Entrevista Gral. McChrystal

8/6/2019 Entrevista Gral. McChrystal

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By Michael Hastings

This article appears in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22,2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25.

'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?"demands Gen. Stanle y McChr y stal. It's a Thursda y nightin mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATOforces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at theHôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new

war strateg y to our NATO allies ± to keep up the fiction,in essence, that we actuall y have allies. Since McChr y staltook over a y ear ago, the Afghan war has become theexclusive propert y of the United States. Opposition to the war has alread y toppled the Dutch government, forcedthe resignation of German y 's president and sparked bothCanada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawalof their 4,500 troops. McChr y stal is in Paris to keep the

French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbl y on him.

"The dinner comes with the position, sir," sa y s his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Fl y nn.

McChr y stal turns sharpl y in his chair.

"He y , Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the

position?"McChr y stal gives him the middle finger.

The general stands and looks around the suite that histraveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale



operations center. The tables are crowded with silverPanasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross thehotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes toprovide encr y pted phone and e-mail communications.

Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual ± blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks ± McChr y stal is wa y out of hiscomfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers sa y s, is the"most anti-McChr y stal cit y y ou can imagine." The generalhates fanc y restaurants, rejecting an y place with candleson the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime(his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (hisfavorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the publice y e has never been a place where McChr y stal feltcomfortable: Before President Obama put him in chargeof the war in Afghanistan, he spent five y ears running thePentagon's most secretive black ops.

"What's the update on the Kandahar bombing?"McChr y stal asks Fl y nn. The cit y has been rocked b y twomassive car bombs in the past da y alone, calling into

question the general's assurances that he can wrest itfrom the Taliban.

"We have two KIAs, but that hasn't been confirmed,"Fl y nn sa y s.

McChr y stal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, heis gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian

Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate-blue e y es have theunsettling abilit y to drill down when the y lock on y ou. If y ou've fucked up or disappointed him, the y can destro y y our soul without the need for him to raise his voice.



"I'd rather have m y ass kicked b y a roomful of peoplethan go out to this dinner," McChr y stal sa y s.

He pauses a beat.

"Unfortunatel y ," he adds, "no one in this room could doit."

With that, he's out the door.

"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides.

"Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking

ga y ."The next morning, McChr y stal and his team gather toprepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, aFrench militar y academ y . The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than an y one else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChr y stal has been in charge of the war for onl y a y ear, in that short

time he has managed to piss off almost ever y one with astake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London,McChr y stal dismissed the counterterrorism strateg y being advocated b y Vice President Joe Biden as"shortsighted," sa y ing it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan." The remarks earned him a smackdown from thepresident himself, who summoned the general to a terse

private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message toMcChr y stal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep alower profile

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech inParis, McChr y stal wonders aloud what Biden question he



might get toda y , and how he should respond. "I neverknow what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's theproblem," he sa y s. Then, unable to help themselves, heand his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice

president with a good one-liner.

"Are y ou asking about Vice President Biden?" McChr y stalsa y s with a laugh. "Who's that?"

"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did y ou sa y : Bite Me?"

W hen Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he

immediatel y set out to deliver on his most importantcampaign promise on foreign polic y : to refocus the war in Afghanistan on what led us to invade in the first place. "I want the American people to understand," he announcedin March 2009. "We have a clear and focused goal: todisrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." He ordered another 21,000 troops toKabul, the largest increase since the war began in 2001.

Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the JointChiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David McKiernan ±then the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan ±and replaced him with a man he didn't know and had metonl y briefl y : Gen. Stanle y McChr y stal. It was the firsttime a top general had been relieved from dut y during wartime in more than 50 y ears, since Harr y Truman firedGen. Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.

Even though he had voted for Obama, McChr y stal and hisnew commander in chief failed from the outset toconnect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozensenior militar y officials in a room at the Pentagon known



as the Tank. According to sources familiar with themeeting, McChr y stal thought Obama looked"uncomfortable and intimidated" b y the roomful of militar y brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place

in the Oval Office four months later, after McChr y stal gotthe Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It wasa 10-minute photo op," sa y s an adviser to McChr y stal."Obama clearl y didn't know an y thing about him, who he was. Here's the gu y who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem ver y engaged. The Boss was prett y disappointed."

