Petraeus described how ISAF forces, fighting alongside Afghan troops, had cleared the Taliban out of its birthplace around Kandahar, and how the Afghan forces were not only greater in size but better in quality. He lauded Lieutenant General Caldwell for leading the effort to train and equip Afghan forces, which he described as “a huge undertaking, and there is nothing easy about it.” He described the growth of the Afghan Local Police “a community watch with AK-47s,” an important addition to the overall campaign that he hoped would spread to seventy districts, each averaging three hundred ALP members. Twenty-seven of those districts, he noted, had been “validated for full operations.
“This program is so important that I have put a conventional U.S. infantry battalion under the operational control of our Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan to augment our Special Forces and increase our ability to support the program’s expansion,” he said, tacitly acknowledging that Flynn had been correct in his belief that conventional forces such as the Top Guns could indeed train Afghans to protect their own villages. The augmentation of the Special Operations Task Force with conventional forces—initially criticized by some—was proving to be an important addition to the Afghan Local Police initiative, enabling the Special Forces to create Afghan Local Police detachments much more rapidly and in many more provinces, a key to defending against Taliban infiltration at the village level. He would later augment the effort with a second conventional infantry battalion, this one from the 82nd Airborne Division.
In reviewing each component of his campaign plan, Petraeus might well have projected his Anaconda strategy slide on the hearing room wall. There were his six lines of operation—protecting the population, disrupting insurgent networks, building the Afghan armed forces, supporting legitimate governance, fostering sustainable development and neutralizing criminal patronage networks. Petraeus told the senators that reintegration of reconcilable insurgents at local levels also remained an important element of his plan, because “we recognize that we and our Afghan partners cannot just kill or capture our way out of an insurgency in Afghanistan.” In recent months, he said, seven hundred Taliban had officially reintegrated with the Afghan government, and another two thousand were in the process of reintegrating.
On the issue of civilian casualties, he pointed out that the recent UN study had concluded that civilian casualties caused by ISAF operations had decreased 20 percent in 2010. But he revealed that he had ordered “a review of our Tactical Directive on the use of force by all levels of our chain of command and with the aircrews of our attack helicopters,” due to the incidents in February that had left him apologizing to Karzai. However challenging his relationship with the Afghan president had been, he gave no hint of it during the hearing. At one point, he paraphrased a remark that Gates had made recently—that sometimes American leaders didn’t listen well enough to Karzai. “What he says is understandable about civilian causalities,” Petraeus said. “We cannot harm the people that we are there to help protect. And we have to protect them from all civilian casualties, not just those at our hands or those of our Afghan partners, but those of the insurgents as well.”
The following week, Petraeus said, Karzai would announce which provinces would be turned over this year to Afghan forces as the transition process, scheduled to run through 2014, officially began. “The shifting of responsibility from ISAF to Afghan forces will be conducted at a pace determined by conditions on the ground,” Petraeus explained, “with assessments provided from the bottom up so that those at operational-command level in Afghanistan can plan the resulting battlefield geometry adjustments with our Afghan partners.” After Petraeus finished reading his opening statement, Levin began by asking whether he supported the beginning of troop reductions in July. Petraeus acknowledged that he was accepting of the plan.
“And why do you support the beginning of reductions this July?” Levin asked.
“If I could come back perhaps to your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, I think it is logical to talk both about getting the job done, as Secretary Gates did with his NATO counterparts, and beginning transition and ‘responsible’—to use President Obama’s term—reductions in forces at a pace determined by conditions on the ground,” Petraeus said. “As my good friend and shipmate General Jim Mattis noted, it undercuts the narrative of the Taliban that we will be there forever, that we’re determined to maintain a presence forever. And it does indeed, as I have told this committee before, send that message of urgency that President Obama sought to transmit on the first of December at West Point in 2009, when he also transmitted a message of enormous additional commitment in the form of thirty thousand additional U.S. forces, more funding for Afghan forces and additional civilians.”
McCain focused on the front-page story in that morning’s Washington Post, saying that most Americans believed the Afghan war wasn’t worth fighting. “Could you respond to that poll and maybe have a few words for the American people about this conflict?” McCain asked. “And you might mention the consequences of failure.”
“Up front, I can understand the frustration,” Petraeus responded, knowing this was an important moment to sustain support for the war among the American people, who ultimately paid the bills and contributed the soldiers.
We have been at this for ten years. We have spent an enormous amount of money. We have sustained very tough losses and difficult, life-changing wounds. I was at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] yesterday seeing some of our troopers whose lives have been changed forever by their service in our country’s uniform in a tough fight. But I think it is important to remember why we are there at such a time. It’s important to remember that that is where 9/11 began. That’s where the plan was made. That’s where the initial training of the attackers took place before they went on to Germany and then to U.S. flight schools. That is where al-Qaeda had its most important sanctuary in the world, and it had it under the Taliban. At that time, of course, the Taliban controlled Kabul and the vast majority of the country. And, indeed, we do see al-Qaeda looking for sanctuaries all the time, frankly.
