Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

by Gates, Robert M

  Perhaps most important, I told Emanuel that the president needed to “take ownership of the Afghan War,” both for the troops and for our allies. My principal concern was not with his public comments on the need for an exit strategy but rather with what he wasn’t saying. He needed to acknowledge that the war could take years but that he was confident we would ultimately be successful. He needed to say publicly why the troops’ sacrifices were necessary. I told Emanuel I would likely come to the president in mid-September for additional “enablers”—more troops for counter-IED, ordnance disposal, route clearance, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and medics—but that I would try to delay any request for combat units until January. I said that the president did not want to be in the position of turning down assets that had a direct role in protecting the troops’ lives. I wasn’t trying to “jam” the president; I knew from experience that with the increase to 68,000 troops, more of these support capabilities would be needed.

  Emanuel sat patiently and quietly while I vented; then he said he would see what he could do. Although I never raised my voice, I think he could tell how angry I was and chose to exercise uncharacteristic restraint. I would later hear that some of the politicos in the White House worried about my quitting.

  In a June 24 videoconference, McChrystal told me for the first time that he had found the situation in Afghanistan much worse than he expected. In the south, he said, insurgents controlled five of thirteen districts in Helmand province, Kandahar was under pressure, and much of the region was “not under our control.” The Afghan forces in the south were at only about 70 percent of authorized strength, and there was a big retention problem. In the east, the Haqqani network was expanding its operational reach, “but our guys have a pretty good handle on the situation there.” Overall, he said, governance was very bad and creating a lot of problems: “There is no legitimacy.” When I asked him if he had enough ISR, his answer provoked the only smiles in the session: “Sir, I am genetically predisposed to never say I have enough.”

  I first heard that McChrystal was going to ask for a lot more troops from Mike Mullen immediately upon his return from a trip to Afghanistan in mid-July. Mullen said McChrystal might ask for as many as 40,000 additional troops. I nearly fell off my chair. Questions flooded my mind: Why? What for? Did he really believe the president would approve that massive an increase so soon after agreeing to an additional 21,000? What about the size of our footprint and the impact on the Afghans? How could I personally reconcile all my public statements expressing concern about our military footprint with supporting McChrystal? Even were I to agree with McChrystal’s assessment and recommendation, I had no idea how I could get the president’s approval of even a fraction of that number. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to see a train wreck coming.

  The only time as secretary of defense that I was truly alarmed was when I heard what McChrystal intended. I decided to meet him secretly in Europe on August 2 and hear firsthand what he had to say. Just before the trip, I participated in the president’s retreat with the cabinet and senior White House staff. An article in The Washington Post on the morning of the thirty-first reported that McChrystal was preparing to ask for a significant increase in troop levels in Afghanistan, a real help as I prepared to spend twenty-four hours interacting with the White House staff.

  I climbed aboard my airplane late in the afternoon on the first and flew to Chievres Air Base in Belgium, where I sat down with McChrystal at eight-thirty on Sunday morning for what turned out to be a five-hour meeting. All the other key players were there as well: Mullen, Petraeus (as Central Command commander), Admiral Jim Stavridis (as supreme allied commander, McChrystal’s NATO boss), Michèle Flournoy, Rodriguez, and of course, a number of their staff. We met in a very plain, utilitarian conference room at the air base around a large U-shaped table, thus allowing everyone a view of the PowerPoint slides so essential to all military briefings. The enlisted soldiers keeping the coffee pots full and serving food seemed nervous, probably because of the array of four-star admirals and generals in the room. They seemed oblivious to the short, white-haired guy in a blue blazer with no stars.

  I began the discussion by underscoring the need to keep the entire troop decision process confidential through its conclusion, which needed to be pushed beyond the Afghan elections on August 20—even though that exceeded my sixty-day deadline for McChrystal’s assessment. I said there would be four pressure points associated with any force increase: White House and congressional political opposition, the impact on Iraq, the availability of additional forces and the impact on the already stressed Army and Marine Corps, and the need for additional supplemental funding. I then asked McChrystal eight questions I had prepared on the plane:

  • What was the result of your scrub [review] of the 68,000 U.S. troops already in or on the way to Afghanistan? Did you find any that you deemed not necessary or not a high priority?

  • Did the alternative strategies you evaluated involve a geographic focus or more sequential or gradual timelines?

  • What are the risk trade-offs with a more graduated [slower] timeline?

  • How should we look at possible outcomes of the August 20 election, and what impact would they have on the assessment’s conclusions?

  • What are the political and military risks associated with a larger U.S. footprint?

  • A significant further increase in the number of U.S. troops will mean a significant Americanization of the war. What is the expected impact in Afghanistan, NATO, and among other allies?

  • Why not wait until the authorized 68,000 troops are in place before asking for more?

  • Did your assessment take into account the likely availability of forces?

