“Sir, I understand,” I said. “It’s over; there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
After a couple of hours, our force made it back to its outstation. In the meantime, the insurgents had cranked into gear their propaganda machine, filming at the local hospital, igniting outrage and barraging the Iraqi government with complaints. Iraqis in the neighborhood reported that bullets from the helicopter had killed teenagers and children, and the Iraqi government spokesman said that fifteen people, not fifty, had died, but that all fifteen were civilians. Dave was taking the heat from Maliki and would later meet with him to discuss the raid.
I understood how fragile a moment this was for the Coalition—and for Dave Petraeus in particular. A month earlier, he and Ryan Crocker had returned to Washington, D.C., for a highly scrutinized public update on the surge in front of Congress. He faced strong skepticism and outright hostility from many of the legislators. And yet he presented—most memorably, in a thirteen-slide PowerPoint presentation—evidence of a truly dramatic reduction in violence. He showed improvements on a number of key metrics. Civilian deaths, ethno-sectarian killing, and weekly attacks were down. American fatalities had spiked as more troops entered the war during the early summer, but now fewer Americans were dying. In May, 126 Americans were killed; in October, that number was 38. It was far from clear that these trends were real and would continue, and the political reconciliation that the added security was meant to midwife was not yet moving. But it appeared for the first time that a spectacular turnaround of the war, under Dave’s leadership, seemed within grasp.
From the very beginning, Dave had been supportive of TF 714’s targeting missions in Iraq. And while there was one level between the political heat and me, I felt the burn. My teams needed immense freedom to operate in order to achieve the required operational tempo. But I was always personally responsible for what they did. In practice, the only way I could manage the balance between assuming the risk for their actions and allowing them enough autonomy was through trust, and lots of it. It had taken four years to build the machine that produced the intelligence that located the Special Groups leader deep in Sadr City. But, more important, those four years also had built up the trust that allowed TF 714’s leaders to act on it.
So in the days following, we did a significant review with the operators of what had occurred and how to move forward. But it was important the men understood I did not question the decisions they made once bullets started flying. I did not want them to feel that they could go from heroes one night to villains the next depending on the whims and friction of war.
As much as the networked organization of our force was novel, sustaining the bonds among warriors, particularly during these difficult months, demanded age-old leadership. On the night of November 20, 2007, a month after the Sadr City raid, a British Puma helicopter was flying near Baghdad, carrying operators from the SAS on an operation. As it descended to land, the helo was caught in a brownout, engulfed in the plumes of desert earth kicked up by its rotors. The helicopter crashed and rolled, and one of the SAS operators was pinned inside, conscious as the helicopter burned and his teammates tried in vain to pull him from the wreckage. The crash killed two of the SAS operators, while others on board were left injured.
After the crash, the British pilots stopped flying for a few days to review the incident—a standard thing to do following a crash like that. I knew they might be self-conscious about getting back into the air after a rattling crash and might worry that the rest of the task force—namely the operators who depended on them—would doubt their ability. During the stand-down, I told my aide Chris Fussell that the first time they got back in the air, I wanted to fly with them. Days later, I rode with the Brits in the Pumas on a run from Balad down to Baghdad.
Graeme captured it in his typically profound and gnomic way: “Soldiering equals trust.”
* * *
Our war demanded relentless focus and a hardening of natural emotions. I knew that required me to regularly reflect on what we were doing and how to keep myself moored to what I believed. Chris Fussell later reminded me of such a moment that spring of 2008. It was Sunday morning, and we’d left TF 714’s small enclave inside Balad Airfield to get a haircut.
I was irritable as we left the barbershop. Seeing the fast-food restaurants and electronics sales displays around the PX did that to me. From the earliest days of our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d been frustrated by the seemingly unstoppable growth of facilities that I considered a serious distraction from the business at hand. I wanted soldiers well fed and housed, but attempts to replicate the comforts of home could deceive us into thinking we weren’t in a deadly fight.
Pulling out of the lot and back onto the roads that led to our compound, the car was quiet. Chris tried to make conversation.
“You see that one of the dogs died on the target last night?” he asked, referring to the dogs the assault teams outfitted with cameras and sent bounding into dark, often booby-trapped houses before the team entered. Chris shook his head. “Really sad.”
“Fuss,” I snapped, turning toward him and squinting. “Seven enemy were killed on that target last night. Seven humans. Are you telling me you’re more concerned about the dog than the people that died?”
The car fell silent again.
“Hey, listen,” I said. “Don’t lose your humanity in this thing.”
He looked me in the eye for a few beats, nodded, and turned to face the road again. We drove back to base. My reaction was unfair. I hadn’t raised the dog that died. I hadn’t enjoyed his companionship during lonely nights at some dusty outpost. I hadn’t had my life saved by the dog.
But, nearing the end of my command, four and a half years in, I had an acute awareness of the incredibly lethal machine we had built in order to defeat the enemy, and the amount of killing that machine had required men like Chris—young, moral, fearless—to bear. I reacted to Chris like this not because I saw in him any bloodlust or brutishness or imbalance but because I feared these qualities might gnarl the upright men I led.
