SPIEGEL Interview with Former Obama Advisor Bruce Riedel
'McChrystal Has Made a Fool of Himself'
SPIEGEL: What was your initial reaction when you read the Rolling Stone article about General Stanley McChrystal, in which he and his colleagues deride leading members of the American administration?
SPIEGEL: Do you think that McChrystal was so disillusioned with the progress of the mission in Afghanistan that he did this deliberately, because he wanted a fast way out?
Riedel: I think there are more graceful ways to offer your resignation. McChrystal has made a fool of himself. It's very tragic in many ways.
SPIEGEL: President Obama has been open about the fact that one of his main concerns was the impact the article would have on allies like the French -- especially when they read the opening paragraph of the Rolling Stone story.
Riedel: General David Petraeus has been chosen for a number of reasons. He is a remarkably diplomatic general who knows how to work with (the United States') allies. Sending him sends a message of reassurance to the allies, to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and to the Pakistanis that there is a change in personality but not a change in strategy.
SPIEGEL: After McChrystal's dismissal, Obama said that he accepted debate but not division. Exactly how serious are divisions in his national security team?
Riedel: There has been a series of leaks, there has been a lot of backbiting. Just think of the McChrystal memo that was leaked to the Washington Post. The president tolerated that as long as he felt it wasn't damaging the strategy or the mission. But the Rolling Stone article was just too much.
SPIEGEL: Had the president been too tolerant, for too long?
Riedel: If there is a silver lining to the McChrystal affair, it may be that we will now see a unity of effort. A counterinsurgency war is, by definition, very difficult to win -- and there are many parts of the counterinsurgency that are beyond your control. One of the few things that is under your control is unity of command and a unity of purpose for your own team. The president is now trying to re-establish that. In General Petraeus, he has picked exactly the right person to do that.
SPIEGEL: However, there is still an unresolved divide between the political and the military. Obama wants to start pulling US troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 -- but his generals remain skeptical.
Riedel: I think that issue was resolved. The July 2011 date will now be very notional and Petraeus has, in effect, gotten what he wanted.
SPIEGEL: So a serious plan for US withdrawal is off the table?
Riedel: Petraeus would not have taken on the job without being reasonably certain that it is not a hard and fast deadline but an aspiration.
SPIEGEL: Do you think this was a condition Petraeus set, before accepting the job?
Riedel: I know David Petraeus pretty well, and I don't think he would have (made that demand publicly). But by turning to Petraeus, the president has signaled that he understands that that deadline is an aspiration, not a fixed point.
SPIEGEL: So Obama is now resigned to the idea of seeing US troops stationed in Afghanistan for many years to come?
Riedel: We now have the extraordinary case of two US presidents in a row going to David Petraeus to try to salvage a deteriorating situation. This president is even more dependent upon Petraeus turning this around than Bush was. By the time he turned to Petraeus, Bush was in his second term and had no hopes for re-election. Obama is in his first term and very much hopes he can be re-elected. But to do that, he now needs to succeed in Afghanistan.
SPIEGEL: Of course, there are other theories about this. For instance: That the president turned to Petraeus because, as a well respected military leader, he is probably the only person in America in a position to tell the Americans, maybe in a year or two, that they cannot win this war.
Riedel: I don't think Petraeus took this job to fail. Petraeus is a winner, and he will find a way to win.
SPIEGEL: Why would someone like Petraeus take on such a hellish task, at the age of 57?
Riedel: He is a remarkably patriotic person. He believes that this war is important to American national security. It is important for the defeat of al-Qaida and its affiliates. Petraeus was one of the architects of this strategy from the beginning. He was an advocate of the counterinsurgency strategy right from the beginning. Obama is going to stick with the strategy now -- at least for his first term as president.
SPIEGEL: Is that strategy -- fewer bombs, fewer civilian deaths, more dialogue with the Afghan people, greater cooperation with local security services -- actually working? June was the bloodiest month ever for US and ISAF troops in Afghanistan.
Riedel: It is way too soon to judge. We still don't have all of the 30,000 or so troops the president committed to send into the field. A counterinsurgency is not like a Normandy invasion. At the end of the day you don't know whether you have put your troops on the battlefield successfully, or not. I don't think we are really going to be in a position to significantly judge this policy's success, or failure, until next spring -- maybe not until next summer.
SPIEGEL: The military, however, is apparently also unhappy with the more moderate approach. Soldiers in Afghanistan say they cannot bomb as much, they don't get as much air support as they used to. And that is why the fatalities are rising.
SPIEGEL: McChrystal was the second Afghan commander Obama fired within a year. Is Petraeus his last chance -- or could he do it a third time?
Riedel: The last time an American president fired his battlefield commander twice in one year was in 1863. The president was Abraham Lincoln and an army was marching into Pennsylvania en route to Gettysburg (during the American Civil war). This is a remarkable thing for a president to do: He is now stuck with Petraeus. He can't have a third commander in Afghanistan during his presidency.
