The Wars of Robert Gates
On Afghanistan, Obama was caught between his generals' advice and his advisers' political worries
By Robert M. Gates, author of "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War", Wall Street Journal
I had been the secretary of defense for just over two years on Jan. 21, 2009, but on that day I again became the outsider. The Obama administration housed a web of long-standing relationships—from Democratic Party politics and the Clinton administration—about which I was clueless. I was also a geezer in the new administration. Many influential appointees below the top level, especially in the White House, had been undergraduates—or even in high school—when I had been CIA director. No wonder my nickname in the White House soon was Yoda, the ancient Jedi teacher in "Star Wars."
For the first several months, it took a lot of discipline to sit quietly at the table as everyone from President Obama on down took shots at President Bush and his team. Sitting there, I would often think to myself, Am I invisible?
During these excoriations, there was never any acknowledgment that I had been an integral part of that earlier team. Discussions in the Situation Room allowed no room for discriminating analysis: Everything was awful, and Obama and his team had arrived just in time to save the day.
Our discussions soon turned to the war in Afghanistan. My years in the Bush administration had convinced me that creating a strong, democratic, and more or less honest and competent central government in Afghanistan was a fantasy. Our goal, I thought, should be limited to hammering the Taliban and other extremists and to building up the Afghan security forces so they could control the extremists and deny al Qaeda another safe haven in Afghanistan.
At the Obama administration's first National Security Council meeting on Afghanistan on Jan. 23, 2009, there was much discussion of the lack of a coherent strategy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had previously asked to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan to deal with the Taliban's expected summer offensive and the country's upcoming presidential elections—a request eventually pared back to about 17,000 troops and an additional 4,000 "enablers," troops for countering roadside bombs, ordnance disposal, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and medics.
This pressure for an early decision on a troop increase had the unfortunate and lasting effect of creating suspicion in the White House that Obama was getting the "bum's rush" from senior military officers—especially the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, and Gen. David Petraeus, who was then running the U.S. Central Command—to make a big decision prematurely. I believed then—and now—that this distrust was stoked by Vice President Joe Biden, with Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and some of Obama's other White House advisers joining the chorus.
A March report on the Afghanistan situation by Bruce Riedel, a seasoned and very capable Middle East expert who had advised the Obama campaign, proved breathtaking in its ambition. It recommended disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, promoting a more effective Afghan government, ending Pakistan's support for terrorist groups and working to reduce enmity between Pakistan and India. Most significantly for the conflicts to come between the White House and the U.S. military, the report called for a "fully-resourced counterinsurgency campaign" to let us "regain the initiative" from the Taliban.
All of Obama's national security principals—except Biden—agreed with Riedel's recommendations. But the vice president argued that the war was politically unsustainable at home. I thought he was wrong—and that if the president remained steadfast, he could sustain even an unpopular war, as President Bush had done with a far less popular war in Iraq. The key was showing that we were succeeding militarily and that an end was in sight.
The president embraced most of Riedel's recommendations and announced his new "Af-Pak" strategy in a televised speech on March 27, including 21,000 more soldiers to "take the fight to the Taliban." There would now be some 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
But within weeks, I began hearing from Mullen and other commanders about the need for more troops. I made clear that we could not go above the presidentially approved number of 68,000 without going back to the commander in chief. On June 8, I told our new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that I wanted him to do a 60-day review of the situation in Afghanistan, including personnel levels. It seemed a perfectly innocuous request. We needed to do the review before I approached the president about any more forces; I couldn't nickel-and-dime him to death.
The next day was my worst so far with the Obama administration. In a meeting with the president, I described my request to McChrystal for a new assessment, including a review of troop levels, and the urgent need to send more enablers. The room exploded. The president said testily there would be no political support for any further troop increase: Congressional Democrats didn't want one, and the Republicans would just play politics. Biden and Emanuel piled on. I had my own reservations about a big increase in troop numbers but didn't see why 2,000 to 4,000 more enablers should cause so much angst and hostility.
