I flew to Sangin in northern Helmand province, scene of some of the toughest fighting of the Afghan War. At Forward Operating Base Sabit Qadam, I met with Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Twenty-nine Marines had been killed and 175 wounded in five months clearing Sangin, the heaviest losses of any battalion in the entire war. Accompanying me was my new senior military assistant, Marine Lieutenant General John Kelly. Kelly’s son Robert had been one of those twenty-nine killed. Kelly met privately with the Marines of his son’s platoon, who gave him a picture of Robert taken a few hours before he was killed and signed by all the Marines in the platoon.
The commanders in Sangin expected a resurgence of violence during the summer. I told the press, “The Taliban will try to take back much of what they have lost, and that in many respects will be the acid test.” Rodriguez told reporters accompanying me, “We think they’ll be returning this spring to a significantly different environment than when they left last year.” I told the Marines at Sabit Qadam that they had written “in sweat and blood” a new chapter in the Marine Corps’ roll of honor. I added, “Every day I monitor how you are doing. And every day you return to your base without a loss, I say a little prayer. I say a prayer on the other days as well.”
During the worst of the battalion’s fight in Sangin, when they were taking such significant casualties, some in the Pentagon had suggested the unit be pulled out of the line. Commanders in the field strongly recommended against it, and I had deferred to their judgment. I thought to myself at Sabat Qadam that pulling them out would possibly have been one of my worst mistakes as secretary of defense. These Marines had been hit hard, very hard. But despite their terrible losses, they were very proud they had succeeded where so many others had failed. And justifiably so.
My last troop visit on the trip was to Combat Outpost Kowall, just north of Kandahar. The area had long been a Taliban stronghold. I walked a few hundred yards to a nearby village to meet with the elders and take a look at the Afghan Local Police unit there. The ALP, mentioned previously, was an initiative pushed by Petraeus that recruited men from local villages and trained them as a local security force to keep the Taliban away. There were farm animals around and, more significantly, lots of children and women out and about, unique in my visits to rural Afghanistan. There were a number of troops lining the road about twenty-five yards apart, and again, for the first time in my experience, about half were Afghans. The village council greeted me, and I met with about twenty of the ALP. I was encouraged when told by the village council that the ALP had worked so well, other nearby villages were starting to participate.
After leaving Kowall, I told the press with me that I was very encouraged and felt that “the pieces were coming together.” “The closer you get to the fight, the better it looks.” I thought but didn’t say that I only wished some of the skeptics working in the White House and the NSS would get a little closer to the fight and be a little less reliant on Washington-based intelligence assessments and press reports.
After the killing of Bin Laden, there was a frenzy of commentary about whether that success would allow us to get out of Afghanistan faster, and if not, why not. There were several Principals Committee meetings on issues relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan in April, but the decisive discussion about how many troops to withdraw and at what pace was not to occur until June.
I made my twelfth and final visit to Afghanistan in early June. Support for the war was steadily dropping at home. On May 26, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had given a speech in which she said Americans had done our job to help the Afghans, and “it is time to come home.” That posture wasn’t new for her, but twenty-six Republicans joining most House Democrats in voting for an amendment calling for an exit strategy and accelerated withdrawal was. The measure failed by 215–204. One of my goals during this last trip was to make the case, through the press accompanying me, for a gradual drawdown of troops, so as to not jeopardize the troops’ hard-won gains. I warned Karzai how fragile support for the war was in Washington and mentioned his “constant criticism.”
The main purpose of the visit, though, was to say thanks and good-bye to the troops. I visited five different forward bases over two days, including spending the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, with units of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. I shook hands and had photos taken with some 2,500 soldiers and Marines. Choking back tears, at the end of each visit I said the same thing:
More than anybody except the president, I’m responsible for you being here. I’m the person who signed the deployment papers that got you here, and that weighs on me every day. I feel your hardship and your sacrifice and your burden, and that of your families, more than you can possibly know. You are, I believe, the best our country has to offer. My admiration and affection for you is limitless, and each of you will be in my thoughts and prayers every day for the rest of my life.
I participated in the first White House session on drawdowns by videoconference. It was very discouraging. Briefers talked about the weakness of the Afghan central government, the poor performance of the Karzai government, the dependence of the Afghan forces on ISAF, and the lack of progress on reconciliation. To my chagrin, both Panetta and Clapper said that another year or two of effort still would not lead to a satisfactory outcome. Petraeus was recommending that the final elements of the surge be withdrawn in December 2012. Biden said the president should withdraw 15,000 troops by the end of 2011 and the remaining 15,000 of the surge by April 2012 or July at the latest, before the next “fighting season.”
I responded on the video screen by asking whether the strategy was to get out of Afghanistan at all costs or to achieve some level of success for the president and the country. I said the critics were too focused on Karzai and the central government, that the situation was far better than it had been a year earlier. The war was not open-ended, I said. The surge would end in 2012, and we faced a deadline of 2014.