From the start, McChr y stal was determined to place hispersonal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laborator y for a controversial militar y strateg y known ascounterinsurgenc y . COIN, as the theor y is known, is thenew gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine thatattempts to square the militar y 's preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars infailed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of

ground troops to not onl y destro y the enem y , but to liveamong the civilian population and slowl y rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government ± aprocess that even its staunchest advocates admit requires y ears, if not decades, to achieve. The theor y essentiall y rebrands the militar y , expanding its authorit y (and itsfunding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sidesof warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace

Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested thetheor y during his "surge" in Iraq, it quickl y gained ahardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, militar y officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed "COINdinistas"for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the



doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All the y needed was a general with enough charisma andpolitical savv y to implement it.

As McChr y stal leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, hedid it with the same fearlessness he used to track downterrorists in Iraq: Figure out how y our enem y operates, be faster and more ruthless than ever y bod y else, thentake the fuckers out. After arriving in Afghanistan lastJune, the general conducted his own polic y review,ordered up b y Defense Secretar y Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its

conclusion was dire: If we didn't send another 40,000troops ± swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan b y nearl y half ± we were in danger of "mission failure." The White House was furious.McChr y stal, the y felt, was tr y ing to bull y Obama, openinghim up to charges of being weak on national securit y unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined

to kick the president's ass.



Official White House photo b y Pete Souza

Last fall, with his top general calling for more troops,Obama launched a three-month review to re-evaluate the

strateg y in Afghanistan. "I found that time painful,"McChr y stal tells me in one of several length y interviews."I was selling an unsellable position." For the general, it was a crash course in Beltwa y politics ± a battle thatpitted him against experienced Washington insiders like Vice President Biden, who argued that a prolongedcounterinsurgenc y campaign in Afghanistan wouldplunge America into a militar y quagmire without

weakening international terrorist networks. "The entireCOIN strateg y is a fraud perpetuated on the Americanpeople," sa y s Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel andleading critic of counterinsurgenc y who attended WestPoint with McChr y stal. "The idea that we are going tospend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of theIslamic world is utter nonsense.

In the end, however, McChr y stal got almost exactl y whathe wanted. On December 1st, in a speech at West Point,the president laid out all the reasons wh y fighting the warin Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in aneconomic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words "victor y " or "win," Obama announced that he

would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan,almost as man y as McChr y stal had requested. Thepresident had thrown his weight, however hesitantl y , behind the counterinsurgenc y crowd.



Toda y , as McChr y stal gears up for an offensive insouthern Afghanistan, the prospects for an y kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troopspassed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled.

Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest countr y on earth has failed to win over thecivilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troopsranges from intensel y war y to openl y hostile. The biggestmilitar y operation of the y ear ± a ferocious offensive that began in Februar y to retake the southern town of Marja ±continues to drag on, prompting McChr y stal himself torefer to it as a "bleeding ulcer." In June, Afghanistanofficiall y outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American histor y ± and Obama has quietl y begun to back awa y from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S.troops in Jul y of next y ear. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: aquagmire he knowingl y walked into, even though it'sprecisel y the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing,multigenerational nation-building project he explicitl y said he didn't want.

Even those who support McChr y stal and his strateg y of counterinsurgenc y know that whatever the generalmanages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. "It's not going tolook like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win," sa y sMaj. Gen. Bill Ma y ville, who serves as chief of operations

for McChr y stal. "This is going to end in an argument."

The night after his speech in Paris, McChr y stal and hisstaff head to Kitt y O'Shea's, an Irish pub catering totourists, around the corner from the hotel. His wife,



Annie, has joined him for a rare visit: Since the Iraq War began in 2003, she has seen her husband less than 30da y s a y ear. Though it is his and Annie's 33rd weddinganniversar y , McChr y stal has invited his inner circle along

for dinner and drinks at the "least Gucci" place his staff could find. His wife isn't surprised. "He once took me to aJack in the Box when I was dressed in formalwear," shesa y s with a laugh.

The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers,spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outrightmaniacs. There's a former head of British Special Forces,

two Nav y Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, alaw y er, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgenc y experts. The y jokingl y refer to themselves as Team America, taking the namefrom the South Park-esque sendup of militar y cluelessness, and the y pride themselves on their can-doattitude and their disdain for authorit y . After arriving inKabul last summer, Team America set about changing the

culture of the International Securit y Assistance Force, asthe NATO-led mission is known. (U.S. soldiers had takento deriding ISAF as short for "I Suck at Fighting" or "InSandals and Flip-Flops.") McChr y stal banned alcohol on base, kicked out Burger King and other s y mbols of American excess, expanded the morning briefing toinclude thousands of officers and refashioned thecommand center into a Situational Awareness Room, a

free-flowing information hub modeled after Ma y or MikeBloomberg's offices in New York. He also set a manicpace for his staff, becoming legendar y for sleeping fourhours a night, running seven miles each morning, andeating one meal a da y . (In the month I spend around the



general, I witness him eating onl y once.) It's a kind of superhuman narrative that has built up around him, astaple in almost ever y media profile, as if the abilit y to go without sleep and food translates into the possibilit y of a

man single-handedl y winning the war.

