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  I was among the students invited by the school to meet with the general at a dinner afterward, because of my military background. I, too, was a West Point graduate, and I had been recalled to active duty three times to work on counterterrorism issues in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. I had since joined the Army Reserve and begun graduate studies with the intent of returning either to active duty or to the policy world. I introduced myself to then–Lieutenant General Petraeus and told him about my research interests; he gave me his card and offered to put me in touch with other researchers and service members working on the same issues. I later discovered that he was famous for this type of mentoring and networking, especially with aspiring soldier-scholars. He immediately responded to the e-mail, inviting me to bounce ideas off him. I took full advantage of his open-door policy to seek insight and share perspectives.

  Soon after his visit to Cambridge, Petraeus assumed command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq and the plan to “surge” nearly thirty thousand additional U.S. forces to pull the country back from the brink of civil war. The focus of his command would be comprehensive civilian-military counterinsurgency operations—protection of the Iraqi population from insurgents’ intimidation, coercion, violence and murder. To accomplish this task, he moved U.S. forces off big bases and into small outposts in the community. Violence escalated and casualties soared, forcing even advocates to question whether the surge would work. But living among the people paid dividends in trust, familiarity and better intelligence. By midsummer, with Petraeus also supporting reconciliation that would grow to include more than one hundred thousand former Sunni insurgents and Shia militia members, violence had started to fall. By the following summer, the country had stabilized and the surge forces had started coming home. Petraeus had believed the surge could work, and he had overseen its successful execution together with a team of U.S., coalition and Iraqi civilian and military partners.

  In 2008, I began to pursue a Ph.D. in public policy and to conduct a case study of Petraeus’s leadership. A few months into my research, General Petraeus, who was then leading Central Command, invited me to go for a run with him and his team along the Potomac River during one of his visits to Washington. I figured I could interview him while we ran. Soon I learned what Petraeus means when he says, “The only thing better than a little competition is a lot of competition!” My intent was to test him. I’d earned varsity letters in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track and finished at the top of my class for athletics at West Point; I wanted to see if he could keep stride during an interview. Instead it became a test for me. As we talked during the run from the Pentagon to the Washington Monument and back, Petraeus progressively increased the pace until the talk turned to heavy breathing and we reached a six-minute-per-mile pace. It was a signature Petraeus move. I think I passed the test, but I didn’t bother to transcribe the interview. I later learned that, at the time, he was nearing the end of eight and a half weeks of radiation treatments for prostate cancer.

  I intended for my dissertation to trace the key themes—education, experience and the role of key mentors—of Petraeus’s intellectual development and to examine these principles in action over his career. But when President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan in the summer of 2010, I decided to meld my research with an on-the-ground account of his command in Kabul—his last military command, as it turned out. He would again become the face of a highly unpopular war, with a surge of 33,000 U.S. troops deploying. When his command was announced, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, the operational commander in Afghanistan and the architect of the war plan, told his staff, “Now we’re going to win.” But the war was at a critical juncture, and many observers both inside and outside the U.S. military weren’t so sure.

  Petraeus had a year to make the gains in Afghanistan that the president would need in order to begin his promised drawdown of forces in July 2011. Every minute counted. He commanded from his fourteen-hundred-person headquarters in Kabul and traveled frequently throughout Afghanistan visiting the more than 150,000 soldiers from forty-nine nations, of which 100,000 were from the United States. By the fall he seemed to hit his stride. But every day in Afghanistan was hard, and no one was certain how it would end.

  This was the story I would report across several months in Afghanistan, observing Petraeus and his team, embedding with combat units, and interviewing dozens of senior officials, officers, soldiers and Afghans. I spent time with infantry, artillery, Special Operations Forces and other military and civilian elements. I reported from the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and the U.S. Embassy. I flew by helicopter to the sandy desert of Helmand Province, the jagged mountains of the Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan and Kandahar’s lush Arghandab River Valley. I broke bread with Afghan ministers, businessmen and barefoot villagers. I ate MREs and T-rations in the field with our soldiers, some of whom were my former peers or West Point classmates. I traveled with retired general Jack Keane on a theater-wide assessment in February, and I covered Petraeus’s trips back to Washington for his testimony on the war before Congress, his drawdown discussions with the White House, his confirmation hearing to become director of the CIA and his last week in Kabul. Throughout, I had numerous interviews and innumerable e-mail exchanges with Petraeus and his inner circle.