Petraeus never wavered in his belief in the cause. He saw the conflict, and the broader global war on terror, as an ongoing effort to contain and confront the enemy, much like the Cold War. There was no end date. His refusal to quit inspired his admirers. It drove the war’s skeptics, including the vice president and more than a few national security officials in the West Wing, crazy. In their minds, Petraeus only wanted more troops. In their minds, Petraeus would keep fighting forever.
Senator Graham began his questioning on a personal note. “General Petraeus, how long have you been deployed since 9/11?” he asked. “Do you even know?”
“Well, it’s more than six years, because there was a year in Bosnia, nearly four years in Iraq and then, you know, eight and a half months here, and then it depends on your accounting rules for CENTCOM, I guess, where we spent, I think, 300 days of the first 365 on the road.”
“What keeps you going?” Graham asked.
“Obviously it is the greatest of privileges to serve with our young men and women in uniform. When the president turns to you in the Oval Office and asks you to do something that’s important to our country, there can only be one answer, frankly,” Petraeus said. “I strongly believe that our young men and women in uniform in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere around the world have more than earned the title ‘new greatest generation.’”
After questioning from nine more senators, alternating back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, Levin gaveled the hearing to a close, noting that the cost of an Afghan security force in excess of 300,000 troops was still a “tiny fraction of what the cost is of having our forces in Afghanistan”—$8 to $10 billion per year, versus $80 billion. (Later, Petraeus and Caldwell would undertake an effort to bring the projected annual number down to the $3-to-$4-billion-per-year range.) Finally, Levin noted that Petraeus had provided a h
elpful set of charts to accompany his testimony but had left his name off of them as one of the “inputs.” McChrystal’s name remained. Perhaps it was undue modesty, Levin told the general, but your name belongs on them. Then, addressing Petraeus, he said: “We thank you. You’ve got great staying power.”
The invitation for a Friday meeting with Obama at the White House arrived that afternoon as the press filed generally upbeat news stories about progress in Afghanistan based on Petraeus’s testimony. There was no indication to his team what the meeting would be about, but they hoped the president would discuss choices for Petraeus’s next assignment. He could be told, “Thanks for your service, well done,” or maybe there would be a surprise. Only one member of Petraeus’s inner circle—Colonel Hickman—and Petraeus’s wife, Holly, knew that becoming the director of the CIA was a serious option and that it was what Petraeus wanted to do.
The following morning, a line of more than a hundred people stretched down the hallway outside the hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building, with only sixteen seats inside for Petraeus’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Petraeus covered much the same ground as he had the day before in his testimony before the Senate committee, where the political objectives dividing Republicans from Democrats were even more pronounced.
Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican whose district includes Camp Lejeune, the Marines’ home on the East Coast, read from a serviceman’s letter: “‘It makes no difference if we’re there four or 40 years. The result will be the same. The war is costing the United States billions of dollars a month to wage. We’ll still continue to get more young Americans killed. The Afghans have no end state for us—this has no end state for us. I urge you to make a contact with all the current and newly elected members of Congress and ask them to end this war and bring our young men and women home.’
“For God’s sakes, how much more can we take?” Jones asked. “How much more can we give treasure and blood?”
“If I ever felt that we couldn’t achieve our objectives, I would be very forthright with my chain of command, with the president of the United States and with all of you,” Petraeus responded evenly. Jones’s pointed question, fraught with emotion, challenged Petraeus in a way no one else had. Petraeus answered with his most heartfelt response in two days of nonstop testimony. He revealed that his own son, 1st Lieutenant Stephen Petraeus, had led a combat platoon through intense fighting in 2010. “We’re very proud of what he did,” Petraeus said. “He thinks he was doing something very important.” Without belaboring the point, Petraeus had made clear what he was willing to contribute and sacrifice. Stephen Petraeus had served on the front line and heard the crack of incoming rounds as an infantry platoon leader on nearly every patrol.
Then came Representative Loretta Sanchez, a liberal Democrat from Southern California who opposed the war, mistrusted the military and wasn’t afraid to make that abundantly clear. She had challenged Petraeus many times over the years, and Petraeus was ready. She gave voice to the frustrations of many in America who questioned the strategic importance of endless fighting in Afghanistan and did not believe Petraeus’s “optimistic assertion” that we had wrested momentum from the Taliban. “I have a couple of questions for you, General,” she said. “We’ve been in Afghanistan about ten years, and we’ve lost over fourteen hundred U.S. lives, and we’ve spent more than $300 billion on this military operation alone. . . . What does success look like in Afghanistan?”
“Well, thanks very much, Congresswoman,” Petraeus responded. “Success in Afghanistan is a country that can secure and govern itself and, in so doing, prevent the reestablishment of sanctuaries by al-Qaeda and like-minded groups,” Petraeus said.
Sanchez noted that he and Gates were now talking about having troops in Afghanistan past 2014. “Somehow mission creep’s gotten into this thing,” she said. After she and the general sparred over the subject of training Afghan forces and the commitment of America’s NATO allies, Sanchez turned to corruption in Afghanistan. “Corruption, by and large, is the Afghan state,” she said.
