Killing Machine (13 page)

There were drones going to remote places inside Pakistan, however, and elsewhere, and many more already than President Bush had authorized. Americans had been introduced to decapitating
drone strikes back in 2002, when a CIA RQ-1 Predator launched a Hellfire missile attack on six Yemenis suspected of being members of al Qaeda, blowing them up in their car. But as the debate over Obama’s West Point speech demonstrated, the media were not much occupied with the drone story, despite the fierce critiques offered by counterinsurgency enthusiasts that drones could quickly undo the work of thousands of soldiers operating on ground level. David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, for example, as noted in
chapter 2
, had argued vigorously in the
New York Times
that drones created more enemies in the very places where it was important to curtail Taliban or al Qaeda recruits, insisting that “the drone war has created a siege mentality among Pakistani civilians.”

Kilcullen and Exum made an excellent point. There was great danger in putting civilians in a country such as Pakistan into a siege mentality, not least because it highlighted once again that drones were the latest iteration in the series of weapons the advanced powers had used in past colonial wars, and although Islamabad was a nuclear power, its outlook (like those in other areas where drones were used) was still bound up in the dynamics of that earlier era. Indeed, in the spring of 2009 there was a related intelligence scare that the Taliban in Pakistan were planning an attack on a uranium stockpile near a research reactor. The uranium had been supplied to Islamabad under the old “atoms for peace” program in the 1960s. Efforts to get the material back proved unavailing, as Islamabad warned that would only excite public opposition to the United States amid rumors that Washington was trying to take away Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
¹¹

Washington’s policy toward the Middle East and South Asia seemed to be a series of ad hoc solutions to immediate problems, in an effort to exert the most leverage possible, but instead of freeing up options, it always seemed to cause a backlash. First there had been Iran and the effort to use the shah as a regional stabilizer, and, when that failed, Pakistan’s turn came. But the results were hardly better, as Islamabad sought its own path regardless of American wishes. It would still be some time, nevertheless, before Congress or the public caught up with all of what was happening at the moment
of the West Point speech. And that was a deliberate administration strategy, as carefully thought out as the events leading up to the troop decision. The administration played down the increasing drone attacks, even as it searched for ways to square this new kind of warfare, carried out inside countries far removed from the actual battlefronts in Afghanistan (not only Pakistan but also Somalia and Yemen), with accepted interpretations of international law. When the justifications came, moreover, they would put the president in the center of “targeting” decisions, in a fashion that made the drones appear to be mandated not by an extraordinary grab of power by the White House but instead somehow granted under a remarkably broad interpretation of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress in the week after 9/11. As explanations and rationale slowly emerged over the next two years, through leaks and carefully worded speeches, the stepped-up pace of drone warfare exceeded—by a wide margin—public knowledge of the legal arguments. The leak process by unnamed officials was, of course, a way of building acceptance of a controversial program that set precedents beyond those where any president had gone before. In a sense, what was being created was a stealth imperial presidency. Yet public opinion polls continually demonstrated public support in the range of 80 percent in favor of the use of drones, however; on that level at least, the Obama administration’s leak strategy was a success. It began to show serious cracks by the end of his first term, as the idea occurred to some legislators that maybe there was something to charges that the Constitution was being set aside for viewing only by visitors to the nation’s capital.
¹²

Hammer and Anvil

Meanwhile, in much-anticipated testimony before Congress, the current American commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, assured legislators that he was perfectly content with the number of troops Obama had promised—and with the timetable. The strategy was reasonable and fully achievable. Republican
critics from the House and Senate repeatedly challenged McChrystal on both points. “I don’t believe the July 2011 time frame, militarily, is a major factor in my strategy,” he replied. If the enemy attempted to wait out the Americans, they would be making a serious miscalculation, because that would allow American trainers to build up a more capable Afghan army. And as the Afghan population became more secure they would also become a less vulnerable target politically. “So they really can’t afford to wait.”
¹³

In essence, McChrystal’s testimony simply rephrased Rasmussen’s op-ed piece. It was not all going to be easy, of course, because the Taliban would likely turn to coercing the population by means of suicide bombers and other attacks—but those terrorist methods would backfire as well, as they would only drive a wedge between insurgents and the population. That was counterinsurgency-speak right out of the manual. Appearing with McChrystal, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who, as we have seen, had fired off cables opposing new troop deployments so long as Hamid Karzai’s government failed to bring corruption under control, now claimed he had no quarrel with the decision, none at all.

Both men were anxious to show there was no daylight between them on Afghan strategy. During testimony they put their dueling pistols back in their cases and exchanged compliments. Eikenberry denied he had at any time during the review opposed additional troops. His concern had been about numbers, he said, and the context of where the troops would operate. Asked about Osama bin Laden and the prospects for victory if he remained an active leader of al Qaeda, McChrystal hesitated a bit. Bin Laden was an iconic figure, said the general. Killing him would not ensure victory, but probably ultimate victory would not be possible without killing him. McChrystal’s view was typical of the uncertainty—indeed, confusion—about the connection between the Taliban and al Qaeda, and about the counterinsurgency aspects of the war. And indeed, once McChyrstal was back in Afghanistan, he continued to resent Eikenberry’s presence as a sign of no confidence in his mission.

