Obama’s Wars

by Bob Woodward

  “People have to be comfortable with the decision that in 18 to 24 months we would begin the downward slope so at the end of 2012 we would be at pre-surge levels,” he said. He did not mention it, but the deadline, 2012, was the year Obama would almost surely seek reelection.

  Donilon pointed out that everyone also needed to be comfortable with having fewer than 400,000 combined Afghan army and police. Moving up the deployment of a NATO brigade combat team by a year to August 2010 would provide more force than McChrystal had requested in his original request.

  There were hard choices with the Pakistani safe haven issue that had yet to be fully addressed, Donilon said. And within the next six months, they had to have a clear path toward dealing with that particular problem.

  Rahm Emanuel talked about the difficulty of passing supplemental funding through Congress. “We would need the support of the American people to undertake this project,” he said. With the options favored by the military, Emanuel explained that the U.S. commitment would effectively triple in one year.

  This got the president’s attention. “I’ve been very careful to not interject domestic politics into this discussion to date,” Obama said. “Rahm, as a good chief of staff, has just raised this question. It behooves us to ask it. I’m not being flip, but what would happen, what would you do if Congress refused to fund the 40,000 troops?” That scenario was highly unlikely. If a Democratic president wanted to send 40,000, the Democratic Congress would no doubt go along. If it didn’t, the Republicans would certainly provide the votes. But it was a way of asking what they would do if the president did not approve 40,000.

  Obama seemed to turn to Petraeus, but the general didn’t answer.

  He’s punting! McDonough and Rhodes concluded. Petraeus was passing the question to McChrystal, they thought. Donilon figured that Petraeus wouldn’t want this option considered.

  “I’m committed regardless,” McChrystal said. “I haven’t developed this in detail, but what I would do is go to Plan B. It would be to pull back to key population centers, to train the Afghan security forces, and to continue to target key sanctuaries, including trying to remove sanctuaries in Pakistan.”

  Cartwright said that would be the Plan B, which was essentially the hybrid option of 20,000 additional troops, including trainers and counterterrorism assets, that he had developed for Biden.

  “Just real quick,” Eikenberry said. “That’s right. You focus on the Afghan National Security Force development as your ticket out, and speed up reintegration.”

  Donilon, McDonough and Rhodes thought Plan B didn’t sound half bad. It was pretty good, plausible. Here again was an option the military had never offered, another viable alternative that the president had been waiting to receive from the Pentagon.

  Petraeus now had an answer to the question about what would happen if the 40,000 were not funded or somehow they did not get them.

  “You would see the spots on the map that we control—and that the Afghan government controls—slowly recede,” he said. “What you would have is a recipe for a slow loss.” Without a secure country, it would become more difficult and more important to improve the ANSF. “But you’ve got to recognize the enormous risk and how difficult it is to develop ANSF if the security situation’s deteriorating.”

  The president attempted to sum things up. “At the end of two years,” he said, “the situation may still have ambiguous elements. We’ll have cleared and held areas, security will be improved, there will be more ANSF. It won’t be fully there yet. Taliban momentum will be broken. Political environment will be complex. Some progress there in the economy, but not as much as we’d like. And basically, we’ll have to ask, is this good enough?

  “If anybody has additional comments,” he said, “they should get them to me.” Obama added, “I’m inclined to agree with the notion that we announce the third brigade. I’m more inclined to off-ramp rather than on-ramp. But if we are not seeing progress, we could off-ramp.

  “Okay, thanks everyone. We need to get a decision. I’ll be working through the weekend on this and I’d like to be able to have a decision early next week.”

  On Tuesday, November 24, Biden called Petraeus, who was on a plane heading to the USS Nimitz, the aircraft carrier that was in the theater supporting the war. Petraeus was going to spend Thanksgiving on the ship.

  Just want to confirm that you are okay with the 18-to-24-month timeline, Biden said. Obama was likely to set a specific date—July 2011—to begin the drawdown. Biden wanted to make sure the most visible general would not balk.

  Roger, Petraeus said. He concluded that the president and vice president were wondering if the military would support the decision.

  • • •

  When Petraeus passed through Washington during the next week or so, Cartwright tried to review the hybrid option with him.

  “Let’s talk about this,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

  Petraeus said he did not want to discuss the matter.

  “I’m taking your lessons here,” Cartwright said, noting that it was straight out of Petraeus’s Iraq playbook to get the surge of troops in fast and also expand counterterrorist operations. “What’s wrong with this plan?”

  “You don’t understand,” Petraeus responded, shutting the door on further discussion.

  Cartwright had thought for a long time that he was a lone military voice howling into a strong wind, but he was surprised that Petraeus was unwilling to have a frank conversation.

