22
 

Around 1:30 P.M. on Friday, October 30, Obama called the Joint Chiefs to the White House. This was not just a matter of checking another box on the way to making a big decision. The president was in a desperate search for another option.

For the past two months, the uniformed military—Mullen, Petraeus and McChrystal—had been locked into counterinsurgency and 40,000 troops. But the individual service chiefs had yet to be consulted for the review.

As the heads of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, the chiefs recruited, trained, equipped and supplied the forces to combatant commanders like Petraeus and their subordinate ground commanders such as McChrystal. Neither Petraeus nor McChrystal attended the Friday meeting, because both were in Afghanistan and were junior in rank to the chiefs. But in the tangle of all things military, the chiefs were not in the chain of command. They had been largely sidelined since the strong JCS chairmanship of Colin Powell 20 years earlier. George W. Bush had used the chiefs to provide perfunctory opinions after he had made his decisions.

Nonetheless, the chiefs had an almost mythic lore in military history. George Marshall had been the powerful Army chief of staff during World War II. On the other hand, the reputation of the chiefs had suffered dramatically after their spineless performance during the Vietnam War, when they failed to give honest guidance to President Johnson as documented by Army Brigadier General H. R. McMaster’s 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty.

“I have one option that was framed as three options,” Obama told the chiefs. “I want three real options to choose from.” It was an unusual appeal for help from the chiefs.

“I’m committed to making this a unified effort” a success, he continued. “This is America’s war, but I don’t want to make an open-ended commitment.” They had all read McChrystal’s assessment and his troop request. The objective of this meeting was to get unbiased views on alternatives, the president said, and the costs associated with any other options.

Biden added, “If it isn’t working, you should be prepared to say so.”

Just to be clear, the president said, “The goal is to defeat and dismantle al Qaeda,” the central threat. But the goal in Afghanistan is to “disrupt the Taliban, weaken them so that the Afghans can handle it.”

Marine Commandant General James Conway addressed the overriding allergy the fighting man has to prolonged missions that go beyond defeating an enemy. Conway, burly and blunt-spoken, had commanded 60,000 troops for two combat tours in Iraq. It was a masquerade for a Marine to act like a social worker, in his opinion. A Marine was a killer. I recommend, Mr. President, he said, “don’t subscribe to long-term nation building.”

Obama could not agree more.

“The Good Lord is working against us in trying to do any kind of nation building there,” Conway went on. “There are things we couldn’t fix in our lifetime. We have to train the forces and hand it over.”

Gates offered what sounded like a partial rebuttal, saying that he had little confidence in a civilian surge or in serious governance reforms by Karzai.

General George Casey, the Army chief of staff, who had commanded the forces in Iraq for two and a half years during some of the darkest days, said that the scheduled withdrawal in Iraq would permit the Army to contribute the necessary units for a 40,000-troop ramp-up in Afghanistan. Casey, however, was a skeptic about large troop commitments in these wars. In his view, the key in both Iraq and Afghanistan was a quick transition, getting out while helping the people to govern and protect themselves. But, he said, the 40,000 plan was an acceptable global risk for the Army. With the anticipated Iraq withdrawal, Casey said he would have forces available in case there was another crisis.

Assess for me, the president asked, the impact of “disrupting” the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As evidence of how much the Joint Chiefs were out of the loop, Casey said even though he had heard the president describe the mission as “disrupting” them, he still understood the mission to be to “defeat” the Taliban. McChrystal’s resource request was premised on that.

“When you defeat the insurgency, that’s a tall order,” Casey said. “It’s going to take some time. But if you take defeat away and make the mission disrupt the insurgency, that’s a different matter.”

“What Stan concluded,” Obama said, “is in terms of the Taliban, using the word ‘defeat’ is probably overambitious. Disrupt the Taliban, control their momentum, keep them from establishing a platform that can be used, destabilizing efforts.”

Casey indicated he was glad to hear that. “It is not possible to defeat the Taliban in the classic sense. It would be like defeating Hamas,” the Palestinian movement governing the Gaza Strip that the U.S. classifies as a terrorist group.

The mission was “disrupt,” the president said.

“Well, that would make a difference,” Casey said.

Obama wanted him to elaborate.

“There’s a big difference here, Mr. President,” Casey said, “in terms of the number of troops that are required.”

General Conway agreed with Casey. The chief of naval operations and the Air Force chief of staff had little to say, noting that whatever the decision in Afghanistan, the impact on their forces would be minimal.

