It wasn’t intended as such, but I could have said it better. I was a commander focused on explaining the mission I understood I’d been given and the strategy currently being prosecuted. Pending alteration through the current review, that strategy was a counterinsurgency campaign to win what Obama had, a few days before the Afghan elections, declared was “not a war of choice” but “a war of necessity.” The London venue allowed me explain to a British audience the soundness of that strategy—under which, on that day, British troops were fighting and dying in Helmand. Still, I should have better understood that the president’s review process, begun in September, was not just evaluating my strategy and force request to accomplish counterinsurgency mission but was reevaluating the mission itself.
Redefining ISAF’s—and America’s—mission in Afghanistan became a central issue. In June, I’d directed our team to conduct the strategic assessment based upon our understanding of the mission as outlined by President Obama in speeches prior to that time. Although the importance of Al Qaeda was never in doubt, we had interpreted that our mission included helping the nation of Afghanistan develop the ability to defend its sovereignty. This necessarily included building capacity across the government and providing the opportunity for economic development.
After Iraq, “nation building” was an unpopular term. But our assessment had concluded that Afghanistan’s inherent weakness in governance was at the core of the problem. Security had to come first, or else the government could not function. But absent legitimate governance, real progress was impossible. We didn’t think the country’s government needed all the attributes and trappings of Western democracy, but Afghans needed to believe it was responsible and legitimate enough to offer a credible alternative to Taliban or local warlord control.
In the weeks ahead, policy makers reviewed a variety of alternative approaches. One envisioned maintaining control of a limited number of secure areas in Afghanistan and prosecuting a counterterrorist strategy of pinpoint kinetic strikes and raids against insurgents. It had the potential advantage of requiring fewer forces and avoiding the daunting challenge of pacifying areas long under insurgent influence or outright control. A counterterrorist approach shared some attributes with Britain’s late-nineteenth-century “butcher and bolt” tactics in India’s Northwest Frontier, now Pakistan, where potential adversaries were kept weakened and “in line” by periodic raids that demonstrated Britain’s power.
My background in counterterrorism made the approach tempting, but I reluctantly concluded it wouldn’t work. Watching efforts like Doug P.’s and Sean MacFarland’s fight in Ramadi, I’d left Iraq with the conviction that strikes could damage insurgent forces, but I felt that a counterterrorism strategy would ultimately cede control of an area, and of its population, to the enemy. If our mission included an Afghanistan capable of defending its people and sovereignty, it would require more.
The day after the London speech, I flew to Copenhagen for a previously scheduled Air Force One meeting with President Obama, who was there to campaign to bring the Olympics to Chicago. I took Annie with me, and in both our initial greeting with spouses and our one-on-one meeting, the president was focused but friendly and supportive. I don’t remember either of us raising anything about the speech.
Still, in retrospect, I never felt entirely the same after the leak of the strategic assessment and then the unexpected storm raised by the London talk. I recognized, perhaps too slowly, the extent to which politics, personalities, and other factors would complicate a course that, under the best of circumstances, would be remarkably difficult to navigate.
Not long before I spoke in London, I’d sat with David Martin of 60 Minutes in front of a camera in ISAF’s Kabul compound. “Can you imagine ever saying to the president of the United States, ‘Sir, we just can’t do it’?” he asked.
“Yes, I can,” I said. “And if I felt that way, the day I feel that way, the day I’m sure I feel that way, I’ll tell him that.”