Donilon was so concerned that Biden had convinced the president to withdraw the entire surge by April or July 2012 that he helped me get a private session with Obama a few days after my return from Afghanistan. I started with my bottom line: I recommended he announce a drawdown of 5,000 between July and December 2011 and the return of all surge troops by the end of summer 2012—late September. This would, I said, be consistent with his decision to surge for between eighteen and twenty-four months. I said the full surge had been in place only since late summer 2010—just nine months. I said the strategy was working and that you couldn’t generalize across the entire country. A quarter of the Afghan population was under Afghan security, and our troops had a much more positive view of the Afghan army than did intelligence assessments. Kabul was now safer than Baghdad, and the Afghans had primary security responsibility there. Karzai was a challenge, I said, but we had a new start with Ryan Crocker as ambassador, and in any event, we had successfully managed around Karzai when necessary. The coalition was strong, our costs were declining sharply—from $40 billion in FY2012 to $25–$30 billion in FY2013. This most certainly was not an endless war. We needed to retain our confidence, act in a measured way. Afghanistan would be messy, just as Iraq still was, but the commanders in the field, many journalists, and NATO leaders believed we were achieving success. “The more time you spend in Afghanistan,” I told the president, “the closer to the front you get, the more optimistic people are.”
I then tackled Biden’s proposal to withdraw all surge forces by April 2012. I reminded Obama that the vice president had never accepted the 2009 decision, had never thought about the consequences if his approach failed. I said if Obama were to announce the withdrawal of all 30,000 surge troops by April, he would signal to the Afghans, the Taliban, the Pakistanis, the allies, and the world that the United States had concluded it could not be successful and was pulling the plug nine months into the surge. I continued that if he opted for April or even July, the entire force would be focused on withdrawing, on choosing which areas to leave e
xposed, on defense, and on meeting the deadline. The surge effort would largely be over before the first soldier came out. I reminded him that the logistics were complicated and that we would be looking at pulling 40,000 to 50,000 troops out of Iraq by December, another 15,000 from Afghanistan by then as well, and another 15,000 by April. I said I thought the troops would feel betrayed by such a decision: “After all their losses, they are convinced they are winning and thus would consider their sacrifices in vain.” Confidence and morale were high, I said, but a precipitous withdrawal of the surge troops would lead them to believe that their successes were neither understood nor appreciated. “I know you want to end this war,” I told him, “but how you end it is of critical importance. To pull the entire surge out before the end of summer would be a tragic mistake.”
Biden was relentless during those few days in pushing his view and in attacking the integrity of the senior military leadership. A White House insider told me he was telling the president, They’ll screw you every time. Biden was said to be pushing Donilon really hard, accusing him of being “too fucking even-handed.” I considered that a high compliment for a national security adviser. Tom continued to be deeply suspicious of the military, but he wanted to do what was in the best interests of the president and the country. His willingness and courage to challenge both Obama and Biden when he thought they were mistaken was a great service, including to them.
The president met with the team on June 17. I repeated most of what I had told him privately. Clinton argued forcefully that withdrawing the surge by April or July 2012 would signal we were abandoning Afghanistan. It would, she said, shock the Afghans, encourage the Taliban, and encourage ordinary Afghans to hedge their bets. We would have to cede control of some areas, and it would take all the pressure off the Taliban to seek a political solution. She recommended withdrawing 8,000 troops by December 2011, with the rest of the surge coming out by December 2012, the “pace and structure … linked to political negotiations.” We had to leverage the drawdown, she said, to pressure both the Taliban and the Afghan government. At the end, the president said he wasn’t sure we needed the surge for another fighting season, especially since we would still have nearly 70,000 troops there. He would ponder on it.
The decisive meeting was on June 21, nine days before I stepped down. The president walked into the Situation Room, sat down, and declared that he intended to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of December and the remaining 20,000 of the surge by July 2012. “You’re welcome to try to change my mind,” he said. Petraeus and Mullen described the risks associated with that timetable. I said that a July completion of the surge withdrawal meant the surge troops would have no 2012 summer fighting season at all since the planning for their withdrawal would pull them out of the line in April and May. The vice president argued strongly for July—“though I prefer earlier”—because the fighting season would still be under way in September and therefore finishing the surge then would be illogical. (I didn’t ask what that would make a July withdrawal.)
Hillary said with conviction that the entire State Department team preferred December but she could live with September because I had suggested it. (I knew Obama wouldn’t agree to Petraeus’s proposed December timeline; at least late September would get us through much of the fighting season.) Panetta said that CIA’s analysts unanimously agreed the surge troops should stay until then. Leon then put on his experienced “Washington hand” hat and told Obama that “speaking politically,” all of Defense, State, and CIA were recommending September or later. “Do you really want to go forward with July against all that?” The president then went around the room. Clinton, Mullen, Petraeus, Panetta, Donilon, McDonough, and I all supported the end of September. Biden, Blinken, Lute, Rhodes, and Brennan supported July or earlier. Not one person outside the White House favored a withdrawal by July or earlier.
