Word of bin Laden’s death crackled from my clock radio when the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. this morning. Moments later, I checked my cell phone. Through the course of the night and early morning, my comrades-in-arms had been using text messages to alert one another of the successful kill by some of our nation’s most elite warriors, a U.S. Navy SEAL team.
At 11:02 p.m., one of the officers with whom I currently serve, George, texted me: “Sir, u watching the news?” Nine minutes later he followed up: “Got Bin Laden. He is dead. We got his body.” George is a cop in New York City. He served in Afghanistan in 2008.
At 11:51 p.m., Trent, a West Point graduate, an airborne ranger, and my former commander, wrote simply: “Bin Laden is dead.” In Iraq in 2005, Trent was decorated for valor after exposing himself to ferocious enemy gunfire while pulling a grievously wounded sergeant to cover.
At 5:29 a.m., John texted: “10 years late, but awesome.” In the early 1990s John served with the U.S. Marines in Somalia. As an Army infantry sergeant, he was my battle buddy in Iraq in 2004 and in Afghanistan in 2008. John and I also served at Ground Zero together.
At 7:25 a.m., another member of our 2008 Afghanistan team sent this message: “UBL KIA. Hooah. Now, Charlie Mike …”
“Hooah” has its origin in the Civil War battle cry “hurrah.” “Charlie Mike” — the phonetic letters C and M — came into use during the Vietnam War. Once a raid, ambush, or firefight is complete, ground commanders use the term to radio their troopers to “Continue Mission” and move on to the next combat objective.
As a practitioner and proponent of counterinsurgency, I look forward to learning if there was any link between the clear-hold-build operations under way in Afghanistan and the capture of the al-Qaeda agent whose information ultimately led to the successful raid. As I have argued before, the relationship among local security, human-intelligence sources, and decisive counterterrorism operations calls for perseverance in the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Some very smart people, however, not least among them NRO’s own Andrew McCarthy, disagree, making strong arguments that we are wasting blood, time, and treasure on fanciful nation-building escapades doomed to fail in the Afghan badlands. The details of the Abbottabad raid may shed some light on this open question.
At the same time, other questions seem to answer themselves. For example, how could bin Laden have enjoyed sanctuary in Abbottabad, the home of an elite Pakistani military academy, without at least passive support from elements in Pakistani military and intelligence circles? And what reason exists to think that the savages who continue to exercise operational command over al-Qaeda — the ones actually responsible for attacking U.S. troops overseas and murdering Americans here at home — do not enjoy that same support?
The Janus-faced nature of Pakistan’s “cooperation” has become so obvious as to defy credible denial. Admiral Mullen was right to suggest as much during a radio interview in Pakistan last month.
Perhaps this weekend’s commando strike signals that there have been some realizations in the highest echelons of our government about the fictions of “soft power” and “smart power” and the limits of “partnering” and multilateralism. By all accounts, the Abbottabad raid was a unilateral attack by American forces against a sworn enemy. It produced decisive results.
Charlie Mike.
— Vincent G. Heintz served with the Army National Guard at Ground Zero in September 2001, in Iraq in 2004, and in Afghanistan in 2008. He is a member of Vets for Freedom.