Speculation of Bush Administration's Failure

On Sunday, Nov. 29, the democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations committee released a report that cast the blame for the current situation in Afghanistan on the Bush administration. As reported by CNN, President Barack Obama is to announce his decision to approve military requests for more troops at West Point, N.Y. Obama will commit 40,000 troops in all; 30,000 of these troops are to be U.S. and the remaining 10,000 are to be troops from various NATO countries. Tora Bora, or "Black Dust" in Arabic, is a cave complex which is part of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass. In Dec. 2001, the United States believed that they might have had Osama Bin Laden cornered at the cave complex. His only option was to escape through the Khyber Pass and into Pakistan. The decision to sweep in and take the complex was not approved by the U.S. command. "Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan," states the report released by the Foreign Relations committee. The Bush Administration at the time did not know for sure that Bin Laden was there, according to CNN. Ultimately, Tora Bora ended with Bin Laden's escape to Pakistan by way of the Khyber Pass. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the committee, had always been a critic of Bush's handling of the war in Afghanistan. As a presidential nominee in 2004, he said that Bush "took his eye off the ball" in Afghanistan to invade Iraq, reports CNN. The report released by the Foreign Relations Kerry's committee stated that the "inability to finish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that endangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region." This, therefore, necessitates Obama's decision to send more troops into the region. Senator Richard Lugar (R- Indiana) told CNN that the report "does serve as a convenient way for, perhaps, Democrats to say once again, there's another failing of the past administration and that all the problems have accumulated." Republicans see this as yet another blame game maneuver. Democrats complain that "the culmination of decisions that were made eight years earlier made the situation much more difficult" today. The committee report called the failure at Tora Bora "a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan." Lugar later commented, according to CNN, that "the problem right now is, what do we do presently? What will the president's plan be? How much confidence do we have in this president and this plan?"