Transforming the Military

Bibliographic Data

ID4452979
AuthorsDonald H Rumsfeld, Donald Rumsfeld (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume81
Issue3
Pages20
Publication date2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20033160
OpenAlexW2802557854
LanguageEN
Citations received61

JUST BEFORE Christmas last year, I traveled to Afghanistan and the neighboring countries, where I had the opportunity to spend time with American troops in the field. Among the many I met was an extraordinary group of men: the special forces who had been involved in the attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. From the moment they landed in Afghanistan, these troops began adapting to the circumstances on the ground. They sported beards and traditional scarves and rode horses trained to run into machine gun fire. They used pack mules to transport equipment across some of the roughest terrain in the world, riding at night, in darkness, near minefields and along narrow mountain trails with drops so sheer that, as one soldier put it, it took me a week to ease the death-grip on my horse. Many had never been on horseback before. As they linked up and trained with anti-Taliban forces, they learned from their new allies about the realities of war on Afghan soil and assisted them with weapons, food, supplies, tactics, and training. And they planned the assault on Mazar-i-Sharif. On the appointed day, one of the special forces teams slipped in and hid well behind enemy lines, ready to call in the air strikes. The bomb blasts would be the signal for the others to charge. When the moment came, they signaled their targets to coalition aircraft and looked at their watches. Two minutes. Thirty seconds. Fifteen seconds. Then, out of nowhere, a hail of precision-guided bombs began to land on Taliban and al Qaeda positions. The explosions were deafening, and the timing so precise that, as the soldiers described it, hundreds

Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Military and Defense Studies · Military History and Strategy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

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