  We spent most of our time on Stan’s assessment of the situation, and he repeated to us his belief that the situation was “serious and deteriorating,” as he had told me a few weeks earlier. He spoke of Karzai’s deficiencies and those of Afghan governance more broadly throughout the country (with some exceptions), the lack of legitimacy, and massive corruption. We talked about civilian casualties and what he intended to do about that, as well as new rules for treating Afghans with respect. He made clear he intended to focus our military effort, as in the past, in the south and east, but he said he would select something like eighty districts and population centers on which to focus our efforts to provide security for the people, “inkblots” on his map where the circles of security would grow until they began to link up. Partnering with the Afghan security forces was critical, and the size and quality of those forces had to increase and improve. It was clear that counterterrorism operations would continue, as well as special operations aimed at taking Taliban commanders “off the battlefield.” We also talked about greater military engagement and cooperation with the Pakistanis in a new effort to get them to help go after Taliban safe havens on their side of the border. (I did not share my skepticism that this would work; there was no harm in trying.) These issues would frame the debate inside the administration in the months to come. “Stability in Afghanistan is an imperative,” I said. “If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban—or has insufficient capability to counter transnational terrorists—Afghanistan could again become a base for terrorism, with obvious implications for regional stability.”

  McChrystal said that a new campaign strategy was needed, one that focused on protecting the population rather than on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces. He talked a lot about changing the operational culture to interact more closely with the population. He emphasized the urgency of the situation: “I believe the short-term fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the … next 12 months—while Afghan security capacity matures—risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” I thought to myself that he was right about the need to produce a perceptible shift of momentum in the near term; the status quo would lead to failure. I believed we could produce the shift in momentum, b
ut expanding and improving the Afghan forces would take more time.

  We then turned to the issue that everyone there knew had prompted the meeting—the question of more troops. I repeated what I had been saying for a year and a half about the history of foreign armies, the Soviet experience, and my concern about reaching a “tipping point” where the size of our presence and our conduct turned us into “occupiers.” McChrystal was ready for the subject. He knew that his chances of getting more troops were nonexistent without my support, and so my concerns had to be alleviated. He said that the size of the force (or footprint) was less important than what you did with it. In and of itself, this wasn’t an earthshaking insight. Similar debates took place over troop levels in Iraq. But I had viewed Afghanistan for so long through the lens of the Soviets’ experience that his comments had a serious impact on me. If the Afghans could see foreign and Afghan forces working together and providing sustainable protection so they could go about their daily lives and not fear the return of the Taliban, they would not resent their presence. Respect for the Afghans and their customs was critical. He spoke at considerable length on the footprint issue, and when he was finished, while not yet supportive of a big increase in troop numbers, I was at least open to considering it.

  I told McChrystal that I wanted him to wait to submit the assessment until after the Afghan election so he could include at least a preliminary evaluation of its impact. He needed to ensure that the military strategy he presented in his assessment focused explicitly on implementing the broader strategy the president had announced in March: “This will be required to achieve the objectives Obama approved.” I said he should submit the assessment and troop recommendations separately because I expected the former to leak and we had to hold the latter very closely. I wanted people to focus first on the assessment, how things were going, and on strategy. Having troop options on the table at the same time would totally divert the debate to numbers, and the substance of the assessment would be ignored.

  Mullen and I briefed the president on the meeting in the Oval Office on August 4. Biden, Emanuel, and Donilon were also there. We focused on Stan’s assessment and the decision-making process to come. I reminded everyone that the troop increase approved in February had preceded the president’s decisions on strategy in March. McChrystal’s assessment would describe the situation as he saw it and then describe how he would operationally implement the president’s March strategy decisions, including the resources required.

  I repeated now to the president all that I had said to McChrystal. I told the president that Stan would probably need some additional capabilities for training the Afghan army and some additional enablers—ordnance disposal, counter-IED, medevac, helicopters—but “not a huge number and I’ll provide ample justification.” I continued, “I understand your priorities this fall—the heavy lift on health care, energy, the budget. I will not add to your burden.” At the end of 2009, early 2010, I said, we could evaluate where we were, and I could make further recommendations. I understood the need to justify any increase, I told him; I would not put him in the position of having the appearance or the reality of an open-ended commitment. McChrystal believed that, if properly resourced, he could have the situation in a different place in one year, I said, and the Afghan forces able to secure key population centers within three years.

  The president said that he wanted a choice of real options, including not just troop-intensive counterinsurgency. “I would never do that to you,” I said. “But whatever we do, we will need more trainers for Afghan forces and more enablers—let’s do that in September, and then do a basic review in January—a return to ‘first principles.’ ” I went on to say that combat units wouldn’t be ready to deploy before spring anyway, and the real decision was whether to add more combat units or not. In January, we should have a pretty good picture of the effect of the election, whether we could accelerate the recruitment and training of the Afghan army and police, and progress with reintegration of former Taliban fighters.

  Obama asked if he had to spend $100 billion a year in Afghanistan. If it was necessary for the security of the United States, he said he would do so. But was that necessary to keep al Qaeda down? Were there alternatives? What about Pakistan? Biden weighed in with his view of the level of congressional opposition to any further increase in troop levels, saying, “The Democrats hate the idea, and the Republicans will just say, ‘You’re on your own.’ ” Nothing new there. Emanuel said that the Hill had voted for the war supplemental the preceding May only as a favor to the president, and they wouldn’t do it now. The president concluded by asking for “robust options” and saying that he would look at McChrystal’s assessment and that we would look deeper at the end of the year or soon afterward into whether we were on the right path. At the end of the session, I said that we would reevaluate progress regularly, something not done in Iraq or Vietnam. The president responded that while North Vietnam had never attacked the United States, there were still points during the war when the basic approach should have been questioned: “I just don’t want McChrystal to come in determined to stay on the same path if it’s not working.” Mullen had the last word: if that was the case, he said, “I would tell you to stop.”

