Killing Machine (39 page)

5
.
  
Ruy Teixeira, “Public Opinion Snapshot: The Verdict on the Surge,” Center for American Progress, June 29, 2007,
www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/snapshot_surge.html
.

6
.
  
Ibid.

7
.
  
Barack Obama, “The War We Need to Win,” speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center, August 1, 2007,
www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/obamasp0807.pdf
.

8
.
  
“Transcript of President Bush’s Speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention,”
New York Times
, August 22, 2007.

9
.
  
Josh Rogers, “Obama: Iraq Troop Surge Isn’t Working,” New Hampshire Public Radio, July 20, 2007.

10
.
  
Obama, “War We Need to Win.”

11
.
  
“President Discusses Global War on Terror,” September 5, 2006,
georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060905-4.html
.

12
.
  
Obama, “War We Need to Win.”

13
.
  
The authorship of the Woodrow Wilson Center speech’s ideas seems to have come from Bruce Riedel, at least on the sections dealing with Pakistan and the Afghan War. See James Mann,
The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power
(New York: Viking, 2012), 86–87.

14
.
  
Ibid.

15
.
  
Ibid.

16
.
  
Jake Tapper, “
MoveOn.org
Ad Takes Aim at Petraeus,” ABC News, September 10, 2007,
abcnews.go.com/Politics/Decision2008/story?id=3581727
.

17
.
  
Ibid.

18
.
  
On the Anbar Awakening, as it was called, see Steve Coll, “The General’s Dilemma,”
New Yorker
, September 8, 2008.

19
.
  
Ibid.

20
.
  
Quotes from the January 31, 2008, Democratic candidates debate taken from a transcript of the debate, which is available online from various sources. McCain’s comments are from John M. Broder and Elisabeth Bumiller, “McCain and Obama Trade Jabs on Iraq,”
New York Times
, February 27, 2008.

21
.
  
Andrew Malcolm, “Obama Website’s Opposition to Successful Surge Gets Deleted,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 16, 2008.

22
.
  
Barack Obama, “My Plan for Iraq,”
New York Times
, July 14, 2008.

23
.
  
Ibid.

24
.
  
“Obama’s Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan,”
New York Times
, July 15, 2008.

25
.
  
“Obama Calls Situation in Afghanistan ‘Urgent,’” CNN, July 21, 2008,
www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/20/obama.afghanistan/
.

26
.
  
Joe Klein, “Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together,”
Time
, June 24, 2010.

27
.
  
Joe Klein, “Why Barack Obama Is Winning,”
Time
, October 22, 2008.

28
.
  
Sara Just, “Obama: Surge Succeeded But Too Costly,”
Political Radar
blog, ABC News, September 8, 2008,
abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/09/obama-surge-suc/
.

29
.
  
Ibid.

30
.
  
Obama’s remarks and the scene in Grant Park are detailed in Jonathan Alter’s
The Promise: President Obama, Year One
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 38–39.

31
.
  
John Nagl, foreword to
The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), xix.

32
.
  
Elisabeth Bumiller, “Gates Vows Active Role in Staying On at Pentagon,”
New York Times
, December 3, 2008.

33
.
  
Transcript of news conference, December 1, 2008, available from several online sources.

34
.
  
All quotations taken from Gates’s speech, “Landon Lecture (Kansas State University),” November 26, 2007,
www.defense.gov/Speeches.aspx?SpeechID=1199
.

35
.
  
Condoleezza Rice, “Rethinking the National Interest: American Realism for a New World,”
Foreign Affairs
, July/August 2008, 2–25.

36
.
  
Ibid.

37
.
  
Ibid.

2. Afghanistan Shortchanged

1
.
  
Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut, “Guantanamo Bay: Why Obama Hasn’t Fulfilled His Promise to Close the Facility,”
Washington Post
, April 23, 2011.

2
.
  
Ann Scott Tyson, “Gates Backs Buildup of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan.”
Washington Post
, November 22, 2008.

3
.
  
Meredith Buei, “Gates: Terror Groups in Pakistan Greatest Threat to Afghanistan, US,” Voice of America, September 23, 2008.

4
.
  
Ann Scott Tyson, “Gates Predicts ‘Slog’ in Afghanistan: U.S. Military Can Achieve Limited Goals in Conflict,”
Washington Post
, January 28, 2009.

5
.
  
Henry A. Kissinger, “A Strategy for Afghanistan,”
Washington Post
, February 26, 2009.

6
.
  
Ibid.

7
.
  
The reference was to Justice Potter Stewart’s quip that he would know what pornography was when he saw it. Spencer Ackerman, “Holbrooke on Afghanistan: ‘We’ll Know It When We See It,’”
Washington Independent
, August 12, 2009.

8
.
  
Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, “U.S. May Label Pakistan Militants as Terrorists,”
New York Times
, July 14, 2010.

9
.
  
Bruce Riedel,
The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 154.

10
.
  
“Afghan Expert Riedel Weighs Obama’s Strategic Options,” transcript,
PBS NewsHour
, October 16, 2009,
www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec09/afghanistan3_10-16.html
.

