I am grateful as well for the support of my dissertation adviser, Sir Lawrence Freedman, of King’s College London, and David Gergen, director of the Harvard Center for Public Leadership, for their patience and willingness to allow me to write a book while completing my dissertation. I thank Professors Sarah Sewall and Toni Chayes, who were guiding lights for me in the early days of trying to reorient my professional azimuth in my attempt to balance motherhood with professional goals; they remain inspirational role models.
I am indebted to Generals (Retired) Keane, Galvin and Vuono and Colonel (Retired) Nightingale for sharing their perspectives at the beginning of my dissertation pursuit, but also as General Petraeus began his final military assignment. Their collective mentoring of Petraeus, from lieutenant to four-star general, has been inspirational to observe. I especially thank Keith Nightingale for his mentorship, insights and trust along my own journey. Other Petraeus mentors, including General (Retired) Fred Franks and Brigadier General (Retired) Jim Shelton, were wonderfully helpful, too. In addition to the mentors, I am indebted to the other individuals in Petraeus’s network who provided insights for the biographical digressions. Special thanks go to Holly Petraeus, Alan Seidman, Dan Kaufman, Conrad Crane, Steve Trauth, Chris White, Dave Buto, Rob Reese, Bob Bassler, George Oliver, Rich Clifford and Pat Schado. Petraeus’s colleagues at Princeton, including John Duffield, and others from his various assignments have been helpful with historical material, especially Colonel Fred Johnson, Colonel Bill Ostlund, Colonel Charlie Miller, Major Jeanne Hull, Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Fred Wellman, Colonel Patrick Frank, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Petit, Major General Ben Hodges, Colonel (Retired) Rich Hatch, Colonel (Retired) Rich Whitaker, Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Mike Bailey, Major General (Retired) Joe Kinzer, Colonel (Retired) Bill Hudson, Colonel Paul Olsen, Lieutenant General Frank Helmick, Colonel (Retired) Jim Coffman, Colonel (Retired) Andy Milani, Sadi Othman and the many, many others who were all extremely helpful along the way. I thank Susan Lemke at the National Defense University for her team’s support during the oral history interviews.
Triangulating opinions and insights always presents a challenge to a writer, but as such, any errors in this text are solely mine. Although not all will agree with my analysis or the presentation of what I observed, I am extremely grateful for their assistance in trying to accurately capture the story.
APPENDIX A:
COUNTERINSURGENCY GUIDANCE LETTER
APPENDIX B:
COMISAF’S COIN CONTRACTING GUIDANCE
APPENDIX C:
ANACONDA STRATEGY
APPENDIX D:
ENGINE OF CHANGE
NOTES
The core of this book comes from interviews and interviewees’ responses to my inquiries via e-mail, many of which were provided on background, others on the record. The interviews were conducted over the course of 2008–2011, though the majority were conducted in the past fifteen months in Afghanistan. Information was supplied by more than 150 individuals and hundreds of hours of interviews, totaling approximately 700 interviews over three years (including multiple interviews with some sources). Many military officials provided insights, as did senior and well-placed military, civilian and diplomatic officials. I also attended General Petraeus’s congressional testimonies and participated in his oral history interviews at the National Defense University prior to his retirement from the U.S. Army. Additional information was derived from personal notes, letters and e-mails exchanged with or among various individuals referenced in the book. I also participated in meetings at ISAF and with Afghan officials at the MOD and MOI, and I embedded with various units in the field; in all these locations I was able to view (limited) unclassified reports, cables, calendars, transcripts and various PowerPoint briefings. On occasion, a source indicated that information was off the record, in which case I could use the information if I found it in an open source. I have vetted, with the oversight of senior DOD officials, the information in this manuscript to ensure there are no violations of operational security.
EPIGRAPH
General Petraeus said this to President George W. Bush in the Oval Office on January 23, 2007, on the eve of the Iraq surge.
CHAPTER 1: GROUND TRUTH
He’d already been deployed over five and a half years: General David H. Petraeus, interview by Jennifer Griffin, Fox News, August 25, 2010.
“I’ve had a certain affinity for leaders”: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, April 19, 2011.
the largest combat loss in a single day: Bradley Graham, “Ambush at Takur Ghar,” Washington Post, May 24–25, 2002. (Graham wrote a powerful two-part series on the Battle of Takur Ghar.)
“Every tiny piece of terrain”: Major Fernando M. Lujan, e-mail message to author, August 4, 2010.
In fact, when McChrystal had arrived in Afghanistan: General Stanley A. McChrystal, interview by author, November 19, 2010, Arlington, Virginia; Lieutenant General David M. Rodriguez, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 15, 2011.
It wasn’t until May 2010 that troop strength: Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Afghan War—Part One: Shaping the Campaign,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 8, 2010.
Before his demise at the hands of Rolling Stone: Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, June 25, 2010.
“It’s not accurate to say Marjah’s a failure”: Richard C. Holbrooke, interview by Fareed Zakaria, CNN, July 25, 2010.
The stronghold of the Taliban: Brett Van Ess, “The Fight for Marjah: Recent Counterinsurgency Operations in Southern Afghanistan,” Small Wars Journal, September 30, 2010.
