by Bob Woodward
Nicholson said that he was fully committed to a protect-the-population counterinsurgency campaign in which “killing the enemy is secondary” and the death of one innocent Afghan could result in the loss of support from an entire village.
“We don’t have enough forces to go everywhere,” he said, and overall he was “a little light,” more than hinting that he could use more troops.
“At a table much like this,” Jones began, referring without irony to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.”
Obama approved that recommendation in February during the first full month of his presidency, Jones reminded them. The deployments included Nicholson’s Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals such as Clinton, Gates and Mullen told the president “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan National Army.
“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’” Jones said, reminding the Marines in front of him how quickly the president approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.
Now suppose you’re the president, Jones said, and the requests come into the White House for yet more troops? How do you think President Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels in their combat camouflage uniforms. How do you think he might feel?
This question was being asked by someone who was not only the president’s national security adviser but also a former Marine commandant.
It was an unusual question. Jones let it hang in the air-conditioned chill and bright fluorescent light. Nicholson and the colonels kept their poker faces, perhaps realizing that Jones was there to answer his own question. Sitting on the side, I thought I probably had never seen so many maintain expressionless stares for so long.
Well, Jones said, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were more requests for forces now the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the reference to the acronym WTF—which in the military and elsewhere means “What the fuck?”—the universal outburst of astonishment and anger.
Nicholson and his 20 colonels sat riveted. Jones had taken them inside the White House to offer a brief glimpse of the commander in chief’s perspective. Nearly all were veterans of Iraq and they seemed to blanch at the explicit message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.
It was easy to imagine the dismay that might be conveyed by a “What the fuck?” eruption from the quintessentially calm 47-year-old commander in chief, a man without military experience.
But in case the message was unclear, Jones said that Afghanistan was not Iraq. “We are not going to build that empire again,” he said flatly.
Jones met privately with McChrystal, delivering Whiskey Tango Foxtrot in a slightly less confrontational way for the commanding general.
“Put yourself in the president’s place,” Jones said. “What would you think if you heard all of this coming up in different—public, private, media—forums? This doesn’t make sense.”
The national security adviser felt the military had already had its opportunity to give its advice during the Riedel review. Not much had changed with regard to the intelligence since then.
McChrystal said Afghanistan was much worse than he had expected. His 60-day assessment would be highly critical. There are good reasons to be concerned, McChrystal warned, and if the situation is not reversed soon, it might be irreversible.
Jones asked politely if McChrystal could provide specific examples that backed up his statements.
McChrystal ran down a litany of problems.
“The number of Taliban in the country is higher than anything I thought,” McChrystal said. “There are 25,000.”
That figure intrigued Jones. When he had gone to Afghanistan in 2003 as NATO commander, the estimated size of the Taliban was 4,000. Jones concluded that the reason for the substantial growth was the 2006 treaty between Pakistan and its tribes, which cut out a large swath of Pakistan where new Taliban recruits could train without interference.
Graphs of insurgent attacks also reinforced what McChrystal was saying. The number of attacks was approaching 550 a week and had nearly doubled within the past month. IED incidents were also spiking. The roadside bombs were on a pace to kill 50 coalition troops a month, compared to just eight a month at the same point last year.
But Jones remained somewhat skeptical. He wondered if McChrystal was giving the initial response of any brand-new four-star who was flexing his muscles. Jones had anticipated that might be the case, so he simply wanted to impart to McChrystal what the landscape was like in Washington. It was unfriendly to generals asking for more troops.
The new strategy, Jones said repeatedly during the course of the trip, has three legs, each of which he said had to be dramatically improved: 1. Security; 2. Economic development and reconstruction; and 3. Governance by the Afghans under the rule of law.
There had been an imbalance with too much emphasis on the military, he said. Economic development and improved governance by the Afghans needed full attention.
“This will not be won by the military alone,” Jones said. “We tried that for six years.” He also said, “The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.” The plea for a focus on the long-range efforts to build the government and the economy seemed to be met with shrugs by the military.
Jones heard repeatedly the complaint that Afghanistan and particularly its leader, President Karzai, had not mobilized sufficiently for their own war.
He emphasized that it was a new era, and Obama would not automatically give the military commanders whatever force levels they requested—a frequent practice of former President Bush in the Iraq War.
But Jones said, “The president realizes it’s on the razor’s edge,” suggesting not only a difficult, dangerous time, but a situation that could cut either way. “And he’s worried that others don’t.”
• • •
It is 25 minutes by helicopter from Camp Leatherneck to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where Jones met with the leaders of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), a unit of about 160 British, U.S., Afghan and other civilians and military officers attempting to rebuild the economy, improve security, and foster a responsive and effective government.
