My Share of the Task(274)
8,500 pounds of bombs: Ibid., 8 (notes 7 and 9), 9 (note 10).
nearly 140 Afghan civilians: Reuters, “U.S. Strikes Killed 140 Villagers: Afghan Probe,” May 16, 2009.
estimated roughly 90: “Balabolook Incident” (press release), Afghan Independent Human Rights Coalition, May 26, 2009, 2. This report further stated that no evidence was advanced by the Afghan government for the figure of 140 casualties. The CENTCOM report acknowledged the AIHRC’s work: “[T]he [CENTCOM] investigative team notes that the report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission . . . represents a balanced, thorough investigation into the incident, citing as many as 86 civilian casualties” (U.S. Central Command, “USCENTCOM Unclassified Executive Summary,” 11.) However, the CENTCOM report’s own estimate of civilian casualties from the incident was considerably lower, approximately twenty-six (ibid.) The above Reuters article reported that the Afghan government produced a list of names to substantiate its claim of 140 casualties, but that list’s authenticity was questionable, according to the U.S. military (Reuters, “U.S. Strikes Killed 140”).
in front of the governor’s house: Patrick Cockburn, “Afghans Riot over Air-Strike Atrocity,” Independent, May 8, 2009.
“Death to the government”: Ibid.
“Our willingness to operate”: “Hearing” (June 2, 2009), Senate Armed Services Committee, 11.
“The better part of one’s life”: Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joseph Gillespie, July 13, 1849, in Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1832–1858 (Literary Classics of the United States, 1989), 239.
eighteen to twenty-four months: In my Senate confirmation testimony on June 2, I said, “I believe that we need to start making progress within about the next nineteen to twenty-four months to know” how long the campaign would take. “Hearing” (June 2, 2009), Senate Armed Services Committee, 17.
“All you have to do is win”: Notes taken by my aide, who was present in the meeting.
“decided within a year”: Jeff Eggers, “Patience Is Paramount but Time Is of the Essence” (memorandum), June 5, 2009.
CHAPTER 17: UNDERSTAND
“And in one single blinding flash . . . ”: Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy, (Stackpole, 1994), 292–94. Fall added, while observing the short, saluting master sergeant, “Something very warm welled up in me. I felt like running over to the little Cambodian who had fought all his life for my country, and apologizing to him for my countrymen here who didn’t care about him, and for my countrymen in France who didn’t even care about their countrymen fighting in Indochina . . .”
forty-two different nations contributed troops: These numbers come from International Security Assistance Force, “International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Army Strength and Laydown,” June 15, 2009, ISAF website, 1–2. Within a year, the coalition would grow to have troops from forty-six nations.
57,600 troops: Hannah Fairfield and Kevin Quealy, “Troop Levels in Afghanistan Since 2001,” New York Times, October 1, 2009.
nearly fifty years of peace: Thomas Barfield, in his book Afghanistan, argues this to be the case, as he divides Afghanistan’s twentieth century into three periods and notes, “Under the rule of the Musahiban brothers and their sons, the second period from 1929 to 1978 gave Afghanistan its longest interval of peace and internal stability.” Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton University Press, 2010), 169.
Nearly all his predecessors: Rodric Braithwaite, in his account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, notes that along with keeping the country glued together, independent, and on the track to modernity, the fourth and final task for recent Afghan heads of state was to “remain alive”: “Between 1842 and 1995 seven of them fell victim at an accelerating pace to family feud, palace coup, mob violence, or outside intervention. Between 1878 and 2001, four more were forced into exile. Others prudently abdicated while the going was good” (Afgantsy, 13–14).