Chairman Mullen had listened as Casey and Conway undermined his argument for the 40,000. He defended that option by trying to alleviate what had to be one of Obama’s concerns.

We won’t ask for more troops again, the chairman promised.

It was a cap. There was no doubt. Mullen, who had objected to suggestions of a cap by Obama that summer, had just offered one of his own. “Bingo!” thought Biden.

The president said he wanted more options, but they had to be affordable and executable. He didn’t want to be boxed in by huge costs and manpower increases.

“We need a sustainable effort that the country can absorb,” he said. “We need to be hardheaded about an exit strategy.”

After the meeting, the president expressed appreciation for Casey and Conway, telling his aides that he thought they had stepped up with advice based on his mission definition, not the one to which Mullen, Petraeus and McChrystal were still clinging.

On October 30, Gates sent Obama a two-page SECRET memo: “Attached is our response to the 27 October NSC request asking DOD to develop alternative option to General McChrystal’s force option two, Tab A.”

Under the heading, “Alternative Mission for Afghanistan,” the secretary of defense wrote, “Implementing this alternative mission will require an extended surge of three U.S. combat brigades plus enablers (30,000 to 35,000 in additional troops).”

It was an easy calculation for Gates. At least 5,000 couldn’t get to Afghanistan for about a year, so why should the president have to make that decision right away? Also, he believed they could get 5,000 or more from the allies. In another way, Gates had found a “sweet spot,” as suggested by Jones—something between 20,000 for the hybrid option and McChrystal’s 40,000.

On the second page, Gates backed off from his summer position that the goal was to “defeat the extremist insurgency.” He now called for “disrupting and degrading the Taliban”—a much less ambitious undertaking. “Our counterterrorism forces,” he wrote, “will continue to degrade the Taliban by conducting sustained operations against their command and control and facilities networks.”

• • •

During a principals meeting in early November—more than six weeks into the strategy review—Ambassador Eikenberry made a long presentation on why a COIN strategy relying on a large infusion of U.S. forces was unlikely to work. He voiced worries about the costs, an overreliance on the U.S. military, increased Afghan dependency, the unreliability of Karzai, and the high attrition and low recruitment rates of the Afghan forces, weaknesses that he said were so great that the Afghans would not be able to take over in 2013 as outlined. More U.S. troops would not end the Afghan insurgency as long as the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani network had sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Donilon found the arguments persuasive. “Why don’t you develop that?” he said to Eikenberry. “Put it in a cable and send it.”

Jones agreed, and Eikenberry promised he would.

Holbrooke was waiting at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan for Petraeus. Both had by coincidence delivered lunch speeches in separate private rooms of the famous restaurant. They had urgent business to discuss. A cable had arrived from Afghanistan that morning, Friday, November 6.

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan had sent Secretary Clinton a cable outlining his “reservations about a counterinsurgency strategy that relies on a large infusion of U.S. forces.” Eikenberry’s concern was that they had not studied every alternative. The proposed troop increase could “bring vastly increased costs” and “an indefinite large-scale U.S. military role” in Afghanistan, the presence of which would “increase Afghan dependency” and deepen the military involvement in a mission that could not be won solely by military means. Eikenberry suggested that the bell curve charts of troop deployments were “imprecise and optimistic.”

As he waited for Petraeus, Holbrooke took a call from Mullen. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs was as angry as Holbrooke had ever heard him.

“What has gotten into Eikenberry?” Mullen said.

“You knew his views.”

“Not like this,” Mullen said. “This is a betrayal of our system.”

Eikenberry had not given Petraeus and McChrystal the courtesy of a heads-up about the cable, which had been requested by Donilon and Jones.

When Holbrooke told Petraeus the contents of the cable, Petraeus went ballistic.

The top American diplomat in Afghanistan had just isolated himself from the military and alienated his counterpart—McChrystal. One of the essentials in counterinsurgency was cooperation between the civilian and military leadership. That had just been blown to pieces.

At another principals meeting about a week later, on Monday, November 9, they honed in on McChrystal’s plan for the Afghan National Security Forces to be increased to 400,000. That was a total of 240,000 for the army (nearly tripling from 92,000) and 160,000 for the police.

“We need to plan for 400,000 ANSF,” Petraeus said, “not something fuzzy” as had been suggested in an NSC staff memo that had been circulated before the meeting. This was a long-term project, he said, and decisions in advance would allow them to order equipment, mortars and artillery, build infrastructure and refine the training. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there, he thought, and he wanted the road to be clearly laid out.