  Beyond the strategic focus on Petraeus, his intellectual journey and his larger initiatives, this book also chronicles the year of war at the tactical level through the eyes of three battalion commanders in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)—the same division Petraeus had led during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel David Flynn commanded a repurposed artillery battalion, the “Top Guns,” in the Arghandab River Valley, the Taliban’s home terrain. Lieutenant Colonel J. B. Vowell led his No Slack battalion on large-scale air assaults into the mountains of Kunar Province, in eastern Afghanistan. And Lieutenant Colonel David Fivecoat, my West Point company mate and Petraeus’s aide in Bosnia and during the invasion of Iraq, directed operations in Taliban-infested Ghazni Province in south-central Afghanistan. Finally, the experience of Major Fernando Lujan, a Special Forces officer and specially trained “Afghan Hand,” stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of passion and expertise in the face of military bureaucracy. All of their stories are rich examples of leadership on the line.

  History has yet to fully judge Petraeus’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan, his impact on the U.S. military and his rank among America’s wartime leaders. But there is no denying that he achieved a great deal during his thirty-seven-year Army career, not the least of which was regaining the strategic initiative in both wars that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His critics fault him for ambition and self-promotion. I will note in the pages that follow that he is driven and goal-oriented, but his energy, optimism and will to win stand out more for me than the qualities seized on by his critics. Serving, in his mind, is winning.

  One of Petraeus’s favorite quotes comes from Seneca, a first-century Roman philosopher: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” This has been true for Petraeus at many turns; his greatest “luck,” however, might have been the opportunity to lead the world’s finest troopers over six and a half years of deployments since 9/11.

  I’ve had some luck, too, with this endeavor, and I am grateful and wiser for the journey.

  CHAPTER 1

  GROUND TRUTH

  General David H. Petraeus sat deep in thought as he made the short drive from the Pentagon to the White House. The next three hours could change the course of his life, the course of a war, maybe even the course of the nation. He hadn’t a clue what was going to happen. The only comment he made to Chief Warrant Officer Four Mark Howell, his personal security officer since the surge in Iraq, was that he hoped General Stan McChrystal had survived his meeting with President Obama. McChrystal,
the four-star commander of the war in Afghanistan, had been called back to Washington the previous day for comments he and his aides had made to a reporter from Rolling Stone that some thought came close to insubordination. On this hot and muggy Wednesday morning, June 23, 2010, McChrystal had reported to the White House an hour and a half before Petraeus. By the time Petraeus’s black GMC Yukon Denali pulled up at the West Wing security gate, McChrystal had already come and gone. Howell and the rest of the general’s inner circle knew they could be heading for Afghanistan if McChrystal had been fired. “We were in a state of denial,” Howell said.

  Once inside the White House, Petraeus went to a small office down the hall from the Situation Room to see his longtime friend Doug Lute, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as senior adviser and the National Security Council’s coordinator for Afghanistan-Pakistan policy. As head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)—and McChrystal’s boss—Petraeus was at the White House that morning for his once-a-month meeting with the president and his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was disappointed about how the situation had unfolded for McChrystal and was concerned for a trusted colleague. They were old friends and battlefield comrades and had worked closely together over the past year on Afghanistan, the president’s “war of necessity,” after serving together for several years in Iraq. Afghanistan was at a critical juncture, politically and operationally. “How’d it go for Stan?” Petraeus asked Lute. Lute demurred. It was not a good sign. They made awkward small talk for a few minutes, waiting to head to the Situation Room. Then one of the president’s assistants stuck his head in the door. “Has anyone seen General Petraeus?” he asked. “He’s wanted up in the Oval.”

  Petraeus headed upstairs. As he entered the Oval Office, Robert Gates, the Defense secretary, and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of State, were coming out, along with other members of the president’s national security team. Obama was alone. Petraeus knew then that Obama had just fired McChrystal without a replacement confirmed, hours before he likely would appear in the Rose Garden and explain his actions to the nation. He and Petraeus sat down together. Obama cut to the chase. “I am asking you, as your president and commander in chief, to take command of the mission in Afghanistan.” Petraeus believed that for anyone in uniform, there is only one answer when a president asks such a question, and he said as much. Then, he responded, “Sir, it would be an honor.” Petraeus could see the burden Obama and the nation faced at that moment. The discussion was sober and frank as they discussed the way ahead in Afghanistan. Obama explicitly told Petraeus to avoid clearing areas that his troops could not hold, and he reviewed the policy that had been announced at West Point the past December, including the plan to begin reducing surge forces in July 2011. Obama described his expectations of a military commander, and Petraeus pledged fealty to the civil-military hierarchy, assuring the president that he would also provide forthright military advice. When the general returned downstairs forty-five minutes later, he said to Howell, “Chief, get my wife on the phone.”