“Top 10 insights/recommendations welcome”: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to Douglas Ollivant, June 24, 2010.
“We’re putting it all on the line”: General Petraeus’s e-mail is quoted both in Linda Robinson’s book Tell Me How This Ends (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), on page 123, and in David Cloud and Greg Jaffe’s book The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the U.S. Army (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009).
CHAPTER 2: RESULTS, BOY
“the best combat leader I have ever known”: Greg Jaffee, “U.S. Is Losing a Savvy Leader in Afghan War Efforts,” Washington Post, April 19, 2011.
a clicking chorus of . . . laptops: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 12, 2011.
“But in the long run”: Martha Schiff, “Two Friends from Cornwall Join the Long Grey Line,” The Cornwall Local, December 19, 1973.
When he arrived in Afghanistan: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, October 3, 2011.
It did not go particularly well: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, October 3, 2011.
“point of decision” was typically where the fighting was heaviest: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2009.
Churchill’s observation: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 29, 2010.
a “lick ’em tomorrow” day: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, July 20, 2010.
Karzai’s government . . . approved creation of the local police: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, July 14, 2010.
The number of bombs dropped in Iraq: Noah Shachtman, “Does Petraeus Mean a Return of Afghanistan Air War?” Danger Room blog, Wired.com, June 23, 2010, www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/does-petraeus-mean-a-return-to-all-out-war.
“sometimes the best weapons don’t shoot”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 3: TRUE BELIEVERS
Rumsfeld imposed a “force cap”: Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco (New York: Penguin Group, 2009), p. 41.
“a perfect storm of political upheaval”: Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires (N
ew York: W. W. Norton, 2009), p. xxiii.
These imperatives and others neatly distilled: Former Army vice chief of staff General Jack Keane makes this point in The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. xiv.
favorably reviewed: Samantha Power, “Our War on Terror,” The New York Times Book Review, July 29, 2007.
Nagl . . . wrote in a foreword: The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xv.
Petraeus’s counterinsurgency guidance bore some parallels: Colonel Daniel Roper, director of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center, made this point in a note on the center’s Web site, at http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/coin.
“Lawrence of Afghanistan”: Ann Scott Tyson, “Can This Officer Win the War?” Washington Post, January 17, 2010.
“a paper written by Special Forces major Jim Gant”: Major Jim Gant, One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan (Los Angeles: Nine Sisters Imports, 2009), available at http://agora.stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/one-tribe-at-a-time-4-the-full-document-at-last.
Petraeus thought Krepinevich’s book: In September 2005, Krepinevich wrote an article that argued for a classic COIN campaign approach in Iraq. Andrew F. Krepinevich, “How to Win in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005.
the story broke that Karzai had fired: Dexter Filkins and Alissa J. Rubin, “Graft-Fighting Prosecutor Dismissed in Afghanistan,” New York Times, August 29, 2010.
Petraeus thought improvement was possible: Colonel William B. Hickman (Executive Office to General Petraeus), e-mail message to author, November 17, 2010.
A report released that October found . . . $55.7 billion: See the October report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to Congress, October 30, 2010, www.sigar.mil/oct2010Report.asp.
Watan . . . “had been funneling large sums”: “U.S. Blacklists Afghan Security Firm Tied to Karzai,” Associated Press, December 9, 2010.
Lawrence’s “Twenty-Seven Articles”: A guide T. E. Lawrence wrote for British officers in the Arab Bulletin, August, 20, 1917.
CHAPTER 4: SCREAMING EAGLES
Taliban movement was established in . . . Sangsar: David S. Cloud, “Troops Launch Afghan Assault,” Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2010.
“There will be time to re-train”: Lieutenant Colonel David S. Flynn, e-mail message to author, November 12, 2010.
“You dudes need to think about my guys”: Brian Mockenhaupt, “The Last Patrol,” The Atlantic, November 2010.
Flynn’s artillery unit “weren’t prepared physically”: Dion Nissenbaum, “U.S. Soldiers’ Mission Shows Afghan War’s Uncertainties,” McClatchy Newspapers, August 13, 2010.
“I knew we could prepare our men to be better than the Taliban”: Lieutenant Colonel David S. Flynn, e-mail message to David Mockenhaupt, August 19, 2010.
“We all have three, four or five deployments”: Lieutenant Colonel David S. Flynn, comment on “A Reporter to Watch—Brian Mockenhaupt: The Last Patrol,” Blackfive blog, blackfive.net, comment posted on October 16, 2010.
“Medic!” he heard someone shout: Captain Andrew Shaffer, e-mail message to author, March 25, 2011.
Pittman was conscious but unresponsive: U.S. Army, Official Investigation into the Deaths of Sergeant Stout, Specialist Stansbery, and Mr. Pittman, September 9, 2010 (statement of Lieutenant Colonel David S. Flynn, Commander, 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division).
A profile in Harper’s: Matthieu Aikins, “The Master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan’s Drug-Trafficking Border Police,” Harper’s, December 2009.
a London tabloid: Richard Pendlebury and Jamie Wiseman, “Dicing Death in the Devil’s Playground,” Daily Mail, October 26, 2010.