Mullen endorsed the idea, while Gates, who did not believe 400,000 was necessary, simply remarked that “having an end state out there is good.”

For Jones, this sounded like the same kind of empire that had been built for Iraq—precisely what he was sure the president did not want for Afghanistan. But Jones left it to the vice president to intervene.

“Is that doable?” Biden asked. On the army side, current training of new recruits was about 2,000 a month. At that rate, it would take six years, assuming no attrition, and attrition was high. On the police side, it was worse—they were regularly losing more than they were gaining.

The military leaders would not give up the 400,000 number, as if it was written in holy text. As they became increasingly dogmatic, Biden unloaded. Without the president at the meeting, the vice president felt he could speak even more freely, and he became “apoplectic,” in the words of one participant. The vice president thought the 400,000 target was hollow, the same kind of BS number that had been presented by Rumsfeld during the Iraq War. He attempted an aggressive interrogation, but Petraeus and McChrystal stuck to their arguments. It was not just planning. Petraeus and McChrystal said they had to create a training system including schools, buildings, recruiting teams, manuals, personnel and the whole infrastructure to be effective. This could not be a fly-by-night operation. It had to be long-lasting.

Petraeus’s attitude was, hey, I’ve done this before. He had headed the training command in Iraq for about 15 months beginning in 2004. Newsweek had put him on its cover when he took over that command, asking in its headline: “Can This Man Save Iraq?”

The implied question bouncing around the Situation Room was: “Can this man save Afghanistan?”

McChrystal continued to push hard on the 400,000 target in a follow-on meeting with the president.

How much would it cost? Obama asked.

At another meeting, the numbers came back. The president expressed sticker shock. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “So our ticket out of here are these guys? And if we sign up for this, we’re signing up for a build price of $55 billion just to get out of this, and then an annual bill of $8 billion indefinitely. What’s magic about 400,000? How’d you get to 400,000?”

Donilon, Lute and the NSC staff asked McChrystal and his staff about the math. The short answer was that this came out of the tired standard COIN ratio of one counterinsurgent for every 40 or 50 people. But the ANSF target was flawed; the insurgency wasn’t on a national scale. It was mostly limited to an area of the country nicknamed Pashtunistan. Only about 42 percent of the Afghan populace was Pashtun. So for example, they would not have to worry about the Taliban in the Tajik areas—at least 27 percent of the total population—because the Taliban would not survive in those areas given the deep hostility the Tajiks felt for them.

“The police aren’t working,” Lute told the president. “We’re being fed a pack of bullshit.” He suggested that Obama press on the issue.

What’s the risk you can achieve these numbers with high quality? Obama asked at another meeting.

For two meetings, McChrystal was not able to answer. So Lute added it to the question list for the next session.

Moderate risk for the Afghan army, McChrystal finally answered, but “high risk” for the Afghan police.

“Guys,” the president asked, “what evidence is there that this is necessary or doable?” No one had a good answer. This seemed to be a turning point for Obama. The 400,000 goal did not fit with his evidence-based reasoning. It was a pipe dream illustrated with charts and abstract ratios.

“This presentation strains credulity,” Obama said. He would not authorize such an extravagant plan. The military should instead develop ANSF goals on a year-by-year basis. It was as flat a no as he had given, and a clue that he did not believe the Iraq model would fit Afghanistan.

It was a somber flight back for Gates from the November 10 memorial service for the 13 people killed at Fort Hood, Texas, in a shooting by U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, noticed Gates was jotting some notes for the next meeting with Obama.

“Are you going to use that in a meeting?” Morrell asked.

“Yeah,” Gates said.

“We should clean that up for you, you know?” Morrell said. The handwriting was sloppy, and there were little arrows and marks on the sheet of paper. “Get it tidy, you know?” The Pentagon prided itself on neatness.

“Absolutely not,” Gates said with a touch of indignation. He was spending countless hours thinking long and hard. “This is my work and I want that perfectly clear to everybody involved,” he said. “This is my thinking. This is my analysis. This is my determination.” He was doing his own homework and wanted people in the Situation Room to know. “It’s not staff work.”

Jones worried that DNI Blair was edging too much into policy advice and proposed dropping him from the strategy review session.

But if Blair was dropped, they would also have to exclude Panetta. The president wanted Blair out, so both intelligence chiefs were not invited to the remaining review sessions. Jones told them that everyone now understood the intelligence picture and they were no longer needed.

Blair, for one, was baffled. And Panetta, who was in charge of the secret CTPT army of 3,000 in Afghanistan, would have no role in the troop debate.