By midnight at Kitt y O'Shea's, much of Team America iscompletel y shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while McChr y stal's top advisers lock arms and sing aslurred song of their own invention. " A fghanistan!" the y bellow. " A fghanistan!" The y call it their Afghanistan

song.

McChr y stal steps awa y from the circle, observing histeam. "All these men," he tells me. "I'd die for them. Andthe y 'd die for me."

The assembled men ma y look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-

knit group represents the most powerful force shapingU.S. polic y in Afghanistan. While McChr y stal and hismen are in indisputable command of all militar y aspectsof the war, there is no equivalent position on thediplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration pla y ers compete over the Afghanportfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberr y , SpecialRepresentative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke,

National Securit y Advisor Jim Jones and Secretar y of State Hillar y Clinton, not to mention 40 or so othercoalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who tr y to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerr y toJohn McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectivel y allowed McChr y stal's team to call the shots and



hampered efforts to build a stable and crediblegovernment in Afghanistan. "It jeopardizes the mission,"sa y s Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council onForeign Relations who supports McChr y stal. "The

militar y cannot b y itself create governance reform."

Part of the problem is structural: The DefenseDepartment budget exceeds $600 billion a y ear, while theState Department receives onl y $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChr y stallikes to talk shit about man y of Obama's top people onthe diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired

four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a "clown" who remains "stuck in 1985." Politicians like McCain andKerr y , sa y s another aide, "turn up, have a meeting withKarzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, thenget back for the Sunda y talk shows. Frankl y , it's not ver y helpful." Onl y Hillar y Clinton receives good reviews fromMcChr y stal's inner circle. "Hillar y had Stan's back duringthe strategic review," sa y s an adviser. "She said, 'If Stan

wants it, give him what he needs.'"

McChr y stal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke,the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. "TheBoss sa y s he's like a wounded animal," sa y s a member of the general's team. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumorsthat he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.He's a brilliant gu y , but he just comes in, pulls on a lever,

whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and y oucan't just have someone y anking on shit."



Michael Hastings at the ISAF base in Kabul, Afghanistan.Photograph b y Mikhail Galustov for RollingStone/Redux

At one point on his trip to Paris, McChr y stal checks hisBlack Berr y . "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke," hegroans. "I don't even want to open it." He clicks on themessage and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs theBlack Berr y back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal

his anno y ance."Make sure y ou don't get an y of that on y our leg," an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

B y far the most crucial ± and strained ± relationship is between McChr y stal and Eikenberr y , the U.S.ambassador. According to those close to the two men,

Eikenberr y ± a retired three-star general who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 ± can't stand that hisformer subordinate is now calling the shots. He's alsofurious that McChr y stal, backed b y NATO's allies, refusedto put Eikenberr y in the pivotal role of vicero y in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic



equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill ± a move that effectivel y increased McChr y stal's influence over diplomac y b y shutting out a powerful rival. "In realit y , that position

needs to be filled b y an American for it to have weight,"sa y s a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations.

The relationship was further strained in Januar y , when aclassified cable that Eikenberr y wrote was leaked to The New York Times. The cable was as scathing as it wasprescient. The ambassador offered a brutal critique of McChr y stal's strateg y , dismissed President Hamid Karzai

as "not an adequate strategic partner," and cast doubt on whether the counterinsurgenc y plan would be "sufficient"to deal with Al Qaeda. "We will become more deepl y engaged here with no wa y to extricate ourselves,"Eikenberr y warned, "short of allowing the countr y todescend again into lawlessness and chaos."

McChr y stal and his team were blindsided b y the cable. "I

like Karl, I've known him for y ears, but the y 'd never saidan y thing like that to us before," sa y s McChr y stal, whoadds that he felt "betra y ed" b y the leak. "Here's one thatcovers his flank for the histor y books. Now if we fail, the y can sa y , 'I told y ou so.'"

