Like my relationship with President Karzai, I sought to build genuine trust with General Kayani. I was aware of the policy and cultural differences between us, but believed that different views, even strong disagreement on hugely substantive issues, would only be exacerbated by personal animosity or disrespect, particularly when expressed publicly or through the press. Despite frustrations I might have had with the Pakistanis, or they with me, I’d found it essential to offer small gestures, engage in honest conversations, and persistently commit to real relationships.
* * *
Early the next morning, December 2, in Kabul, I decided, instead of running or lifting weights, to use an hour on an elliptical trainer for exercise so that I could watch President Obama’s speech announcing his decision on Afghanistan. He was speaking at eight o’clock in the evening of December 1 in the United States. In front of the president’s podium was a sea of gray wool. Young cadets in their slate dress uniforms filled the auditorium’s tiered seats. In a moment, the memory of the particular itch and stiffness of the wool brought into focus my thirty-four-year career that had begun on the plain, so near to where the president was speaking. I remembered how our full dress uniforms had all been accidentally shrunk in the academy’s washing machines the night before graduation, and how big Ken Liepold’s frame had looked inside his tight gray tunic. Earlier that fall, I had phoned Kenny from Kabul. Stricken by throat cancer, he could not talk much, but expressed his support. Even at a distance, his company meant as much as it had when we shared a small dorm room at West Point decades earlier.
On the screen above the elliptical, the camera periodically panned to the faces of the cadets. The youngest would have been ten years old when September 11 struck. Now, as the president spoke, the decision he outlined would likely send some of them to a war that had until then been far away. For those of us already close to it, his speech was an important development for ISAF and a milestone for our long war in Afghanistan.
“We will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny Al Qaeda a safe haven,” he said. “We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.”
To provide the means to accomplish this, Obama announced he would send thirty thousand additional U.S. forces and said he expected our Coalition partners to provide their proportion as well. As a means of demonstrating limits to the mission, he also announced that the increase in forces was for the next eighteen months only and stated his intention to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011. The surge forces would be one part of a three-part strategy that included a surge in U.S. civilian personnel to help with governance, development, and other efforts, and the pursuit of a new, more effective partnership with Pakistan.
As with most presidential decisions in wartime, there was something for everyone to like and something for everyone to hate. Those who opposed the war decried the escalation, while those who supported it found the stated plan to withdraw counterproductive.
Because I had been through the gestation of his decision, its public birth was anticlimactic. For me, and the command I led, it was simply guidance to execute.
* * *
Later that morning, I drove out the small ISAF gate that had been the site of the lethal car bomb attack in August, and down familiar Bibi Marhru Road to the palace to meet with President Karzai. I went to brief him, as well as ministers Wardak and Atmar, and others from his national security team on the implications of his American counterpart’s speech. I’d briefed Karzai earlier in the fall on what I had recommended to President Obama and he offered his concurrence. But, as always, I sensed ambivalence toward any actions that he feared were likely to increase the violence.
I then began a journey to disseminate President Obama’s intent across my command. We drove from the palace to a helipad at the Ministry of Defense and flew by UH-60 helicopter to Bagram Airfield to meet with Lieutenant General Mike Scaparrotti and the other leadership of RC-East. We spent the remainder of a long day flying first to RC-North in Mazar-e-Sharif, then to RC-West in Herat, and finally to Kandahar to meet with RC-South. In each location I met face-to-face with ISAF leaders to talk to them about President Obama’s decision and what it meant. Earlier in my career, I’d found that reaching or making a decision was sometimes less critical than communicating it effectively.