Michael Hastings - The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of Americas War in Afghanistan

BLUE RIDER PRESS
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Copyright 2012 by Michael Hastings

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Published simultaneously in Canada

EISBN: 9781101575482

Printed in the United States of America

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Book design by Michelle McMillian

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however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

TO MY FAMILY

I was silenced, said no more to him, and we soon left. I was sadly disappointed, and remember that I broke out on John, damning the politicians generally, saying, You have got things in a hell of a fix, and you may get them out as you best can.

F ROM M EMOIRS OF G ENERAL W. T. S HERMAN , on Shermans
first meeting with President Abraham Lincoln

a certain irresponsibility grew.

H ISTORIAN H.D.F. K ITTO , on the decline of leadership
in Athens during its twenty-seven-year war with Sparta

The sons-of-bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work.

P RESIDENT J OHN F. K ENNEDY , on the bad advice he received
from his generals, remarking on the colorful ribbons on their chests

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war

L UCIUS A NNAEUS S ENECA , R OMAN PHILOSOPHER

15. Petraeus Cant Do Afghanistan,
and We Arent Going to Get Bin Laden

40. The Concluding Converations with Duncan Boothby,
General Petraeus Face-Plants in Congress, and the Story
Breaks While I Watch American Helicopter Pilots Kill
Insurgents

APRIL 7, 2010, MILTON, VERMONT

I dialed the strange number with a sequence of digits too long to remember. The tone beeped in a distinctly foreign way. My call went through to Afghanistan.

Hello, Duncan? This is Michael Hastings from Rolling Stone.

I was in a house on Lake Champlain, smoking a cigarette on a screened-in porch with a view of the Adirondacks. I put the smoke out in an empty citronella candle, went inside, and grabbed a notebook from the kitchen counter.

Duncan Boothby was the top civilian press advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Duncan and I had been e-mailing back and forth for a month to arrange a magazine profile I was planning to write about the general. Id missed his call yesterday. Hed left a message. This was the first time Id spoken to him.

Duncan had a slight British accent, ambiguous, watered down. He told me I should come to Paris, France.

Were going to discreetly remind the Europeans that we bailed their ass out once, he said. Its time for them to hold fast.

Duncan explained the plan.

The visual: Normandy. D-day. The Allied forces greatest triumph. Bodies washed ashore then, rows of white crosses now.

The scene: McChrystal standing on the banks of the English Channel, remembering the fallen, a cold spring wind blowing up from Omaha Beach. Hes a war geek, Duncan said; he spends his vacations at battlefields. A few months ago, on a trip back to DC, on his day off he went to Gettysburg.

The narrative: The trip is part of a yearlong effort for McChrystal to visit all forty-four of the allies involved in the war in Afghanistan. This time, its Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, and Prague. Its to shore up support among our friends in NATOto put to rest what Duncan called those funny European feelings about the Americanization of the war. From my perspective, he told me, there would be something new to write about. No one had ever profiled McChrystal in Europe.

Duncan was a talker. He hinted: Im in the know. Im in the loop. Im in the room.

What do you make of Karzais outburst the other day? I asked. Hamid Karzai, the U.S. ally and Afghan president, had threatened to join the Taliban, the U.S. enemy. Hed done so just days after President Barack Obama had met with him. That make life difficult for you?

Duncan blamed the White House.

The White House is in attack mode, he said. It took President Obama a long time to get to Kabul. They threw the trip together at the last minute. We had six hours to get it ready. Then they came out of the meeting saying how much they slammed Karzai. That insulted him.

I took notes. This was good stuff.

Duncan spun for McChrystalthe general had invested months of his time to develop a friendship with the Afghan president.

Karzai is a leader with strengths and weaknesses, he said. My guy has inherited that relationship. Holbrooke and the U.S. ambassador are leaking things, saying they cant work with him. That undercuts our ability to work with him. For the McCains and the Kerrys to turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, its not very helpful.