Obama’s evident commitment to increased use of drone aircraft to target al Qaeda leadership hiding away in Afghanistan near the
border with Pakistan, or even over the border, suggested that counterterrorism approaches were being relied on more than a surge approach; the balance between the two had yet to be determined. Republicans—as well as other critics—had some justification in suspecting that McChrystal was being set up for failure, not because Obama wanted him to fail, but rather because the president could not have gotten Congress to provide the general with an open-ended commitment. Besides, maybe Secretary Gates was right, the United States had not fought one war in Afghanistan, but nine different wars, none of them with the right inputs.

While all such questions awaited serious exploration, there was general agreement that the president’s plan required Pakistan’s full cooperation, a fraught problem.
¹⁴
An American military officer who served in the frontier area in the early years, for example, recalled seeing Taliban fighters waving their rifles from the Pakistani side to taunt his troops. The rules then were that the Americans could not shoot unless they were shot at first, he told
New York Times
reporter Scott Shane. “But when we saw them over the border, we knew we should expect an attack that night. The only ones who recognized the border were us, with our G.P.S.”
¹⁵

Up until now, explained Shane, the border had been so porous and Pakistani governments “so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.” But that would change when the new American troops arrived in Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold around Kandahar, while at the same time a major intensification of drone strikes began inside Pakistan and the Pakistani army stepped up its campaign against militants in South Waziristan. Or so it was hoped. “We finally have an opportunity to do a real hammer-and-anvil strategy on the border,” agreed analyst Michael O’Hanlon, picking up on the favored image of Obama’s plan.
¹⁶

A big supporter of the 2003 Iraq invasion, O’Hanlon had criticized postinvasion policies as wrongheaded, but he believed Obama had gotten it right this time. A Brookings Institution senior fellow,
O’Hanlon co-authored a book,
Toughing It Out in Afghanistan
(2010), expressing confidence that the mixture of more troops and more drones would turn the tide. For a time the hammer-and-anvil image popped up everywhere. The next to use it was General David Petraeus of Iraq surge fame and now the head of Central Command. “While certainly different and in some ways tougher than Iraq, Afghanistan is no more hopeless than Iraq was when I took command there in February 2007,” Petraeus told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Indeed the level of violence and number of violent civilian deaths in Iraq were vastly higher than we have seen in Afghanistan, but achieving progress in Afghanistan will be hard and the progress there likely will be slower in developing than progress was achieved in Iraq.”
¹⁷

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry pressed Petraeus on the border question. Sending more troops into Afghanistan, the general admitted, might result in more Taliban in Pakistan. “That is why we’re working very hard to coordinate our operations more effectively with our Pakistani partners, so that they know what our operational campaign plan is, and can anticipate and be there with a catcher’s mitt, or an anvil, whatever it may be, to greet these individuals.”
¹⁸

Secretary Gates was the first high-level visitor to Kabul after the West Point speech. His visit was an opportunity for Karzai to tell the Americans something about what they had bought into and what he expected in the way of support. It was clear that the Afghan president stood with those who believed that Obama’s goal was finding the exit gate. Like other local leaders in the days of the old colonialism, he feared being dumped. He could see, for example, that Obama had called the recent election a fraud in his speech.

In Afghanistan, we and our allies prevented the Taliban from stopping a presidential election, and—although it was marred by fraud—that election produced a government that is consistent with Afghanistan’s laws and constitution.

And Obama had not stopped there.

This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over. President Karzai’s inauguration speech sent the right message about moving in a new direction. And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We’ll support Afghan ministries, governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.

So if Karzai did not perform, could he, too, be replaced? McChrystal had already built up a relatively good relationship with the Afghan leader, but Karzai no longer had regular video conferences with the president, as he had had with his friend George Bush. The election had been a big factor in the growing doubts that what had worked in Iraq could be repeated in Afghanistan. Karzai’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of Obama’s announcement—however much it could have been anticipated—was not encouraging except to those who were committed to the long-haul counterinsurgency required, and was another reason to look for ways of preempting the need to work outside the difficult task of nation building.

It turned out that Hamid Karzai should not be underestimated. Gates had no sooner arrived in Afghanistan than he was shocked by President Hamid Karzai’s blunt statement that his country would not be able to pay for its own military until 2024. The shock was not so much because Gates was unaware that Afghanistan could not come up with the money, one suspects, as that the Afghan president would be a tattletale a few days after President Obama had announced his “surge” on December 1, 2009, along with its supposed time limit designed to hold steady the left wing of his party. Yet there was another way to see the situation: Karzai understood perfectly well the bet Obama had placed on counterinsurgency as the roulette wheel started spinning, and he put down his own wager.

The secretary revealed another well-known “secret” in a Kabul press conference, confirming that Washington paid for organizing
and training the Afghan army and police (as had the colonial powers at the height of the imperial era in Asia and Africa), and admitted as well that the United States was in a cash bidding war with the Taliban for recruits, something that had been the case in Iraq as well. Only recently, Gates told reporters, had he “learned the ‘eye-opener’ that the Taliban were able to attract so many fighters because they paid more. Generals in Afghanistan said the Taliban dole out $250 to $300 a month, while the Afghan Army paid about $120. So Gates has made sure that the recruits get a raise to $240.”
¹⁹

New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd, who noted that Gates had been on the wrong side of history in the past, called him “the Cold Warrior who helped persuade the Reluctant Warrior to do the Afghan surge.” How did he make decisions, she asked, that would “determine his reputation and that of the young president he serves?” Gates’s answer suggested that he may not have noticed the implication in her question that he had been wrong before. “Anybody who reads history,” he replied, “has to approach these things with some humility because you can’t know. Nobody knows what the last chapter ever looks like.”
²⁰