We found ourselves in a situation wherein an enemy ideology had spread and corrupted thousands of young men. By the time they came into contact with our machine, by the time they had a vest strapped to their chest and were planning to cut down a score of Americans on their way out, the only way to deal with them was to fight them and, often, kill them. Operations reports put the toll into tidy acronyms—EKIA, enemy killed in action—while the aerial feeds of operations showed men fleeing our helicopters as antlike specks, too small to show their blanched faces. But they obviously believed in what they were fighting for. And while some men showed an innate, unalloyed cruelty, many who ended up fanatical and dangerous had begun as misguided, gullible kids. That they had to die was something to lament.
* * *
On May 1, 2008, I waited in the SAR at Balad for a missile impact some two thousand miles away in a rural compound in Somalia. We’d done the same thing eight weeks earlier, however, and had failed. In that case, our intelligence was accurate, but to be conservative, we’d fired only two missiles when four would have covered the entire compound. Al Qaeda leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was in a separate part of the compound, escaped the edge of the blasts, and survived. The miss was a bitter lesson for me.
Another opportunity arose quickly. In late April 2008, we located Al Shabab leader Aden Hashi Ayrow near Dusa Mareb, Somalia. Like Dadullah in Pakistan, Ayrow seemed an eerie mirror of Zarqawi. A stubborn but charismatic extremist known to be personally volatile and ruthless, he was responsible for the deaths of foreign aid workers, Somalis, international peacekeepers, and BBC journalist Kate Peyton, who was shot in the back near her Mogadishu hotel in February 2005. Since the Ethiopian invasion sixteen months earlier, Al Shabab had split from the Islamic Courts Union. No longer a “youth wing,” Al Shabab was growing into an autonomous terroristic organization with ai
ms to disrupt political reconciliation inside Somalia. It also had aspirations, albeit boastful ones, of striking beyond its borders. Aden Ayrow’s continued personal ascendance had helped spur Al Shabab’s dangerous rise. Now we felt we had him in the crosshairs.
Waiting for the operation brought me back to the tense moments surrounding Big Ben, the arms cache on the southern edge of Fallujah we had struck in the summer of 2004, when insurgents controlled the city and TF 714’s credibility was far more fragile. And yet, in spite of everything we’d done in the past four years, I again worried about the potential impact of a second failed strike on TF 714’s standing and its hard-won freedom of action.
As the missiles impacted, we waited anxiously for indications that Ayrow was dead. Sometimes the target’s voice came up on a phone call after the strike. Ayrow’s never did. The operation represented an important step in TF 714’s ability to contribute in even difficult, denied areas. A September 2009 U.S. raid that killed Nabhan reflected the continued maturation of this capability.
* * *
A month later, in June of 2008, immediately before I left Iraq for the last time, I walked the three hundred meters from a new headquarters and billet area we had occupied since March of that year for a last look at the original area we had built and occupied since the summer of 2004.
In the fading light of early evening, with the frequent roar of departing jets or helicopters in the background, Jody Nacy and I walked into the bunker, through the SAR, TF 16’s operations center, and then across the gravel patch I’d crossed thousands of times to our small wooden hooch when retiring at dawn. All the areas were deserted but still largely furnished, as they had been when we had lived there. The plywood tables, worn chairs, and shelves, often built quickly, all remained. It was as though everyone had suddenly disappeared. It was as though we were exploring a sunken ship.
Memories poured back. I recalled good times, like modest ceremonies to pin medals on deserving young people. And I remembered moments of frustration and loss.
At what had been the entrance to the bunker area—a small wooden guard shack flanked by cement blast walls—we paused. As much as there was sacred ground for members of the task force, this was such a place. Here, on more occasions than Jody or I liked to recall, the small patch of concrete would fill with weathered and bearded Green operators, young and focused Rangers, our SAS brothers-in-arms, the tireless men of the Night Stalkers, a broad assortment of SEALs, intelligence analysts, interrogators, communicators, and countless others.
As had become our tradition, it was here that our task force would assemble at dusk whenever we lost a comrade on the battlefield. In an admittedly ragtag military formation, beneath half-masted American and British Union Jack flags folding and unfolding easily in the warm breezes of the Iraqi desert, we would listen to a brief and solemn remembrance of our fallen comrade. We would then remain at silent attention as bagpipes played and the flags were returned to their positions at the top of the flagpole. With our Balad bunker in the background, the team would disperse, returning to a fight that did not pause for losses.
I doubt there’s anything there now to mark the spot or record what took place. It remains only in the memories and hearts of the incredible men and women who gathered there. Jody and I said nothing and walked away from our Balad war bunker for the last time.
A few days later, on June 3, 2008, I flew back to the States a different person from the one who’d first flown to Iraq in October 2003. In my pocket I carried a letter from my aide Chris Fussell, who had written to me about his year.
Sir: You asked me once what I would consider the “perfect day,” and I’ve thought of that often this year—especially during a few of the not-so-perfect days. I know that day would include Holly, a good running trail, crisp morning air, a meal with good friends. I also know it would not involve a war, a helicopter, or an assault rifle; there would be no air support, medical plan, or five-paragraph order. But it would most certainly involve stories and debates from a time when those were the daily norm. And it would involve friends who shared these days and lived to see a more peaceful world. It would also involve stories of great men and leadership and what our mentors taught us, and I will speak with pride of this year.