The most striking example of McChr y stal's usurpation of diplomatic polic y is his handling of Karzai. It is

McChr y stal, not diplomats like Eikenberr y or Holbrooke, who enjo y s the best relationship with the man America isrel y ing on to lead Afghanistan. The doctrine of counterinsurgenc y requires a credible government, andsince Karzai is not considered credible b y his own people,McChr y stal has worked hard to make him so. Over the



past few months, he has accompanied the president onmore than 10 trips around the countr y , standing besidehim at political meetings, or shuras, in Kandahar. InFebruar y , the da y before the doomed offensive in Marja,

McChr y stal even drove over to the president's palace toget him to sign off on what would be the largest militar y operation of the y ear. Karzai's staff, however, insistedthat the president was sleeping off a cold and could not be disturbed. After several hours of haggling, McChr y stalfinall y enlisted the aid of Afghanistan's defense minister, who persuaded Karzai's people to wake the presidentfrom his nap.

This is one of the central flaws with McChr y stal'scounterinsurgenc y strateg y : The need to build a crediblegovernment puts us at the merc y of whatever tin-potleader we've backed ± a danger that Eikenberr y explicitl y warned about in his cable. Even Team McChr y stalprivatel y acknowledges that Karzai is a less-than-idealpartner. "He's been locked up in his palace the past y ear,"

laments one of the general's top advisers. At times, Karzaihimself has activel y undermined McChr y stal's desire toput him in charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed Arm y Medical Center, Karzai met three U.S. soldiers whohad been wounded in Uruzgan province. "General," hecalled out to McChr y stal, "I didn't even know we werefighting in Uruzgan!"

Growing up as a militar y brat, McChr y stal exhibited themixture of brilliance and cockiness that would follow himthroughout his career. His father fought in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a two-star general, and his four brothers all joined the armed services. Moving around to



different bases, McChr y stal took solace in baseball, asport in which he made no pretense of hiding hissuperiorit y : In Little League, he would call out strikes tothe crowd before whipping a fastball down the middle.

McChr y stal entered West Point in 1972, when the U.S.militar y was close to its all-time low in popularit y . Hisclass was the last to graduate before the academ y startedto admit women. The "Prison on the Hudson," as it wasknown then, was a potent mix of testosterone,hooliganism and reactionar y patriotism. Cadetsrepeatedl y trashed the mess hall in food fights, and

birthda y s were celebrated with a tradition called "ratfucking," which often left the birthda y bo y outside in thesnow or mud, covered in shaving cream. "It was prett y out of control," sa y s Lt. Gen. David Barno, a classmate who went on to serve as the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. The class, filled with what Barno calls "huge talent" and "wild-e y ed teenagers with a strong sense of idealism," also produced Gen. Ra y

Odierno, the current commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The son of a general, McChr y stal was also a ringleader of the campus dissidents ± a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment whilethumbing his nose at authorit y ever y chance he got. Heaccumulated more than 100 hours of demerits fordrinking, part y ing and insubordination ± a record that

his classmates boasted made him a "centur y man." Oneclassmate, who asked not to be named, recalls findingMcChr y stal passed out in the shower after downing a caseof beer he had hidden under the sink. The troublemakingalmost got him kicked out, and he spent hours subjectedto forced marches in the Area, a paved court y ard where



unrul y cadets were disciplined. "I'd come visit, and I'dend up spending most of m y time in the librar y , whileStan was in the Area," recalls Annie, who began datingMcChr y stal in 1973.

McChr y stal wound up ranking 298 out of a class of 855, aserious underachievement for a man widel y regarded as brilliant. His most compelling work was extracurricular: As managing editor of The Pointer, the West Pointliterar y magazine, McChr y stal wrote seven short storiesthat eeril y foreshadow man y of the issues he wouldconfront in his career. In one tale, a fictional officer

complains about the difficult y of training foreign troopsto fight; in another, a 19- y ear-old soldier kills a bo y hemistakes for a terrorist. In "Brinkman's Note," a piece of suspense fiction, the unnamed narrator appears to betr y ing to stop a plot to assassinate the president. It turnsout, however, that the narrator himself is the assassin,and he's able to infiltrate the White House: "ThePresident strode in smiling. From the right coat pocket of

the raincoat I carried, I slowl y drew forth m y 32-caliberpistol. In Brinkman's failure, I had succeeded."

