When the questioning began, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican and committee vice chairman, said he was “somewhat disappointed with the scale of the drawdown” announced by Obama and asked Petraeus whether that plan jeopardized his gains in Afghanistan. If Chambliss was hoping to use the general to score partisan points, he got nowhere. Petraeus explained that the president’s plan called for removing the 33,000 surge troops over a fifteen-month period beginning in July. He supported the president’s decision and recognized that Obama had to take factors into consideration that went well beyond those of a battlefield commander. He noted that 70,000 additional Afghan troops would be added in that period. Echoing what Joint Chiefs chairman Mullen had told the House Armed Services Committee that morning, where Mullen stated that “the president’s decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than [Mullen] was originally prepared to accept,” Petraeus stated it was “more aggressive” too, noting specifically that he, Mullen and General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, had recommended to keep those forces in place through the end of the 2012 fighting season. But Petraeus termed it a “small difference.” As if to cut off Chambliss’s further lines of attack, Petraeus pointed out that a transition to Afghan forces would soon begin in seven districts in three provinces, including Kabul—all told, areas encompassing 25 percent of the nation’s population.
The next questioner, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat, elicited the most newsworthy response of the hearing when he asked Petraeus to share some of his thoughts about running the CIA. “As I told you behind closed doors, I’ll say here: I wanted this job,” Petraeus said. “This is something that was not . . . a month or two or three in the making. Secretary Gates and I discussed this all the way back last year.”
Senator Levin was clearly irked by Karzai’s most recent speech, in which he said U.S. forces were essentially an occupation force “using our country.” “I was absolutely dismayed,” Levin said, “because I thought the comment of his talking about us as occupiers plays right into the hands of a common enemy, the Taliban. And I would hope that in your determination to speak truth to power, which is your commitment here as the new CIA director, that you also will speak truth to President Karzai.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that I have always sought, albeit in private and on many occasions one-on-one, to have very candid and forthright conversations with President Karzai,” Petraeus said.
“Were you dismayed by that comment?” Levin asked.
“It did cause concern, without question,” Petraeus said.
Feinstein expressed similar dismay, calling Karzai’s remarks “insulting” and “misleading.” “You have the automatic reaction ‘Why the heck are we here then?’ ” she commented.
“Well, look, I am entirely sympathetic to that, needless to say, and so I will certainly ensure that that sentiment is shared with our Afghan partners.” Petraeus wanted to preserve the relationship he had with Karzai and wasn’t about to criticize him in public, but he couldn’t help but express that he, too, had been disturbed by such statements.
By far the most dramatic moment, and a lesson for students of civil-military relations, came when Levin asked Petraeus whether he supported the president’s drawdown plan and what would have to happen before he would ever consider resigning his command. “I obviously support the ultimate decision of the commander in chief,” Petraeus said. “That is, we take an oath to obey the orders of the president of the United States and indeed do that.”
“And if you couldn’t do that—if you couldn’t do that consistent with that oath—you would resign?” asked Levin.
“Well, I’m not a quitter, chairman,” Petraeus said. “I’ve actually had people e-mail me and say that I should quit, and actually this is something I’ve thought a bit about.”
“I’m sure you have,” Levin said.
“And I don’t think it is the place for a commander to actually consider that step unless you are in a very, very dire situation,” said Petraeus. He went on:
This is an important decision. [The president’s decision] is, again, a more aggressive approach than the chairman, General Mattis and I . . . put forward, but this is not something I think where one hangs up the uniform in protest or something like that. . . . I actually feel quite strongly about this. Our troopers don’t get to quit, and I don’t think commanders should contemplate that, again, as any kind of idle action. That would be an extraordinary action, in my view. And at the end of the day, this is not about me, it’s not about an individual commander, it’s not about a reputation. This is about our country. And the best step for our country, with the commander in chief having made a decision, is to execute that decision to the very best of our ability.
CHAPTER 12
MASK OF COMMAND
During his final three weeks in command of the war in Afghanistan, Petraeus masked his emotions. He believed in projecting strength, and while he did not consider his emotions a weakness, he also didn’t feel they were something he necessarily needed to show to others. As the end of his military service approached and the outcome of the war remained uncertain, he kept the mask of command firmly in place. Even more than giving up command, he dreaded taking off the uniform. Retired general Fred Franks warned him not to underestimate the emotional impact of the next few weeks. He urged Petraeus to give himself some space and time to reflect. “Sometimes,” Franks told him, “emotions ambush us.” Petraeus was grateful for the counsel, but he thought the best strategy was to control his emotions, not give in to them. He’d rarely if ever gotten choked up during a ceremony, and he didn’t plan to start now. Avoiding self-reflection, as much as possible, seemed to be the way to go. Another close friend urged him to just let it out in private so he didn’t have a weak moment in public, or, better yet, to just let the public see his human side. But Petraeus had seen others struggle to regain control, and he was having none of it. He knew what to do. Stay busy. Don’t think. Compartmentalize.
