by Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post, where he has worked for 39 years. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal, and later for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored or coauthored eleven #1 national nonfiction bestsellers. He has two daughters, Tali and Diana, and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, writer Elsa Walsh.
“To quote a famous American,” President Barack H. Obama told the author in an interview on July 10, 2010, “‘War is hell.’ And once the dogs of war are unleashed, you don’t know where it’s going to lead.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden opposed General McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, saying that progress in Afghanistan depended on reducing corruption. “If the government’s a criminal syndicate a year from now, how will troops make a difference?”
James L. Jones, national security adviser, thought the Afghan War was central to international stability. “If we don’t succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, endorsed the military’s position during the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review. “If we don’t come with an approach close to this, we shouldn’t even try, because we’ll just be wasting time, lives and money,” she said.
Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense, said during an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review session, “We should have a plan that says 18 to 24 months. We will begin reducing our forces, thinning them out.” Obama seized on this statement to set July 2011 as the date they would begin reducing U.S. forces.
Rahm I. Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, saw the Afghanistan War as “political flypaper” and thought the military was boxing Obama in with public statements. “It’s bullshit that between the chairman [Admiral Mullen] and Petraeus, everybody’s come out and publicly endorsed the notion of more troops. The president hasn’t even had a chance!”
Robert L. Gibbs, White House press secretary, said the July 2011 date Obama had announced to start drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan was etched in stone, and he had the chisel to prove it.
David M. Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, was wary of Hillary Clinton, Obama’s chief rival in the presidential campaign. When Obama said he was considering her for a top cabinet post, Axelrod asked, “How could you trust Hillary?”
Thomas E. Donilon (far right), the deputy national security adviser, wanted to make sure the military understood and carried out the president’s specific orders, so he worked with Obama to develop a six-page “terms sheet” detailing Obama’s final orders.
John O. Brennan, the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism, questioned ambitious plans for Afghanistan. “If you’re talking about a completely uncorrupt government that delivers services to all of its people, that end state won’t be achieved in my lifetime. That’s why using terminology like ‘success,’ like ‘victory’ and ‘win’ complicates our task.”
Army Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, Obama’s coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the president he didn’t have to send 30,000 more troops because there were too many risks with the new strategy. “It still smells to me like a gamble,” he said. “You shouldn’t base this on sort of an unexpected windfall of luck.”
Bruce O. Riedel, a former CIA analyst, was brought in to lead the early 2009 review of the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. He told the president that Pakistan was the central problem and al Qaeda remained as dangerous as it had been on September 10, 2001.
Benjamin Rhodes (left), deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, drafted the president’s Afghanistan speeches. Denis Mc-Donough (right), a former Obama campaign aide who became chief of staff of the National Security Council in October 2009, was one of the president’s most trusted advisers and attempted to enforce message discipline.
Mark W. Lippert, a key Obama foreign policy aide from Obama’s Senate days, became National Security Council chief of staff. He left the White House after Jim Jones, the national security adviser, complained Lippert was trying to undermine him.
Antony J. Blinken, the vice president’s national security adviser, was skeptical that the U.S. could succeed in Afghanistan and helped design an alternative to the military’s strategy. “I don’t know if they can ever pull this off,” he said while visiting the war zone in early 2009. “How do you leave?”
Dennis C. Blair, who served as director of national intelligence until Obama fired him in May 2010, lacked the authority to challenge the CIA. “I think the CIA is fundamentally an organization that’s like a really finely trained, not very smart, dangerous animal that needs to be controlled very closely by adults,” he said.
Army General David H. Petraeus served as the commander of Central Command and then replaced General McChrystal as the Afghanistan commander. He said privately, “I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. . . . This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
Navy Admiral Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a tireless advocate for McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops. When asked what he would do if McChrystal failed, Mullen said, “Then I’ve got to leave because I put him there.”
Marine Corps General James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drafted a 20,000-troop option requested by Vice President Biden. When Chairman Mullen refused to provide it to the White House, Cartwright said, “I’m just not in the business of withholding options. I have an oath, and when asked for advice I’m going to provide it.
In July 2008, then Senator Obama and General Petraeus, then Iraq commander, ride together in a helicopter there. Obama recalled telling Petraeus, “I expect you, as the commander of our forces in Iraq, to ask for everything you need and more to ensure your success. That’s what you owe the troops who are under your command. My job, then, which in some ways is more difficult, is I’ve got to choose. Because I don’t have infinite resources.”
Army General Stanley A. McChrystal got 30,000 of the 40,000 troops he requested, but Obama later fired him because of derogatory comments the general and his staff made about civilian leadership in a controversial June 2010 Rolling Stone magazine article.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, told others that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he has asked for it. So just do it. Do what they said.” He said the decision should have been made in a week.
Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral who was director of national intelligence in the Bush administration, told President-elect Obama that sensitive intelligence was good on targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “They talk, we listen,” he said. “They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally.”
Michael V. Hayden, a retired Air Force general and outgoing director of the CIA, warned that drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan were not a long-term solution. “Unless you’re prepared to do this forever,” he told chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, “you have to change the facts on the ground.”
Richard C. Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, never made a personal connection with the president. A pessimistic Holbrooke concluded on the eve of Obama’s decision to add 30,000 troops, “It can’t work.”
Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general who was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, questioned a troop increase, alienating the military hierarchy.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) was considered an unreliable partner by U.S. officials. “He’s on his meds, he’s off his meds,” U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry said. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari (right) told the CIA to aggressively attack top al Qaeda leaders in his country. “Kill the seniors,” he said. “Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”
General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of staff of the Pakistani army
, refused to take on all of the extremist Islamic groups in his country. Kayani had other priorities. “I’ll be the first to admit, I’m India-centric,” he said.
Senator Lindsey O. Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, advised General Petraeus on how to argue for more troops in Afghanistan. “If there is a number in your mind below which we can’t succeed,” he said, “don’t ever create a scenario where that thought is lost. . . . One thing you’ve got to say, ‘This is the fail-safe line right here.’”
The October 9, 2009, session of the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review, held in the White House Situation Room. Clockwise from President Obama: Retired General Jim Jones; Hillary Clinton; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice; retired Admiral Dennis Blair; Leon Panetta; Richard Holbrooke; General David Petraeus; Tom Donilon; Rahm Emanuel; Admiral Mike Mullen; Vice President Joe Biden. Pictured on the video screens are retired General Karl Eikenberry and General Stanley McChrystal (left) and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson (right).
“We can absorb a terrorist attack,” President Obama told the author. “We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, that ever took place on our soil, we absorbed it and we are stronger. . . . A potential game changer would be a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists, blowing up a major American city.”