Many in the White House were increasingly suspicious that the commanders were trying to box the president in. In early August, I had a long, very direct conversation with Emanuel in the chief of staff's corner White House office. I told him that the president needed to "take ownership of the Afghan war." My principal concern wasn't with Obama's public comments on the need for an exit strategy from Afghanistan but with what he wasn't saying. He needed to acknowledge that the war could take years but that he was confident we would ultimately succeed. He needed to explain publicly why the troops' sacrifices were necessary.
I told Emanuel I would likely come to the president in mid-September for additional enablers. I said that the president didn't want to be in the position of turning down assets that had a direct role in protecting the troops' lives.
Emanuel sat quietly while I vented. I never raised my voice, but I think he could tell how angry I was—and chose to exercise uncharacteristic restraint. I would later hear that some White House politicos worried about my quitting.
In a June 24 videoconference, McChrystal told me for the first time that he had found the situation in Afghanistan much worse than he expected. In mid-July, Mullen returned from a trip to Afghanistan and told me that McChrystal might ask for as many as 40,000 additional troops. I nearly fell off my chair. I had no idea how I could get the president's approval of even a fraction of that number, and I saw a train wreck coming. The only time as secretary of defense that I was truly alarmed was when I heard what McChrystal intended.
On Aug. 4, Mullen and I briefed the president in the Oval Office. The president said that he wanted a choice of real options, not just a troop-intensive counterinsurgency campaign. Obama was thoughtful and balanced, sensible in his comments and questions. He was aware of the politics but, unlike Biden and Emanuel, not driven by them.
For 2½ years, I had warned about the risks of a significant increase in the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, and during that period we had increased from about 21,000 to 68,000 troops. I believed, with Mullen, that the war in Afghanistan had been neglected and under-resourced in the Bush administration. But I was torn between my historical perspective, which screamed for caution, and what my commanders insisted was needed to accomplish the mission they had been given.
McChrystal submitted his assessment on Aug. 31. Mullen and I met with the president in the Oval Office on Sept. 2 and gave him a copy. I told him it didn't represent a new strategy but focused on implementing what the president had approved in March. With IED attacks and casualties rising, I told the president I wanted to move quickly on the enablers, sending perhaps up to as many as 5,000.
To my astonishment and dismay, the president reacted angrily. Why do you need more enablers? he asked. Were they not anticipated as part of the 21,000? Is this mission creep?
Outside the Oval Office after the meeting, exasperated, I told Biden and Donilon that, with respect to the 5,000 enablers, "From a moral and political standpoint, we cannot fail to take action to protect the troops."
I was deeply disturbed by the meeting. If I couldn't do what I thought was necessary to take care of the troops, I didn't see how I could remain as secretary.
I shared Obama's concerns about an open-ended conflict in Afghanistan, but I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House's lack of appreciation—from the top down—of the uncertainties and inherent unpredictability of war. "They all seem to think it's a science," I wrote in a note to myself. I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it.
On Sept. 10, I gave the president a long "eyes only" memo on my own thinking. I wrote that, "as usual," all the options were unpalatable. I added, impertinently, that any new decision that abandoned Obama's decisions in March would be seen as a retreat from Afghanistan, sending a worrisome message to Afghanistan, Pakistan, our Arab and NATO allies, Iran, North Korea and others about U.S. will and staying power.
I ended on a very personal note. "Mr. President, you and I—more than any other civilians—bear the burden of responsibility for our men and women at war," I wrote. "But, I believe our troops are committed to this mission and want to be successful. Above all, they don't want to retreat, or to lose, or for their sacrifices—and those of their buddies—to be in vain."
On Sept. 15, at Mullen's Senate confirmation hearing for his second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he forcefully argued for more troops in Afghanistan. Six days later, McChrystal's assessment of the dire situation in Afghanistan leaked, and on Oct. 1, while answering a question at a speech in London, McChrystal dismissed out of hand the Afghan option the vice president had been pushing in our internal deliberations. All this ignited a firestorm as the president—and everyone else in the White House—angrily concluded that it constituted an orchestrated effort by the military to force the commander in chief's hand.
