Michael,

Thanks for writing a great book and also for telling my story in it. Take care in the frigid north although I am sure it is equally cold here in southern Vermont. It cant happen too often that you have two Vermonters doing the salon.

Peter

I think he is mostly right. As in Vietnam, I think the top brass in Afghanistan are in dereliction of duty for not honestly appraising the situation. In order to have an effective strategy, we need ground truth and this is what Davis provides. Alas, I doubt he will be heard but Pentagon leaders should remember that the first victim of propaganda is the propagandist.

You take on David Petraeus in a way no other author has. Why has the press given him so much adulation? And what do you see in his future? Is he interested in running for President? I would caution, however, that political Generals do not necessarily make good politicians. Just ask Wes Clark.

I wouldn’t use those words but I think it is utterly indefensible to send young men and women in harms way to further a strategy you know won’t work.

Good for you to rediscover love for life (and, I gather, love). As you write, being in a war zone entails intense emotions and I appreciate your willingness to tackle that.

The US-Pakistan relationship is very complex. Pakistani officials follow their own narrative of the relationship which is basically that America always lets Pakistan down. American officials are constantly changing so they have little sense of the history of the relationship and therefore do not counter the Pakistani narrative. (In most cases, the US stopped supporting Pakistan because Pakistan’s Generals did not keep their commitments to the US, but our officials don’t know the history and cant counter the Pakistani narrative).

That said, Pakistan is not a failed state and, while the military has lots of influence, the civilian government is not as weak as many perceive. We are best off supporting Pakistan’s civilian government which is the most pro-American force in the country.

Michael,

As I said in my introductory post, I was impressed and intrigued with the way you brought your personal issues into the book, including your own misadventures with alcohol. Yet, I slightly wondered whether this made you over sensitive to Team America’s drinking.

I also thought I detected in a slight undertone of bitterness in the book that I connected with your experience in Baghdad. Is this unfair?

I totally agree and have been saying that since 2007. The surge made little difference in Iraq. What mattered was the Sunni leaders turning against AQI. A long as AQI was killing Americans and Shiites, the Sunnis didn’t mind. But once AQI tried to seize power from the Sunni Sheiks (and began assassinating them), they flipped. Once the Sunni leaders turned AQI, it was quickly defeated. And this occurred mostly before the surge really got underway.

Jim,

I agree that the Taliban may think they will win soon after we go but I don’t think that will happen. The Taliban is an almost entirely Pashtun movement and Pashtuns are only 45% of Afghanistan’s population. The Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks are better armed and organized and I think they can keep the Taliban out of the North and out of Kabul, especially if we provide some minimal support.

Afghanistan after we leave is likely to look pretty much like Afghanistan right now: the Taliban in control of the countryside in the South and East, in control of most of Kandahar most of the time but unable to conquer Kabul or the North. Which begs the question as to what difference our 100,000 troops and $117 billion a year is actually making.

Michael,

Petraeus wrote the manual on counter-insurgency that was the basis for the McChrystal and later his own Afghanistan strategy. Central to successful counter-insurgency is having an Afghan partner who can win over the population. Did McChristal or Petraeus actually think Karzai was a partner who somehow in 2009 and 2010 could do what he hadn’t done in the previous decade—i.e. win over Afghans.

And if there is no partner, how do they think their counter-insurgency strategy will work?

When I pose this question to Petraeus collaborators, they almost invariably change the subject. In a BBC debate with Gen Graeme Lamb (who as you write was central in developing the strategy) responded to my question by observing that it took the US nearly a century to move from the Declaration of Independence to freeing the slaves.

Actually, I was struck by something else that emerged from Woodward’s book. Clearly, Obama did not believe the counter-insurgency strategy would work and yet he tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan. However politically trapped he may have felt by the military and Democratic foreign policy establshment (which always wants to show it is more hawkish than the Republicans),I am troubled by a decision to commit lives and so many resources to a strategy that you don’t think will work.

Sincerity is hard to judge. In a successful counter-insurgency, you have to win over the population and civilian casualties set back that goal, especially in a country with an extended family and tribal structure like Afghanistan. This McChrystal understood. For what it is worth, I also felt he was sincere. Unfortunately Petraeus loosened McChrystal’s policy of zero tolerance of civilian casualties.

Do you think the mainstream press–and in particular the New York Times—has been too deferential and, sometimes fawning, in their coverage of the America’s wartime Generals? Is the mainstream press is too close to the military to give us the real story as to how badly things are going in Afghanistan?

BTW, it is also frigid here in southern Vermont. I was just out skating.

Michael,

You paint a pretty dismal picture of civilian-military relations in the first years of the Obama Administration. Who is most to blame: Generals insufficiently respectful of civilian authority or a President unwilling to take responsibility? How has this changed?