These imperatives and others were neatly distilled in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual of 2006, the first revision of Army counterinsurgency doctrine since Field Circular 100-20, a slim low-intensity-conflict manual from 1986 that had survived the systematic purge of everything the Army had learned about counterinsurgency warfare after Vietnam. The new manual Petraeus produced as commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth was downloaded 1.5 million times in the first month following its release via the Web by the Army in December 2006. The University of Chicago Press then released it in book form, which was favorably reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Former lieutenant colonel John A. Nagl, a Petraeus acolyte, wrote in a foreword to the book version that at the start of the Iraq War in 2003, most conventional Army officers knew more about the Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency. But by the time Petraeus assumed command in Afghanistan seven years later, this was no longer true, thanks to many hard-learned lessons in Iraq, Petraeus’s work at Leavenworth in 2006, and success with the counterinsurgency doctrine during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.
While it was certainly true that U.S. forces hadn’t fought a successful counterinsurgency during the first seven or eight years of the war in Afghanistan, due to the focus of troops and resources being in Iraq, McChrystal had been working to implement a counterinsurgency campaign for a year prior to Petraeus’s arrival. And many of the U.S. forces serving in Afghanistan—especially the officers commanding units—had prior counterinsurgency experience in Afghanistan or Iraq. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency guidance bore some parallels to the guidance he’d issued in Iraq in 2007, but it had also been modified to reflect the challenges in Afghanistan.
Petraeus first issued the points on July 27, only to uncharacteristically pull the document back almost immediately. When he reissued it five days later, he explained that it was his first update, slightly revised based on feedback he had received from “Afghan partners,” “elders” and Special Forces teams in Herat Province’s Zerkoh Valley. “I welcome further feedback,” Petraeus wrote. Most of the changes softened the document’s tough stand on corruption by stressing the need to cooperate with NATO’s Afghan partners.
HELP CONFRONT THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY. The Taliban are not the only enemy of the people. The people are also threatened by inadequate governance, corruption, and abuse of power—recruiters for the Taliban. President Karzai has forthrightly committed to combat these threats. Work with our Afghan partners to help turn his words into reality and to help our partners protect the people from malign actors as well as from terrorists.
Only two words were added to the earlier release: “Help” in front of “confront the culture of impunity”—meaning that this was something U.S. forces could do only in partnership with the Afghans—and “forthrightly,” to highlight Karzai’s commitment to combating corruption. Petraeus hoped to see Karzai assume a leadership role in that important effort.
BE A GOOD GUEST. Treat the Afghan people and their property with respect. Think about how we drive, how we patrol, how we relate to people, and how we help the community. View our actions through the eyes of the Afghans and, together with our partners, consult with elders before pursuing new initiatives and operations.
This final sentence was refined from the earlier version, which had included two sentences that read: “View your actions through the eyes of the Afghans. Alienating Afghan civilians sows the seeds of our defeat.”
PETRAEUS WASTED LITTLE TIME implementing the Afghan Local Police program he’d won approval for shortly after his arrival in July. His enthusiasm was based in part on a paper written by Special Forces major Jim Gant, entitled One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan. Petraeus made it required reading for leaders in Afghanistan. If you believed what Gant was saying, as Petraeus did, you could believe that success in Afghanistan was possible, that Afghan hearts and minds could, indeed, be won.
The son of a middle school principal in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Gant sported tattoos of Achilles and Chinese characters that say FEAR NO MAN on his right arm. He carried three times as much ammunition as he needed for a mission and had been called “Lawrence of Afghanistan.” Not all of his peers and superiors thought so highly of him, but “Lawrence of Iraq” (a title Petraeus had earned for his four years there) embraced Gant’s ideas.