The PRT resembled a fortress. Before getting out of the helicopters we were advised to wear protective body armor. Most donned flak jackets and hustled toward the compound, ducking behind buildings to avoid sniper fire. We walked at the fastest clip possible without breaking into a full sprint.
In a meeting, the PRT leaders told Jones that there had been 58 IED attacks during the last week in the province. They stressed that the biggest problem was “Afghan capacity” because the Karzai government was not really committed.
“The only way we will make security work here is to have this gated community,” one of the British team leaders told Jones. “More Afghan National Security Force, army and police, is a lot more important than more U.S. troops. If we go into an area without Afghans of any sort, then all they think is here come the Russians again.” But the inherent contradiction was that the successful development of Afghan capacity “can only be delivered by the United States.”
Jones said President Obama wanted a strategy designed to reduce the U.S. involvement and commitment. The president didn’t think Afghanistan should only be an American war, but there had been a tendency to Americanize it. “We didn’t consult, we didn’t ask, we didn’t listen,” Jones said of the attitude toward other countries supplying troops. “We basically said, stand aside, we know how to do this. And we and the Brits will do this. The rest of you don’t even play. You French guys stay over there. The Germans, you won’t fight, so we don’t need you.” Se
veral in the room laughed at the mention of the Germans. “So what we’ve tried to do is rebalance the relationships, make people feel like they are contributing, even a small amount, but to make them feel like they’re valued and respected. We all know who’s going to do the bulk of the work.”
Nonetheless, the British leader of the PRT said the key to progress in Helmand was provincial governor Gulab Mangal, who over the previous 15 months had moved on nearly all fronts to modernize, improve governance and reduce corruption.
The British had identified what they call “the golden 500”—government and other officials, beginning with Mangal, they wanted to stay in their positions in Helmand province.
Reliable information in the hands of the U.S. and British showed that President Karzai planned to replace Governor Mangal with a crony of questionable administrative and anti-corruption credentials. To ensure his reelection, one official said, Karzai was cutting deals with a number of unsavory Afghan politicians.
Jones promised to intervene personally with Karzai. As a first step, he called in about a dozen Afghan reporters and sat down on a couch outside the PRT headquarters next to Governor Mangal for a press conference. He praised Mangal, 52, a soft-spoken leader with charcoal-colored hair and a trimmed beard, and said, “I know of no place in Afghanistan that has more potential.”
We then flew to Islamabad and stayed two nights at the ambassador’s residence, a large and comfortable home. Anne Patterson, a 60-year-old career Foreign Service officer appointed in 2007 by Bush, was a favorite of Obama because, as acting ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, she had done an exceptional job hosting a visit by the then senator. A small, forthright woman, she gave a candid private assessment of the situation. “I worry that all of this is just going to blow up. Zardari doesn’t know anything about governing. He will never get out from being Mr. Benazir Bhutto, but he’s basically on our side.”
Jones met next afternoon with President Zardari, and I joined them for the last 15 minutes. Zardari sat between two photographs of his late wife—one of her campaigning, the other a pensive close-up. His black hair was pomaded to his scalp and his suit had the smart cut of an expensive tailor. He beamed with a wide smile that appeared whenever I asked troubling questions. Zardari acknowledged the influence of the Taliban in Pakistan and said, “It is a thin line to walk with the Taliban. We must walk in small steps.”
On relations with India, he took pride in what he deemed a significant liberalizing moment. “I’ve allowed Indian movies for the first time.”
I asked what had caused him over the past six months to view the Taliban as a lethal threat to Pakistan and its government. Zardari claimed this was not a recent transformation for him.
“I’ve been fighting terrorism for 30 years,” said Zardari, who had spent eight years in jail on charges of corruption and the alleged murder of his brother-in-law. “Khalid Sheik Mohammed [the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks] tried to assassinate my wife.”
Afterward, Jones and his staff debated whether they should worry more about Pakistan or Afghanistan. Several members of his staff said the chief problem was Pakistan—Zardari’s political vulnerability, the continuing dominance of the country’s military-intelligence complex, its nuclear weapons, the persistent presence of al Qaeda training camps in the ungoverned regions, and the possibility of a misstep with the CIA drone attacks that could dramatically shift the political calculus.
Jones said that the problem is Afghanistan. That’s where the U.S. troops were, approaching 68,000 total, and a presence of that size engaged in combat operations would always be the center of gravity. Afghanistan’s troubles were compounded by what he called “the Karzai problem,” adding, “He doesn’t get it, or he doesn’t want to get it.” He said that at best Karzai was “mayor of Kabul,” and the reach of the national government did not extend much farther than the capital, other than to promote, encourage and facilitate corruption.
“We haven’t been tough enough on him, given the sacrifice in lives that we are making,” Jones said.