  Gates spoke with Cartwright at this point. He wanted to figure out how to have a recommendation that did “not break the internal coalition” among the uniformed military. Cartwright thought of their discussion as a negotiation, but it almost approached an argument.

  The secretary of defense said he wanted 35,000 troops, the high end of his Option 2A.

  The vice chairman said he was in the 25,000 area, up 5,000 from the hybrid option.

  * 1. Reversing Taliban momentum.

  2. Denying the Taliban access to and control of key population and production centers and lines of communication.

  3. Disrupting the Taliban outside secured areas and preventing al Qaeda from regaining sanctuary in Afghanistan.

  4. Degrading the Taliban to levels manageable by the Afghans.

  5. Increasing the size and capacity of the Afghan security forces.

  6. Building the Afghan government, especially in key ministries.

  25

  At about 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, November 25, the day before Thanksgiving, the president and his chief of staff met in the Oval Office with the White House national security team—Jones, Donilon, McDonough and Rhodes, the foreign policy speechwriter.

  Obama said this was the most difficult decision he had faced—and he looked like it was.

  He unspooled what was on his mind, offering some conclusions, expressing some uncertainty, and outlining specifics to Rhodes for the upcoming speech. He said he was “inclined to go with the 30,000” troops, yet he didn’t sound like this was final.

  “This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama said. “Everything that we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room. It has to be clear that this is what we’re doing.”

  There were uncertainties, he said. “As we describe this to the American people, they’re not as interested in things like the numbers of brigades. It’s the number of troops. And I’ve decided on 30,000.” It was the lowest number in Gates’s Option 2A, which had been submitted three weeks earlier. Obama now sounded more certain on that number. “We should make clear that this is not the Iraq debate. We’re not talking about setting a date for removing our troops and lessening our commitment. We’re talking about identifying the time frame for transition” to the Afghan security forces.

  “And we also need to make clear that we’re goi
ng to have interests in Afghanistan that are enduring, in terms of counterterrorism and governance, assistance.” Focus on training also, he said. “I want to emphasize the speed with which we’re doing things. Faster in, faster out.”

  In an unusual move, he said, “I want everybody to sign on to this—McChrystal, Petraeus, Gates, Mullen, Eikenberry and Clinton. We should get this on paper and on the record.” With the president speaking as if there would be a signed contract, some had the mistaken impression that he wanted actual signatures on a document.

  “We’re not going to be precise about the speed with which we’re winding down,” Obama said. They would just identify the point of transition—July 2011. In a shot right at Petraeus, he said, “Avoid the counterinsurgency language in public.” The language he wanted to use was “target, train and transfer.”

  He reiterated that he was out-of-hand rejecting the McChrystal proposal to train the Afghan security forces up to 400,000. “We’re not going to set targets unless we’re going to meet them.” He added that on the price tag, “We shouldn’t low-ball the price in our estimates. We should be as clear as we can, when we can, about how much this is going to cost.

  “We shouldn’t be belligerent in how we talk about this,” said Obama, who had been offended by Bush’s “bring ’em on” talk and the early Bush rhetoric of getting bin Laden “dead or alive.” He added, “We need to set public expectations that this is going to be difficult and it’s going to take time.”

  Donilon asked about Pakistan. Exactly how were they going to explain that the safe havens there would no longer be acceptable? It could not be framed as a declaration of war inside Pakistan. This was a tricky problem.

  “We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan,” Obama said. “The reason we’re doing the target, train and transfer in Afghanistan is so the cancer doesn’t spread there. We also need to excise the cancer in Pakistan.” But the fuller explanation would not—could not—be in the speech because these were covert drone attacks and other clandestine operations. “We also have to connect this to our counterterrorism efforts in the homeland.”

  Turning to the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said they had to make it clear they “are both supportive of this and will get into the fight. That this is an opportunity for them to increase their partnership.”

  Obama said the speech should address the underlying purpose of these decisions. “The reason we’re doing this is to create the space for the training and partnership with the Afghans to work.” It was a surge intended to get the United States out.

  Donilon said that not everything was resolved. The Pentagon was now raising another troop request that had been overlooked during the deliberations. It was for 4,500 more “enablers”—logistics, communications and medical personnel—and it had been pending since summer. As best he could tell, some of those enabling functions were built into the request for the large brigades. I’m not impressed that they have made a good, strong case that these 4,500 enablers are necessary for those brigades, Donilon said.

  “That’s basically taking it up to 40,000?” the president asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m done doing this!” Obama said, finally erupting. “We’ve all agreed on a plan. And we’re all going to stick to that plan. I haven’t agreed to anything beyond that.”

  The 30,000 was a “hard cap,” he said forcefully. “I don’t want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do—politically—would actually be to say no” to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military, he said, “They think it’s the opposite. I’d be perfectly happy—” He stopped mid-sentence. “Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.”

