The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (50 page)

Nearly three thousand Americans were killed on September 11. Since then, 6,000 American servicemen and -women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and over forty-two thousand have been wounded. More than three thousand allied soldiers have died, along with nearly twelve hundred private contractors, aid workers, and journalists. Since Obama became president, a thousand soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, more than double the total in the years under Bush. Most of the killing didn’t take place in battles—it was in the dirty metrics of suicide bombs, death squads, checkpoint killings, torture chambers, and improvised explosive devices. Civilians on their way to work or soldiers driving around
in circles, looking for an enemy they could seldom find. We may never know how many innocent civilians were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but estimates suggest that more than a hundred and sixty thousand have died so far. Al-Qaeda, by contrast, has lost very few operatives in the worldwide conflagration—perhaps only “scores,” as Obama would say. Maybe there weren’t that many to begin with.

That night, I thought of all the dead, and what adding Bin Laden’s name to the list actually meant. I thought of Ingram, and I thought of Arroyo, who would never sleep peacefully again. I thought of the thumbs I’d seen hanging off barbed wire, the pools of blood, like oil on concrete, in small outposts I could barely remember. The memorial services with grown men crying over empty boots. The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin. The explosions in hotels and government office buildings. I thought of the operators, all of us who’d made our careers off Bin Laden’s horror show: McChrystal, Petraeus, Duncan, Dave, the Flynns, Lamb, Starkey, Hoh, Hicks, the twenty-three Navy SEALs who killed him, and even the president himself, who’d ridden to power on an antiwar tide. I thought of the harsh judgment history was going to one day render on us all.

Strangely, Bin Laden’s death would have little impact on the actual war—the war in Afghanistan hadn’t been about capturing Bin Laden for many years. But it would have an impact on how Washington thought about the war. It would give Obama the political cover he needed to give his speech in June where we declared the war in Afghanistan was coming to an end, or at least the beginning of the beginning of the end.

This book is based primarily on my reporting collected during four trips to Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010, as well as interviews conducted with State Department, White House, and Pentagon officials in Washington, DC, from 2008 to 2011. During my time with General McChrystal, I recorded over twenty hours’ worth of interviews and scenes with him and his staff. I also documented the journey contemporaneously with a half-dozen notebooks, a camera phone, and about seventy pages of single-spaced typed notes. Three other book-length inside accounts of the Obama administration’s decision making in Afghanistan were particularly helpful: Jonathan Alter’s
The Promise
, Richard Wolffe’s
Revival
, and Bob Woodward’s
Obama’s Wars
. For the history of the war correspondent, Phillip Knightley’s classic
The First Casualty
remains the definitive and most excellent account. For the chapter on counterinsurgency, I was greatly aided by Anne Marlowe’s writings on David Galula (though I interpreted her work in my own fashion). Both Noah Schactman’s and Spencer Ackerman’s work on Robert Gates, the Pentagon, and counterinsurgency were also invaluable (again, the interpretation is my own). As always, I’m indebted to the daily journalism produced by the folks in the Kabul bureaus at
The Washington Post
,
The New York Times
,
The Wall Street Journal
, the Associated Press, and the
Financial Times
, among other publications. A few chapters contain material that has been previously published in
Rolling Stone
. The description of the suicide bombing in “Interlude: Dubai” was first reported in
GQ
. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve witnessed covering war, and I also referred to it in the afterword of my previous book. I have done my best to credit in these notes all the work that aided my writing of this story. Any oversights are unintentional
and due mostly to the desire to see this book published in a timely manner. I’ve refrained from naming the two journalists mentioned in
Chapter 7
, “On the
X
,” one for legal reasons, and the other because Duncan asked me not to. In
Chapter 11
, “Totally Shit-Faced,” I refer to the British Special Forces commando as C. in order to protect his identity, as he’s still involved in ongoing operations. Kerina is not the real name of the woman we encountered in the Berlin Ritz-Carlton. Nor are real names used for the Afghan translators and the security guards I employed. A version of the Epilogue was originally published as an essay in
Rolling Stone
.

Page 3
:
“Hello, Duncan?”
: Author interview with Duncan Boothby, April 7, 2010.

Page 4
:
Hamid Karzai
…
had threatened to join
: A. Shaw and C. Bodden, “Lawmakers: Afghan Leader Threatens to Join the Taliban,” Associated Press, April 5, 2010.

Page 6
:
A handful of staffers are watching television
: Author interview with military officials, ISAF HQ, October 2008.

Page 7
:
“
Sounds like someone’s running for prom queen”
: Author interview with military officials, ISAF HQ, October 2008.

Page 7
:
He pissed off Don Rumsfeld
: B. Graham,
By His Own Rules: The Ambition Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), p. 408.

Page 7
: …
McKiernan had testified to defend the Crusader
: K. Peraino, “Low-Key Leader,”
Newsweek
, March 19, 2003.

Page 7
:
After seeing McKiernan in Iraq
: B. Graham,
By His Own Rules: The Ambition Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), p. 408.

Page 7
:
His promotion to fourth star gets held up
: Ibid., p. 409; author interview with military officials, ISAF HQ, October 2008.