After graduation, 2nd Lt. Stanle y McChr y stal entered an Arm y that was all but broken in the wake of Vietnam."We reall y felt we were a peacetime generation," herecalls. "There was the Gulf War, but even that didn't feellike that big of a deal." So McChr y stal spent his career

where the action was: He enrolled in Special Forcesschool and became a regimental commander of the 3rdRanger Battalion in 1986. It was a dangerous position,even in peacetime ± nearl y two dozen Rangers were killedin training accidents during the Eighties. It was also anunorthodox career path: Most soldiers who want to climb



the ranks to general don't go into the Rangers. Displa y inga penchant for transforming s y stems he considersoutdated, McChr y stal set out to revolutionize the trainingregime for the Rangers. He introduced mixed martial

arts, required ever y soldier to qualif y with night-visiongoggles on the rifle range and forced troops to build uptheir endurance with weekl y marches involving heav y backpacks.

In the late 1990s, McChr y stal shrewdl y improved hisinside game, spending a y ear at Harvard's Kenned y School of Government and then at the Council on Foreign

Relations, where he co-authored a treatise on the meritsand drawbacks of humanitarian interventionism. But ashe moved up through the ranks, McChr y stal relied on theskills he had learned as a troublemaking kid at WestPoint: knowing precisel y how far he could go in a rigidmilitar y hierarch y without getting tossed out. Being ahighl y intelligent badass, he discovered, could take y oufar ± especiall y in the political chaos that followed

September 11th. "He was ver y focused," sa y s Annie. "Evenas a y oung officer he seemed to know what he wanted todo. I don't think his personalit y has changed in all these y ears."

B y some accounts, McChr y stal's career should have beenover at least two times b y now. As Pentagon spokesmanduring the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more likea White House mouthpiece than an up-and-comingcommander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretar y Donald Rumsfeld made hisinfamous "stuff happens" remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChr y stal backed him up. A few da y s later, he



echoed the president's Mission Accomplished gaffe b y insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over.But it was during his next stint ± overseeing the militar y 'smost elite units, including the Rangers, Nav y Seals and

Delta Force ± that McChr y stal took part in a cover-upthat would have destro y ed the career of a lesser man.

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentall y killed b y his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChr y stal took an active rolein creating the impression that Tillman had died at thehands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified

recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillmanhad been killed b y enem y fire. (McChr y stal would laterclaim he didn't read the recommendation closel y enough± a strange excuse for a commander known for hislaserlike attention to minute details.) A week later,McChr y stal sent a memo up the chain of command,specificall y warning that President Bush should avoidmentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the

circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death becomepublic," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment"for the president.

"The false narrative, which McChr y stal clearl y helpedconstruct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman'smother, Mar y , in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk.McChr y stal got awa y with it, she added, because he was

the "golden bo y " of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bendingthe rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine da y safter Tillman's death, McChr y stal was promoted to majorgeneral.



Two y ears later, in 2006, McChr y stal was tainted b y ascandal involving detainee abuse and torture at CampNama in Iraq. According to a report b y Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-

familiar litan y of abuse: stress positions, being draggednaked through the mud. McChr y stal was not disciplinedin the scandal, even though an interrogator at the campreported seeing him inspect the prison multiple times.But the experience was so unsettling to McChr y stal thathe tried to prevent detainee operations from being placedunder his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a"political swamp," according to a U.S. official. In Ma y 2009, as McChr y stal prepared for his confirmationhearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions aboutCamp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But the scandals barel y made a ripple in Congress, and McChr y stal wassoon on his wa y back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan.

The media, to a large extent, have also given McChr y stal

a pass on both controversies. Where Gen. Petraeus iskind of a dweeb, a teacher's pet with a Ranger's tab,McChr y stal is a snake-eating rebel, a "Jedi" commander,as Newsweek called him. He didn't care when his teenageson came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speakshis mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official.He asks for opinions, and seems genuinel y interested inthe response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to

books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convo y engraved with his name andfour stars, and his itinerar y often bears a fresh quotefrom Bruce Lee. ("There are no limits. There are onl y plateaus, and y ou must not sta y there, y ou must go



be y ond them.") He went out on dozens of nighttime raidsduring his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a topcommander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. "The fucking lads love Stan

McChr y stal," sa y s a British officer who serves in Kabul."You'd be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone wouldtake a knee beside y ou, and a corporal would be like 'Whothe fuck is that?' And it's fucking Stan McChr y stal."

It doesn't hurt that McChr y stal was also extremel y successful as head of the Joint Special OperationsCommand, the elite forces that carr y out the

government's darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, histeam killed and captured thousands of insurgents,including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaedain Iraq. "JSOC was a killing machine," sa y s Maj. Gen.Ma y ville, his chief of operations. McChr y stal was alsoopen to new wa y s of killing. He s y stematicall y mappedout terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents andhunting them down ± often with the help of c y berfreaks

traditionall y shunned b y the militar y . "The Boss wouldfind the 24- y ear-old kid with a nose ring, with somefucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming," sa y s a SpecialForces commando who worked with McChr y stal in Iraqand now serves on his staff in Kabul. "He'd sa y , 'He y ± y ou fucking muscleheads couldn't find lunch withouthelp. You got to work together with these gu y s.'"