Gant’s story in Afghanistan began with a six-man Special Forces team, Operational Detachment Alpha 316, part of the Army’s 3rd Special Forces Group, in Kunar and Helmand provinces in 2003 and 2004. Gant and his cohort dropped out of a helicopter in Kunar, in northeast Afghanistan on the Pakistan border, in the middle of the night with a mission to kill the Taliban and other “anti-coalition” fighters. After fighting their way out of an ambush by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), they ended up in a village called Mangwal, whose tribe was led by a malik (chief) named Noorafzhal. Gant spent hours with him, explaining what this small band of Americans was doing there to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. When Noorafzhal explained to the American that he was involved in a dispute with a subtribe that had taken land that did not belong to them, Gant said his team, which had grown to eight, would fight with the malik’s eight village warriors if necessary. “With that, a relationship was born,” Gant writes. “We talked for hours, discussing what next steps to take. Then, out of the blue, the malik leaned over and told my interpreter to tell me that he had not been completely honest, that he had not eight, but 80 warriors.” Later, after more talk and more tea, the malik looked Gant in the eye and said, “‘Commander Jim, I have 800 warriors and they are at your disposal. You only need to ask and they will be yours.’”
Afghan villagers in some areas would resist any form of outside interference, Gant realized, be it from a foreign power or the central government in Kabul. The only form of governance that mattered was tribal. “We saw firsthand the depth and power of the existing (though initially invisible to us) tribal defense system,” Gant wrote, referring to the tribal army he found at his disposal. “And we grasped the absolute necessity of working with and bonding with the tribal leader—man-to-man, warrior-to-warrior.”
Gant’s conclusion: “The enemy thinks he can wait us out. However, we can turn time into an ally if we engage and partner with the tribes and, most importantly, demonstrate our commitment to them. Once they believe that we share the same objectives and are not leaving, they will support us and fight alongside us.” It was a common theme in counterinsurgency theory, and for Petraeus, who also believed that all counterinsurgency operations were local, understanding politics at the tribal level was key for a successful transition.
AFTER WEST POINT, Petraeus’s interest in counterinsurgency only deepened when, as a newlywed and newly minted 2nd lieutenant, he headed to Vicenza, Italy. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team. In those days of the “hollow Army,” still recovering from Vietnam, the 509th was an elite unit, the first choice of the top-ranking graduates from West Point. It fell under the headquarters at the Southern European Task Force, whose primary mission was to oversee the security and transfer in wartime of tactical nuclear weapons based in Italy, Greece and Turkey, and that focus meant that the higher headquarters generally left the 509th to its own devices. Many of the unit’s captains and above had Vietnam combat experience. One of them was a “Plankholder cadre” member of the 1/75th Rangers, a major named Keith Nightingale. Petraeus admired his irreverent, cocky spirit. Nightingale would become a mentor for life.
“The first time I met him, I knew he was different and unique,” said Nightingale, who later would help develop what evolved into the Joint Special Operations Command. He would also play a key role in planning the ill-fated Iran Hostage Rescue Mission that ended when aircraft failed in the desert en route to Tehran in April 1980. “I said in an evaluation report that this man has the potential to be the chief of staff of the Army. The colonel running
our higher headquarters said, ‘You can’t say this.’ But I said, ‘It’s true,’” Nightingale recalled. “He already was a cut above everybody else.” His skills were such that, even as a young lieutenant, he ran certain aspects of the unit during the tenure of a very hands-off battalion commander. Nightingale liked to think that he taught Petraeus to never take no for an answer—and to understand that there’s an exception to every rule.
The 509th presented Petraeus with ample opportunity to train with NATO forces, and he did so in Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Turkey. On a training mission in France to compete for French Jump Wings, he learned about Marcel Bigeard, a legendary French general and paratrooper who had been captured during the siege of Dien Bien Phu, in Vietnam. Upon Bigeard’s release, he went back to France, regrouped with his men and, employing the lessons they had learned fighting the Viet Minh, attempted to pacify the Casbah in Algeria. Bigeard was the inspiration for Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Raspeguy in Jean Larteguy’s 1963 novel The Centurions. Petraeus read the book as a captain and admired what it had to say about leadership and the cohesion of successful fighting units. Petraeus later wrote to Bigeard, beginning a correspondence that would continue intermittently until Bigeard’s death in the summer of 2010, three weeks after Petraeus took command in Afghanistan. By then Bigeard had acknowledged Petraeus’s accomplishment in Iraq and addressed him as a peer.
