My Share of the Task(172)
In truth, suddenly cutting a chunk out of a larger force package was complex business. Ensuring that the reduced force has all the necessary capabilities, yet stays within a specified number, is more difficult than it would appear. Brigades are not self-sustaining units: They require “enablers,” additional units that provide aviation, logistics, intelligence, and medical support. These enablers are like overhead in a business—they are not needed in direct proportion to the number of brigades whom they deploy to support. Yet to those unfamiliar with the arcane system and often complicated math, it would seem like a basic, fair request to ask the military to tell exactly how many soldiers it was deploying, and what each of them would do. As I confided in Charlie Flynn that spring, “This is, after all, our profession—they have a right to be upset.”
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On the morning of Friday, March 27, 2009, President Obama, flanked by his national security team, took to a podium inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. His morning address followed another intensive White House assessment of Afghanistan, this time led by Bruce Riedel. Its conclusions formed the basis of a “comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan,” which the president outlined that morning: The United States’ goal in fighting the war in Afghanistan was to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan and Afghanistan.” To do so, the United States would pursue the terrorists directly, but it would further require “executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.” The counterinsurgency’s focus would be to secure the most contested terrain in Afghanistan—in the east and south—while mentoring the Afghan army and police so they could “take the lead” and, in time, fight the insurgency without Americans by their side.
Noting the “situation is increasingly perilous,” President Obama announced the deployment of four thousand American troops to train Afghan soldiers and policemen—the troops the military had most recently requested.
Although President Obama did not say so in the speech, in the Pentagon we understood we had strong guidance from the White House to deploy and employ the forces on operations as rapidly as possible. We also understood that a decision on the final part of McKiernan’s request would be delayed until after the August elections.
Watching from my office in the Pentagon, I thought the speech was powerful as the president evoked a strong sense of mission to help Afghanistan craft its future.
For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people—especially women and girls. The return in force of Al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.
I used the words from this speech and the National Security Council’s Strategic Implementation Plan for Afghanistan to craft my understanding of the mission President Obama was defining for America in Afghanistan. We would prevent the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and, through a counterinsurgency strategy, defeat the Taliban’s effort to topple the government of Afghanistan and retake the country. Simultaneously, we were to help develop Afghanistan’s capabilities so that it could eventually resist the Taliban and protect its own sovereignty. This was the lens through which I testified during my confirmation hearings that June, and then later used to guide my own strategic assessment.
From a White House perspective, with this decision, President Obama had given the military almost all that it had recommended, and had publicly announced troop increases twice after the military had to come back with an additional request. Indeed, ultimately President Obama would make difficult decisions that tripled U.S. forces in Afghanistan. And I understood that for an administration that needed to factor domestic support into its strategic calculus, it could seem like taking unnecessary political pain to announce, in the spring of 2009, the deployment of troops who could not physically deploy to Afghanistan before the election that August. I also understood the appeal of not deploying additional forces until the first tranche of troops arrived and their impact could be assessed.