Petraeus would be serving his seventh Independence Day in the nine years since 9/11 in a combat zone: commanding the 101st Airborne in Mosul in 2003, training Iraqi forces in Baghdad in 2004 and 2005, commanding the war in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 and commanding the war in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. Always the competitor, Petraeus noted in an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post that the answer would have been eight in eleven years, had the question been how many Fourths he had spent deployed overseas since 2001—as he was serving in Bosnia on July 4, 2001.
Though Petraeus knew he was sacrificing time with his family during those absences, he loved to be where the fight was. To that end, he thought he should have fought harder to remain in command through the end of the fighting season in October. But he wasn’t sure what else he could have done. He understood why the White House wanted him in place at the CIA before the September 11 anniversary. He also recognized that it was undoubtedly a good idea to have General Allen and Ambassador Crocker getting off to a fresh start together as they assumed the reins for the war.
PETRAEUS’S ASSESSMENTS of how the war was going were quite measured. He always predicted hard fighting ahead. He always said the gains were fragile and reversible. After the first week in command, he never talked about winning; rather, he talked about progress—or, in some cases, lack of progress. But he never sounded defeated. What Petraeus’s critics saw as his “spinning” of events was really a by-product of two of his greatest strengths: his unrelenting optimism and his insatiable appetite for facts and information, wherever he could find them. There would be no victory lap, however, in his final weeks of command, only relentless attention to detail to the very end. His immediate focus was getting his staff to work on planning to implement the president’s drawdown decision—first, the reduction of 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, and then the rest of the 23,000 by September of the following year. He wanted the planning effort well
under way by the time Allen took over.
Petraeus’s workweek back in Kabul had begun that Monday morning, June 27, with a security briefing to a large gathering of more than seventy senior civilian representatives of the countries helping in Afghanistan. The meeting was hosted by the Afghan Foreign Ministry and was the first time such a session had been held in Kabul. Jet lag hit Petraeus hard; it was a “fireball” session. (An officer close to him said he had eaten four Atomic Fireballs in one hour.) Petraeus stayed only for the meeting’s first hour before heading off to convene a tripartite meeting of Afghan, Pakistani and NATO military commanders, including General Ashfaq Kayani, head of the Pakistani military, and General Sher Mohammad Karimi, his Afghan counterpart. Petraeus later noted to his staff that Afghan intelligence chief Major General Abdul Khaliq had been impressive in his briefing on the current threat situation and the Afghan security posture along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But tensions persisted. Pakistan remained concerned about insurgent infiltration into its tribal areas from Afghanistan; the Afghans countered with their objections to numerous cross-border mortar and rocket attacks from Pakistan.
A report released that day by the International Crisis Group came into his e-mail inbox as he returned to his office. The ICG is an influential nonprofit that seeks to find peaceful solutions to global conflicts. The report concluded that the Taliban had moved into the country’s center, around Kabul, far beyond its home in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and that combat gains in those two provinces had not arrested the Taliban’s momentum elsewhere. Violence had peaked in the country despite the troop surge, the report contended, and Karzai’s government was hopelessly corrupt, ineffectual and close to collapse. “On the surface, security conditions in the capital city appear relatively stable,” the ICG report said. “The nexus between criminal enterprises, insurgent networks and corrupt political elites, however, is undermining Kabul’s security and that of the central-eastern corridor. . . . Tasked with quelling the violence, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is perceived as unable or unwilling to distinguish between civilians and insurgents and to reduce dependence on corrupt government officials in its counter-insurgency strategy.” The group’s conclusion: “Failure in Afghanistan is not inevitable, but without a recalibration of the current counter-insurgency strategy, success is far from guaranteed.”
Petraeus countered the group’s pessimism the following day in his own guidance to the troops on Obama’s decision to draw down forces. “The progress of the past year, in particular, has been significant,” he wrote. “Together, ISAF and Afghan forces have driven insurgents out of a number of important safe havens in Helmand and Kandahar. Security in Kabul, home to one-fifth of Afghanistan’s population, has been improved. Broadly speaking, we have broken the Taliban’s momentum and reversed it in many areas.”
He also managed to keep an eye on his successor’s upcoming confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He had immense respect and affection for John Allen, whom he had fought to have assigned—and be given a third star—as his deputy at Central Command after the two had worked together in Iraq. Allen, like Petraeus, had a reputation as a strategic thinker and a deft communicator. He was highly respected by the NSC staff and principals. Petraeus’s admiration for Allen was born during Petraeus’s command in Iraq, when Allen, as deputy commander in restive Anbar Province, was credited with helping to convince Sunni tribes there to reject the insurgency and take part in the Sunni Awakening. Petraeus felt he was a great leader who developed a vision and was then calm but determined in carrying it out. He also thought Allen was very good in the interagency and international arena and understood how to navigate the U.S. military hierarchy, skills not all attributed as fully to Rodriguez, the man Allen had edged out to replace Petraeus as commander in Afghanistan.