11
.
  
Bruce Riedel, “A Plan B in Afghanistan,” Brookings Institution, August 2, 2010,
www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0802_afghanistan_riedel.aspx
.

12
.
  
“White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy Toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,”
New York Times
, March 27, 2009.

13
.
  
Daniel Klaidman,
Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 21–23.

14
.
  
Ibid.

15
.
  
David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum, “Death from Above, Outrage Down Below,”
New York Times
, May 17, 2009.

16
.
  
Ibid.

17
.
  
Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick, “Drone Attacks Inside Pakistan Will Continue, CIA Chief Says,”
Washington Post
, February 26, 2009.

18
.
  
Josh Gerstein, “Leon Panetta Wars Against Politicization of CIA,”
Politico
, May 18, 2009,
www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22676.html
.

19
.
  
“Obama’s Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, March 2009,” Council on Foreign Relations primary sources, March 27, 2009,
www.cfr.org/pakistan/obamas-strategy-afghanistan-pakistan-march-2009/p18952
.

20
.
  
Interestingly, David Sanger reports that the threat of a “particularly virulent” strain of Pakistani Taliban gaining access to a nuclear weapon was the stuff of Naval War College crisis games until early in 2009, when there appeared intelligence reports on the possibility as a real danger. These came along, it should be noted, as a precursor to a second surge decision. David E. Sanger,
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
(New York: Crown 2012), 58–59.

21
.
  
Ibid.

22
.
  
“Transcript: Secretary Gates on ‘FNS,’” FOX
News Sunday
, Fox News, March 29, 2009,
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511368,00.html
.

23
.
  
Trudy Rubin, “Gen. Petraeus Makes the Case for Obama’s War,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, April 12, 2009.

24
.
  
“Secretary Robert Gates Interview with CNN,” April 29, 2009,
www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?trandscriptid=4411
.

25
.
  
Bob Woodward,
Obama’s Wars
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 85–86.

26
.
  
Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer, “Insurgent Leader Al-Zarqawi Killed in Iraq,”
Washington Post
, June 8, 2006.

27
.
  
Kelley B. Vlahos, “The Dark Legacy of Gen. McChrystal,”
Antiwar.com
, July 23, 2010,
original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/07/12/the-dark-legacy-of-gen-mcchrystal/
.

28
.
  
Mary Tillman with Narda Zacchino,
Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman
(New York: Modern Times Books, 2008), 289–97. The Tillman family sent President Obama an e-mail when the appointment was made and before the congressional hearing on his nomination. In a foreword to the paperback edition, she wrote: “McChrystal’s actions should have been grounds for firing. That is why it was so disturbing to us when President Obama instead promoted McChrystal to the position of top commander in Afghanistan last year. I had sent the president an email and a letter reminding him of McChrystal’s involvement in Pat’s cover-up. I suggested McChrystal should be ‘scrutinized very carefully’ by the Senate Armed Services Committee. I also contacted the staffs of Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator James Webb and expressed my concerns.”

29
.
  
Mark Thompson, “Why the Pentagon Axed Its Afghanistan Warlord,”
Time
, May 12, 2009; Fred Kaplan, “It’s Obama’s War Now,”
Slate
, May 11, 2009,
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2009/05/its_obamas_war_now.html
.

30
.
  
Julian E. Barnes, “Americans Won’t Accept ‘Long Slog’ in Afghanistan War, Gates Says,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 19, 2009.

31
.
  
Sanger,
Confront and Conceal
, 25.

32
.
  
The document can be found at
articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-09-21/news/36848328_l_international-security-assistance-force-civilian-casualties-review-plans
.

33
.
  
These last two quotes are from Bob Woodward’s analysis of the report, “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure,’”
Washington Post
, September 21, 2009. The
Post’s
position on the ensuing debate was pretty clear.

34
.
  
George Packer, “Reading the McChrystal Report,”
Interesting Times
blog,
New Yorker
, September 23, 2009,
www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/09/reading-the-mcchrystal-report.html
.

35
.
  
Ewen MacAskill, “Barack Obama ‘Risks Suez-like Disaster’ in Afghanistan, Says Key Adviser,”
The Guardian
, November 12, 2009.

36
.
  
Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Obama Is Considering Strategy Shift in Afghan War,”
New York Times
, September 23, 2009.

37
.
  
Sanger,
Confront and Conceal
, 29.

38
.
  
“Text of the Secret Eikenberry Cables Advising Against the Surge in Afghanistan,” America at War, January 27, 2010,
afpakwar.com/blog/archives/3727
.

39
.
  
Baker and Bumiller, “Obama Is Considering Strategy Shift.”

40
.
  
Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “General Denies Rift with Obama over Afghan Strategy,”
New York Times
, September 24, 2009.

41
.
  
Nancy A. Youssef, “Gates to Army: We’ll Follow Obama’s Orders on Afghanistan,” McClatchy Newspapers, October 5, 2009.

42
.
  
Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, “In Afghanistan, Real Leverage Starts with More Troops,”
Washington Post
, November 27, 2009.