The Longest War (83 page)

307
became the deputy leader
: Worth op. cit.

307
chart his changing character
: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “From captive to suicide bomber,”
Washington Post
, February 22, 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/02/21/AR2009022101234.html
.

307
“hostile, hardened individual”
: Chandrasekaran op. cit.

307
Pentagon fact sheet
: The list, entitled “Former Guantánamo Detainee Terrorism Trends,” is available from
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/
Guantánamo_recidivism_list_090526.pdf
as of January 6, 2010.

308
“One in seven”
: Dick Cheney, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/
opinion/07pubed.html

308
the true rate
: Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “Who really returned to the battlefield?” New America Foundation, July 20, 2009.
http://counterterrorism.
newamerica.net/publications/
policy/Guantánamo_who_really_
returned_battlefield
.

308
some fifty
: Peter Finn, “Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantánamo detainees be held indefinitely,”
Washington Post
, January 22, 2010.

308
Obama backed away
: Jane Mayer, “The trial,”
New Yorker
, February 15, 2010.

308
ended in 2003
: Michael V. Hayden, hearing of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence, “Worldwide threats,” February 7, 2008, Washington, D.C.

308
dramatically increased
: Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, The New America Foundation, “The Year of the Drone,” February 24, 2010,
www.newamerica.net/drones
.

309
“The Taliban regime”
: Agence France Presse, “Cheney declares death of Taliban as alliance mops up in Afghanistan,” March 13, 2002.

309
“[The Taliban] have a”
: Admiral Mike Mullen, House of Representatives, Hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee, “U.S. strategy in Afghanistan,” Washington, D.C., December 2, 2009.

309
“central front”
: Barack Obama, Remarks to State Department Employees, Washington, D.C., January 22, 2009.

309
Obama announced
: Obama 2009 op. cit.

310
Just as Holbrooke
: Richard Oppel, “Obama’s special envoy arrives in Afghanistan,”
New York Times
, February 12, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/world/
asia/13afghan.html?emc=eta1
.

310
threat assessment map
: Afghan National Security Forces/United Nations maps, April 2009, described in Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “More troops needed for Afghan war,” CNN.com, August 4, 2009.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/04/
bergen.afghanistan/index.html
.

310
“take over in one hour”
: Author interview with former senior Afghan cabinet member, September 2006, Kabul.

310
U.S. military slide
: Afghanistan: Security Incidents CENTCOM slide as of October 4, 2009. Author collection.

310
“inner shura”
: Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, ISAF briefing slides December 2009, Peter Bergen, “U.S. intelligence briefing: Taliban increasingly effective,” CNN.com, January 25, 2010.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/01/25/
afghanistan.taliban/index.html
.

311
“going around and around in circles”
: Dinner participant, interview by author; “this dinner is over”: Dexter Filkins, “Former favorite, Karzai slips in U.S. eyes,”
New York Times
, February 8, 2009.

311
“ten different answers”
: Tony Blinken, interview by author, Washington, D.C., December 18, 2009.

311
had helped to pull Pakistan and India back
: Bruce Riedel, “American diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” Center for the Advanced Study of India, 2002.

311
“Hi, Bruce, it’s Barack”
: Bruce Riedel, interview by author, Washington, D.C., November 23, 2009.

312
“closely linked; not a monolith”
: Bruce Riedel interview op. cit.

312
Pashtun ethic group
: 42 percent of Afghans are Pashtun. CIA World Factbook, Afghanistan, 2009.
https://www.cia.gov/library/p
ublications/the-world-factbook
/geos/af.html
.

312
“not going to recruit”
: Riedel interview op. cit.

313
Afghan army and police
: Stephen Hadley, “How Obama’s surge in Afghanistan can stabilize the region,”
Washington Post
, December 11, 2009; 10,000: Riedel interview op. cit.; 12,000: Blinken op. cit. and Douglas Lute, interview by author, January 8, 2010, Washington, D.C.

313
strong outlier
: Riedel interview.

313
“killer argument against”
: Riedel interview.

313
“does not want to be the Hubert Humphrey”
: Riedel interview.

313
twenty-five thousand Taliban full-time fighters, “quadrupled in size”
: Adam Entous, “Taliban growth weighs on Obama strategy review,” Reuters, October 9, 2009.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/
idUKN09496447
.

314
every four days
: This section draws on Peter Bergen, “Winning the good war,”
Washington Monthly
, July/August 2009,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/
2009/0907.bergen.html
.

314
holding pattern
: Riedel interview.

314
21,000 more
: Richard Wolf, “Obama: Afghanistan a ‘joint problem,’”
USA Today
, April 3, 2009.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/
2009-04-03-obama-town-
hall-meeting_N.htm
.

314
“I want to see the impact”
: Senior U.S. national security official, interview by author, Washington, D.C.

314
“There’s no guarantee”
: Riedel interview op. cit.

315
Recommendation number one
: White House, “White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” March 27, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/
documents/afghanistan_
pakistan_white_paper_final.pdf
.

315
some additional four thousand trainers
: Ann Scott Tyson, “Military wants more troops for Afghan war,”
Washington Post
, April 2, 2009.
http://www.washington-post.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2009/04/01/AR2009040102652.html
.

315
voted against
: Perry Bacon Jr., “House passes war funds as 51 Democrats dissent,”
Washington Post
, May 15, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/05/14/AR2009051403480.html
.

