All In (28 page)

In Tabin, a village of about a thousand residents, Flynn explained that there were now ten “vetted and confirmed” members of the Afghan Local Police providing village security. They had been trained by Flynn's troops using techniques first developed by Special Forces involved in the Village Stability Operations, the effort that laid the foundation for the ALP. Nine more villagers, all recommended by village elders and screened by U.S. forces, were being trained and vetted in order to join the detachment. The Tabin Local Police had received uniforms and weapons, and they were being paid slightly less than members of the National Police. Once the village force was in operation, it would be transferred to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior for ongoing oversight and administration, Flynn said. Gate's team sent a follow-up e-mail: “One of the best visits . . . in 4 years.”

Back in Kabul, Petraeus sat down for an interview with the
New York Times
on the eve of his departure for testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington. He was beginning to see the six lines of operation come together for real effect, even though each new week seemed to bring new insurgent attacks and bombings, while ISAF's advances were maddeningly incremental.
The
Times
described the interview with Petraeus as “a preview of what is likely to be his argument next week when he testifies before Congress for the first time since he took over command of coalition forces in Afghanistan eight months ago.”

The Taliban's momentum, Petraeus said, had been halted in much of Afghanistan and reversed in Helmand and Kandahar. Afghan forces were continuing to grow in number and capability. Special Operations had taken a number of key insurgent leaders off the battlefield. He acknowledged that efforts to persuade Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and become part of a reintegration program had been only modestly successful. He insisted that relations with Karzai were good, despite periodic evidence to the contrary. He said that ISAF forces would focus in the months ahead on a strategy called “defense in depth” to make it difficult for Taliban fighters to leave their redoubts in Pakistan and infiltrate back across the border into Afghanistan and make their way to Kabul. Only time would tell how that strategy would fare on the ground in Afghanistan—and the hearing rooms in Washington.

CHAPTER 8

WASHINGTON AND BACK

P
etraeus flew into Washington under the media radar on Friday, March 11, and spent a quiet weekend reunited with his wife, Holly, and their daughter, Anne. Holly had moved from Tampa to a house on the base at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia, overlooking the Potomac. Anne was home on spring break from graduate school. She was studying to become a dietitian and chided her father about his new slow-carb diet, but he would not be deterred. She wrote a popular blog about food and fitness that Petraeus had been following with great pride, pleased that she had gained nearly ten thousand followers.

Undetected by the press but shadowed by Petraeus's security detail, father and daughter ran seven miles along the Potomac on Saturday morning. Petraeus had been slightly irked by various news reports that he was “worn out.” He was still running or riding a stationary bike nearly every day. After he'd run at Kabul's 5,800-foot elevation, the run at sea level was nothing. The opportunity to run on a level path, along a clean river, was uplifting. He had been away from his family for more than seventy months since 9/11. He gave his team a day off, their first in more than eight months. Several of his close aides were able to see their families for the first time since their unexpected departures the previous June. His personal security guard, Mark Howell, returned home to Arkansas for just thirty-six hours. That afternoon, the Petraeus clan went to see Matthew McConaughey in
The Lincoln Lawyer
at a theater in downtown Washington. He and Holly loved to watch movies together. He could let go of the immense weight of the war he carried, for a moment.

On Monday morning, Petraeus attended his “murder board,” a practice session for his testimony before the Senate and House Armed Services committees. The term was a play on one used to describe the promotion board for noncommissioned officers. Candidates must memorize tactical and operational detail to pass. Petraeus used a Washington-based lobbying-and-communications firm headed by a retired Marine Corps major general who had been the staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee to conduct the exercise. Petraeus performed well in congressional testimony in part because he conducted these practice sessions. They were at least two painful hours, without a break, to simulate the testimony, but they were beneficial. Lieutenant Colonel Tony DeMartino, Major Keith Benedict and Captain Alston Ramsay, members of his Commander's Initiatives Group, participated with the corporate simulators, asking questions “for elephants—” the big game four-star generals.

The intense session prepared Petraeus for any question, as well as a hostile audience, although neither he nor his inquisitors anticipated one this time. He expected there to be questions about the cost of the war and whether the nation could continue to make that kind of massive financial commitment, with Congress focused on the deficit and proposing huge budget cuts. Petraeus knew that he had to make a persuasive argument that members of Congress could convey to their constituents, many of whom were unaffected by the war and focused more on pocketbook issues than national security. He also expected questions about Afghan corruption, reintegration and reconciliation and the Afghan Local Police initiative, as well as various concerns that revolved around Pakistan. Petraeus would decide what information was essential to highlight while making sure he did not disclose anything that was classified. It was a complex calculus. After the practice session, members of the Commander's Initiatives Group were quickly assigned to research areas in which Petraeus felt he needed more information.