Jones thought that there was another group that President Obama was not tough enough on—his senior White House political advisers, whom he saw as major obstacles to developing and deciding on a coherent policy. This group included Emanuel, Axelrod, press secretary Robert Gibbs, and the two former Senate operatives now placed in the NSC—Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert. He privately called them “the water bugs,” the “Politburo,” the “Mafia,” or the “campaign set.”
“There are too many senior aides around the president,” Jones said privately. “They’re like water bugs. They flit around. Rahm gets an idea at 10 A.M. and wants a briefing by 4 P.M., and I will say no” because the work can’t be done in a day. The water bugs did not understand war or foreign relations, Jones felt, and were too interested in measuring the short-term political impact of the president’s decisions in these areas.
He would invite them to strategy briefings on some of these matters but more often than not they didn’t show. When he talked with them, they would often invoke Obama, saying, “The president wants this, the president wants that.”
At one point, Jones had told Emanuel, “You have enough juice to say it on your own.” In the military, the number two to the commander is not supposed to use the boss as the cover for his orders. He is supposed to establish enough authority to issue orders on his own. But Emanuel and the others continued to invoke the president.
Worse for Jones, he often felt sidelined by Emanuel, who would regularly come to the national security adviser’s suite and see his deputy, Donilon. So Jones told Emanuel, “I’m the national security adviser. When you come down there, come see me.” It got better for a short time, but the practice of visiting only Donilon soon started up again. Jones hadn’t realized what a clique the White House was. He concluded that if he had understood that dynamic when he was picking a deputy, he never in a million years would have gone with Donilon.
Jones also was unsure about Gates. The defense secretary tended to hang back, figure out which way decisions were going, where everyone else, including the president, was leaning and then jump that way. So his comments seemed a studied calculation of the likely outcome. The trademark skepticism was often a cover to delay taking a stand.
At first Jones had had a positive impression of Secretary Clinton, but then there was the Zinni incident. Early in the administration, Clinton was looking for somebody to be the ambassador to Iraq.
“Why not Tony Zinni?” Jones proposed. Anthony Zinni was a retired four-star Marine general, like Jones, former Central Command commander (from 1997 to 2000), and later an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Jones and Zinni were close friends.
Clinton thought it was a good idea, had an excellent interview with Zinni, and it looked like it was going to happen. Zinni thought he had been offered the job when she told her assistant, “Let’s get the paperwork moving.” Obama liked the idea and Biden called Zinni to congratulate him, but nothing was announced for several days, so Jones asked Clinton about the status.
“Oh,” she said, “we decided on Chris Hill,” a former Bush negotiator with North Korea.
“Has anyone told Tony Zinni?” asked Jones.
All he got was a blank look, so Jones called Zinni, who unloaded on his old friend, telling him, “Stick it where the sun don’t shine.” Jones mentioned the possibility of the ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia, and Zinni blew up even more.
Jones told the president how distressed he was. “We decided and it didn’t happen. It changed. No one called Zinni to tell him.” It appeared no one was in charge of the process or coordinating it. “It was just chaotic,” Jones said. “This has essentially destroyed an important friendship I had.”
But the real offense by the water bugs took place during the president’s first European trip in March. Jones was on the trip and asked to see the president. “My access was cut off,” he said. One of the water bugs said no. Jones couldn’t believe it. He was hum
iliated. Here they were in Europe and the national security adviser couldn’t talk to the president?
Jones complained to Emanuel and explained what had happened. He was offended at the personal slight. As a matter of process, it was malfeasance for someone to block the main foreign policy coordinator for the president from advising the president anytime, let alone when the president was abroad. Jones almost threatened to quit, but instead brought up the subject directly with the president.
“This has got to stop,” Jones said.
The president calmed him down and promised, “We’ll take care of it.”
The situation improved with everyone but one—Mark Lippert, his NSC chief of staff and someone so close to Obama that he was like a favored younger brother.
Jones was convinced that Lippert was trying to derail his role in the Obama administration. But the matter would have to wait while Jones built his case that Lippert was engaged in a massive campaign of leaking, regularly providing criticism and derogatory information to other NSC staffers and the media about Jones and his performance as national security adviser.
Back from Afghanistan, Jones reported to the president that the situation was puzzling. There was a disconnect between what they had been told for the past several months and what General McChrystal was now seeing.
“I wasn’t sure what was going on,” Jones said. “I wasn’t sure on the eve of one commander’s departure and another one coming in how things could be so catastrophically different.”
On the question of how many troops were needed, Jones told Obama, “The jury is still out on this.” It might not matter how many troops were added unless the other legs of the stool—economic development and Afghan governance—accompanied them, he said. Without those other elements, Afghanistan would simply gobble up additional troops.
A few days after returning from Afghanistan, I published a front-page story in The Washington Post on Wednesday, July 1. The news value of what had occurred was obvious. I was sure the military would not give up on requests for more troops, no matter what Jones had told the generals in Afghanistan.