315
move to turn off the money spigot
: “U.S. House committee approves Iraq, Afghanistan war funding,” Voice of America, May 7, 2009,
http://www.voanews.com/english/
2009-05-07-voa49.cfm
.

315
the war was a mistake
: Tom Vanden Brook, “Poll: more view Afghan war as a mistake,”
USA Today
, March 16, 2009,
http://www.usatoday.com/news
/world/2009-03-16-poll_N.htm
.

315
57 percent
: CNN Opinion Research Poll, August 28–31, 2009.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn
/2009/images/09/01/rel12a.pdf
.

315
a cover story
: Evan Thomas and John Barry, “Obama’s Vietnam,”
Newsweek
, February 9, 2009,
http://www.newsweek.com/id/182650

315
“Fearing another Quagmire”
: Helene Cooper, “Fearing another quagmire in Afghanistan,”
New York Times
, January 24, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/weekinreview
/25cooper.html
; “isn’t worth fighting”: Rory Stewart, “The good war isn’t worth fighting,”
New York Times
, November 22, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/
opinion/23stewart.html
.

316
have won military victories
: Peter Bergen, “Graveyard myths,”
New York Times
, March 28, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/
opinion/28bergen.html
.

316
2005 poll by ABC/BBC
: ABC News Poll: Life in Afghanistan, December 7, 2005,
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/
998a1Afghanistan.pdf
.

316
less than one in five Iraqis
: ABC News Poll: Iraq—Where Things Stand, December 12, 2005,
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/
1000a1IraqWhereThingsStand.pdf
.

316
same poll taken in Afghanistan in 2009
: ABC/BBC Poll: Life in Afghanistan, February 9, 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/05_02_09
afghan_poll_2009.pdf
.

316
continued to approve
: 62 percent of Afghans surveyed in December 2009 supported the presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan. ABC/BBC Poll: Life in Afghanistan, December 11-23, 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/
11_01_10_afghanpoll.pdf
.

316
In 2008 more than two thousand Afghan civilians died
: United Nations, “Number of Afghan civilian deaths in 2008 highest since Taliban ouster, says UN,” February 17, 2009,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29918&
Cr=Afghan&Cr1=civilian+rights
;

316
less than a fourth
: According to the Iraq Body Count database, more than 9,200 civilians were killed in 2008 in Iraq.
http://www.iraqbodycount
.org/database/
.

316
more than three thousand civilians were dying every
month
: Iraq Body Count database, between July 2006 and July 2007,
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
.

317
closed the U.S. Embassy
: The Embassy was closed on January 30, 1989. Embassy of the United States—Kabul, Afghanistan, “About the Embassy.”
http://kabul. usembassy.gov/
about_the_embassy.html
.

317
zeroed out aid
: Roy Gutman,
How We Missed the Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan
(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008), p. 55.

317
puny size of the Afghan Army
: Ann Scott Tyson, “More recruits, U.S. arms planned for Afghan military,”
Washington Post
, December 5, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com
/wp-dyn/content/article
/2007/12/04/AR2007120402086.html
.

318
“It was a very close-hold”
: David Petraeus interview with author, Washington, D.C., December 18, 20009.

318
was retiring on May 11
: Ann Scott Tyson, “Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is fired,”
Washington Post
, May 12, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/05/11/AR2009051101864_pf.html
.

318
“the bottom fell out”
: Riedel interview.

318
“if we’d said no?”
: Stephen Biddle, interview by author, November 9, 2009, Washington, D.C.

319
“what shocked me”
: Andrew Exum, interview by author, Washington, D.C., December 9, 2009.

319
“centrality of Kandahar”
: Fred Kagan, interview by author, Washington, D.C., November 17, 2009.

319
“discover that the Taliban controlled Kandahar”
: Fred Kagan, interview by author.

319
where ten thousand Marines
: Richard Oppel, “U.S. Marines try to retake Afghan valley from Taliban,”
New York Times
, July 1, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/
world/asia/02afghan.html
.

319
“ten thousand fucking Marines”
: White House official, interview by author.

320
had already signed off
: David Kilcullen, interview by author, Washington, D.C., January 19, 2010.

320
Nearly 60 percent
: Bergen and Tiedemann, July 2009, op. cit.

320
“on their arse, literally”
: senior U.S. Marine officer, interview by author, September 10, 2009, Helmand, Afghanistan.

320
During the summer of 2009
: Author observations, Nawa, Helmand, Afghanistan, summer of 2009.

320
80 percent of the U.S. casualties in Helmand
: Michael Flynn, ISAF intelligence briefing, cited in Peter Bergen, “U.S. intelligence briefing: Taliban increasingly effective,” CNN.com, January 25, 2010.

320
The assessment
: COMISAF’s Initial Assessment, Memo from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Robert Gates, August 30, 2009, obtained by the
Washington Post
, September 21, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html
.

321
“McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure’”
: Bob Woodward, “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure,”
Washington Post
, September 21, 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com
/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/
09/20/AR200 9092002920.html
.

321
multiple and credible
: Sabrina Tavernise and Abdul Waheed Wafa, “U.N. Official Acknowledges ‘Widespread Fraud’ in Afghan Election,”
New York Times
, October 11, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/world/
asia/12afghan.html
.

321
“supposing no one gets fifty percent”
: Richard Holbrooke, interview by author, February 3, 2010, Washington, D.C.

321
almost a quarter
: “Audit finds almost a quarter of Afghan vote is fraudulent,”
New York Times
, October 20, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2009/10/20/world/
asia/1020-afghan-recount-analysis.html
.