Later that afternoon, Petraeus and Gates met with Obama at the White House to discuss progress in Afghanistan and Petraeus's upcoming testimony. The meeting needed to appear on the president's public schedule to show solidarity, but it was also a good opportunity to provide the president with an up-to-date assessment. Petraeus explained the progress coalition forces had made in recent months. There were no surprises about the war, since the three had spoken together in recent months on several occasions in secure video teleconferences. Petraeus also provided weekly updates on the war via teleconference for Gates, Mullen and Marine General James Mattis, head of Central Command, that were retransmitted to the White House and the secretary of State.

The White House issued a two-sentence summary of the meeting that night, emphasizing the issues most important to the president:

 

The President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and General David Petraeus met today to discuss our ongoing efforts in Afghanistan, including the effectiveness of the military surge, the growth of the Afghan National Security Forces, and President Karzai's expected March 21 announcement on beginning transition to Afghan security lead. They also discussed the plan to begin the reduction of U.S. forces this July, and the path to completing the transition to full Afghan responsibility for security by the end of 2014.

While Washington was filled with rumors about Petraeus's next assignment, no mention was made of it in this statement from the White House. Nor was there any discussion of it at the meeting between Petraeus and Obama. Petraeus knew he was not in the running to be named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff following his command in Afghanistan, as Gates had made clear to him in December when they discussed the matter in Kabul and Petraeus first floated the idea that he become CIA director. Gates had reported that Obama had been intrigued by the idea, and Petraeus looked forward to discussing it directly with the president. He was encouraged by Obama's interest, and he realized that this trip to Washington was his chance to validate the tough decisions Obama had made in late 2009, since the surge had succeeded in clearing key Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Some reporters and military officers who had seen Petraeus in action over the past eight months continued to speculate that he was worn out, and that perhaps the president would surmise that a break was in order. This irritated Petraeus to no end. The summer and fall campaign had without a doubt taken a toll. There had been a steep learning curve his first few months in theater, and he would often yawn his way through meetings, chew on Atomic Fireballs and drink coffee nonstop, even into the evenings, but by winter the campaign was showing signs of progress, and the pace of insurgent fighting slowed in its cyclical winter pattern. Petraeus felt energized by spring.

The following morning, the clicking of camera shutters sounded when Petraeus took his seat before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy sat next to him at the witness table, facing the horseshoe-shaped dais of senators. Members of Petraeus's military team wore their Class A uniforms, neatly pressed. They had awoken that morning to a headline on the front page of the
Washington Post
that read, “Afghan War Isn't Worth Fighting, Most in U.S. Say.” A poll by the
Post
and ABC News had found that nearly two-thirds of Americans thought the war was no longer worth fighting, “the highest proportion yet opposed to the conflict.” The newspaper said Petraeus was expected to face “tough questioning” on the war. Yet, aside from two protestors who had made it into the room, there was a relaxed feeling. Petraeus was well prepared, and the senators were relatively deferential to a commander who had appeared before them numerous times in the previous six years. Taking his seat at the witness table always took Petraeus back to Iraq and all the passions the war had unleashed as violence exploded in 2004 and grew steadily straight into the surge at the beginning of 2007.

A MONTH AFTER
he arrived at the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth in the fall of 2005, Petraeus set out to create a new field manual on counterinsurgency. He would launch this ambitious effort by hosting an inclusive workshop at Fort Leavenworth, the Army's schoolhouse, in February 2006. He considered creation of a new doctrinal manual for commanders and troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to be a critical need.

The situation in Iraq, the U.S. military's main effort, had spiraled downward, with the country beset by extreme sectarian violence that many thought would lead to civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. Petraeus thought he had a chance at Fort Leavenworth to help the military provide doctrinal concepts to address the problem. There had already been speculation that he might be the next overall commander in Iraq, and the chief of staff had told him that he was just being given an opportunity to “take a knee” for a while before deploying again. That made it all the more imperative to identify and codify best practices in counterinsurgency.