After his tour in Italy, Petraeus attended the Armor Officer Advanced Course, following which he was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He and McChrystal served briefly together there as captains. Both had their eye on assignments with the elite 1st Ranger Battalion, a unit formed in the mid-1970s as part of a chief of staff of the Army initiative implemented by Nightingale and others to build a unit of exceptionally high standards and training readiness. Petraeus so distinguished himself in the 24th as a company commander that he was selected to serve as the aide-de-camp to the incoming division commander, then–Major General Jack Galvin, who would become his most important mentor.
Galvin was an intellectual force in the American military who, like Knowlton, came from Massachusetts and was an archetypal soldier-scholar. Commissioned in the infantry from West Point in 1954, Galvin came of age in Vietnam and was among a key group of officers who helped rebuild the Army in the 1980s. When Galvin arrived at Fort Stewart and assumed command of the 24th Infantry Division, he found that Petraeus had managed to anticipate all of the first tasks Galvin would need done—and accomplished them in advance. Petraeus’s chagrin over giving up a battalion operations job in the division, however, was not completely muted.
Sensing this, Galvin assured Petraeus that the insights he would gain would contribute to his personal development like no other assignment. Galvin took Petraeus on trips throughout the United States as he oversaw division training—to include maneuver exercises at Eglin Air Force Base, in Florida and Fort Bliss, Texas, as well as a major international exercise called “Bright Star” in Egypt, which was designed as preparation for a potential ground war should the Soviets invade Iran. In all, Galvin and Petraeus had thirty-five trips together in twelve months. “Help me expand my impact,” Galvin instructed Petraeus, expecting the young officer to be not just his eyes and ears but a surrogate voice as well. In turn, Petraeus inspired Galvin, according to Galvin’s unpublished memoirs and their exchange of letters. Galvin considered him an intellectual “sounding board” with “sharp and often original perspectives.” Galvin’s associates thought Petraeus was a “bit of a tonic” and source of energy for the senior officer. Petraeus took notes as Galvin schooled the division’s senior officers in the importance of military history, the concept of “chain training,” the conduct of heavy/light force operations and soldier-scholar skills. They even discussed the history of aides-de-camp, which Galvin, slightly tongue in cheek, said he thought was “glorious.”
Galvin also schooled Petraeus on a concept he called “the big M,” which stood for individual mystique or mythology. “‘When the going gets hard, we need a leader to pull us together,’” he remembered telling Petraeus. “‘Through your mythology, people create you. Set the example. It doesn’t have to be flamboyant, like Patton and his pistols always seen driving to the front. Ridgway and his grenades. Grant with his cigar. They want you to be bigger than you are, so they magnify you. They laud you to everyone. Live up to it all with the highest standards of integrity. You become part of a legend.’”
Galvin gave Petraeus a signed print of Remington’s Stampede as a farewell gift to symbolize the chaos surrounding the transformation of the under-strength 24th Infantry Division into a trained and ready mechanized infantry unit that became part of the nation’s new Rapid Deployment Force. The print—and its symbolism—would accompany Petraeus throughout his career.
Galvin was also instrumental in convincing Petraeus to go to graduate school, which took Petraeus, his wife and their first baby, Anne, to Princeton in the fall of 1984, where he began work on a master’s degree—and ultimately a Ph.D.—at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. There, Petraeus sought out the tutelage and mentorship of Professor Richard Ullman, known for his common sense and realistic liberalism in foreign policy. He would push Petraeus intellectually. During work on his doctoral dissertation, which he completed in 1987, Petraeus taught at West Point’s Social Sciences department. His son, Stephen, was born during this academic hiatus, just miles from his father’s birthplace, and four years after the birth of the Petraeuses’ daughter, Anne, who was born during the general’s year at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
Petraeus’s growing interest in Vietnam—the subject of his doctoral research—and counterinsurgency were evident in a letter he wrote to Galvin in August 1985 from West Point. “I think the next big debate will be about counterinsurgency operations—whether the U.S. should get involved in them, and if so, how,” he wrote. “One of the sub-debates will undoubtedly be over whether the Army is capable of developing forces suited for counterinsurgency operations.”
