Michael Smerconish: Why can't we catch Bin Laden?

This morning, I'll be leading five busloads of local residents on a trip to Shanksville, Pa., to the spot where Flight 93 crashed seven years ago today. Like the beaches at Normandy, it is one of those places that every American should see.

This was written for publication in my next book, "Morning Drive: Things I wish I knew before I started talking," set for publication in March, 2009, by Lyons Press.

WHERE THE HELL are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? And why does virtually no one ask anymore?

What's changed since the days when any suburban soccer mom would have strangled either of them with her bare hands if given the chance? And what happened to President Bush's declaration to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11 that "any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

We're at the seven-year anniversary of 9/11, lacking not only closure with regard to the two top al Qaeda leaders but also public debate about any plan to bring them to justice.

Bin Laden is presumed to have been in Afghanistan on 9/11 and to have fled that nation during the battle at Tora Bora in December 2001. Then came a period when the Bush administration was supposed to be pressing the search through means it couldn't share publicly. But as time went by with no capture, the signs became more troubling.

We now know that in late 2005, the CIA disbanded the FBI-CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden, reported on July 4, 2006 by the New York Times. At the time, I hoped we'd closed the bin Laden unit because Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was fully engaged in the hunt in his country's northwest territories, where bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were supposedly hiding. In September 2006, however, Musharraf reached an accord with tribal leaders - notorious for their refusal to hand over a guest - to give them continued free reign.

Getting the policy, firsthand

In October 2006, I participated in a week-long, Pentagon-sponsored program called the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, for 45 civilians to learn firsthand about the military's Central Command (CENTCOM).

We boarded the USS Iwo Jima by copter in the Persian Gulf, fired the best of the Army's weaponry in the Kuwait desert (just 10 miles from Iraq), drove a Humvee obstacle course designed to teach about IEDs (improvised explosive devices), boarded the Air Force's most sophisticated surveillance aircraft in Qatar and even took a tour of a humanitarian outpost in the Horn of Africa.

In addition to Secretary Rumsfeld, we were briefed by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the vice admiral of CENTCOM and other high-ranking war commanders.

I came home with the utmost respect for the men and women throughout the ranks of all five branches of the service committed to eradicating the forces of radical Islam. But there was one thing noticeably absent: The search for bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. It was not part of our otherwise comprehensive agenda, and when I asked, there was no information forthcoming except a general assertion that, indeed, the hunt continued.

When we were briefed at Andrews Air Force Base by Vice Admiral David Nichols, I asked him whether the hunt for bin Laden was completely dependent on President Musharraf. He told me that we respect national sovereignty, and described the search as "difficult and nuanced."

In Bahrain, I put the same question to Marine Brig. Gen. Anthony Jackson. He told me that the search was like trying to find one man in the Rockies, an analogy that I heard repeatedly. He also said that "no one is giving up," and that my question was better put to the guys in special ops.

At special-ops headquarters in Qatar, I raised the matter again, with Col. Patrick Pihana, the chief of staff to the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command. He offered nothing substantive on the issue.

If we did kill him, what then?

I came home worried that the days of aggressively hunting bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had ended. Of course, I could fully appreciate that an aggressive pursuit is underway but that I, a blowhard from Philadelphia, was simply unworthy of any information.

But more than one individual with whom I spoke - no one I've named here - raised the question of what would happen to public support for the war against radical Islam if we were to kill bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. They wanted to know: Would the American people then expect the military to pack up and go home? No one ever told me that we're not hunting bin Laden because killing him would cause Americans to want to close up shop in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was on the minds of our warriors as support for the war in Iraq dissipated.

Meanwhile, the White House and the Pentagon have consistently played down the significance of capturing bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and President Bush offered only superficial responses to the few questions raised on the status of the search.

At a May 24, 2007, White House news conference, when asked why Osama was still at large, President Bush offered, "Because we haven't got him yet. . . . That's why. And he's hiding, and we're looking, and we will continue to look until we bring him to justice." For me, it had begun to wear thin. Unfortunately, the president's line has been accepted by the media and American people.

I hoped that the presidential campaign would move the issue to the front burner, but it's failed to stir up a discussion about the failure to capture or kill those who pushed us down such a perilous path. In the first seven presidential debates there was only one question that touched on the subject of finding bin Laden, and it came from the audience.

Strong words - and ridicule

Things changed somewhat on Aug. 1, 2007, when Barack Obama delivered a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets, and President Musharraf won't act, we will," he said. "We can't send millions and millions of dollars to Pakistan for military aid, and be a constant ally to them, and yet not see more aggressive action in dealing with al Qaeda."

Finally, I thought, a presidential candidate saying something about this foreign-policy failure.

The reaction? Ridicule.

Then-candidates Joe Biden and Chris Dodd responded derisively. John McCain pounded Obama for a perceived lack of seasoning in foreign relations: "The best idea is to not broadcast what you're going to do," McCain said. "That's naive." (More recently, McCain has grown fond of saying that he'll "follow bin Laden to the gates of hell.")

Obama has refused to back away from his insistence on reasserting control over the hunt for bin Laden. On March 21, he told me: "What I've learned from talking to troops on the ground is that unless we can really pin down some of these Taliban leaders who flee into the Pakistan territories, we're going to continue to have instability, and al Qaeda's going to continue to have a safe haven, and that's not acceptable."

