All In (18 page)

Obama ultimately agreed to 30,000 additional troops, with an additional 10 percent authorization for Gates, should that be needed for critical unanticipated requirements, and with a pledge to ensure generation of the rest of the needed 40,000 from other troop-contributing nations.
But he also then insisted that Mullen, Petraeus, McChrystal and Gates agree to a secret six-page “terms sheet” that stated: “This approach is not fully resourced counterinsurgency or nation building, but a narrower approach tied more tightly to the core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al Qaeda and preventing al Qaeda's return to safe havens in Afghanistan or Pakistan.” Gates and the military had not only seen the terms before they were asked to agree to them; they had provided input to those from the Pentagon who were helping the White House craft them. What Obama personally added at the last minute, Pentagon officials later shared, was the provision that a drawdown of forces would begin in July 2011. “As we learned in the Oval Office on Sunday evening the night before the policy was to be announced, it was take it or leave it,” one participant later told an assistant. Gates, Mullen, Petraeus, McChrystal and the others “took it.”

Obama announced the outcome of the review in a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009. In a huge auditorium filled with cadets in simple gray uniforms, Petraeus looked up from the front row alongside Mullen, Gates, Clinton and retired Army general Eric Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs. The president explained his decision: “As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional thirty thousand U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After eighteen months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.”

Petraeus had flown to West Point with the president on
Air Force One.
It was the most time the two had spent together in such an informal environment. The president had requested that Petraeus travel with him, so Petraeus flew back to Washington from Tampa on short notice for the second time in two days. The show of solidarity was important, and it meant a great deal to Petraeus. Still, key members of the White House staff remained wary of Petraeus's stature and motives. In the fall of 2009, in fact, he and others involved in the review process reportedly had been warned by the White House not to speak to the press about the review, guidance he followed so diligently that journalist Thomas Ricks described one of Petraeus's presentations that fall as “Dave Does Dull.” (Petraeus noted to his public affairs officer that it had taken great skill to be dull in such a charged atmosphere.)

There were other tensions, too. In early May 2010, Petraeus had been quoted in a story by the Associated Press as saying that Faisal Shahzad, who had attempted to detonate a bomb in New York's Times Square, was a “lone wolf.” The AP's story made it appear as though he were contradicting statements by others in the Obama administration that Shahzad had been trained by the Pakistani Taliban. He had been misquoted, and the AP later put out a corrected version quoting him as saying that Shahzad was a lone wolf
who was inspired by militants in Pakistan but didn't necessarily have contact with them.
But the damage was done. Petraeus asked his spokesman, Colonel Erik Gunhus, to draft a short press release to correct the misimpression and directed Gunhus to inform the White House. But Gunhus was told by the White House not to issue the release and to let the matter blow over. It came up a few days later, when Petraeus and his staff were on a plane together. The general joined Gunhus and other officers in the rear cabin and had a rare glass of wine during the flight. “As the plane roared to its next destination,” Woodward later wrote, “Gunhus noted that the White House still had a tendency to leave Petraeus twisting in the wind.
‘They knock you down every chance they get,' Gunhus said.
‘They're fucking with the wrong guy,' Petraeus responded.”

There were eight people on the plane with Petraeus that day. One of them was Woodward's source. Petraeus later expressed his displeasure to all of them for betraying his confidence.
He later surmised, with disappointment, that it was a field-grade officer on the trip who had been a loyal adviser for nearly five years. But Petraeus knew that he was ultimately responsible for making the intemperate remark, even if he assumed he was making it in private. When the comment turned up in Woodward's book, Petraeus—known for his accessibility and skillful press relations—felt himself pulling back. As he counseled subordinates in subsequent talks on leadership, someone is always watching. As had long ago become clear to him, very little was private in his life anymore. The scrutiny was enormous, and Petraeus tightened the mask of command further.

A long line of critics, including Woodward, had also remarked on Petraeus's “endless campaign of self-promotion.” This has been a common refrain of those inside the military who viewed Petraeus with suspicion, or envy. He had become a target of such criticism earlier in his career because of his repeated assignments as an aide to powerful four-star generals—Galvin, Vuono and, from 1997 to 1999, General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What few acknowledged was that four-star generals hired aides for their ability, not their political skills. Even detractors generally conceded that Petraeus's ability was off the charts.

Meanwhile, Petraeus's relationship with the president, beginning with the West Point trip, had markedly changed by the fall of 2010. The infighting between Obama's generals and his White House aides the previous fall, Petraeus thought, had been overtaken by events. Three months into his own command in Afghanistan, Petraeus was confident that Obama would not have picked him to replace McChrystal if he hadn't trusted him. It was inconceivable to Petraeus that Obama would pick someone regarded as an “outsider” to take charge of the most important national security initiative of his presidency. “If you're going to fire one guy, you better get another guy in there in whom people have confidence,” Petraeus later said to a confidant. Though he'd have less direct contact with Obama than he did with Bush during the Iraq War, Petraeus had access and was now Obama's guy.

By September 2010, there were already indications coming out of the Obama White House that there had been a “mind meld” between the president and his most famous general. Petraeus thought he and his staff had been as loyal to the White House as was possible. He and his team had made a lot of sacrifices to assume command of the war on a moment's notice. He felt a deep sense of disappointment when he was told that there were some on the White House staff who doubted his loyalty to Obama. The battle with the rest of the White House would have to remain just under the surface.