The president decided to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of December 2011 and the remainder of the surge by the end of summer 2012. He turned to me, Hillary, Mullen, and Petraeus and asked, “If I decide this, will you support it publicly?” All but Petraeus said yes. He said that he had a confirmation hearing for CIA director in two days and that he was certain he would be asked his professional military judgment about the decision. He intended to say that the scheduled withdrawal was “more aggressive” than he liked. The president said that was okay and in fact would be helpful. But he then asked Dave, Will you say it can succeed? How can you have confidence the plan will succeed if I decided December but not September? Dave got argumentative with Obama at that point, and I came within a whisker of telling him to shut up. He had gotten most of what he wanted, and I believed we had avoided a much worse outcome.
The next day the president announced his decisions. He spoke encouragingly of the progress of the war:
Thanks to our extraordinary men and women in uniform, our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners, we are meeting our goals.… We’re starting this drawdown from a position of strength.… The goal that we seek is achievable and can be expressed simply: No safe haven from which Al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland or our allies.… Tonight we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.… And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.… America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.
Eight days later I resigned as secretary of defense. My first fight as secretary had been over Iraq. My last was over Afghanistan. My entire tenure was framed by war. I had served longer than all but four of my predecessors and had been at war every single day. It was time to go home. My wars were finally over.
CHAPTER 15
Reflections
Throughout my four and a half years as secretary of defense, I was treated by Presidents Bush and Obama with consistent generosity, trust, and confidence. They both gave me the opportunity and honor of a lifetime in serving as secretary. With only a few exceptions, members of Congress—both Republicans and Democrats—were respectful and gracious toward me, both privately and publicly. Overall, the press coverage of me and my actions was substantive, thoughtful, and by Washington standards, positive and even gentle. In both administrations, I liked—and enjoyed—nearly everyone I worked with at the White House, the National Security Council, other departments and agencies, and above all, the Department of Defense. Treated better for longer than almost anyone in a senior position I could remember during the eight presidencies in which I served, why did I feel I was constantly at war with everybody, as I have detailed in these pages? Why was I so often so angry? Why did I so dislike being back in government and in Washington?
It was because, despite everyone being “nice,” getting anything of consequence done was so damnably difficult even in the midst of two wars. From the bureaucratic inertia and complexity of the Pentagon to internal conflicts within the executive branch, the partisan abyss in Congress on every issue from budgets to the wars, the single-minded parochial self-interest of so many individual members of Congress, and the magnetic pull exercised by the White House and the NSS, especially in the Obama administration, to bring everything under their control and micromanagement, all made every issue a source of conflict and stress—far more so than when I had been in government before, including as director of central intelligence. I was more than happy to fight these fights, especially on behalf of the troops and the success of their mission; at times, I relished the prospect. But over time, the broad dysfunction in Washington wore me down, especially as I tried to maintain a public posture of nonpartisan calm, reason, and conciliation.
I have described many of these conflicts in these pages. I have tried to be honest about where I think I fell short, and I have tried to be fair in describing the actions and motivations of others. I am confident some, if not many, will feel that I have further fallen short in both respects, especially to the degree I have been critical. So in c
oncluding this very personal memoir, I want to rise above specific issues and reflect on the broader drama under two presidents in which I was a leading member of the cast.
THE WARS
I was brought in to help salvage the war in Iraq and, as it turned out, to do the same in Afghanistan—in short, I was asked to wage two wars, both of them going badly when I reported for duty. When I arrived in Washington, we had already been at war in Afghanistan longer than the United States had been in World War II, and at war in Iraq longer than our participation in the Korean War. Afghanistan would become the nation’s longest foreign war, Iraq the second longest. By the end of 2006, America was sick of war. And so was Congress.
In an earlier time, people would speak of winning or losing wars. The nearly seventy years since World War II have demonstrated vividly that while wars can still be lost (Vietnam, nearly so in Iraq), “winning” has proved difficult (from Korea to the present). In December 2006, my goals in our wars were straightforward and I think relatively modest, but they still seemed nearly unattainable. As I believe I have already made clear, in Iraq, I hoped we could stabilize the country in such a way that when U.S. forces departed, the war there would not be viewed as a strategic defeat for the United States, or as a failure with global consequences; in Afghanistan, I sought only an Afghan government and army that were strong enough to prevent the Taliban from returning to power and al Qaeda from returning to use the country again as a launching pad for terror. These goals were more modest than President Bush’s, especially since I thought establishing democratic rule and effective governance in both countries would take far more time than we had. I believe my minimalist goals were achieved in Iraq and remain within reach in Afghanistan as of this writing.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Page 73