America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (76 page)

 50.
Mark Boal, “The Kill Team,”
Rolling Stone
(April 14, 2011).

 51.
Harry D. Tunnell IV,
Red Devils: Tactical Perspectives from Iraq
(n.p., 2006), 53.

 52.
Anna Mulrine, “Pentagon Had Red Flags About Command Climate in ‘Kill Team’ Stryker Brigade,”
Christian Science Monitor
(October 28, 2010).

 53.
Memorandum for the Honorable John McHugh, Subject: Open Door Policy—Report from a Tactical Commander (August 20, 2010),
michaelyon-online.com/images/pdf/secarmy_redacted-redux.pdf
, accessed June 2, 2015.

 54.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Petraeus Reviews Directive Meant to Limit Afghan Civilian Deaths,”
Washington Post
(July 9, 2010).

 55.
“General Petraeus Issues Updated Tactical Directive” (August 4, 2010),
rs.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/general-petraeus-issues-updated-tactical-directive-emphasizes-disciplined-use-of-force.html
, accessed June 1, 2015. This NATO website provides unclassified extracts from Petraeus’s classified directive, dated August 1, 2010, emphasis in the original.

 56.
Bob Woodward,
Obama’s Wars
(New York, 2010), 346.

 57.
As measured by “weapons releases,” ISAF air strikes increased by 22 percent from 2009 to 2010, with an additional 6 percent the following year. “Combined Forces Air Component Commander, 2007–2012 Airpower Statistics” (October 31, 2012),
wired.com/2012/11/drones-afghan-air-war/
, accessed June 5, 2015.

 58.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “U.S. Deploying Heavily Armored Battle Tanks for First Time in Afghan War,”
The Washington Post
(November 19, 2010).

 59.
“Kill/Capture,”
Frontline
(May 10, 2011). The quotation is from John Nagl, who had collaborated in drafting FM 3-24.

 60.
Tim Foxley, “How Many Taliban Are There?”
Afghanhindsight
(November 2012),
afghanhindsight.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/how-many-taliban-are-there/
, accessed June 7, 2015.

 61.
Susan D. Chesser,
Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians
(December 6, 2012). This is a Congressional Research Service report.

 62.
The number of such episodes increased from five in 2010 to sixteen in 2011 and then to forty-four the following year. Bill Roggio and Lisa Lundquist, “Green-on-Blue Attacks in Afghanistan: The Data,”
The Long War Journal
(April 8, 2015).

 63.
“U.S. Military Casualties—Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Casualty Summary by Month,”
dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_oef_month.xhtml
, accessed June 7, 2015.

 64.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
Afghanistan Opium Survey 2014
(November 2014), 60.

 65.
Joel Brinkley, “Money Pit: The Monstrous Failure of U.S. Aid to Afghanistan,”
World Affairs
(January–February 2013).

 66.
Transparency International,
Corruptions Perceptions Index, 2013,
transparency.org/cpi2013/results
, accessed June 6, 2015.

 67.
A web search that combines “Afghan security forces” with “work in progress” yields thousands of reports, articles, and news stories using the latter phrase to describe the former between 2007 and 2015.

 68.
“Address to the Nation on the Drawdown of United States Military Personnel in Afghanistan” (June 22, 2011).

 69.
Ben Anderson, “TIA: This Is Afghanistan,”
Port
(August 14, 2013).

 70.
“Statement by the President on the End of the Combat Mission in Afghanistan” (December 28, 2014).

16. Entropy

 1.
“Remarks by the President on the Way Forward in Afghanistan” (June 22, 2011).

 2.
“Secretary of Defense Speech” (February 25, 2011).

 3.
“Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony” (May 28, 2014).

 4.
“Remarks in Cairo” (June 4, 2009).

 5.
By 2015, more than 350,000 Israelis were living in the occupied territories, with the rate of settlement increasing in recent years. Jodi Rudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas, “Netanyahu and the Settlements,”
The New York Times
(March 12, 2015).

 6.
Jodi Rudoren, “Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians,”
The New York Times
(March 16, 2015).

 7.
According to some projections, BDS was likely to cost the Israeli economy billions. See, for example, John Reed, “Israel: A New Kind of War,”
Financial Times
(June 12, 2015). Whatever its economic impact, BDS generated outrage tinged with panic among Israel’s supporters. See for example the series of reports in
Commentary
magazine at
commentarymagazine.com/topic/bds-movement/
, accessed June 15, 2015.

 8.
The book that first violated and thereby destroyed that taboo was John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt,
The Israel Lobby
(New York, 2007).

 9.
For a complete inventory, see Justin Elliott, “Netanyahu Gets More Standing Ovations Than Obama,”
Salon
(May 24, 2015).

