Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Welcome! Log in to stay connected and make the most of your experience.

Input clean

Wars are not Won by Evacuations

Wars are not Won by Evacuations

Shot of a Squad of Soldiers Running Forward and Atacking Enemy During Military Operation in the Desert.

Mark Kelton, Former Deputy Director, CIA's Counterintelligence, National Clandestine Service

Cipher Brief ExpertMark Keltonis a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency executive with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations. Before retiring, he served as CIA’s Deputy Director for Counterintelligence.  He is a partner at the FiveEyes Group and is Board Chair of Spookstock, a charity that benefits the CIA Memorial Foundation, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation and the Defense Intelligence Memorial Foundation.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Winston Churchill’s 04 June 1940 speech in which he vowed that he and his countrymen would “fight on the beaches “and would “never surrender” in the face of a seemingly inevitable Nazi invasion is rightly renowned as perhaps history’s most famous address by a wartime leader.  Less well known, however, is the cautionary tone the new Prime Minister struck in that same appearance before the House of Commons, as he sought to temper the joy and relief engendered by the seemingly miraculous extraction of the British army from the beaches of Dunkirk.  “We must,” Churchill warned, “be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.”  “Wars” he admonished, “are not won by evacuations.”

Shortly before the 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden, I was asked by my HQ, my views on mounting an assault on the target we knew as Abbottabad Compound 1, (AC1) given that we were not sure it sheltered the terrorist leader.  After expressing my 95% confidence that the Al Qaeda (AQ) leader was in fact, there, I allegorically added that we must strike as ‘you cannot leave Hitler in his bunker and end the war’.  I was fortuitously, right in my assessment that the murderer of so many innocents was present within AC1.  Sadly, however, his death did not bring our war with radical Islamic terrorism to a conclusion.  As was the case after Dunkirk, our enemy was unwilling to quit the field or to limit his unbounded war aims.

Likewise, we should have no expectation that the withdrawal of our forces from the Afghan theater of combat signals an end to the conflict with terrorists who started that war by attacking us on September 11, 2001.  We cannot unilaterally declare an end to the War on Terror by leaving Afghanistan - however much we might wish to do so - for the very simple reason that our enemies do not share that desire.  As former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta put it, "I understand that we're trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is, we can leave a battlefield, but we can't leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security."

The Taliban parading of the American-made weapons and accoutrements of their defeated foes was, in a manner akin to that of ancient Rome, intended not only to celebrate victory.  It was also meant to humiliate the vanquished.   Such triumphal demonstrations - and what will be a galling celebration of the anniversary of 9/11 as their own holiday to follow - will evoke enthusiastic responses from Islamic extremists and will draw many new adherents to the cause that lies at the core of Taliban legitimacy and belief.

As was the case when we left Iraq and later had to go back into the region to crush the ISIS Caliphate that metastasized in the wake of our departure, there is every prospect that the Taliban’s success will breathe new life into Islamic extremist groups.  And there is no reason to believe that the “new” and now much more heavily armed Taliban - an organization that refused to break with AQ over the course of a brutal twenty-year battle, will be any less receptive to working with Islamic terror groups than were their pre-9/11 forebears.

Keep reading...Show less
Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Related Articles

A Good NATO Summit, Though Russia Won a Round

EXPERT Q&A — NATO leaders convened in The Hague this week for a summit aiming to strengthen the alliance's defenses, with the ever encroaching threat [...] More

NATO Wins Will Have an Impact

CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT Q&A — NATO leaders convened at The Hague this week and agreed to raise the alliance’s defense spending target to 5% GDP, marking [...] More

Dead Drop: June 27

THIS WEEK: SURPRISES, SECRETS AND SPY COCKTAILS: This week’s best collection of national security gossip is filled with surprises, secrets and a [...] More

NATO Lures Trump Back - at a Cost

NATO Lures Trump Back - at a Cost

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING – The stakes at this week’s NATO summit were sky-high – support for Ukraine, a shoring up of Europe’s defenses, and the [...] More

Report for Friday, June 27, 2025

8:11 America/Chicago Friday, June 27 [...] More

The Zbig Biography: No Small Feat!

BOOK REVIEW: Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet by Edward LuceAvid Reader Press / Simon & SchusterReviewed by: [...] More

Report for Thursday, June 26, 2025

8:18 America/Chicago Thursday, June 26 [...] More

North Korea’s Sticking Points: Abduction and Uranium Enrichment

OPINION — In September 2002, North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, admitted to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korea had [...] More

Report for Wednesday, June 25, 2025

9:20 AM America/New York Wednesday, June 25 [...] More