Well said.
Part Three
The power of the mighty hath no foundation but in the opinion and belief of the people.
—Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth
| CHAPTER 16 |
The Ticking Clock
June 2008–June 2009
The black civilian vehicle drove onto the palace grounds and pulled up in front of a small residence where we would stay. On the entire early morning drive through Kabul, Annie had been perched in her seat in wide-eyed wonder trying to take in every sight, asking questions about all that was new and curious. It was vintage Annie, on her first trip to the country that had so impacted our lives.
The box-shaped, two-story residence sat next door to a similar structure where President Hamid Karzai lived. Both were in the shadow of the historic palace accommodations of kings, but were a far cry from palatial. As the vehicle slowed to a stop, Annie and I saw a collection of members of President Karzai’s protective force and staff who were waiting to greet us. I knew most from before, and their genuine smiles and traditional hand-on-their-heart gestures brought back a flood of memories.
It was November 19, 2011, and I was once again in Afghanistan. It had been nine and a half years since I’d first arrived with Combined Joint Task Force 180 early in the war and seventeen months since I’d left on a June evening amid controversy over a magazine article. I’d never expected to return but now found myself excited to see old friends.
We’d traveled at President Karzai’s invitation. I’d delayed accepting for many months, but in October, after consulting Ryan Crocker, our new ambassador in Kabul; General Jim Mattis, now the commander of Central Command; and Chief of Staff Bill Daley at the White House, I decided to go, and as we exited the airplane I was glad I had.
Annie and I spent only two days in Afghanistan—I knew how distracting visitors could be for busy leaders, but it was enough time for Annie to visit an American-sponsored center for the vulnerable street children of Kabul she supports as a board member. And it was long enough for me to meet with ministers, generals, ambassadors, and President Karzai. I was able to renew friendships and express in person the respect and thanks I’d only been able to write in letters. After all we’d done together, I owed them that.
As we entered the building to a waiting breakfast of Afghan fruit, tea, and the flatbread I’d always enjoyed, I pointed out to Annie the room where, twenty-one months before, President Karzai had come from being sick in bed to approve, as commander-in-chief, the combined Afghan-ISAF operation into the Helmand district of Marjah. There was history in that room, another chapter in Afghanistan’s long, often twisted tale. It was history I had been a part of.
Over lunch Karzai talked to Annie about Afghanistan, and later escorted her on a short tour of the palace. He took special care to explain the restoration that had been required to repair, as much as possible, the needless damage inflicted by the Taliban to the artwork. It was a subtle message of what he was trying to do for his country.
On our last night in Kabul we had dinner at the home of Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan’s minister of defense since 2004. Wardak was a career soldier who’d trained in the United States, but had defected to be a mujahideen leader for a moderate Sufi faction during the Soviet war. An ardent royalist, he had experienced Afghanistan when it had proud institutions, like the army he joined. Since 2001, Wardak had been a consistent advocate of rebuilding a credible Afghan military, and we had become close during my tour.
In the fading light of early evening we passed through checkpoints manned by poorly uniformed security guards and bumped along potholed streets flanked by grayish brown cement walls until we came to a ba
ttered metal gate. On a call from our security detail the gate swung open and we pulled into a small courtyard.
The chilled fall air was immediately warmed by the glow of light from an open door and the familiar face of Wardak and his wife, who came quickly to the car to greet us. Clasping my hand firmly, Wardak thanked Annie and me for coming and escorted us into their house.
The inside felt like an oasis of color and culture in the somber landscape of Kabul. The home had been in his wife’s family for many years and was decorated with tasteful furniture and beautiful red Afghan carpets. As Annie and his wife chatted, Wardak escorted me to a small studylike room toward the back of the house. On the walls and shelves were mementos of his military career. Some, like diplomas from military schools, were self-explanatory; others were seemingly innocuous objects that needed backstories to explain their significance. And there were photographs. A younger Wardak, often against a backdrop of harsh terrain, peered at me from alongside other soldiers. It was a soldier’s room and testified to all he was, and that which was important to him. He didn’t bring me into it to brag or impress, but to connect.
I was home, or at least I could have been. In my father’s house the room is the same, except the hills are Korea and Vietnam instead of Jalalabad and Khost. In mine they are Iraq and Afghanistan. And there are always photographs showing comrades who have shaped and defined us. Earlier that day, I’d given Wardak a gift of a small statue of Washington crossing the Delaware, and it was already on a shelf in a place of honor. My office holds a nineteenth-century rifle Wardak had sent to me after I’d left Afghanistan.
For dinner Wardak had gathered a small group of Afghan officials with whom I’d worked closely. Over lamb and plates of steaming rice topped with raisins, we shared an evening of friendship and candor. We knew that the following morning Annie and I would fly home; they would stay in troubled Afghanistan. It would likely be the last time I saw many of them. Unexpectedly, Afghanistan, and most important, Afghans, had become a major part of my career, and my life.
My Share of the Task Page 41