Deutsche Presse-Agentur September 1, 2002
Burning Pentagon prepared for war, rebuilt a year later
Thwarting perceptions that the terrorist attack on the Pentagon put it out of business, senior officials and officers inside the smouldering, blackened building quickly began plotting for a war like no other they had previously fought.
The target was Afghanistan, a country torn by civil war for decades. Within weeks of launching the campaign, the U.S. military, equipped with high-tech weapons and special forces on the ground, helped advance Afghan resistance forces and topple the radical Taliban regime, accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden and his al- Qaeda terrorist network.
U.S. military resolve was not only evident in Afghanistan but also back home, where officials and construction crews quickly worked to meet the symbolic goal of restoring the Pentagon within a year of the September 11 attacks. By June, an outside view of the building showed no signs of the grim scene where 189 people - including the passengers on the plane flown into it - died nine months earlier. The final limestone block was in place. Engraved into its side to remember the victims was only the date of the attacks that shattered the prism through which Americans saw the world.
Some of the 4,600 displaced employees have begun returning to their old offices, and the sections nearest the outer wall were scheduled to return to full capacity by September 11, 2002. The inner areas were due for completion by the end of the year.
But the U.S. military hasn't escaped criticism. It has come under fire for civilian death tolls during the war in Afghanistan. And politicians on Capitol Hill criticized the armed forces for failing to capture bin Laden or present evidence of his death.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was reportedly fuming over the December battle at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Instead of deploying its own forces on the ground, the U.S. military relied mostly on its Afghan allies and might have missed an opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden.
Publicly, though, Rumsfeld touted the military's performance. During a speech earlier this year, he discussed a battle scene in northern Afghanistan involving special forces riding horses to spot targets for high-tech B-2 Stealth bombers and B-52s designed in the 1950s, both of which are now dropping precision-guided weapons. He said it was the innovation he was seeking when he took office 19 months ago and pledged to "transform" the U.S. military.
"Coalition forces took existing military capabilities - from the most advanced to the antique to the most rudimentary and used them together in unprecedented ways, with devastating effect on enemy positions (and) enemy morale," he said.
"It shows that a revolution in military affairs is about more than building new high-tech weapons, though that is certainly a part of it," he said. "It is also about new ways of thinking ... and new ways of fighting."
Despite the success in Afghanistan and the deployment of special forces to advise Filipino troops fighting rebels linked to al-Qaeda, a year later, the role of the U.S. military in the war against terrorists who operate in shadows rather than as a state is hard to define.
Aside from a few large battles in Afghanistan, the visibility of the military since the collapse of the Taliban has diminished, as most of the struggle is being waged by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
"It is not clear that the Defence Department has the capabilities that are necessary at the forefront of the war on terrorism," said John Pike, a defence analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, which is based just outside Washington.
"The Pentagon is designed to deal with countries or large organizations that hold territory," he said. "But when you start talking about an international terrorist network, aircraft carriers just don't have anything to do with that."
Pentagon officials maintained Rumsfeld's plans to transform the armed forces from its past, heavy structure that was geared toward fighting the Soviets into a flexible, swift and lethal force are well-suited to the war on terrorism.
"One of the big changes was from being threat-based to being capabilities-based because it is no longer clear what the threats are," said Major Michael Humm, a Pentagon spokesman for defence policy. September 11 "has broadened the type of threat we're aware of and what we have to deal with".
And in the case of the rugged mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, those capabilities need to equal that of the enemy - even if it means knowing how to ride a horse.
Copyright 2002 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