The manual, developed jointly with the Marine Corps, would be published on an unprecedented timeline. Petraeus commissioned Dr. Conrad Crane, his West Point classmate and director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, to lead the effort, helped by Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, Rhodes Scholar, West Point Department of Social Sciences alum and author of a notable book on counterinsurgency. Within a month of taking command, Petraeus e-mailed the manual as it existed at the time to several intellectuals, including Eliot Cohen, whom he'd known since Petraeus's days teaching at West Point, and members of the “LICimites,” the low-intensity-conflict acolytes of the 1980s, some of whom he'd met in Central America in 1987. He sought feedback on its content—another example of his crowdsource approach to decision making.

The day before Christmas, Petraeus brought his boss, General William Wallace, up to speed on his plans for the conference that would kick off the effort, noting that he planned to invite “a broad mix of approximately sixty influential practitioners, academicians, journalists and others,” including the full spectrum of typically liberal skeptics, to participate in a quest for “infotopia.” He was also planning to invite fifteen foreign liaison officers at Leavenworth to participate, along with additional representatives from the United Kingdom and Australia. Tentatively, the Carr Center at Harvard University was going to cosponsor the workshop, contingent upon approval by the Army's General Counsel.

The manual spelled out the focus for all U.S. counterinsurgency operations: Protect the people from violence, harassment or intimidation by insurgents. Killing the enemy and disrupting insurgent networks remained critical areas of emphasis. But the most important area—the center of gravity—was protecting the people. This led to better intelligence from them. It enhanced prospects for effective local governance. And it made it difficult for insurgents to operate. It was published in late 2006, the fastest doctrinal endeavor in anyone's memory.

The manual was lauded inside and outside the military, but it also energized military skeptics, who said bad strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq could not be fixed with sound tactics. Petraeus welcomed the constructive criticism, and a spirited debate ensued among defense intellectuals. The skeptics' concerns were perhaps best symbolized by Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and novelist whom Petraeus had long respected but who had become a font of criticism of the wars. “It's appallingly bad—a prescription for defeat,” he wrote. “We're not at war with ideologies, but with religious convictions and ethnic identities. Those are profoundly different matters. We're not in Malaya in 1959. We don't have to like it, but our core enemies are waging religious warfare, and they're not susceptible to friendly persuasion.”

Petraeus realized the political sensitivity of the manual, personally editing the opening chapter thirty to forty times. “Let me assure you that there is no reluctance to kill religious extremists (or Saddamists or any others) who want to kill us,” Petraeus responded to Peters in an e-mail.

“The 101st Airborne, e.g., remains proud to have killed [Saddam Hussein's sons] Uday and Qusay—and to have done it in a way that took them out without blowing up the rest of the neighborhood. Nor did we shrink from taking out Ansar al-Sunnah's number three, or from killing or capturing a host of other extremists, insurgents, or Saddamists. Our objective, though, was always to try to take more bad guys off the streets than we created by the way we conducted our operations. That's not politically correct; it's the way to win—when complemented by a host of other activities, of course, many of them nonmilitary in nature. . . . One can, to be sure, defeat an insurrection or insurgency by killing lots of people. The Romans did it long ago, and people like Saddam and Assad have done it more recently; however, that's obviously not an approach that is available to us.”

The 419-page manual was not only published by the Army but also made into a trade version that was favorably reviewed. That version included an introduction by Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, that began, “This counterinsurgency field manual challenges much of what is holy about the American way of war. It demands significant change and sacrifice to fight today's enemies honorably. It is therefore both important and controversial. Those who fail to see the manual as radical probably don't understand it, or at least understand what it's up against.”

Beyond the manual, Petraeus focused his efforts during his fifteen-month tour at Fort Leavenworth on advancing the concepts of full-spectrum operations and preparedness of leaders and units for deployment. A significant part of the latter was overhauling the military's “road to deployment”—a systematic road map that charted the training activities that a brigade combat team, a division headquarters and corps headquarters went through during the approximately twelve months of preparation for deployment. Up until 2006, Petraeus had discovered, deploying units were still going through an outdated “Military Operations in Urban Terrain” (MOUT) seminar as their first step down that road. The MOUT training did not reflect the combat and stabilization operations in which troops had been engaged in recent years. The deploying units needed guidance, training and rehearsals for counterinsurgency operations, he believed. The training needed to include an understanding of the cultural nuances of the area to which the unit was to deploy, the concept that protecting the people was the overarching objective and a recognition that soft-power governance and development efforts had to complement military clearing operations. Few, if any, had demonstrated this better than Petraeus in Mosul in 2003.