All In Read Online Free PDF Page B

going to strive to achieve in Afghanistan a full year from now. So that was . . . an 18-month or more projection at that time.”
    Petraeus had defended Obama’s announced troop drawdown in July 2011. It was the president’s policy decision, which trumped whatever desires Petraeus may have had for more troops on the ground. He accepted that as a soldier. He took orders from the commander in chief, and, after proffering his best advice, it was his job to execute them. But he was firm that all decisions about how many troops to withdraw and where to deploy those that remained had to be made with the goal of preserving hard-fought gains at the village, district and province levels so that momentum would not swing back to the Taliban. He noted that the president had stressed in announcing the policy that decisions on the pace of the drawdown would be conditions-based.
    Throughout his testimony, Petraeus played his political, as well as military, role; he also executed the four tasks he felt strategic leaders had to perform. Regarding the first—getting the big ideas right—he described the fundamentals of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign, which he had employed in Iraq and pushed continually in Afghanistan. “You must capitalize on every capability that is out there—host nation, U.S., international, whatever it may be. That’s what this takes: everything from the very hard-edged, targeted Special Mission Unit operations to the reintegration of ‘reconcilables’ to conventional forces expanding their security zones,” he said.
    Petraeus repeated the word “relentless” and repeatedly stressed the importance of the United States’ “will” to win, underscoring the second task of a strategic leader: effectively communicating the big ideas. “This is a test of wills. And again, the enemy has to know that we have the will to prevail.”
    To the third task of a strategic leader—overseeing the implementation of the big ideas—he promised, once he arrived in country, to review the Tactical Directive and the rules of engagement, which were seen as too restrictive by many soldiers on the ground. “I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform and the Afghan security forces with whom ISAF troopers are fighting shoulder to shoulder,” he said. “Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation.”
    To accomplish the fourth task—capturing best practices and lessons and cycling them back through the system to help refine the big ideas—he noted that he already had his favorite think-tank analysts, academics and military experts packing their bags, and that he was in communication with commanders and key staff officers on the ground in Afghanistan.
    The tasks of strategic leadership he described had been the keys to the success of the “surge” that pulled Iraq back from the brink of civil war in 2007. His three tours in Iraq enabled him to speak with confidence about another important concept—achieving unity of effort among all participants—as he prepared to take command yet again: “We know, in fact, that we can achieve such unity of effort because we’ve done it before.” But as Petraeus himself had said on many occasions, Afghanistan was not Iraq. Indeed, Afghanistan, in some ways, made Iraq look simple.
    â€œYou certainly can’t take lessons learned in Iraq and just apply them in a rote manner in Afghanistan,” Petraeus told Senator Mark Udall, the Colorado Democrat. “They have to be applied with a keen understanding of the situation on the ground, village by village, valley by valley. All counterinsurgency is local, as they say.”
    He created a sense of measured optimism as he noted