Even in his new role as America's leading evangelist forcounterinsurgenc y , McChr y stal retains the deep-seatedinstincts of a terrorist hunter. To put pressure on theTaliban, he has upped the number of Special Forces unitsin Afghanistan from four to 19. "You better be out there



hitting four or five targets tonight," McChr y stal will tell aNav y Seal he sees in the hallwa y at headquarters. Thenhe'll add, "I'm going to have to scold y ou in the morningfor it, though." In fact, the general frequentl y finds

himself apologizing for the disastrous consequences of counterinsurgenc y . In the first four months of this y ear,NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent fromthe same period in 2009 ± a record that has createdtremendous resentment among the ver y population thatCOIN theor y is intent on winning over. In Februar y , aSpecial Forces night raid ended in the deaths of twopregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up,and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S.forces accidentall y shot up a bus, killing five Afghans."We've shot an amazing number of people," McChr y stalrecentl y conceded.

Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChr y stal has issuedsome of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualtiesthat the U.S. militar y has ever encountered in a war zone.

It's "insurgent math," as he calls it ± for ever y innocentperson y ou kill, y ou create 10 new enemies. He hasordered convo y s to curtail their reckless driving, putrestrictions on the use of air power and severel y limitednight raids. He regularl y apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commandersresponsible for civilian deaths. "For a while," sa y s oneU.S. official, "the most dangerous place to be in

Afghanistan was in front of McChr y stal after a 'civ cas'incident." The ISAF command has even discussed wa y s tomake not killing into something y ou can win an awardfor: There's talk of creating a new medal for "courageous



restraint," a buzzword that's unlikel y to gain muchtraction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. militar y .

But however strategic the y ma y be, McChr y stal's new

marching orders have caused an intense backlash amonghis own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldierscomplain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?"sa y s a former Special Forces operator who has spent y ears in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love to kick McChr y stal in the nuts. His rules of engagement putsoldiers' lives in even greater danger. Ever y real soldier will tell y ou the same thing."

In March, McChr y stal traveled to Combat Outpost JFM ±a small encampment on the outskirts of Kandahar ± toconfront such accusations from the troops directl y . It wasa t y picall y bold move b y the general. Onl y two da y searlier, he had received an e-mail from Israel Arro y o, a25- y ear-old staff sergeant who asked McChr y stal to go ona mission with his unit. "I am writing because it was said

y ou don't care about the troops and have made it harderto defend ourselves," Arro y o wrote.

Within hours, McChr y stal responded personall y : "I'msaddened b y the accusation that I don't care aboutsoldiers, as it is something I suspect an y soldier takes both personall y and professionall y ± at least I do. But Iknow perceptions depend upon y our perspective at the

time, and I respect that ever y soldier's view is his own."Then he showed up at Arro y o's outpost and went on afoot patrol with the troops ± not some bullshit photo-opstroll through a market, but a real live operation in adangerous war zone.



Six weeks later, just before McChr y stal returned fromParis, the general received another e-mail from Arro y o. A 23- y ear-old corporal named Michael Ingram ± one of thesoldiers McChr y stal had gone on patrol with ± had been

killed b y an IED a da y earlier. It was the third man the25-member platoon had lost in a y ear, and Arro y o was writing to see if the general would attend Ingram'smemorial service. "He started to look up to y ou," Arro y o wrote. McChr y stal said he would tr y to make it down topa y his respects as soon as possible.

The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt.

Arro y o's platoon for the memorial, I arrive at CombatOutpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone onpatrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed b y high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiershere have been on repeated combat tours in both Iraqand Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worstfighting of both wars. But the y are especiall y angered b y Ingram's death. His commanders had repeatedl y

requested permission to tear down the house whereIngram was killed, noting that it was often used as acombat position b y the Taliban. But due to McChr y stal'snew restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the requesthad been denied. "These were abandoned houses," fumesStaff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. "Nobod y was coming back tolive in them."