The following summer, Galvin invited him to spend time with him at the Southern Command headquarters, in Panama, which Galvin led as a newly promoted four-star general. Petraeus was thrilled and offered some research prospects—to compare and contrast the differences between the intervention in Vietnam and the U.S. military’s activities in Central America, or perhaps a look at the efforts of military and civilian officials to coordinate their activities. “These efforts,” Petraeus observed, “seem a good example of political-military integration, something that, as you know, many in the military would rather avoid, preferring instead to worry only about ‘purely military matters’ and wanting to be left alone in pursuing them. Those instincts are, of course, contrary to what must be done in fighting low intensity conflict. Civil-military integration efforts also seem to be an example of success in spite of the system, rather than because of it.”
The theater for which Galvin’s Southern Command was responsible encompassed Central and South America, and it was defined by multiple Communist insurgencies, which Petraeus found fascinating. He traveled with Galvin throughout Panama and to Honduras and El Salvador, where U.S. trainers were helping the Salvadoran army defeat Communist guerrillas. Although brief, the time was formative for Petraeus, who had known only garrison and field training to that point. “This has been a tremendous experience,” Petraeus wrote to a colleague from Princeton in July 1986. “When I showed up at the house [of the Mil Group Commander in El Salvador]—his wife greeted me, ushered me to the guest wing . . . and handed me a loaded MP-5 submachine gun to keep me company. . . . I [later] asked a Salvadoran soldier if he’d seen much combat. ‘Not much,’ he said, matter-of-factly; ‘I’ve only been in about 85 firefights.’”
At the end of the summer, Galvin sent a note to the head of the Social Sciences department, thanking him for releasing his favorite protégé: �
��Dave did not try to wear my stars while here, but rather helped me to wear them more effectively. I told him to help and expand my impact and he did that—without ruffling feathers. In fact, his enthusiasm, dedication, and pleasant personality proved infectious to others in the command group.”
Petraeus sent a note to Galvin from West Point upon his return in July 1986. “To really make an impact on Army thinking about small wars,” Petraeus reflected, “you need to institutionalize your ideas. That requires, of course, that you get your ideas/concepts into doctrinal manuals.” Petraeus proposed that Galvin encourage his staff to produce a new version of a field circular on low-intensity conflict. He thought it could evolve into a replacement for a “rather poor” field manual on the subject drafted in the early eighties. A quality field manual on this type of warfare, he said, presciently, “could be very valuable in coming years.”
Petraeus continued to immerse himself in the study of Vietnam and low-intensity conflict, reflecting in the same letter to Galvin on a particular book that had captured his interests, Andrew Krepinevich’s The Army and Vietnam. In it, Krepinevich argued that the Army had not gotten its campaign strategy right, that it had focused too much on the “big war”—large units conducting search-and-destroy operations—when it should have put more emphasis on the “smaller war”: small elements living with and securing the people and helping develop host-nation capacity to secure and govern themselves. Petraeus thought Krepinevich’s book was “the best there is” and later used it to inform the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. “Maybe we should marry Andy’s book and Harry Summers’ On Strategy (which, as you know, criticizes our preoccupation with the insurgency),” he wrote to Galvin. “The two together might have provided a solution—though I occasionally wonder if there was anything we could have done to ‘win’ in Vietnam given the obvious domestic unwillingness to stay for the long haul and given the absence of a ‘Vietnamese Duarte,’” Petraeus concluded, referring to José Napoleón Duarte, the Salvadoran leader with whom the American military successfully worked to demobilize and reintegrate the guerrillas there.
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