Interview conducted by Gregor Peter Schmitz
Obama's War
Petraeus Appointment a Coup with Risks
By Marco Evers, Marc Hujer, Susanne Koelbl and Gregor Peter Schmitz
It is a Monday evening, at about 8 p.m., when US President Barack Obama's press secretary makes his way from the West Wing of the White House to the president's private quarters, a copy of the now infamous article in the music magazine Rolling Stone in hand. When he reaches the president's quarters, he immediately starts looking for Obama, who is normally having dinner with his family at this time. Mr. President, he says as Obama meets him on the ground floor, there's an article here that you have to see. In the article, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, is quoted as making inappropriate remarks about everyone and everything.
After reading the first few paragraphs, Obama looks irate, says a member of his staff. At this point, it is already clear to him that McChrystal will have to go, and he hasn't even read the disrespectful passages in which he himself is mentioned. "The president wasn't furious about the things that were said about him," says the staff member. Instead, his immediate concern, apparently, was over how such insults could affect the US's allies in Afghanistan, like the French, who have supported the war for years.
Obama's aides like to tell the story of that decisive evening, when the president saw the Rolling Stone article for the first time and read how his supreme commander in Afghanistan humiliated him, his country and his administration. They see it as evidence of how quickly Obama took the initiative that evening, because he understood immediately how dangerous a general can be who insults his allies in the middle of a war and makes snide comments about the civilians on the White House's Afghanistan team.
'Now Is the Time for All of Us to Come Together'
Obama fired the disrespectful general 40 hours later. Now Obama is standing in the White House Rose Garden with Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of the United States Central Command for the entire Middle East and Afghanistan, a position in which he was McChrystal's superior. Now he will also become the general's successor. Obama seems cool and decisive when he says, momentously: "War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or a president … now is the time for all of us to come together."
Until this moment, Petraeus was probably the most unlikely candidate for the position, because, in complying with Obama's request, he is not only taking a step down in the hierarchy to run the war from Kabul. Petraeus has political talents, and some say that could even run against Obama as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. If he had any such intentions, taking a step that aligns him more closely with Obama would not have been expedient. For the president, it was a successful coup that hardly anyone had expected. The Washington Post offered sardonic praise for the president, writing that the scene at the White House had been "rare enough to be worth the suffering (through temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit in the Rose Garden): The commander in chief was being commanding."
Is this the break Obama has been waiting for, a "stroke of brilliance, an unassailable move, politically and strategically," as Fred Kaplan writes in the online magazine Slate? Or has Obama just become even more embroiled in a war that could already be unwinnable?
In appointing Petraeus to success McChrystal, Obama has chosen the strongest proponent of the troop surge strategy. But if the war continues to drag on, he will come to be seen as a war president and, when he runs for reelection, could have trouble gaining the support of voters who already hold it against him that the Afghanistan campaign has already lasted longer than World War II.
Can the War Still Be Won?
The war in Afghanistan is not just controversial among Americans. There are growing doubts among Obama's allies over whether they should continue to support the war in Central Asia by sending their own troops. No European government "can afford to sustain a foreign policy that is so deeply unpopular at home ... for very long," Pakistani strategist Ahmed Rashid recently warned in an essay in SPIEGEL.
On the Sunday before last, the increasingly war-weary British mourned the death of their 300th fallen soldier since the beginning of the Afghanistan mission. During the course of the week, another seven young Britons lost their lives. Such losses reinforce doubts over whether the conflict can still be won militarily.
But hardly anyone dares to openly express these doubts. There is, however, one person who has repeatedly questioned the Afghanistan strategy. Unlike McChrystal, Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's envoy to Afghanistan, has pushed for negotiations with the Taliban. Last week, the British Foreign Office abruptly announced that Cowper-Coles had taken "extended leave" from his position in Afghanistan, and it appears unlikely that he will return to Afghanistan.
The Poles, the seventh-largest contingent in Afghanistan, also recently announced their upcoming withdrawal from the mission, following on the heels of the Canadians and the Dutch, who decided to bring home their troops months ago.
Germany, however, where the majority of citizens also oppose the war, is not expected to announce its withdrawal -- not yet, at any rate. Although McChrystal frequently made derisive remarks about the German troops in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg regretted the departure of the ousted general: "I have always had an excellent working relationship with McChrystal and see few reasons to make any changes to his strategy."
The military leadership can't complain about the personnel change at the top, even though the Pentagon and its top brass held McChrystal in high regard. A change was already overdue in Obama's Afghanistan team. McChrystal was too much at odds with the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, with the national security advisor, General James Jones, and with the special envoy for Afghanistan, the choleric Richard Holbrooke.
Regardless, Petraeus seems to be the better choice for Obama's war. The conflict with the Taliban cannot be won with weapons. The upper hand can only be gained through better communication. The so-called COIN strategy, which is intended to isolate the rebellious Taliban, emphasizes winning the trust of the Afghan people.
It turns the traditional logic of war on its head. The primary goal, as McChrystal kept trying to hammer into the heads of his soldiers, is not the enemy but protecting the civilian population. He argued that this was the only way the West could gain the trust of the Afghans and gradually deprive the Taliban of their support. He ordered his soldiers in the field only to request air support in an absolute emergency and only to take significant risks when their own safety was at stake. The goal, he said, was to gain the support of the people for the idea of a peaceful Afghanistan. It was about diplomacy, about talking instead of dropping bombs.
