Bob Woodward has started rolling out teasers for his new book in the Washington Post. The first one explains how the military refused to provide Obama with the alternatives to escalation in Afghanistan that he sought. The options they gave him would have resulted in more troops in Afghanistan in 2016 than were there when he took office.
It’s worth a read, because it contextualizes what Obama eventually decided to do. I don’t agree with Obama’s decision, but at least it was closer to what I’d advise than anything he was provided by the Pentagon. One interesting fact is that Obama had to consider the implications of Defense Secretary Bob Gates deciding to resign in protest if he didn’t escalate by at least 40,000 troops (he eventually settled for 30,000).
Obama was strongly considering limiting the escalation to 10,000 military trainers, despite the fact that all his military advisers had rejected that strategy at the beginning of the process.
The 30,000 was a “hard cap,” [Obama] said. “I don’t want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do – politically – would actually be to say no” to the 30,000.
The president gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac River, in the direction of the Pentagon. He said, “They think it’s the opposite. I’d be perfectly happy . . .” He stopped mid-sentence. “Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.”
There was some subdued laughter.
The military did not understand, he said. “It’d be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, ‘You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we’re going to put in 10,000 trainers because that’s how we’re going to get out of there.’ “
It was apparent that a part of Obama wanted to give precisely that speech. He seemed to be road-testing it.
[Deputy National Security Adviser Tom] Donilon said Gates might resign if the decision was 10,000 trainers, an option the military leaders had all rejected in the early stages of the review.
“That would be the difficult part,” Obama said, “because Bob Gates is . . .there’s no stronger member of my national security team.”
No one said anything more about that possibility.
Obama wanted something his National Security team could support with unanimity, not something that would divide them into hostile camps.
“We’re not going to do this unless everybody literally signs on to it and looks me in the eye and tells me that they’re for it,” Obama said.
The president was as animated as most in the room had ever seen him. “I don’t want to have anybody going out the day after [the speech] and saying that they don’t agree with this.”
He did accomplish that task, but the problem was that no one provided any real strategies. For example, the Pentagon gave him a plan with flawed assumptions:
“Mr. Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs, Mike Mullen], the president really wants another option,” [Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E.] Lute said. “You’re on the hook.”
Three days later, Mullen and the Joint Chiefs produced a new version of its “Alternative Mission in Afghanistan” graph. The revised chart showed a faster drawdown beginning in 2012, when Obama would be running for reelection. The then-current level of 68,000 would be reached by spring of 2013. Then the shift to an “advise/assist” mission would begin.
The new timetable relied on four “key assumptions,” none of which the strategy review had suggested was likely. The assumptions were that Taliban insurgents would be “degraded” enough to be “manageable” by the Afghans; that the Afghan national army and police would be able to secure the U.S. gains; that the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan would be “eliminated or severely degraded”; and that the Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai could stabilize the country.
So, part of the problem is that the Pentagon has no solution but doesn’t want to face an accountability-moment. The president was not given anything to work with, and he faced the prospect of a mutiny if he did anything less than he wound up doing.
This is another example of the risks of war. They are easy to start, but nearly impossible to end.
What is left unsaid in Woodward’s piece is the situation in Pakistan. Concern about instability there is a huge part of the reason that no one wants to take responsibility for drawing down promptly in Afghanistan. But that’s a subject for another post.