“Until recently, Ghazni . . . was considered reasonably safe”: Nir Rosen, “How We Lost the War We Won,” Rolling Stone, October 29, 2008.
Their fighting force was thought to number around four hundred: C. J. Chivers, “In Eastern Afghanistan, at War with the Taliban’s Shadowy Rule,” At War blog, NYTimes.com, February 7, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/asia/07taliban.html?pagewanted=all.
“What do you expect after years of our presence here?”: Lieutenant Colonel David G. Fivecoat, interview by author, Kandahar, Afghanistan, October 1, 2010.
six “lines of effort”: Lieutenant Colonel David G. Fivecoat and Captain Aaron T. Schwengler, “Revisiting Modern Warfare Counterinsurgency in the Mada’in Qada,” Military Review, Nov./Dec. 2008.
“The December assessment will be bad”: Lieutenant Colonel David G. Fivecoat, e-mail message to author, July 28, 2010.
“Petraeus, in his relentlessly positive way”: Lieutenant Colonel David G. Fivecoat, interview by author, Kandahar, Afghanistan, October 1, 2010.
Petraeus had nearly bled to death: General Jack Keane, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, November 12, 2010.
The division had six dozen Apache gunships: Rick Atkinson, In the Company of Soldiers (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), p. 14.
“The challenges from the sanctuaries”: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, July 30, 2010.
“We had multiple indicators”: Matiullah Mati, “Dozens of Bodies Found After Clash at Afghan Military Base,” CNN.com, October 31, 2010.
Around Margah, there were four: Department of Defense, Pentagon briefing, Federal News Service, November 2, 2010.
“wonderful American”: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, December 4, 2010.
CHAPTER 5: ANACONDA
An officer . . . fired off an e-mail: Major John P. Gallagher, e-mail message to author, September 22, 2010.
White House draft had merely said “disrupt”: Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 145.
McChrystal . . . had not planned on asking for more troops: General Stanley McChrystal, interview by author, Arlington, Virginia, November 19, 2010.
“There was the real work”: General David H. Petraeus, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, October 4, 2010.
“All we were repeating during the subsequent policy review”: Military official, interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, October 5, 2010.
restating what Mullen had told the Senate: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 158.
Like McChrystal and Mullen: General Stanley McChrystal, interview by author, Arlington, Virginia, November 19, 2010; Admiral Mike Mullen, interview by author, Washington, D.C., August 31, 2010.
“This approach is not fully resourced”: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 387.
“‘They knock you down every chance they get’”: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 362.
“fucking with the wrong guy”: Steve Luxenberg, “Obama Battles with Advisers Over Afghan Exit Plan Detailed in Woodward Book,” Washington Post, September 22, 2010.
He later surmised . . . that it was a field-grade officer: General David H. Petraeus, e-mail message to author, January 26, 2011.
A headline . . . triggered a counterattack: Carlotta Gall, “Coalition Routs Taliban in Southern Afghanistan,” New York Times, October 21, 2010.
A story line emerged that Petraeus was moving away: In mid-October 2010, three columnists wrote about a shift in the strategic effort in Afghanistan under General Petraeus: Fred Kaplan, “A New Plan for Afghanistan: Less Counterinsurgency, More Killing and Capturing,” Slate, Slate.com, October 13, 2010; David Ignatius, “Petraeus Rewrites the Playbook in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, October 19, 2010; and Joe Klein, “Afghanistan: A New Balance,” Swampland blog, Time.com, October 18, 2010, http://swampland.time.com/2010/10/18/afghanistan-a-new-balance.
“That’s rare in a general officer”: General Jack Keane, interview by Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose, PBS, October 19, 2010.
“In fact, the better date to think about is the end of 2014”: Warren P. Strobel, “Happy Veterans Day,” Nukes & Spooks blog, November 11, 2010, http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/nationalsecurity/2010/11/index.html.
Graham said that “2014 is the right date”: Lindsey Graham, interview by Christiane Amanpour, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” ABC, November 14, 2010.
Triggered by an interview Karzai gave: Joshua Partlow, “Karzai Wants U.S. to Reduce Military Operations in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, November 14, 2010.
CHAPTER 6: CLEAR, HOLD AND BUILD
“Out here we’re fighting the Taliban”: James Kitfield, “Robert Gates, David Petraeus: Partners in War,” The National Journal, December 9, 2010.
“We literally got every single thing”: Major Fernando Lujan, e-mail message to author, December 20, 2010.
Karzai reported in mid-January: Taimoor Shah and Rod Nordland, “Afghan Panel and U.S. Dispute War’s Toll on Property,” New York Times, January 13, 2011.
Petraeus ordered up a “constant drumbeat”: General David H. Petraeus, morning stand-up briefing, January 12, 2011.
revisited Flynn’s decision in October: Joshua Foust, “The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing,” Registan.net, January 13, 2011, www.registan.net/index.php/2011/01/13/the-unforgivable-horror-of-village-razing.
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