PETRAEUS NOW COMMANDED
the surge he, McChrystal, Mullen and Gates had argued for the previous fall. While he counseled caution in his morning stand-ups at ISAF headquarters and told the dozens of officers gathered for the morning briefing that progress would be slow in coming, his own approach was anything but cautious. He found ways to augment units with civilian intelligence personnel that would not count against formal troop ceilings. He “amped up” Special Operations night raids aimed at Taliban leaders, pushed hard to create Afghan Local Police across the country and carefully monitored conventional forces as they moved into the “hold and build” phases of counterinsurgency after their hard summer of fighting.

But Petraeus found Afghanistan, in some ways, more complex than Iraq, though the levels of violence were certainly far less. “Afghanistan is so dynamic at the moment that it is actually very difficult to track everything going on—and it is almost impossible to track if you are looking in from the outside,” he observed to a friend at the time. “The fact is that in Iraq we had more forces, a smaller population to secure, and easier terrain than we are faced with in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has many more challenges than Iraq, although there is not the colossal level of violence that we faced in Iraq. Even in Iraq, it took us months to see progress, prove progress and then solidify the progress. What does this tell us about Afghanistan? Progress will take time.”

Afghanistan was also a rural insurgency, as opposed to the urban insurgency in Iraq, and many inside the Beltway did not understand that the operation required a different approach. The decentralized nature of the government and the disconnect between officials in Kabul and people in the rural areas—more than 75 percent of the population—made every effort more challenging. Though Petraeus pushed for troops to implement all lines of effort—security, governance and development—security was obviously the first priority. It was difficult to build roads, repair mosques, open medical clinics and schools and foster economic development in areas still filled with Taliban, or where the villagers favored the insurgents over either the occupying force or corrupt, inept government officials.

In counterinsurgency doctrine, governance and development follow security gains, but troops should be setting the conditions for those activities within the concept of an increased security presence. Petraeus pursued progress on all fronts: attacking top- and midlevel Taliban commanders with Special Forces, cleaning out Taliban safe havens with conventional forces, developing the Afghan military and police, working with civilian partners to build the capability of the Afghan government, reconciling with Taliban elements tired of fighting and supporting Afghan initiatives to reintegrate those willing to switch sides. “All of this will accumulate over time,” he told his staff. “Over time, imperceptibly, we will see improvement—but it will be like watching grass grow.”

He'd honed this ability to attack multiple fronts most notably during his first assignment in a chaotic foreign capital, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

WHEN HE LEFT THE
101st Airborne in mid-1994, after a year as the division's operations officer, Petraeus requested to spend his War College year as a fellow at Georgetown University. Shortly after he began the fellowship, the Clinton administration precipitated a showdown with General Raoul Cédras, the military strongman in Haiti, and forced his departure, deploying 20,000 U.S. troops to oversee the reinstallation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the elected president who had been overthrown by the military junta. Over the course of the fall and winter, the United States planned to reduce its contribution and build up forces from other countries to enable handing off the mission to a UN force of 6,000 military and more than 300 civilians.

Petraeus, not coincidentally, picked Haiti as his research topic at Georgetown, looking to get involved helping the National Security Council staff in this diplomatic and military initiative. He soon accompanied deputy secretary of State Strobe Talbott to a five-hour White House deputies meeting on the situation in Haiti, which he found very stimulating. When he bumped into a colonel he'd known on Vuono's staff who was looking for a few good officers to help set up and run the new UN task force, Petraeus jumped at the chance. He had, in fact, sought the fellowship in part to be able to deploy if the opportunity arose. When the UN force commander relieved his operations chief, Petraeus was selected for that critical position.

He landed in Port-au-Prince in February, sixty days before the UN was scheduled to take over, and he helped build the task force from scratch. There was no headquarters. There were no procedures. Petraeus had very little help and slept most nights of his four-month deployment on a cot stored behind the projector screen in a briefing room. When he finally heard he'd been given a permanent headquarters for the task force, he visited the facility and found it lacking. “For starters, there was no roof and there was no floor, also no communications, furniture or electricity,” he later observed drily. Fortunately, he had just finished running a combat division ten times larger than the UN task force. His growing team had the operations center up and running by the time the UN assumed the mission.

Though he didn't know it at the time, setting up the task force, planning and directing operations, helping to train Haitian police and overseeing improvements to the Haitian judicial and prison systems served as a primer for a similar challenge he would face on his second tour in Iraq, when he had to create a new command to recruit, train, equip, advise and build infrastructure for the Iraqi military and police.

In Haiti, sleeping on his cot, running in the morning with Motorola radios in both hands, Petraeus immediately impressed his bosses and colleagues with his capacity for work and his ability to move back and forth between international diplomacy, security operations, nation building and infrastructure repairs. In mid-February, one week after arriving, he briefed Aristide, Deputy Secretary Talbott and other senior officials from the Clinton administration on the UN force's structure. Ten days later, after updating Aristide on conditions across the country, he jumped in his Toyota 4Runner and drove out to Port-au-Prince's main prison, where inmates were rioting and burning everything in sight. Petraeus and a group of military police galvanized the Haitian guards and regained control of the facility. Digging into the situation later, he discovered that many of the prisoners were still being detained after serving their full terms. He thought of them as “the people who time forgot.” He and his team set out to help the Haitians regain control and improve conditions in the jail.

Petraeus realized that the task force's soldiers would need clear rules of engagement about intervening in Haitian-on-Haitian violence, remembering an earlier episode when U.S. forces—lacking such rules—stood by and watched as a riot erupted and Haitians killed each other. A document Petraeus wrote setting forth the rules of engagement, dated March 31, 1995, foreshadows the counterinsurgency guidance he would issue shortly after his arrival in Kabul. The list of nine bullet points began: “1. Treat all persons with dignity and respect.”