At War with Ourselves, page 22
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2017, would be the second time that Trump used Camp David. Trump, who favored resorts that bore his name, had been pleasantly surprised by the 125-acre presidential retreat in Maryland. Navy Seabees do a phenomenal job maintaining the grounds and the structures, which include guest cabins, a chapel, Aspen Lodge (the president’s guest house), and Laurel Lodge (a meeting and conference facility).
I stayed home that morning. White House Military Office couriers delivered the PDB book. I read it in the SCIF. ISIS terrorist attacks in Barcelona on Thursday had killed 13 people and injured at least 130 others. I locked the book in its bag and placed it in the safe before joining several conference calls.
Just before noon, I walked out of Quarters 13, past the old officers’ club, and to the edge of the large lawn on the north side of Roosevelt Hall that serves as the helicopter landing zone for Fort McNair. I joined my colleagues there in time to recommend that they turn their backs to the U.S. Marine Corps Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as they hovered and landed, buffeting us with the rotor wash. As we walked up the ramps and sat facing each other along the bulkheads, I wondered how our NSC meeting with the president at Camp David would end.
I reflected on what had become the saga of the South Asia strategy. The first obstacle had been the State and Defense Departments’ unwillingness to abandon flawed assumptions and develop options other than the withdrawal strategy that was leading to slow failure.
In our first principals committee meeting, on July 16, Tillerson had table-dropped a briefing coordinated with Defense that started with three premises: a tougher approach to Pakistan is unlikely to lead to improvements in the Pakistani Army’s behavior; an Afghan military victory over the Taliban is unattainable; and there is a viable political path to a negotiated agreement with the Taliban. It was as if all the work the NSC had coordinated since May had been discarded.
It had been equally difficult to convince Trump to consider alternatives to withdrawal. The alt-right and isolationists had been in his ear, as had those lobbying to turn the war over to private security contractors. Members of the White House staff had fed the press disinformation to portray me as tricking Trump into abandoning his promise to withdraw. Despite my best efforts to get the president into a good frame of mind for the first NSC meeting on the South Asia strategy on July 19, that meeting had been a disaster. Trump immediately went into harassment mode, railing against the “stupid people” who had “wasted trillions of dollars.” Would the second NSC meeting on the South Asia strategy, at Camp David, be any different?
After the first meeting, we had regrouped. Pence exhorted the principals to show Trump “what winning looks like.” I directed our staff to develop two alternatives to the status quo: withdrawal and sustained commitment with a more effective approach to helping Afghan forces fight the Taliban. But most important, I worked to expose Trump to a wider range of perspectives, including the intelligence officers he had met at Bedminster. At the suggestion of Pence, I called General Dunford to coordinate lunch in the Roosevelt Room with military officers and noncommissioned officers who had completed multiple and recent tours in Afghanistan. Before Trump’s meeting with them, I had welcomed the three Army noncommissioned officers and an Air Force officer into my office. I told Master Sgt. Henry Adames, Maj. Eric Birch, Master Sgt. Zachary Bannon, and First Sgt. Michael Wagner that the president had a lot of people in his ear and that he needed to hear from those who had been fighting the war. “There are no right or wrong answers to his questions. Just answer honestly and stick to what you know.”
We walked to the Roosevelt Room. After introductions, the president asked the press pool to come in for some photos. As lunch was served, I asked each service member to introduce himself and describe his experience in Afghanistan. As the vice president excused himself for another meeting, Trump asked them, referring to Afghanistan, “Do you want to go back?”
They answered all together: “Yes, Mr. President.”
Trump was puzzled. “Why?” he asked.
Master Sergeant Bannon answered, “Mr. President, we want to finish the job [against the enemy] so our children and grandchildren don’t have to go there.”
Trump then asked what we needed to do differently.
They described, with examples, the inconsistent short-term approach to the war, the restrictions on the use of force against the Taliban, the lack of assets such as surveillance platforms and close air support, the troop caps that had forced them to break up teams, and the terrorist haven in Pakistan. They were honest and direct about corruption among Afghan forces: the diversion of assistance and money and the “ghost” soldiers on the rolls.
But contrary to the content of Tillerson’s table-dropped briefing of the following day, the soldiers and airman told Trump that, with the proper authorities, sufficient assets, and adequate numbers of special operations forces as advisors, the Afghans could win. They then asked Trump to lift restrictive rules of engagement, asking why the rules were more restrictive in Afghanistan than they were in Syria. When Trump asked why the war was important, the service members were adamant that our operations in Afghanistan in support of Afghan forces were preventing attacks in the United States.
