Karzai’s responses in the meeting and then at dinner led me to wonder if he listened to anyone but the conspiracy-minded. He said he had heard that the United States wanted to weaken Afghanistan, to create many small states in its place. U.S. efforts to build the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and to work with local leaders could “be very destabilizing,” he added. In the war on terror, he claimed, it was never clear whether the United States wanted Pakistan strong or weak. The Chinese view, he said, was that the United States wanted to strengthen Afghanistan against Pakistan and to use India against China. What is the “real” American agenda? he asked. He carried on at some length about the “radicalization” of the Pashtuns, wondering who was behind it. The Indians, he said, thought it might be the United States or the United Kingdom. To all this and more, knowing the futility—and risks—of challenging him in front of a roomful of people, I responded only that he “needed to get his relationship with the United States straight in the very near future.”
Before and after the Karzai meeting, I met at length with Petraeus, Rodriguez, the operational commander, and others to pose questions I felt would be at the heart of the White House discussions in the coming weeks. I asked about their expectations for the spring and summer campaigns, whether the Pakistanis were actually making a difference, and how we might discourage our allies from pulling out of Afghanistan prematurely.
The day after the Karzai encounter was an emotional one. I flew to Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan and visited the medevac unit there. Pilots, medics, and doctors described what they had been able to do with the additional assets we had provided them, the lives they had been able to save. Every day those crews put their lives on the line to save our troops; to say they are heroic doesn’t do them justice. Talking with them fueled my gratitude for what had been accomplished but reignited my fury at those in the Pentagon who had fought the medevac initiative with such vigor.
I flew to Sangin in northern Helmand province, scene of some of the toughest fighting of the Afghan War. At Forward Operating Base Sabit Qadam, I met with Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Twenty-nine Marines had been killed and 175 wounded in five months clearing Sangin, the heaviest losses of any battalion in the entire war. Accompanying me was my new senior military assistant, Marine Lieutenant General John Kelly. Kelly’s son Robert had been one of those twenty-nine killed. Kelly met privately with the Marines of his son’s platoon, who gave him a picture of Robert taken a few hours before he was killed and signed by all the Marines in the platoon.
The commanders in Sangin expected a resurgence of violence during the summer. I told the press, “The Taliban will try to take back much of what they have lost, and that in many respects will be the acid test.” Rodriguez told reporters accompanying me, “We think they’ll be returning this spring to a significantly different environment than when they left last year.” I told the Marines at Sabit Qadam that they had written “in sweat and blood” a new chapter in the Marine Corps’ roll of honor. I added, “Every day I monitor how you are doing. And every day you return to your base without a loss, I say a little prayer. I say a prayer on the other days as well.”
During the worst of the battalion’s fight in Sangin, when they were taking such significant casualties, some in the Pentagon had suggested the unit be pulled out of the line. Commanders in the field strongly recommended against it, and I had deferred to their judgment. I thought to myself at Sabat Qadam that pulling them out would possibly have been one of my worst mistakes as secretary of defense. These Marines had been hit hard, very hard. But despite their terrible losses, they were very proud they had succeeded where so many others had failed. And justifiably so.
My last troop visit on the trip was to Combat Outpost Kowall, just north of Kandahar. The area had long been a Taliban stronghold. I walked a few hundred yards to a nearby village to meet with the elders and take a look at the Afghan Local Police unit there. The ALP, mentioned previously, was an initiative pushed by Petraeus that recruited men from local villages and trained them as a local security force to keep the Taliban away. There were farm animals around and, more significantly, lots of children and women out and about, unique in my visits to rural Afghanistan. There were a number of troops lining the road about twenty-five yards apart, and again, for the first time in my experience, about half were Afghans. The village council greeted me, and I met with about twenty of the ALP. I was encouraged when told by the village council that the ALP had worked so well, other nearby villages were starting to participate.
After leaving Kowall, I told the press with me that I was very encouraged and felt that “the pieces were coming together.” “The closer you get to the fight, the better it looks.” I thought but didn’t say that I only wished some of the skeptics working in the White House and the NSS would get a little closer to the fight and be a little less reliant on Washington-based intelligence assessments and press reports.
After the killing of Bin Laden, there was a frenzy of commentary about whether that success would allow us to get out of Afghanistan faster, and if not, why not. There were several Principals Committee meetings on issues relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan in April, but the decisive discussion about how many troops to withdraw and at what pace was not to occur until June.
I made my twelfth and final visit to Afghanistan in early June. Support for the war was steadily dropping at home. On May 26, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had given a speech in which she said Americans had done our job to help the Afghans, and “it is time to come home.” That posture wasn’t new for her, but twenty-six Republicans joining most House Democrats in voting for an amendment calling for an exit strategy and accelerated withdrawal was. The measure failed by 215–204. One of my goals during this last trip was to make the case, through the press accompanying me, for a gradual drawdown of troops, so as to not jeopardize the troops’ hard-won gains. I warned Karzai how fragile support for the war was in Washington and mentioned his “constant criticism.”
The main purpose of the visit, though, was to say thanks and good-bye to the troops. I visited five different forward bases over two days, including spending the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, with units of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. I shook hands and had photos taken with some 2,500 soldiers and Marines. Choking back tears, at the end of each visit I said the same thing:
More than anybody except the president, I’m responsible for you being here. I’m the person who signed the deployment papers that got you here, and that weighs on me every day. I feel your hardship and your sacrifice and your burden, and that of your families, more than you can possibly know. You are, I believe, the best our country has to offer. My admiration and affection for you is limitless, and each of you will be in my thoughts and prayers every day for the rest of my life.
I participated in the first White House session on drawdowns by videoconference. It was very discouraging. Briefers talked about the weakness of the Afghan central government, the poor performance of the Karzai government, the dependence of the Afghan forces on ISAF, and the lack of progress on reconciliation. To my chagrin, both Panetta and Clapper said that another year or two of effort still would not lead to a satisfactory outcome. Petraeus was recommending that the final elements of the surge be withdrawn in December 2012. Biden said the president should withdraw 15,000 troops by the end of 2011 and the remaining 15,000 of the surge by April 2012 or July at the latest, before the next “fighting season.”