Petraeus, who admired Sanchez’s feistiness and enjoyed the challenge she presented, mentioned McMaster’s work and said he welcomed the opportunity to “lay that out for you in detail.” Sanchez raised a number of legitimate issues, and Petraeus thought it was important to make sure she got good answers. He didn’t think it would change her mind, but he considered it his duty to describe the good work his people—some of whom were her constituents—were doing in Afghanistan.
In the weeks prior to Petraeus’s testimony, reports had surfaced in the media that Obama planned on naming him CIA director. While Petraeus knew that the president was contemplating that possibility, he had yet to speak to Obama about his next assignment and did not know precisely what to make of the leaks. Senator Graham confirmed during a meeting the day after Petraeus’s House testimony that Petraeus was, at the very least, a strong contender for the CIA job. Graham said that he and other senators from both parties had heard that he was out of the running for chairman of the Joint Chiefs but that he would be offered the CIA director’s job and would probably retire from the military before assuming the post. But if he were allowed to take the post and remain in uniform, as General Michael V. Hayden had been allowed to do, Graham said, an “unholy alliance” of Republican and Democratic senators would push to get him a fifth star for all he had accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan. A fifth star was a very political move, but Graham was determined to make it happen if he got the chance. Petraeus told Graham that he appreciated the thought but politely offered that such ideas verged on nonsense.
The testimony, as smoothly as it went, didn’t receive much attention, with the press focused on a tsunami in Japan, the stalled economy and budget fights. It wasn’t clear that anyone in Congress had changed his or her stance on the war. With the hearing behind him, Petraeus filled up the rest of the week with additional engagements. In between, he conducted closed-door meetings with Senate and House leaders. After he’d run the gauntlet of testimony on the Hill, the pressure was off. “How’s the general’s morale?” one journalist asked Petraeus’s personal security bodyguard, Mark Howell. “Exceptionally high, I should think,” Howell said. “Usually when we come back for testimony, everybody suffers a little from what we [the staff] call ‘PTSD’—Petraeus Traumatic Stress Disorder. But,” Howell continued, “I sense a feeling of calmness from the boss that says, ‘I’m where I want to be. Let the cards fall where they may.’” Petraeus drove his staff hard and expected those around him to work as hard as he did. The demands on his nonstop schedule during his trips back to Washington were intense for everyone. Although Petraeus worked people hard, he treated them well and let them know how much he depended upon and appreciated their great work. They also knew that his gratitude had no “half-life”: once a Petraeus guy, always a Petraeus guy when it came to letters of recommendation, advice, references or other forms of assistance.
Petraeus’s schedulers had been waiting for word all week as to when he would meet with the president that Friday. But as of 10:15 A.M. on Friday, the White House still did not have Petraeus listed on the schedule. By noon he had been told that he was supposed to meet with Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mullen after Mullen first met with Obama. When he did meet with Mullen at 4:00 P.M., the chairman told him that he was the leading candidate for the CIA job but that if he accepted the position, he would have to retire from the military. His aides and members of his security detail were in a light mood as they drove across the river, even though they were unsure of what to expect. The boss’s meeting with Obama gave them some hope that their futures might be resolved. They’d heard the rumors by now and were considering the implications. If he retired and went to the CIA, they’d have to find new jobs. If he took the CIA job in uniform, would they go with him? And if there was some miracle in the making and the president opted to select him as chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, then they were most likely moving to Washington for their follow-on tours.
Petraeus maintained a poker face to all. Behind the mask, there was a lingering sense of frustration about the perception of his loyalty. He’d been told that some members of the White House still thought they had a “Petraeus problem.” But Petraeus felt he had passed every test of loyalty he’d been given. He had assumed command at the president’s behest, even, unbeknownst to most, taking a pay cut by stepping down from the CENTCOM position to take the command in Afghanistan. He’d succeeded in guiding a campaign to take away the Taliban’s momentum in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. And he’d supported the policy on the Hill, at NATO and with the press.
Senator Lindsey Graham discussed with Petraeus that as head of the CIA, he could actually have more impact on the war against terrorism. He would direct the work of covert action around the world. The chairman position obviously was of enormous significance as the senior military adviser to the president and secretary of Defense; however, Graham pointed out, the position is not a command, and it is heavily dependent on the relationship between the chairman and the secretary of Defense when it came to ongoing operational matters, as the secretary actually issues orders in the Pentagon. Petraeus demurred. But his closest colleagues and mentors worried that the CIA job was just a way for the administration to keep him at bay. He might not be allowed to attend regular NSC meetings, and he might more or less be leashed in seeking out the public spotlight to market the agency, as he’d done for years with the military. They thought he didn’t know the CIA or its rules and regulations, which would make it harder for him to find solutions to problems and use his force of will to manage the bureaucracy. To assume the role, he would have to be a civilian and forgo wearing the medals and awards on his uniform that had served partly as a shield.
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