  That discussion presaged many of the debates we would have in the months to come. I thought the president had been thoughtful and balanced, sensible in his comments and questions. He was aware of the politics but, unlike Biden and Emanuel, not driven by them. The meeting took place on the president’s forty-eighth birthday. At Leon Panetta’s suggestion, I asked Obama whether he wanted a billion-dollar presidential helicopter or an F-22 for his present. He demurred.

  A week and a half later I asked Cartwright whether McChrystal could include an option that would be limited to trainers for the Afghans and enablers, in numbers up to about 7,500 troops. We could then push off a decision on combat forces until January inasmuch as we couldn’t deliver them until late spring anyway. In short, as of mid-August, I continued to be focused on a modest increase in troops in the fall and possibly more only after the first of the year, depending on a thorough evaluation of the situation.

  Meanwhile Holbrooke was doing his best to bring about the defeat of Karzai in the August 20 elections. Richard had spoken for months about the need for creating a “level playing field” for all presidential candidates in Afghanistan, including ensuring that they all had security, access to independent media, and transportation to campaign around the country. What he really wanted was to have enough credible candidates running to deny Karzai a majority in the election, thus forcing a runoff in which he could be defeated. Unlike the 2004 Afghan presidential election, when the United States offered Karzai unqualified support, in the months leading up to the 2009 election our public position was one of neutrality among the candidates. But Holbrooke and U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry were encouraging the other candidates, meeting and being photographed with them, attending their rallies, and making suggestions. Karzai might not be a great president, I figured, but he sure as hell knew what was going on in his own capital and was well aware of the American efforts to unseat him. Indeed, as Peter Lavoy, the senior intelligence officer briefing the NSC, later told us, Karzai saw the United States—the Obama administration—walking away from him and turned to the warlords and made deals to get reelected.

  The election outcome was deeply marred by security problems but also large-scale fraud perpetrated by Karzai. He failed to get the magic 50 percent in the first round but still ended up with a second term. It was all ugly: our partner, the president of Afghanistan, was tainted, and our hands were dirty as well. The senior UN representative for Afghanistan, Ambassador Kai Eide, subsequently gave a report on the election to the NATO defense ministers during which he sat next to me. Before speaking publicly, he whispered to me that while he was only going to say that there was blatant foreign interference in the election, he wanted me to know he had in mind specifically the United States and Holbrooke. Our fu
ture dealings with Karzai, always hugely problematic, and his criticisms of us, are at least more understandable in the context of our clumsy and failed putsch.

  For two and a half years, I had warned about the risks of a significant increase in the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, and during that period we had increased from about 21,000 to 68,000 troops. I was torn between my historical perspective, which screamed for caution, and what my commanders insisted was needed for accomplishing the mission they had been given by the president and by me. Three very different commanders—McNeill, McKiernan, and McChrystal—had all asked for more troops. I believed, with Mike Mullen, that the war in Afghanistan had been neglected and underresourced in the Bush administration. But how many troops were too many before reaching the tipping point in terms of Afghan attitudes and support? Embassy polling showed that in 2005 about 80 percent of Afghans saw us as allies and partners; by summer 2009, after nearly eight years of war, that was down to 60 percent.

  As I thought about the tipping point, it seemed to me we had several vulnerabilities with the Afghan population. One was civilian casualties; every incident was a strategic defeat, often caused and always manipulated by the Taliban and then magnified by Karzai. Another was our thoughtless treatment of the Afghans in routine encounters, including U.S. and coalition military vehicles barreling down the roads scattering animals and scaring people. We often disrespected their culture or Islam and failed to cultivate their elders. We collaborated with Afghan officials who were ripping off ordinary citizens. In Kabul and all over the country, we and our coalition partners, as well as nongovernmental organizations, far too routinely decided what development projects to undertake without consulting the Afghans, much less working with or through them on what they wanted and needed. Was it any wonder that Karzai and others complained they had no authority in their own country? Or that even reasonably honest and competent Afghan officials got no respect from their fellow citizens? For all our hand-wringing and hectoring about corruption, we seemed oblivious to how much we were contributing to it, and on a scale that dwarfed the drug trade. Tens of billions of dollars were flooding into Afghanistan from the United States and our partners, and we turned a blind eye or simply were ignorant of how regularly some portion was going to payoffs, bribes, and bank accounts in Dubai. Our own inspectors identified how lousy—or nonexistent—U.S. government controls were. From Karzai on down, Afghans had to shake their heads at our complaints about their corruption when elements of the American government (and almost certainly a number of our closest allies) were paying off them and their relatives as agents and to secure their cooperation. Hillary Clinton and I repeatedly objected to this contradictory behavior by the United States, but to no avail.