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations theplatoon was given. "Patrol onl y in areas that y ou arereasonabl y certain that y ou will not have to defend y ourselves with lethal force," the laminated card reads.For a soldier who has traveled halfwa y around the worldto fight, that's like telling a cop he should onl y patrol in



areas where he knows he won't have to make arrests."Does that make an y fucking sense?" asks Pfc. JaredPautsch. "We should just drop a fucking bomb on thisplace. You sit and ask y ourself: What are we doing here?"

The rules handed out here are not what McChr y stalintended ± the y 've been distorted as the y passed throughthe chain of command ± but knowing that does nothingto lessen the anger of troops on the ground. "Fuck, whenI came over here and heard that McChr y stal was incharge, I thought we would get our fucking gun on," sa y sHicks, who has served three tours of combat. "I get COIN.

I get all that. McChr y stal comes here, explains it, it makessense. But then he goes awa y on his bird, and b y the timehis directives get passed down to us through Big Arm y ,the y 're all fucked up ± either because somebod y is tr y ingto cover their ass, or because the y just don't understand itthemselves. But we're fucking losing this thing."

McChr y stal and his team show up the next da y .

Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minutediscussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphereis tense. "I ask y ou what's going on in y our world, and Ithink it's important for y ou all to understand the bigpicture as well," McChr y stal begins. "How's the compan y doing? You gu y s feeling sorr y for y ourselves? An y bod y ? An y bod y feel like y ou're losing?" McChr y stal sa y s.

"Sir, some of the gu y s here, sir, think we're losing, sir,"sa y s Hicks.

McChr y stal nods. "Strength is leading when y ou justdon't want to lead," he tells the men. "You're leading b y example. That's what we do. Particularl y when it's reall y ,



reall y hard, and it hurts inside." Then he spends 20minutes talking about counterinsurgenc y , diagramminghis concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He makesCOIN seem like common sense, but he's careful not to

bullshit the men. "We are knee-deep in the decisive y ear,"he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has theinitiative ± "but I don't think we do, either." It's similar tothe talk he gave in Paris, but it's not winning an y heartsand minds among the soldiers. "This is the philosophicalpart that works with think tanks," McChr y stal tries to joke. "But it doesn't get the same reception from infantr y companies."

During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowedto use lethal force, about watching insurgents the y detain be freed for lack of evidence. The y want to be able to fight± like the y did in Iraq, like the y had in Afghanistan beforeMcChr y stal. "We aren't putting fear into the Taliban," onesoldier sa y s.

"Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldbloodedthing," McChr y stal sa y s, citing an oft-repeated maximthat y ou can't kill y our wa y out of Afghanistan. "TheRussians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn't work."

"I'm not sa y ing go out and kill ever y bod y , sir," the soldierpersists. "You sa y we've stopped the momentum of the

insurgenc y . I don't believe that's true in this area. Themore we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, thestronger it's getting."

"I agree with y ou," McChr y stal sa y s. "In this area, we'venot made progress, probabl y . You have to show strength



here, y ou have to use fire. What I'm telling y ou is, firecosts y ou. What do y ou want to do? You want to wipe thepopulation out here and resettle it?"

A soldier complains that under the rules, an y insurgent who doesn't have a weapon is immediatel y assumed to bea civilian. "That's the wa y this game is," McChr y stal sa y s."It's complex. I can't just decide: It's shirts and skins, and we'll kill all the shirts."

As the discussion ends, McChr y stal seems to sense thathe hasn't succeeded at easing the men's anger. He makes

one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging thedeath of Cpl. Ingram. "There's no wa y I can make thateasier," he tells them. "No wa y I can pretend it won'thurt. No wa y I can tell y ou not to feel that. . . . I will tell y ou, y ou're doing a great job. Don't let the frustration getto y ou." The session ends with no clapping, and no realresolution. McChr y stal ma y have sold President Obamaon counterinsurgenc y , but man y of his own men aren't

bu y ing it.

W hen it comes to Afghanistan, histor y is not onMcChr y stal's side. The onl y foreign invader to have an y success here was Genghis Khan ± and he wasn'thampered b y things like human rights, economicdevelopment and press scrutin y . The COIN doctrine, bizarrel y , draws inspiration from some of the biggest

Western militar y embarrassments in recent memor y :France's nast y war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975).McChr y stal, like other advocates of COIN, readil y acknowledges that counterinsurgenc y campaigns areinherentl y mess y , expensive and eas y to lose. "Even



Afghans are confused b y Afghanistan," he sa y s. But evenif he somehow manages to succeed, after y ears of blood y fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S.homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda,

which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like tr y ingto stop the drug war in Mexico b y occup y ing Arkansasand building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all ver y c y nical, politicall y ," sa y s Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region."Afghanistan is not in our vital interest ± there's nothingfor us there."

