Karl’s cable reminded me of Bob Komer’s well-known 1972 Rand study raising the alarm about U.S. performance in Vietnam, a document I’d read and reread for the instructive way it captured the pitfalls counterinsurgency efforts too easily fall into.
There was little of Karl’s analysis that I disagreed with. But based on my understanding of the mission the president had given us, I concluded that we had few options, and none of them were easy or enticing. Complete withdrawal would reopen Afghanistan to Al Qaeda and enable the Taliban’s resurgence. And at the status quo, the situation had been steadily deteriorating. So, as we’d outlined in our strategic assessment, I believed that if we were going to pursue the objectives that comprised our current mission, we had to simultaneously do more, and also do it better.
While our objective had to be the most rapid transition possible to Afghan defense of their own sovereignty, by the fall of 2009, for a variety of oft-cataloged reasons, Afghanistan was not yet ready to assume responsibility. As expensive as it would be, particularly in the lives of our service members, I had concluded that in order to provide both the Afghan government and its security forces an opportunity to grow the necessary capabilities, we would need additional U.S. and Coalition forces to enhance security and to accelerate training of the army and police. These Afghan units would need to be mentored by U.S. and international forces in the field, as they jointly fought back the enemy. Doing so, in time, would bring the insurgency down to a size that the Afghan security forces, with continued improvement, could then manage. Rather than increasing the Afghan army and police’s dependence, more American troops, seriously focused on integrating the Afghans would set conditions, as President Obama later put it, so that “more Afghans can get into the fight.”
Karl proposed President Obama take more time before making a decision on a strategy or troop levels, and instead extend the review process and bring in further viewpoints. In the meantime, Karl suggested, the president might incrementally add smaller amounts of troops to mentor and fight, adding more forces only as the Afghan government’s performance improved. I shared the desire to see the Afghan government make significant improvements before putting more Americans in harm’s way. But I felt that incrementally adding troops would parallel our experience in Vietnam and, to a degree, in Iraq. In those wars, we had underestimated, then lagged the insurgency. By periodically adding more troops but not enough to finish off the insurgency, we’d made it stronger: The combat made the enemy a wiser foe, and their ability to survive made them appear more credible and fearsome to the population.
Unfortunately, within days of his sending the cables, the broad outlines of Karl’s conclusions were leaked to the New York Times, which paraphrased many of his concerns. Like the leak of our strategic assessment, it was disruptive to have such classified documents shared with the press, particularly at that sensitive period of the campaign. Then, and again when the Times released the cables in their entirety in January, my immediate concern was the impact they would have on the Afghans, particularly President Karzai. As is typical in confidential correspondence, the language was frank. Karl took the position that Karzai was “not an adequate strategic partner.” Karzai and his administration soon read that phrasing themselves. I did not share Karl’s viewpoint, knowing that a relationship with any one person, even the president, in a campaign as complex as the one in Afghanistan would not make or break the entire effort. Instead, the partnership that we had with Afghanistan collectively—its government, its security forces and, most important, its people—would drive our success or failure.
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Two weeks later, on November 23, President Obama convened the last of his full National Security Council sessions on the direction forward in Afghanistan. The president opened the floor, and Vice President Biden spoke first. Secretary Clinton followed. Throughout the fall, she’d been a strong voice during the deliberations. Now she quickly made clear that she supported sending forty thousand additional troops to pursue our strategy. As it had been refined, that strategy involved protecting select geographic centers; continuing to target Al Qaeda; and growing and improving the Afghan army and police to be able to secure the state against a weakened insurgency. Even on the wide angle of the VTC screen and through our headquarters speakers in Kabul, her strong tenor was unmistakable. Secretary Gates spoke immediately after her, and echoed her sentiment. So did Ambassador Holbrooke when it came time for him to weigh in.