Mullen and I repeatedly discussed with the infuriated president what he regarded as military pressure on him. "Is it a lack of respect for me?" Obama asked us. "Are [Petraeus, McChrystal and Mullen] trying to box me in? I've tried to create an environment where all points of view can be expressed and have a robust debate. I'm prepared to devote any amount of time to it—however many hours or days. What is wrong? Is it the process? Are they suspicious of my politics? Do they resent that I never served in the military? Do they think because I'm young that I don't see what they're doing?"
By mid-October, some clarity was emerging on the key issues. The president called me one night while I was eating a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner at home. "I'm really looking to you for your views on the way forward in Afghanistan," he said. "I'm counting on you."
When I met privately with him in the Oval Office a week later, he grinned broadly, stuck out his hand to shake over the bowl of apples on his coffee table and said, "You have the solution?" I told him I had thought about his call a lot and had prepared a memo for him offering my thoughts. Ultimately, one of the pivotal decisions of Obama's presidency largely tracked the recommendations in that paper.
"We tried remote-control counterterrorism in the 1990s, and it brought us 9/11," I wrote. The core goals Obama had chosen the previous March remained valid—above all, defeating al Qaeda—but we had to narrow the Afghan mission and better communicate what we were trying to do.
We could not realistically expect to eliminate the Taliban; they were woven into Afghanistan's political fabric. But we could work to reverse their military momentum, deny them the ability to control major cities and pressure them along the Pakistani border. Our military efforts should aim to stabilize the situation and buy time to train the ragged but courageous Afghan security forces. We should "quietly shelve trying to develop a strong, effective central government in Afghanistan" and concentrate instead on building up a few key ministries. I supported McChrystal's request for 40,000 troops, but I offered an alternative of about 30,000 troops.
"In conclusion, Mr. President, this is a seminal moment in your presidency," I wrote. "If you elect not to agree to General McChrystal's recommendations (or my alternative), I urge you to make a tough-minded, dramatic change in mission [in] the other direction. Standing pat, middling options, muddling through, are not the right path forward and put our kids at risk for no good purpose."
The atmosphere at the White House was getting poisonous, especially on the part of Donilon, who had characterized Mullen and the military as "insubordinate" and "in revolt." It steamed me that someone who had never been in the military and had never even been to Afghanistan was second-guessing commanders in the field.
On Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving, the president called me at my home in the Pacific Northwest for a long talk. He was fine with the 30,000 troops, with flexibility "in the range of 10%" for additional enablers, but he wouldn't agree to the requests for 4,500 enablers unrelated to the new deployments that had been stacking up on my desk for more than two months. He said that pushed the total number to 37,000. The president asked me to return to Washington early for a meeting with him, Mullen and Petraeus to make sure they were on board. "I'm tired of negotiating with the military," he said.
That Sunday meeting was unlike any I ever attended in the Oval Office. Obama said he had gathered the group principally to go through his decisions one more time to determine whether Mullen and Petraeus were fully on board. The commanders said what he wanted to hear, and I was pleased to hear my proposal being adopted.
Then came an exchange that is seared into my memory. Biden said he was ready to move forward, but the military "should consider the president's decision as an order."
"I am giving an order," Obama quickly said.
I was shocked. I had never heard a president explicitly frame a decision as a direct order. With the U.S. military, it is completely unnecessary. As secretary of defense, I had never issued an "order" to get something done; nor had I heard any commander do so. Obama's "order," at Biden's urging, demonstrated the complete unfamiliarity of both men with the American military culture.
The president announced the troop surge at West Point on Dec. 1. In the end, this major national security debate had been driven more by the White House staff and domestic politics than any other in my entire experience. The president's political operatives wanted to make sure that everyone knew the Pentagon wouldn't get its way.
Obama, however, made the tough decision to go forward with the Afghan surge—a decision that was contrary to the advice of all his political advisers and almost certainly the least politically popular of his options.