The meeting went well. I could see that our servicemen had challenged Trump’s prejudices. But in the months that followed, the president would revise his memory of that meeting to realign with those prejudices. Trump would claim that the soldiers had criticized their commanders. They had not. They had merely noted that some NATO officers on the staff were not familiar with the U.S.-only counterterrorism fight.
In multiple conversations with Trump over the weeks prior to the Camp David meeting, I told him, “You are right to be frustrated over the war. All of us who served in Afghanistan are frustrated. We have been fighting under a withdrawal strategy for eight years. Maybe that has something to do with the lack of progress. We told the Taliban we are leaving and then tried to negotiate a deal with them. How the hell is any of that going to work? Let us give you options, and after we do, if you decide to get out, we will get out.” Pence and Kelly had reinforced that message.
As I looked out the window as our aircraft paralleled the Potomac River into Maryland and then turned north toward Catoctin Mountain, I wondered if I had violated the Scowcroft model and become more of a policy advocate on South Asia than an “honest broker.” But I had fought to give the president a choice beyond the status quo, what I saw as a slow, painful path to failure in Afghanistan.
* * *
UPON ARRIVAL at Camp David, we joined the president for lunch around the long rectangular table in the Laurel Lodge dining area. The president was in a good mood, and the conversation was relaxed. After lunch, we moved into the large conference room. The president sat at the center of one of the table’s longer sides, rather than at the head. I sat to his left. Ricky Waddell sat across from us. Members of the NSC and Lisa Curtis, senior director for South and Central Asia, and John Eisenberg filled out the table. My chief of staff, Ylli, sat behind me.
I had decided that it would be more effective for Ricky to narrate the courses of action, after which the president would hear from his advisors. Leaks and disinformation associated with our previous deliberations had portrayed me as an advocate for a much larger commitment of troops than any of the options under consideration called for. I did not want the messenger to taint the message.
I gave only a brief introduction: “Good afternoon, Mr. President. The purpose of this meeting is to obtain your decision on the South Asia strategy. After General Waddell summarizes the courses of action, you will hear the assessments and recommendations of your National Security Council.”
Ricky’s delivery was clear and succinct. Trump listened attentively to the courses of action and the recommendations of all his advisors. Each offered their endorsement of the recommended South Asia strategy, which included expanding the strategic relationship with India, removing the time limit on U.S. military support for the Afghan armed forces, lifting restrictions on U.S. forces, and ending the delusion that Pakistan was an ally in that fight. Sessions was candid about his reluctance to recommend a sustained commitment but said that after hearing the cost and consequences of withdrawal, he believed that the new approach could accomplish the mission at acceptable cost and risk.
After everyone spoke, Trump turned to me and said, “What do you think, General?”
“Mr. President, it won’t surprise you that I believe that the recommended option is the best way to secure America’s vital interests. You would establish a sound policy for the region and the first long-term, sustainable strategy to win in Afghanistan.”
Trump approved the recommended South Asia strategy.
Before we departed, Kelly asked all of us to pose for a photo as Trump signed the presidential decision memorandum directing implementation. The president would announce the decision and explain the strategy on Monday in a speech at Fort Myer, Virginia. Over the weekend, we would finalize our communications rollout and plan to inform key allies and members of Congress. Kelly told everyone that he expected that there would be no leaks. With Bannon gone, there were none.
* * *
AS WE lined up for cars, several cabinet members thanked me for running a process that gave all of them a voice and resulted in the best available outcome. I thanked them in return. In the midst of attacks on the NSC staff and me, the Charlottesville controversy, and multiple personnel changes, including a new White House chief of staff, we had helped Trump challenge assumptions, understand a complex problem set, consider multiple options, and make a sound decision. The collaborative process had worked under duress and delivered. The long saga of the South Asia strategy demonstrated that Trump did not need to be controlled or fed carefully selected information. He needed a wide range of perspectives and multiple options.
On Monday evening, I walked through the Rose Garden to the Residence and then up the steps to join the president and First Lady; their son, Barron; Jared and Ivanka; Stephen Miller; and Trump’s longtime bodyguard, former New York City police officer Keith Schiller, in the living room. When Miller and I had reviewed the speech with Trump earlier in the day, he seemed to take full ownership of it and the strategy it announced. The president had taken out one of his medium-point Sharpies and partly written, partly dictated the following paragraph:
My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office; in other words, when you’re President of the United States. So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle. After many meetings, over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David, with my Cabinet and generals, to complete our strategy.1
But now, as I sat across from him on one of the white couches just hours after he had written those words and approved a speech that contained a commitment to “fight to win” through “attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge,” Trump was wavering. Like a groom getting cold feet on his wedding day, he turned to his “best man,” Schiller, and asked, “What do you think? Am I doing the right thing?”
