq is
over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down,
al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.” The message was clear. President Obama's actions had diminished the threat of a terrorist attack, and al Qaeda was on the ropes. The reality was somewhat different—while Obama was proclaiming al Qaeda's demise, it and other militant Islamic terrorist groups were resurgent across the globe.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, offered this view as he was leaving his post:

When asked if the terrorists were on the run, we couldn't respond with any answer but “no.” When asked if the terrorists were defeated, we had to say “no.” Anyone who answers yes to either of those questions either doesn't know what they are talking about, they are misinformed, or they are
flat out lying.

A RAND Corporation study published in 2014 confirmed what General Flynn was saying. It found, for example:

Beginning in 2010, there was a rise in the number of Salafi-jihadist groups and fighters, particularly in Syria and North Africa. There was also an increase in the number of attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda
and its affiliates.

Between 2010 and 2013, according to the study, there was a 58 percent increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist groups. And more groups meant more attacks:

There was a significant increase in attacks by al Qa'ida-affiliated groups between 2007 and 2013, with most of the violence
in 2013 perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (43 percent) . . . al Shabaab (25 percent); Jabhat al-Nusrah (21 percent); and al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (
10 percent).

The study also addressed the status of “core al Qaeda,” the group President Obama has claimed repeatedly to have defeated. Noting that the “broader Salafi-Jihadist movement has become more decentralized,” the report explained, “using the state of core al Qa'ida in Pakistan as a gauge of the movement's strengths (or weaknesses) is increasingly anachronistic for such a heterogeneous
mixture of groups.”

We now know, in addition, as a result of the documents captured in the bin Laden raid, that Obama's claims about the condition of “core al Qaeda” were untrue. Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn reported:

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden's own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I'd say close to doubling by that time. And
we knew that.”

On September 6, 2012, as he accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, the president said this:

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and we have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises
above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama
bin Laden is dead.

Five days later, on September 11, 2012, an al Qaeda–affiliated group attacked two American facilities in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. Not only was al Qaeda not on the path to defeat, it was resurgent across the Middle East and had just carried out a brutal and well-planned attack against the United States, on the anniversary of 9/11.

In the days and weeks following the attacks, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and other administration officials misled the American people about what had happened, attempting to cast the attacks as spontaneous uprisings in response to an anti-Islamic Internet video, though there was no evidence for such a claim. Here is a sampling of what they said:

SECRETARY CLINTON:
“We've seen rage and violence directed at American Embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it
is unacceptable.” (September 15, 2012)

AMBASSADOR RICE:
“The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it
grew very violent.” (September 16, 2012)

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
“That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage
throughout the Muslim world. Now I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our
common humanity.” (September 25, 2012)

They made these claims despite evidence to the contrary, including:

• The State Department Operations Center had reported on September 11, 2012, at 6:08
P.M.
, while the attacks were still under way, that an al Qaeda–linked group had already
claimed credit.

• The CIA station chief in Libya reported on September 12 that the U.S. facilities in Benghazi had been the target of a terrorist attack by
Islamic militants.

• The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs had informed the Libyan government on September 12, 2012, that an al Qaeda–affiliated group had been
involved in the attack.

• There was no protest or demonstration or gathering of people angry about a video, or anything else, at the consulate prior to the attack. The
CIA station chief in Libya had notified CIA deputy director Mike Morrell of this on September 15, prior to Ambassador Rice's claims. The Accountability Review Board tasked to investigate the attack also concluded, “There was no protest
prior to the attacks.”

• There was no mention of any Internet video sparking these attacks in any of the reporting from Libya or in the talking points prepared about the attack
by the CIA.

• The initial talking points prepared by the CIA included the assertion that the U.S. government “knows that Islamic
extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated
in the attacks.”

As Stephen F. Hayes has reported,
after an interagency meeting at the White House on September 15, 2012, the CIA removed all references to Islamic extremists, jihadists in Cairo, previous attacks on foreign interests in Benghazi, possible surveillance of the American facilities in Benghazi, and warnings about al Qaeda in Libya. In other words, they removed anything that suggested the involvement of al Qaeda affiliates in an attack on U.S. interests, and anything that suggested the State Department should have been aware of the danger. The new version of the talking points also softened the word “attacks” to “demonstrations.”

There was an important video released on the Internet the day before the attacks. It was not, however, the one Secretary Clinton and President Obama attempted to blame for the attacks. It was a video released by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, on September 10, 2012. Zawahiri confirmed the death of his number two, Abu Yahya al-Libi, at the hands of the Americans. He urged his followers to puncture the “arrogance” of the “evil empire, America.” Perhaps it was this video on which the president and secretary of state
should have been focused.

One might ask why the administration worked so hard to ignore evidence and peddle a false narrative about what happened. The answer is the calendar. In the middle of an election campaign in which President Obama was claiming every day that al Qaeda had been defeated or was diminished, he could not admit to an al Qaeda attack on U.S. personnel and facilities on the anniversary of 9/11. His reelection was on the line. He had to find another story.

The outlines for the new story were in place by Friday, September
14, 2012, when Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes sent an email setting out goals for Ambassador Rice to achieve during her appearances on September 16 on five Sunday shows. She should, he wrote, “Underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” She should also, he emphasized, “Reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with
difficult challenges.” The Obama team's spin was clear.

They knew that a preplanned al Qaeda attack on American personnel and facilities would raise the question of whether senior officials had spent so much time claiming al Qaeda was defeated that they had failed to adequately guard against the possibility of an al Qaeda–linked attack. The facts, in this regard, are not helpful to either President Obama or Secretary Clinton. We know now: