Page 106: You might as well resign; you’ve lost the faith of the president: Author interviews with White House and State Department officials, January 2011.
Page 106: “Richard Holbrooke expected everyone in the White House”: Author interview with White House official, May 2011.
Page 107:… armed gunmen storm a guesthouse in Kabul: Jon Boone, “U.N. Workers Killed in Afghanistan Attack,” The Guardian, October 28, 2009.
Page 107:… an e-mail getting bounced around among Afghan elites: E-mail obtained by author, November 2009.
Page 107:… “Elections: What’s the Point?”: State Department, Kabul, October 2009, Wikileaks.org.
Page 107: “The people do not want change”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 19. TEAM AMERICA ROLLS THE RITZ
Page 108: The lobby of the Ritz-Carlton: Author notes, April 20, 2010.
Page 109:… “networked security” and “humanitarian action”: Gale A. Mattox, “Germany and Elections: Dodging the Afghanistan Bullet,” American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.
CHAPTER 20. ON PRINCIPLE
Page 116: Matt Hoh has seen enough: Author interview with Matthew Hoh, November 2010.
CHAPTER 21. SPIES LIKE US
Page 127: “Nothing new could ever be expected”: Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), p. 64.
Page 128:… “To resign oneself to monotony”: Richard Zenith and Fernando Pessoa, “Masquerades,” Harper’s Magazine, December 2009.
CHAPTER 22. “I’M PRESIDENT. I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT THEY SAY”
Page 130:… on the verge of “mission failure”: Bob Woodward, “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure,’” The Washington Post, September 21, 2009.
Page 130:… “Hey, maybe it’s better that it’s out there”: Author interview with Major Casey Welch, April 17, 2010.
Page 130:… the leak undercuts the strategic impact of the twenty-one thousand troops already sent: Author interview with White House official, May 2010.
Page 131: “they may change their minds and crush me someday”: John F. Burns, “McChrystal Rejects Scaling Down Afghan Military Aims,” The New York Times, October 1, 2009.
Page 131:… “letting just half the building burn down”: Evan Thomas, “McChrystal’s War,” Newsweek, September 25, 2009.
Page 131:… Petraeus calls a Washington Post columnist: Michael Gerson, “U.S. Has Reasons to Hope in Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, September 4, 2009.
Page 132: Stephen Biddle writes an essay supporting: Stephen Biddle, “Is It Worth It?” The American Interest, July/August 2009.
Page 132: The Kagans do the same: Fred Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, and James M. Dubik, “While Afghan Forces Are Trained, U.S. Forces Must Stay,” The Washington Post, September 13, 2009.
Page 132: As does Anthony Cordesman: Anthony Cordesman, “A Chance to Avoid Defeat in Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, August 31, 2009.
Page 132: Exum fails to disclose: Andrew Alexander, “Undisclosed Conflict in a Review of Jon Krakauer’s Book on Pat Tillman,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2009.
Page 132: The same book is also reviewed in The New York Times: Dexter Filkins, “The Good Soldier,” The News York Times, September 8, 2009.
Page 132:… publishes a glowing New York Times Magazine cover story: Dexter Filkins, “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War,” The New York Times Magazine, October 14, 2009.
Page 132: For guidance, the guys in the White House: Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Wiesman, “Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages,” The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2009.
Page 132:… all Eikenberry does is “whine”: Author interview with White House official, October 2010.
Page 134:… Senator Lindsey Graham has to remind: Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 155.
Page 135: Press reports quote other unnamed: Nancy A. Youssef, “Military Growing Impatient with Obama on Afghanistan,” McClatchy Newspapers, September 18, 2009.
Page 135:… want “to sandbag his old colleagues”: Jonathan Alter, The Promise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 381.
Page 136: “I’m president. I don’t give a shit”: Ibid., p. 392.
CHAPTER 23. THE STRATEGY
Page 137: On the mezzanine level of the Ritz-Carlton: Author notes, April 21, 2010.
Page 138: I made copies of his sketches in my notebook: As noted in the text, sketches included are my renditions of McChrystal’s whiteboard diagrams, recreated from my original notebook pages for publication in this book.
CHAPTER 24. “LET ME BE CLEAR”
Page 149: “Let me be clear”: Barack Obama, “Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan” (speech), December 1, 2009, transcript from whitehouse.gov.
Page 150: “It was clearly a political decision: Author interview with Pentagon official, April 2011.
Page 151: McChrystal prepares for his testimony: Author interview with Colonel Richard Gross, May 2010.
Page 152: “So we will start bringing troops home”: Congressional testimony of Representative Ted Poe before House Armed Services Committee, December 8, 2009.
CHAPTER 25. WORSHIPPING THE GODS OF BEER
Page 153: I walked back to the Ritz: Author notes, April 21, 2010.
Page 157: “The more you know”: Author interview with former U.S. official, April 2011.
CHAPTER 26. WHO IS STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL? PART I, 1954—1976
Page 158: He writes a series of provocative articles and stories for the school’s literary magazine: Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, June 2010.
Page 159: Barno recalls having eggs thrown at him: Author interview with General Dave Barno, May 2010.
Page 160: “I remember going down to the Area: Author interview with Jake McFerren, April 2010.
Page 161: There are famous Goats—like George Armstrong Custer and George E. Pickett: James S. Robbins, Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett, and the Goats of West Point (New York: Encounter Books, 2006).
Page 161: The Goat excels in “mischief”: Ibid.
Page 162 One story, written in November 1975, titled “Brinkman’s Note”: Stanley McChrystal, “Brinkman’s Note,” The Pointer, 1975 (copy obtained by author).
Page 162: In a story called “The Journal of Captain Litton,” the main character is a British officer: Stanley McChrystal, “The Journal of Captain Litton,” The Pointer (copy obtained by author).
Page 163: Another story, “In the Line of Duty”: Ibid.
Page 163: “The bombs are in place and in minutes vengeance will be mine,” the story opens: Ibid.
CHAPTER 27. “THE JERK IN GREEN”
Page 165: …I checked out the local papers: Author notes, April 22, 2010.
CHAPTER 28. WHO IS STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL? PART II, 1976—present day
Page 171:… introduces mixed martial arts, like jujitsu, to the hand-to-hand combat training: Author interview with Sergeant Major Michael Hall, May 2010.
Page 174: “We are soldiers, God, agents of correction”: Dick Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 464.
Page 174: . . . “the mortally wounded Zarqawi pulled”: Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), p. 694.
CHAPTER 29. REALITY CHECKS IN
Page 176: The Afghan embassy was in an upscale neighborhood on the city’s west side: Author notes, April 22, 2010.
INTERLUDE: DUBAI
Page 185: “There is danger here! A dry brown vibrating hum or frequency in the air”: William S. Burroughs, Interzone (New York: Viking, 1989), pp. 65, 75.
Page 186: I headed off to my hotel in the city: I spent the first two nights in Dubai at Le Royal Meridien and my last night at Atlantis: The Palm. For the sake of the narrative, I’ve spared the reader events that took place at the Meridien and jumped ahead to the Palm, which was the only hotel worth writing about anyway.
Page 186:… the Emirates had a gross domestic product of some $261 billion: World Bank Development indicators, via Google.
Page 188: He first appeared in the Crimean War in 1854: Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), p. 20.
Page 188: “Exaggeration, outright lies, puffery, slander,” wrote one historian on the quality of Civil War coverage: Ibid., p. 21.
Page 189:… “Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution”: Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (New York: Little, Brown, 1937), p. 92.
Page 189: “Fuck my shit,” he said privately, using a dropped expression picked up from GIs: William Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War (New York: Crown, 1995), p. 345.
Page 190: “Ernie got it,” he heard: Robert Capa, Slightly Out of Focus (New York: Henry Holt, 1947), p. 230.
Page 190: “There’s absolutely no reason for me to get up”: Ibid., p. 30.
Page 190: “I would say the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay”: Alex Kershaw, Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003), p. 20.
Page 193: In October of 2008, I’m in Afghanistan for the first time: Author notes, originally published in “Obama’s War,” GQ, May 2009.
Page 197: Two hours later, I stumbled through airport security: Author notes, April 27, 2010.
CHAPTER 30. A SHORT HISTORY OF A HORRIBLE IDEA
Page 201:… that Arabs have a “notorious inability to organize”: David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1956–1958 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006), p. 18.
Page 201: “I sound no doubt terribly colonialist”: Ibid.
Page 202: In 1960, Galula takes a position at the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia: Ann Marlowe, David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2010).
Page 202: In 1962, Vietnam War architect General William Westmoreland: Ibid.
Page 202: tries to help him get a job at Mobil Oil company: Ibid.
Page 203:… and the controversial Phoenix Program: Ibid.
Page 203: COIN had been “overblown and oversold”: Ibid.
Page 203: Caspar Weinberger pens what is seen as official repudiation: Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Macmillan, 2009), p. 129.
Page 203:… definitively replaced by a new fad of the moment: Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules (New York: Macmillan, 2010), p. 178.
Page 203: “Never Send a Man When You Can Send a Bullet”: Colonel David H. Petraeus, Major Damian P. Carr, and Captain John C. Abercrombie, “Why We Need FISTS: Never Send a Man When You Can Send a Bullet,” July 1997.
Page 204: Kilcullen, too, views the decision to invade Iraq as “fucking stupid”: Spencer Ackerman, “A Counterinsurgency Guide for Politicos,” The Washington Independent, July 27, 2008.
Page 205:… explicitly points out that the best way to defeat terrorist networks: Seth Jones “How Terrorist Groups End,” RAND Corporation, 2008.
Page 206:… that “JSOC was a killing machine”: Author interview with General Bill Mayville, April 2010.
Page 206:… he would have “worked with the devil” to beat Al-Qaeda: Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, “The Spark, the Oxygen and the Fuel,” Armed Forces Journal, September 2010.
Page 206:… about $360 million spent in just one year: Erica Goode, “U.S. Military Will Transfer Control of Sunni Citizen Patrols to Iraqi Government,” The New York Times, September 1, 2008.
Page 207: “They are true Iraqi patriots”: Author interview with senior military official, Baghdad, January 2011.
Page 207:… “graduate level of war”: FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, December 2006.
Page 207:… the key is “perception”: Major David Petraeus, “American Lessons in Vietnam,” Parameters, 1987.
Page 208: COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated: Author interview with Douglas Macgregor, May 2010.
Page 208: It’s all very cynical, politically: Author interview with Marc Sageman, former CIA analyst, May 2010.
Page 208: “Losing wars is really expensive”: Tara McKelvey, “The Cult of Counterinsurgency,” The American Prospect, November 2008.
Page 208: “The intellectual construct for the War on Terror”: Hearing of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, witness General David Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, Washington, DC, April 24, 2009.
Page 209:… examined eighty-nine insurgencies and pointed out: Ben Connable and Martin Libicki, How Insurgencies End (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010), pp. 2–11.
Page 209:… “I keep Galula by my bedside”: Author notes, April 2010, from a talk at the École Militaire.
CHAPTER 31. BAD ROMANCE
Page 212:… $206 billion in private contracts: Congressional Research Services Report, Department of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, May 13, 2011.
Page 213: A number of the security companies had connections to the insurgency: Aram Roston, “How the U.S. Funds the Taliban,” The Nation, November 30, 2009.
Page 213:… from 2002 to 2009 found at least $18 billion unaccounted for: Billions in Afghanistan Aid unaccounted for, AFP, October 28, 2010.
Page 213: Karzai had talked about banning the mercenaries: Joshua Partlow, “Karzai Wants Private Security Firms Out,” The Washington Post, August 17, 2010.
Page 215: “It’s not going to work”: Author interview with Hekmatullah Rahmini, April 27, 2010.
Page 217:… ran into the hotel, detonated a suicide bomb, and killed seven: “Attack on Luxury Hotel Kills Seven,” Associated Press, January 15, 2008.
Page 225: The Washington Post would describe the video’s ”powerful poignancy”: Sarah Kaufman, “U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Make a Telephone Connection with Hit Video Remake,” The Washington Post, May 1, 2010.
CHAPTER 32. PRESIDENT KARZAI HAS A COLD
Page 227: “We have to be careful not to believe our own bullshit”: Richard Wolffe, Revival (New York: Crown, 2011), p. 294.
Page 227:… there’s a ninety-minute window to make the decision: Author interviews with senior military officials. April 2010.
Page 228: “They are like ‘Inshallah’ ”: Author interview with Colonel Charles Flynn, April 2010.
Page 228:… the “chicest man on the planet”: Judy Hevrdejs, “Hamid Karzai: The World’s Most Stylish Man,” Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2002.
Page 228:… “the Gray Wolf’s Vagina”: Author notes, April 2010.
Page 229: Karzai looks back on fondly as the “Golden Age”: U.S. State Department cable, July 16, 2009.
Page 229: That changes when Obama takes over: Ahmed Rashid, “How Obama Lost Karzai,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2011.
Page 231:… describe it as “a bleeding ulcer”: Dion Nissenbaum, “McChrystal Calls Marjah ‘Bleeding Ulcer,’ ” McClatchy Newspapers, May 24, 2010.
CHAPTER 33. AN E-MAIL EXCHANGE: COME WALK IN OUR BOOTS
Page 232: On February 27, 2010, at 6:27 P.M.: E-mails obtained by author.
CHAPTER 34. A BOY BORN IN 1987
Page 235: One night this month, he calls home: Author interview with Julie Ingram, June 2011.
Page 239: I was asked to see if you would attend a memorial: E-mail obtained by author.
CHAPTER 35. WHERE IS ISRAEL ARROYO?
Page 240: My Afghan security guard dropped me off: Author notes, April 28, 2010.
CHAPTER 36. INGRAM’S HOUSE
Page 254: The twenty-two-ton MRAP bounced up and down along: Author notes, April 28, 2010.
CHAPTER 37. AN ARMY OF NONE
Page 267: . . . arrives in late 2009 at Camp Eggers: “New NATO Command in Kabul Focuses on Afghan Training,” American Forces Press Service, November 23, 2009.
Page 267: It’s an $11.6 billion a year operation: Michael Hastings, “Another Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, February 2010.
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan Page 38