Schiller, like many Americans, had imbibed the “graveyard of empires” argument regarding Afghanistan. He thought that the United States was doomed to fail there, just as the British and the Soviets had failed before us. Schiller also echoed the criticism that the United States and our allies were wasting money and resources trying to remake Afghanistan in an alien, Western image.
As Trump looked back at me, I expressed respect for Keith and his views, but reminded the president that he had heard similar opinions many times over the past six months. His speech would make clear that Afghans were “fighting to defend and secure their country against the same enemies who threaten us.” We were not in Afghanistan to fulfill imperial ambitions; we were helping Afghans “build their own nation and define their own future.”
I went on: “Mr. President, your speech rejects the use of ‘American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands or try to rebuild other countries in our own image.’ As you have heard me say many times, Afghanistan does not need to be Denmark for this strategy to succeed.”
With a look of resignation, he responded, “Okay, General, let’s go.”
As we stood, he said what I would hear many times over the coming months: “I am doing this for you.”
And I responded as I did every time: “Mr. President, you made the right decision for our nation. You should never do anything for me.”
As our motorcade passed Arlington National Cemetery and entered the gates of Fort Myer, I thought of our servicemen and -women and especially the Gold Star families of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan—including the Kelly family, whose son Robert was killed in action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on November 9, 2010. Much of the president’s speech that day was dedicated to them: “Now we must secure the cause for which they gave their lives. We must unite to defend America from its enemies abroad. We must restore the bonds of loyalty among our citizens at home, and we must achieve an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the enormous price that so many have paid.”
When Trump delivered those lines and ended the speech with “Thank you. May God bless our military. And may God bless the United States of America,” the audience of mainly servicemen and -women gave him a round of applause much louder than the pro forma ovations expected for a commander in chief.
In the speech, Trump outlined the dramatic changes in the strategy, including “a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.” The United States would “not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.” The strategy would emphasize “the integration of all instruments of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—toward a successful outcome.”
I had drafted a few lines so Trump could deliver an unambiguous message to a Pentagon that had resisted earlier efforts to lift restrictions and ensure that troops had the authorities and the assets necessary to accomplish the mission:
. . . the brave defenders of the American people, will have the necessary tools and rules of engagement to make this strategy work, and work effectively and work quickly.
I have already lifted restrictions the previous administration placed on our warfighters that prevented the Secretary of Defense and our commanders in the field from fully and swiftly waging battle against the enemy. That’s why we will also expand authority for American armed forces to target the terrorist and criminal networks that sow violence and chaos throughout Afghanistan.
On negotiations, Trump made clear that military gains were necessary to get to an acceptable agreement: “Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen.” Despite that clear guidance, the State Department would continue to pursue negotiations with the Taliban while the Defense Department clung to the perverse rationale that an intensified military effort against them might impede rather than incentivize negotiations.
The message to Pakistani leaders was unambiguous: “We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.” Trump noted that “we have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials.” It would also remain a struggle to get State and Defense to stop providing aid to the Pakistanis.
The Washington Post reported that former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani leaders were unhappy with the South Asia speech. I considered those reactions a positive sign. At home, the reaction to the speech was mainly positive, even in a mainstream media environment generally hostile to everything Donald Trump did.
The president made a good decision and a courageous one, having been aware that elements of his base were calling for “ending endless wars.” But I was concerned: Trump was already wavering. Implementation of the strategy would be critical. The best way to allay his concerns over his base would be to demonstrate success in Afghanistan and across the region.
* * *
AT THE end of August, I planned to focus on two important integrated strategies: Russia and Iran. Both were ready to go to the president. Trump had gained a greater appreciation for the threat from Russia, which was now demanding that the United States reduce the staff in our Moscow embassy by 755 personnel. In response, Trump had approved the closure of the consulate general and official residence in San Francisco and of trade mission offices in New York and Washington. The closures dealt a significant blow to Russia’s intelligence network in the United States, which was integral to its sustained campaigns of political subversion and information warfare. Although Trump still clung to his forlorn hope for a game-changing entente with Putin, his penchant for reciprocity overcame his reluctance to take strong action.