As the confirmation process approached for Allen, Petraeus was concerned that Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham would try to pin Allen down on the difference between Obama’s drawdown and Petraeus’s recommendation. Mindful that this was Allen’s first Senate confirmation, Petraeus coached him on how to provide context before directly taking on a hard question such as “What does this mean in terms of risk for the troops?” Petraeus knew the Republicans would try to drive a wedge between Allen and Obama. At the hearing, Graham asked Allen whether Obama’s drawdown plan was one of the options Petraeus had presented.
“It was not,” Allen said.
“So I just want the country to understand that this is not the Petraeus strategy any longer,” Graham said. “The commander in chief has the perfect right to do what he did. I just hope that it hasn’t undercut what I think could be a very successful outcome.”
Levin took the opposite tack.
“I think it’s important that even though this apparently was more aggressive than General Petraeus recommended, that military leaders of our country support this decision and feel it was an appropriate decision for the president to make. Is that correct?”
“Chairman, we’re in execution now,” Allen replied.
“But you also felt it was a proper decision for the president to make?”
“It is the prerogative of the president to make—to take the recommendations of his commanders and to make the decision—and he made the decision and we are executing,” Allen said.
“All right,” said Levin. “And it’s something you agree with.”
“I agree,” Allen said.
Petraeus thought his protégé had done well and told him so immediately following the Senate hearing.
The same day as Allen’s confirmation hearing, a small group of insurgents blew up a vehicle at the gate of the historic Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul and stormed the building just as Afghan officials were preparing to hold a meeting elsewhere in Kabul of provincial governors to discuss the upcoming transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces. Reports indicated that at least some of the attackers had worn Afghan police uniforms. Eleven civilians were killed and eight were wounded in the assault, which shattered the sense of security in Kabul. While Afghan police and commandos ultimately cleared the hotel of insurgents, the siege didn’t end until well after midnight, when an ISAF sniper aboard a NATO helicopter finally killed the last three insurgents, who had sought cover on the hotel’s roof. The attack made the ICG report citing weaknesses in Kabul’s security seem all the more prescient.
Petraeus thought the attack demonstrated real capability on the part of the insurgents. The silver lining, in his mind, though, was that the Afghan National Police’s Crisis Response Unit and the Afghan National Army Commandos had responded capably and courageously, with an official from the Ministry of the Interior and the Kabul police chief on the scene commanding the response. Several Afghan troopers had sacrificed their lives going after the attackers. In the end, all nine insurgents were killed, and a fire they set was extinguished. While attending a security shura later in the week, Petraeus noted that the attack had been carried out by the same number of insurgents as had raided hotels in Mumbai, India, in the deadly 2008 attacks, but with a far different result—the Afghans having resolved the situation during a single night, in far less time and with far less loss of life than in Mumbai, where 166 were killed.
FRESH FROM Lieutenant General Allen’s confirmation hearing, Senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman arrived in Kabul for the Fourth of July weekend, far more focused on what they considered the “unnecessary risk” inherent in Obama’s drawdown plan than was Petraeus, who had clearly moved on. McCain repeated the words “unnecessary risk” in an interview, and Graham, appearing on Fox News Sunday from Afghanistan, continued doing his best to saddle Obama with the consequences of his drawdown plan. “No military leader recommended the decision the president chose,” he said. “So it is now the Obama-Biden strategy.”
The senators and Petraeus had dinner that evening with Karzai. At one point, the Afghan
leader mentioned that he loved a song that he thought was called “Down on the Bayou.” After dinner, Petraeus put his communications team on it. His aides quickly found the tune—“Born on the Bayou,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. For Petraeus, it brought back memories of Cadet Hops at West Point in 1972. His team burned a CD of Creedence’s greatest hits, and Petraeus gave it to Karzai two days later. The president beamed.
When the morning of the Fourth arrived, Petraeus felt a bit of a dull ache but hoped his jam-packed day would keep him from thinking too much about his final Fourth in uniform. He flew to Kandahar and presided over a reenlistment ceremony for 235 soldiers, commemorating the 235th anniversary of the United States. Before the ceremony, he promoted his son Stephen’s best friend from the 173rd Airborne, who had volunteered to return to Afghanistan to serve under Brigadier General Martins. He also used the occasion to formally establish the NATO Rule of Law Field Support Mission, making Martins’s work to build a functioning justice system an international effort.
McCain, Lieberman and Graham carried the message of urgency to President Karzai during dinner with him that evening at the palace. They also warned him about his repeated eruptions in the media. The three senators impressed on Karzai that the U.S. Congress was running out of patience. Graham was frank with Karzai, whom he sometimes referred to as “the Lion.” “The Lion will never be your friend,” he confided later. But you still wanted the Lion on your side.
“The best chance for your country’s survival, and for your survival,” Graham advised Karzai at the dinner, “is a meaningful relationship with the United States.” Graham was referring to a long-term commitment to permanent basing and partnership, an initiative he had first raised exactly a year earlier with Karzai in the same room. Karzai was less than sanguine.
All In Page 37