Petraeus, as the co-author of the manual that establishes the new rules of combat, is at least as familiar with this strategy as McChrystal. The 241-page work augments the tried-and-true principles of guerilla warfare with many suggestions to incorporate "social networks" in local communities. All Petraeus has to do now is to implement his own ideas. And unlike McChrystal, who felt "betrayed" by the US ambassador in Kabul, Petraeus had an excellent working relationship with the US ambassador in Baghdad and demonstrated diplomatic skills during his tenure in Iraq.
Petraeus' Presidential Dreams Unlikely to Materialize
However, the general's potential presidential dreams are unlikely to materialize for the time being. He can hardly run an election campaign from Kabul. Besides, if Petraeus fails in Afghanistan, he will also have failed as a presidential candidate. And if he succeeds, the victory will be mostly President Obama's.
In return, however, Petraeus now holds sway over Obama on such matters as requesting more troops. "His real ambition was to become his era's Carl von Clausewitz or Alfred Thayer Mahan, the dominant military strategist of the 21st century," journalist Jonathan Alter writes in his book "The Promise," the first comprehensive look behind the scenes of the Obama White House.
His approach worked in Iraq. But Afghanistan is not Iraq, which even Petraeus has pointed out again and again. Besides, the new strategy has yet to yield significant positive results. On the contrary, there are growing fears that the West is in the process of losing this war.
The capture of the town of Marja was supposed to become a textbook example of the successful use of the new COIN doctrine. In February, the allies sent 15,000 troops to the town in Helmand Province, a largely agricultural region. Their goal was to liberate the roughly 82,000 inhabits from the Taliban, which had become entrenched there, but the effort was unsuccessful. Even McChrystal later described the tenacious rebel stronghold as a "bleeding ulcer."
A similar operation, but this time with a substantially larger force, was intended to liberate Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the spiritual center of the Taliban. But the offensive has been repeatedly postponed. Perhaps it will happen this autumn, or possibly not at all.
How Committed Is America?
In any event, Afghanistan is a long way from peace. In June alone, coalition troops had lost 80 soldiers by last Friday, making it the bloodiest month in a war that has been raging for almost nine years. In the Rolling Stone article, a close advisor to McChrystal is quoted as saying that the mission there is "not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win."
There is also mounting concern among other senior US military leaders over whether America has enough patience for a mission that is as broad and protracted as McChrystal and his successor expect it to be, especially with the prospect of growing American losses in the coming months -- as was the case in Iraq when Petraeus took the reins there, before managing to turn the war around a few months later.
In the controversial Rolling Stones article by author Michael Hastings, soldiers, in particular, openly complain about their situation, mostly about being ordered not to shoot, even in menacing situations, so as to protect innocent civilians. "Does that make any fucking sense?" only soldier asked. "We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?"
But Petraeus supports the strategy, which is why his appointment also holds unmistakable risks for Obama. The president and his commander have signed a pact. "He is now stuck with Petraeus," says Bruce Riedel, co-author of the president's Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. According to Riedel, Obama cannot afford "to have a third commander in Afghanistan during his presidency." It is a pact with many unknown factors. Most of all, it is by no means clear that Petraeus truly agrees with Obama's plan to ring in the end of the unpopular war by next year.
The withdrawal of the additional troops that were sent to Afghanistan will begin in July 2011, Obama announced in a speech on Afghanistan at the United States Military Academy at West Point last December. McChrystal thought it wasn't a good idea. He believed that Obama was sending the wrong signal to America's enemies, and he argued that it could take years for the strategy of winning over the Afghan people to succeed.
How Unified Is Obama's Team?
This is why the question of how unified Obama's Afghanistan team really is after Petraeus's appointment still remains unanswered. Is Defense Secretary Robert Gates truly on his way out, after trying, unsuccessfully, to convince the president to keep McChrystal?
And what will happen to National Security Advisor Jones, who one of McChrystal's men referred to as a "clown?" Although many in Obama's inner circle were outraged over the choice of words, no one could bring himself to defend the retired general against the insult. He hardly plays a role anymore within Obama's team of close advisors.
Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan -- described as a "wounded animal" in the Rolling Stone story -- is also weakened. In a letter to Ambassador Eikenberry in February, Jones wrote that he shouldn't get so upset about Holbrooke, because he was going to be out of the picture soon, anyway. The memo was leaked and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to intervene to keep her ally in office. The new unity Obama is now demanding of his staff will not be that easy to achieve.
When Petraeus was called to testify before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan two weeks ago, the chairman asked him how he felt about Obama's withdrawal plan. Did he still support it? Petraeus paused for 10 long seconds before answering. The senators waited. Finally, the general said quietly: "In a perfect world, Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines." The purpose of setting a date of July 2011 for the beginning of the withdrawal, he said, was to convey "a message of urgency," but that it "did not imply a race for the exits."
This, unlike his hotheaded predecessor, is the way a diplomatic general speaks.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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