Page 8
:
He gets dubbed the Quiet Commander
: Ibid. R. Neuman and E. Grossman, “The Quiet Commander,”
U.S. News & World Report
, March 31, 2003.

Page 8
:
Even in the midst of an invasion, “he is rarely known to swear”
: Ibid.

Page 8
:
“
In any type of a chaotic situation”
: Ibid.

Page 8
:
His best friend growing up says
: Samieh Shalash, “WM Grad Makes
Time
’s Top 100 List,”
Daily Press
, Newport News, Virginia, May 7, 2009.

Page 8
:
He hates PowerPoint
: R. Neuman and E. Grossman, “The Quiet Commander,”
U.S. News & World Report
, March 31, 2003.

Page 8
: …
an autographed picture of himself
: W. Stern, “The General Motors,”
Runner’s World
, December 3, 2007.

Page 8
: 
…
seem to treat war “like summer camp”
: Anne Scott Tyson, “Commander in Afghanistan Wants More Troops,”
The Washington Post
, October 2, 2008.

Page 9
:
This time, the staff gathers to watch the vice presidential debate
: Author interview with military officials, October 2008.

Page 9
: …
NATO to pony up the reserves
: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Pentagon Worries Led to Command Change; McKiernan’s Ouster Reflected New Realities in Afghanistan,”
The Washington Post
, August 17, 2009.

Page 9
:
Palin keeps calling him “
McClellan
”
: CQ Transcriptions, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Sarah Palin Participate in a Vice Presidential Campaign Debate, October 2, 2008.

Page 9
:
The staff breaks out laughing
: Author interview with military officials, October 2008.

Page 9
:
“The reason we don’t read about Afghanistan”
: CQ Transcriptions, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Sarah Palin Participate in a Vice Presidential Campaign Debate, October 2, 2008.

Page 9
:
“It’s not a quagmire”
: Department of Defense transcript, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Remarks, outside of ABC TV Studio, Washington, DC, October 28, 2001.

Page 9
:
In 2003, the commanding general
: S. Tanner,
Afghanistan: A Military History of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban
(New York: Da Capo Press, 2009), p. 330.

Page 9
: 
…
says the Taliban “is increasingly ineffective”
: Statement by General John P. Abizaid to Senate Armed Services Committee, March 1, 2005.

Page 9
:
In 2005, the Taliban is “collapsing”
: “U.S. Commander Sees Near-Collapse of Taliban Within Year, Terrorists Could Still Strike,” Associated Press, April 17, 2005.

Page 9
: 
…
“prevailing against the effects of prolonged war”
: Department of Defense transcript, News Briefing with Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin and Minister Abdul Hadir Khalid from the Pentagon, January 9, 2007.

Page 9
:
…
“my successor will find”
: Interview with Top ISAF Commander McNeill, “More Than Promises Needed in Afghanistan,”
Der Spiegel
online, March 31, 2008.

Page 9
: 
…
“very successful counterinsurgency”
: Statement by Secretary Robert Gates to Senate Armed Services Committee, April 10, 2008.

Page 10
:
…
“larger western footprint”
: John J. Kruzel, “Three Combat Brigades Available for Afghanistan by Summer, Gates Says,” American Forces Press Service, September 23, 2008.

Page 10
: 
…
there are over thirty thousand troops
: Amy Belasco, “Troop Levels in the Afghan and Iraq Wars, FY2001–FY2012: Cost and Other Potential Issues,” Congressional Research Service, July 2, 2009.

Page 10
:
…
violence has spiked dramatically
: “NATO Figures Show Surge in Afghanistan Violence,”
guardian.co.uk
, January 31, 2009.

Page 10
:
American and NATO soldiers are getting killed
: Operation Enduring Freedom statistics at
http://icasualties.org/oef
/.

Page 10
:
Civilian casualties have tripled
: Kenneth Katzman, “Security Policy and Force Capacity Building; Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue Briefs, March 1, 2010; Human Rights Watch, “Troops in Contact: Air Strikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan,” September 2008.

Page 10
: 
…
saying the prognosis is “grim”
: Brian Ross, “‘Grim’ Afghanistan Report to Be Kept Secret by U.S.,” ABC News, September 23, 2008.

Page 10
:
A White House staffer nicknames Lute
: Author interview with White House official, October 2010.

Page 10
:
He didn’t want to surge in Iraq
: Hearing of Senate Armed Services Committee, Nomination of Lieutenant General Douglas Lute to be Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, June 7, 2007.

Page 10
:
He tells McKiernan
: Author interview with military officials, September 2010.

Page 10
:
McKiernan is impressed when he meets Obama that summer
: Author interview with General David McKiernan, October 30, 2008.

Page 10
:
McKiernan
…
is pulling for Obama
: Author interview with senior military official, October 2008.

Page 11
:
McKiernan is suspicious of McCain, too
: Author interview with military official, October 2008.

Page 11
: 
…
three strategic reviews are going on
: Author interview with military officials; Karen De Young, “U.S. Urgently Reviews Policy on Afghanistan,”
The Washington Post
, October 9, 2008.

Page 11
:
“There’s no way this place is going to be the next Switzerland”
: Author interview with General David McKiernan, October 30, 2008.

Page 12
:
The hotel
Rolling Stone
put me up in sucked
: Author notes, April 15, 2010.