  There was some subdued laughter.

  “Rahm would tell me it’d be much easier to do what I want to do by saying no,” the president said. He could then focus on the domestic agenda that he wanted to be the heart of his presidency. The military did not understand. “Politically, what these guys don’t get is it’d be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, ‘You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we’re going to put in 10,000 trainers because that’s how we’re going to get out of there.’

  “And the military would be upset about it,” the president added.

  It was apparent that a part—perhaps a large part—of Obama wanted to give precisely that speech. He seemed to be road-testing it.

  Donilon said that Gates might resign if the decision was only the 10,000 trainers.

  “That would be the difficult part,” Obama said, “because Bob Gates is … there’s no stronger member of my national security team.”

  No one said anything more about that possibility.

  “I’m just going to lay it out,” the president said, returning to the path they had supposedly agreed on for the 30,000. Overall, he said there were five points he wanted to underscore for how they all would talk about the decision.

  “We need to emphasize this is an international effort,” he said. “We need to emphasize we’re getting troops in faster and getting them out faster. We need to emphasize the training of the Afghans. We need to emphasize the need to beat back the Taliban’s momentum, and we need to emphasize that this will help us improve Afghan governance.”

  The speech “should be very sober but not depressing.” He said again that he didn’t want to use the word “counterinsurgency,” but just talk instead about security for the Afghan population centers. The terms counterinsurgency and counterterrorism had become caricatured, he felt, code words for nationwide security versus pulling back and firing missiles from ships and drones.

  Full counterinsurgency was not possible, yet it had become a Republican mantra. “Here’s the part of it that I agree with,” he said. “In order to have successful training of these security forces and to blunt the Taliban’s momentum, you need to secure enough population centers to create space for that training mission to succeed.”

  He repeated that he wanted a decision memorandum that everyone would have to follow.

  “We’re not going to do this unless everybody literally signs on to it and looks me in the eye and tells me that they’re for it.” The president was as animated as most in the room had ever seen him. “I don’t want to have anybody going out the day after and saying that they don’t agree with this.” No more gentlemen’s agreements. The lawyer in Obama would attempt to deter revisionism with a written document.

  Addressing Rhodes, he began to sketch the case he wanted to make in his speech.

  “We need to remind people why we went into Afghanistan in the first place,” he said. “We need to tell the story of how we got up to where we are today. I want to make the point that this is the epicenter of violent extremism.” The speech should describe how he believed in the mission in Afghanistan and the need for additional resources.

  “People think that this is some kind of numbers game,” the president said. He repeated what he had said two weeks earlier during a review session. If I was not convinced this was necessary, he said, “going to Dover, another night in Dover, would be enough for me to just say the hell with this, and let’s get out of there.” A version of that should be in the speech, Obama said, to show it had been hard to make this decision, and how deep his conviction was.

  The president also wanted to stress that an international coalition supported this war. It was not just an American war, and any increase in force would be accompanied by an increase from the NATO allies. He also said he had to be specific about the July 2011 date for beginning withdrawal.

  Biden had suggested a long section on Pakistan, but they had to be careful. Much of that would be on the covert side and involved classified forces. All hell would break loose if the president announced that safe havens were no longer acceptable, and he was going after them with U.S. ground combat forces—Special Operation
s or CIA paramilitary teams. Crossing the border, even with Pakistani acquiescence, was dicey.

  “You know what?” Obama said. He had outlined the Pakistan problem already in March. “We did that the first time. We’ve made it clear to people. They’ll link it, but this speech is about Afghanistan. Americans are really concerned about our troops in this speech.”

  The president repeated that he had decided on the 30,000-troop option and that should be in the speech draft, he said, adding a caution. “There’s a chance the decision could change,” he said. “We may need another speech.”

  Obama called Rhodes back to the Oval Office shortly after the meeting.

  “One other thing,” the president said, “I want to say in the speech why this is not Vietnam, why this is not Iraq.” He wanted to say that in Afghanistan, unlike Vietnam, the United States had 41 nations supporting the war as coalition partners. And it would be useful to remind people that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by al Qaeda, which had sanctuary in Afghanistan. Tell the whole story from 9/11. It was not like Iraq because we weren’t attacked from there and there is no threat to the homeland from Iraq. Yet, he said he wanted to acknowledge that Iraq’s security and stability had improved.

  Of both Vietnam and Iraq, he said, “We’ve had wrenching debates about these issues as a country. But we need to move beyond relitigating those debates. We need to celebrate the heroism and courage of our troops without glorifying war.

  “We need to convey the extent of the threat and the fact that these dangers still exist,” he directed. The tone ought to be “clear-eyed and resolute with a clear focus on our interests, that we’ve not overexpanding or moving beyond those interests.