 10.
Uri Avnery, “The Speech,”
Gush Shalom
(March 6, 2015).

 11.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
(March 3, 2015),
thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/p87z5f/bibi-s-big-adventure--the-media-comeback-kid
, accessed June 14, 2015.

 12.
John M. McHugh and Raymond T. Odierno, “On the Posture of the United States Army” (March 11, 2015).

 13.
William R. Levesque, “Gen. Joseph Votel Takes Over U.S. Special Operations Command During Ceremony in Tampa,”
Tampa Bay Times
(August 28, 2014).

 14.
Mark Bowden, “1980 Iran Incident Was Our Most Successful Failure,”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(May 9, 2010).

 15.
In 2015, the British Army consisted of eighty-two thousand soldiers, with the government of Prime Minister David Cameron promising further cuts.

 16.
Nick Turse, “A Shadow War in 150 Countries,”
TomDispatch
(January 20, 2015).

 17.
Michael P. Kreuzer, “Remotely Piloted Aircraft: Evolution, Diffusion, and the Future of Air Warfare” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2014), 66–70.

 18.
Rumsfeld,
Known and Unknown
, 630.

 19.
Scott MacLeod, “Behind Gaddafi’s Diplomatic Turnaround,”
Time
(May 18, 2006).

 20.
Gaddafi was much taken with the American secretary of state, referring to her as “my darling black African woman.” In an interview, he professed to be “very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders.” Gaddafi continued: “Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza….I love her very much.” Helene Cooper, “Isolation Over, Libyan Leader Meets with Rice,”
The New York Times
(September 5, 2008).

 21.
“Libya Protests: Defiant Gaddafi Refuses to Quit,” BBC News (February 22, 2011).

 22.
“Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee” (March 2, 2011).

 23.
Barack Obama, “Remarks on the Situation in Libya” (March 18, 2011).

 24.
Major General Margaret Woodward, “Defending America’s Vital National Interests in Africa” (September 21, 2011).

 25.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Operation Unified Protector Final Mission Stats” (November 2, 2011),
nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_11/20111108_111107-factsheet_up_factsfigures_en.pdf
, accessed June 16, 2015; Florence Gaub,
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Libya: Reviewing Operation Unified Protector
(Carlisle Barracks, 2013), 7.

 26.
Thomas Harding, “Col. Gaddafi Killed: Convoy Bombed by Drone Flown by Pilot in Las Vegas,”
The Telegraph
(October 20, 2011).

 27.
Corbett Daly, “Clinton on Qaddafi: ‘We Came, We Saw, He Died,’ ”
CBS News
(October 20, 2011).

 28.
“Remarks on the Death of Former Leader Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi of Libya” (October 20, 2011).

 29.
Alan J. Kuperman, “Obama’s Libya Debacle,”
Foreign Affairs
(March/April 2015).

 30.
“The President’s News Conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman, Jordan” (March 22, 2013).

 31.
Mark Landler, “Obama Threatens Force Against Syria,”
The New York Times
(August 20, 2012).

 32.
Chuck Todd, “The White House Walk-and-Talk That Changed Obama’s Mind on Syria,” NBC News (August 31, 2013).

 33.
Jodi Rudoren, “U.S. Backing of Russian Plan Leaves a Wary Israel Focusing on Self-Reliance,”
The New York Times
(September 12, 2013).

 34.
Thom Shanker and Lauren D’Avolio, “Former Defense Secretaries Criticize Obama on Syria,”
The New York Times
(September 18, 2013).

 35.
“Kerry’s Remarks on Chemical Weapons in Syria,”
The New York Times
(August 30, 2013).

 36.
Andy Borowitz, “Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form,”
The New Yorker
(June 27, 2014).

 37.
Helene Cooper, “Few U.S.-Trained Syrians Still Fight ISIS, Senators Told,”
The New York Times
(September 16, 2015).

 38.
Karen Yourish et al., “Death in Syria,”
The New York Times
(September 14, 2015); “Syria’s Refugee Crisis in Numbers,”
Amnesty International
(September 4, 2015).

 39.
Eric Schmitt and Neil MacFarquhar, “Russia Expands Fleet in Syria with Jets That Can Attack Targets on Ground,”
The New York Times
(September 21, 2015).

 40.
For a critical, yet balanced account of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship with all its ups and downs, see Husain Haqqani,
Magnificent Delusions
(New York, 2013).

 41.
Richard Holbrooke may have been the first to use the term. In a speech delivered in February 2009 at Munich, just beginning his ill-fated term as Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Holbrooke riffed on “the problem AfPak, as in Afghanistan Pakistan.” The use of the term was “not just an effort to save eight syllables,” he said. “It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theater of war, straddling an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that on the western side of that border, NATO and other forces are able to operate. On the eastern side, it’s the sovereign territory of Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this ill-defined border that the international terrorist movement is located.” Michael Quinion,
World Wide Words,
worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-afp1.htm
, accessed June 18, 2015.