I asked about it again on April 18. He told me that Musharraf, despite billions in American aid, was not taking counterterrorism seriously. He pointed out that the Bush administration is actually showing signs of following his lead. Obama reminded me that a late-January airstrike killed a senior al Qaeda commander in Pakistan, calling it an example of the type of action he's been recommending since August. The CIA, it was reported a few weeks after the strike, acted without the direct approval of Musharraf.

Soon after I spoke with Obama, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report called "Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas."

The report, undertaken at the request of U.S House and Senate members, minces no words in issuing a conclusion that should make Americans' blood boil: Six years after Sept. 11, the United States had failed to destroy the terrorist havens in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas.

'Tailor-made for bin Laden'

More recent headlines continue to defy the GAO recommendations. "Pakistan asserts it is near a deal with militants," read the front page of the April 25 edition of the New York Times. Pakistan's newly elected government was again on the verge of an accord with the militants running amok in the tribals areas - despite the new government's previously stated desires to move away from Musharraf's policies.

The arrangement was tailor-made for bin Laden. It permitted the local Taliban group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, to assist in keeping law and order in the area in the northwest frontier province, while not attacking the existing security forces, in return for an exchange of prisoners between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban. The Army also agreed to withdraw forces from parts of the area.

According to a report from the May 22 Times, the Bush administration was concerned that the deal would "give the Taliban and al Qaeda the latitude to carry out attacks against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan." Some U.S. officials even went so far as to call it a "victory" for bin Laden, as reported by ABC News.

In May 2008, I got the chance to interview Marcus Luttrell, the only survivor of Operation Red Wing, a mission that resulted in the worst loss in Navy Seal history. He earned a Navy Cross for his valor and wrote about his harrowing story in "Lone Survivor."

Luttrell gave a brutally honest account of the time he had spent in the Hindu Kush, the mountainous area just a few miles from the northwestern border of Pakistan. He described how his efforts were too often constricted by red tape.

"We'd be chasing the bad guys in there and they had a lot of security set up, and we have to stop what we're doing while they just run across, and if we don't, we'll get engaged by the Paki border guards, and that's an international incident."

'Such a joke . . . so stupid'

I asked him if the Pakistan issue was a problem in general.

"Hell, yeah, it's a problem. Heck, they're harboring the enemy. It's such a joke, it's so stupid. hey come over and do their business, whatever is, and if it gets them into trouble, all they have to do is sink back into Pakistan and stay there . . . it's frustrating."

Supporting Luttrell's account is a chilling report released by the RAND Corp. think tank on June 9, 2008. It warned that the "United States and its NATO allies will face crippling long-term consequences in their effort to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan" if it does not eliminate Taliban strongholds in Pakistan.

But the presidential contenders and Americans headed to the polls are mostly silent in the face of six and a half years moving in the wrong direction. Ayman al-Zawahiri is apparently so comfortable that he now spends time logging into jihadi chat rooms.

The Bush administration's failure to orchestrate a successful counterterrorism plan - topped off with justice for bin Laden and al-Zawahiri - has left me embarrassed for my party, and angry.

Unfortunately, Sen. McCain only offered a continuation of the Bush policy. In a conversation on June 13, he first attempted to say that our counterterrorism efforts were working and that remaining on good terms with Pakistan was imperative to our safety.

"There has been progress in those areas," he said. "Pakistan is a sovereign nation and we have to have the cooperation of Pakistan in order to have these operations succeed. . . . if you alienate Pakistan and it turns into an anti-American government, then you will have much greater difficulties."

When the senator reminded me that the U.S. also gives a great deal of money to Egypt, which also could be more helpful in the War on Terror, I pointed out that these guys aren't hiding in Cairo. The people responsible for the atrocities of 9/11 are concentrated in northwestern Pakistan, I repeated to the senator. He pointed out the difficulty with the region.

"I have promised that I will get Osama bin Laden when I am president . . . but . . . there's a reason why it hasn't been governed since the days of Alexander the Great. They're ruled by about, it's my understanding, 13 tribal entities, and nobody has ever governed them, not the Pakistani government, not the British -nobody."

I said, "All I think is that the guys who sent those guys over here are still on the lam and we're writing a big check, and I'm unhappy about it."

There is one bit of encouraging news: In August, Abu Saeed al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda commander, was killed in an American air strike. Where? The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, of course. And we're continuing to use unmanned attack drones to put al Qaeda forces in the area in the crosshairs, even as recently as this week.

This election offers a chance

But I still believe that this election will be the chance to overturn the conventional wisdom that President Bush has offered for seven years and that Sen. McCain appears resigned to advance: That the now-gone Musharraf was a friend who did what he could to prevent Pakistan from defaulting toward further extremism, that the hunt for bin Laden is nuanced and that U.S. forces are doing everything they can to find him, and that the war in Iraq is a necessary one that hasn't distracted from the fight against those who planned and perpetrated 9/11.

That wisdom has been proven unequivocally wrong.

Forget ideology or politics. I wish every American could agree that our obligation to bring these two to justice needs outrage. I wish Hillary Clinton would have done more than promise to answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. Forget following bin Laden to the gates of hell; I just want John McCain to follow him to Pakistan. Most important, I wish Barack Obama's calls for refocusing the War on Terror there would fall on receptive ears.

More than anything, I want Americans to stop standing for this. I doubt that the families of the 3,000 innocents murdered on 9/11 - and the 4,000 that followed them in Iraq - are content with it. If we don't have the fire in our belly to kill these two, I fear we'll be left to deal with another fire, raging in another building, burning a hole in another American city. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.