Marathon War: Leadership in Combat in Afghanistan by Jeffrey Schloesser

Author:Jeffrey Schloesser [Schloesser, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military Policy, Military, Biography & Autobiography, Historical, history, N/A, political science, Afghan War (2001-), Public Policy
ISBN: 9781682619896
Google: ue77zQEACAAJ
Publisher: Permuted Platinum
Published: 2021-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“My own soul is my most faithful friend. My own heart, my truest confidant.”

Babur

Saturday, September 20, 2008

That evening we held our normal joint operations center Saturday evening ceremony, where we honored the casualties from the month with moments of silence, as we gazed at their pictures displayed on the main screen. Normally a bustling, high-tempo place with a constant buzz, it was perhaps easy to forget that beyond the Predator feeds of ongoing kinetic ops, blue force tracker maps, and so much more information, all displayed on multiple large screens, there was in fact a real world where troops talked to Afghan farmers, shared tea with local tribal leaders, and at times, did all they could to find and kill a reclusive but stubborn enemy. I reminded myself that night that it was the simple events like this and the ramp ceremonies that served to remind those at headquarters in Bagram what was truly at stake outside the wire.

I was barely back in my office when the operations center called me back. There had been a massive bombing in Islamabad, at the Marriott Hotel. On the large screen was a TV feed, showing major destruction to the front of the hotel, which was still burning, sending a black tornado-like cloud of smoke into the dark sky. There were casualties.

“Have we heard from Colonel Dapore and the liaison team?”

“We are trying to contact them now, sir.”

The Marriott served as a home away from home for U.S. and other diplomats, international businessmen, and closet spies, as well as the handful of military liaison teams working with our Pakistani counterparts. It was Saturday night and mid-evening in Islamabad, a perfect time to hang out at the Marriott. It was also Ramadan, and time for iftar, the evening breaking of the daylong fast, and the Marriott likely had one of the finest iftar banquets in Islamabad.

A perfect time for a bombing.

We knew the chairman, Admiral Mullen, had visited Islamabad earlier in the week, and had likely stayed with his security and communications team at the Marriott. The hotel was close to the diplomatic quarter and the U.S. embassy, and was considered to have stringent security. It was common for the U.S. embassy to book rooms for visiting American delegations at the Marriott. Military and other government agency personnel working temporarily at the embassy were housed there as well.

We also knew that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had given his first public address earlier in the day, and had lashed out against homegrown terrorism, declaring his government would stop terrorists from using Pakistan as a safe haven to attack other countries. Zadari’s wife, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, had been assassinated as she departed a campaign rally in December 2007. The daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she was a groundbreaking female politician: she became the first democratically elected woman head of an Islamic state. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she worked to deregulate Pakistan’s economy, build capitalism, and cut the influence of trade unions.

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