HOME :: PUBLICATIONS :: Thankfully, Wikileaks Did Not Know of Bin Laden's Compound, by COLONEL KENNETH ALLARD (US ARMY, RET.)

Thankfully, Wikileaks Did Not Know of Bin Laden's Compound

by COLONEL KENNETH ALLARD (US ARMY, RET.) May 3, 2011
 
Vengeance, the Bible warns, belongs strictly  to the Almighty. But sometimes American Special Forces are privileged to assist - arranging God’s love-overdue meetings with Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.  The commando forces of the United States – some of the deadliest and most dangerous people on the planet – are all-stars, an elite force drawn from the best of the Army, Air Force and Navy. In Sunday’s pre-dawn hours, the Navy SEALS who shot it out with Bin Laden might have taken their cue from George Orwell: “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
 
Today Orwell might suggest that America and the West are not always worthy of those who defend us. We are, after all, a country where few of those safely sleeping citizens will ever enlist and where only the media have an unquestioned right to protect their sources. The real wonder of the Bin Laden operation is that our national security establishment was able to keep it secret ever since last August – when the first tentative lead surfaced about his whereabouts.
 
If you believe that PFC Bradley Manning, the accused traitor in the Wikileaks fiasco, was harmlessly pursuing his First Amendment rights, then remember that he was only arrested in July. What if it had been a month later, leaving him free to release another secret archive? Just last week, for example, Wikileaks revealed that US interrogators on Guantanamo had identified Casio wrist-watches as an indicator of possible membership in Al Qaida. If the public had a right to know about that, then why not include an “insignificant” lead about an obscure compound north of Islamabad?
 
Deception, secrecy and intelligence have always been war’s hand-maidens. But they have become fundamental to the post-911 ‘war of the shadows’ in which Special Forces have become signature weapons. Remotely controlled precision strikes by Predator drones are more famous – even notorious. But there is another form of precision warfare: the whirring helicopter blades, the fast-rope rappel, the stun grenades and the swift double-tap to head and heart. In just seconds a well-executed Special Forces raid can take out an insurgent network the same way a surgeon treats cancer: one cell at a time.
 
Executing that kind of warfare requires political courage because even the best-planned missions fall short –as Jimmy Carter found out when Operation “Eagle Claw” failed spectacularly in the Iranian Desert. But last night’s celebrations outside the Obama White House had their beginnings in the reaction to earlier fiascos. As has so often been the case in military history, if you live that long, how you react to today's failure is what determines tomorrow's success. With Special Forces, a generation-long effort was needed to unite the often quirky personalities of the military’s band of brothers with an intelligence establishment that often lacked tactical focus.
 
To say the least, this was not a marriage made in heaven. Human institutions - particularly those in Washington but elsewhere too – are never perfect. Gradually, the instruments of land, air, sea, space and information warfare were welded into a new class of weapon- and made ready to ‘to visit violence upon those who would do us harm.’ Just as it was last night in Pakistan. And just as it is likely to be in future conflicts - Libya’s deserts for sure and maybe even those of Northern Mexico as well.
 
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Col. Ken Allard (U.S Army, Ret.) rose from draftee to Dean of the National War College. A prolific writer and a former NBC News military analyst, he continues to seve in San Antonio Texas. He is the author of WARHEADS. Email: WARHEADS6@aol.com.
 

Colonel Ken Allard is a widely known commentator on foreign policy and security issues. For more than a decade, he was a featured military analyst on NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC. That experience provided the backdrop for his most recent book, Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War. A dynamic speaker, Colonel Allard appears before business and trade groups around the country, speaking on themes ranging from the war on terror to leadership and corporate governance. In 2006, he became an adopted Texan and San Antonian, joining the faculty of UTSA as an executive-in-residence and senior lecturer in management. His other books include Business As War, a hard-hitting look at 21st century business leadership, Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned, and Command, Control and the Common Defense, winner of the 1991 National Security Book Award. His military career included overseas service as an intelligence officer as well as tours of duty as an assistant professor at West Point, special assistant to the Army Chief of Staff, and Dean of Students at the National War College. He holds a Ph.D. in International Security from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and an MPA from Harvard University. In 1999 his alma mater, Lycoming College, recognized his record of public service with its Outstanding Achievement Award.

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