In mid-Ma y , two weeks after visiting the troops inKandahar, McChr y stal travels to the White House for ahigh-level visit b y Hamid Karzai. It is a triumphantmoment for the general, one that demonstrates he is ver y much in command ± both in Kabul and in Washington.In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and

dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai.The two leaders talk about how great their relationship is,about the pain the y feel over civilian casualties. The y mention the word "progress" 16 times in under an hour.But there is no mention of victor y . Still, the sessionrepresents the most forceful commitment that Obama hasmade to McChr y stal's strateg y in months. "There is noden y ing the progress that the Afghan people have made

in recent y ears ± in education, in health care andeconomic development," the president sa y s. "As I saw inthe lights across Kabul when I landed ± lights that wouldnot have been visible just a few y ears earlier."



It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make.During the worst y ears in Iraq, when the Bushadministration had no real progress to point to, officialsused to offer up the exact same evidence of success. "It

was one of our first impressions," one GOP official said in2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of thesectarian violence. "So man y lights shining brightl y ." So itis to the language of the Iraq War that the Obamaadministration has turned ± talk of progress, of cit y lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoricthat just a few y ears ago the y would have mocked. "The y are tr y ing to manipulate perceptions because there is nodefinition of victor y ± because victor y is not even definedor recognizable," sa y s Celeste Ward, a senior defenseanal y st at the RAND Corporation who served as apolitical adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006."That's the game we're in right now. What we need, forstrategic purposes, is to create the perception that wedidn't get run off. The facts on the ground are not great,and are not going to become great in the near future."

But facts on the ground, as histor y has proven, offer littledeterrent to a militar y determined to sta y the course.Even those closest to McChr y stal know that the risinganti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deepl y fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americanspulled back and started pa y ing attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to

McChr y stal sa y s. Such realism, however, doesn't preventadvocates of counterinsurgenc y from dreaming big:Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next y ear, asObama promised, the militar y hopes to ramp up itscounterinsurgenc y campaign even further. "There's a



possibilit y we could ask for another surge of U.S. forcesnext summer if we see success here," a senior militar y official in Kabul tells me.

Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the WhiteHouse meeting with Karzai and all the talk of "progress,"McChr y stal is hit b y the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgenc y . Since last y ear, the Pentagon had been planning to launch a major militar y operation thissummer in Kandahar, the countr y 's second-largest cit y and the Taliban's original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point in the war ± the primar y

reason for the troop surge that McChr y stal wrested fromObama late last y ear. But on June 10th, acknowledgingthat the militar y still needs to la y more groundwork, thegeneral announced that he is postponing the offensiveuntil the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah orRamadi, U.S. troops will implement what McChr y stalcalls a "rising tide of securit y ." The Afghan police andarm y will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of

neighborhoods, while the U.S. pours $90 million of aidinto the cit y to win over the civilian population.

Even proponents of counterinsurgenc y are hard-pressedto explain the new plan. "This isn't a classic operation,"sa y s a U.S. militar y official. "It's not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren't going to be doors kicked in."Other U.S. officials insist that doors are going to be

kicked in, but that it's going to be a kinder, gentleroffensive than the disaster in Marja. "The Taliban have a jackboot on the cit y ," sa y s a militar y official. "We have toremove them, but we have to do it in a wa y that doesn'talienate the population." When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders sa y he



was shocked to see how much it mirrored the moregradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated lastfall. "This looks like CT-plus!" he said, according to U.S.officials familiar with the meeting.

Whatever the nature of the new plan, the dela y underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgenc y . After nine y ears of war, the Taliban simpl y remains toostrongl y entrenched for the U.S. militar y to openl y attack.The ver y people that COIN seeks to win over ± the Afghan people ± do not want us there. Our supposed all y ,President Karzai, used his influence to dela y the

offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed b y McChr y stal is likel y onl y to make things worse."Throwing mone y at the problem exacerbates theproblem," sa y s Andrew Wilder, an expert at TuftsUniversit y who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption,delegitimizes the government and creates anenvironment where we're picking winners and losers" ± a

process that fuels resentment and hostilit y among thecivilian population. So far, counterinsurgenc y hassucceeded onl y in creating a never-ending demand forthe primar y product supplied b y the militar y : perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiousl y avoids using the word "victor y " when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not reall y possible. Not even with Stanle y McChr y stal in charge.

Documents

Entrevista Gral. McChrystal