  Howell figured the die had been cast—McChrystal was out, Petraeus was in. Why else would he be calling his wife? But Howell noticed something about his boss. He thought he saw the same spark in Petraeus’s eyes that he’d last seen when he was commanding the war in Iraq. “It’s that undeniable look in sports where the player is in the zone and he says, ‘Give me the ball, I want the ball,’” Howell said. He dialed Holly Petraeus’s number, got her voice mail and handed the phone to the general, who left a simple message: Watch the news at 1:30 for a presidential announcement—we’ll be in the Rose Garden. He asked Howell to send her a text message, too, gave him the phone and went inside the Situation Room just before noon.

  Clinton, Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were there, waiting for Petraeus, and the president and Vice President Biden joined them after a few minutes. “This is a bad day; a sorrowful day,” Obama said. Keeping McChrystal in command, he said, would have made it difficult to achieve unity of effort and maintain respect for the military. He acknowledged that replacing him might slow momentum in Afghanistan, though replacing him with Petraeus would mitigate that risk. He wanted no sniping in the press. They needed to be focused, as a team, on the way ahead.

  Obama said he had had long conversations on the subject with Gates and Mullen, and now with General Petraeus. The best way forward, he told the room, was for Petraeus to step in as commander in Afghanistan. He noted that he had already committed additional troops to show that America would not allow al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan. We’ll see next July if the strategy is working, Obama said. If not, we’ll redesign it. It’s important that we deliver a clear message about what we’re trying to do, he continued. We have to acknowledge the real tension that exists between how long we stay and how much it costs. There were rumors of tension with Petraeus, but Obama noted that he had asked Petraeus to meet with him and share his views candidly. We’ve agreed to trust each other, Obama said, and to share assessments in private. Vice President Biden added that it was the right decision, and a sad day, to let McChrystal go. But it would be an opportunity to clarify civil-military relations. The president said he would call Afghan president Hamid Karzai, British prime minister David Cameron and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to let them know of his decision.

  Obama walked out of the Oval Office and into the Rose Garden an hour later. Petraeus stood to his immediate left, flanked by Gates. Biden and Mullen stood to Obama’s right.

  “Today I accepted General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan,” Obama began. “I did so with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military and for our country. I’m also pleased to nominate General David Petraeus to take command in Afghanistan, which will allow us to maintain the momentum and leadership that we need to succeed.”

  Obama said he was “extraordinarily grateful” that Petraeus had agreed to serve. It would be Petraeus’s fifth overseas assignment since 2001—including some four years during three tours in Iraq—for a man who was possibly the most well-known general officer in America since Dwight D. Eisenhower. He’d already been deployed over five and a half years since 2001, managing to miss most of his son’s time in high school—although Afghanistan would offer a reunion of sorts: Stephen Petraeus had recently graduated from MIT and was serving as an Army lieutenant in Afghanistan.

  Holly’s phone had been in her purse, on vibrate, while she attended a business luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel. “Chief, what’s up?” she asked when she finally called Howell back. Howell explained the details. She was used to her husband being asked to serve the nation. She listened, then said simply, “Roger, Chief, thanks.”

  On the drive back to the Pentagon, Petraeus called Holly to update her and then called his executive officer, Colonel Bill Hickman, who was at the Pentagon. Petraeus told him to clear the schedule, except for two speeches the next evening in his hometown of Cornwall, New York—one for Purple Heart recipients and the other a commencement address at his old high school, marking the fortieth anniversary of his class’s graduation. He scribbled a to-do list—start assembling a team, cancel future events, write an opening statement for a confirmation hearing, review rules of engagement, start drafting his first-day letter to the troopers in Afghanistan, develop a timeline. He paused, then started jotting down the names of all those he needed to call—Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, General McChrystal, Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, his diplomatic partner in Iraq. He told Hickman to call Central Command’s congressional liaison and line up meetings with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the following Monday, and to get his enlisted aide to start packing his bags back in Tampa. And if you’re willing to deploy one more time, he told Hickman, you’re needed. Hickman didn’t hesitate. He would go
to war with Petraeus again—for the fourth time since 2003. Petraeus turned to Howell and said they had to start preparing for his confirmation hearing the following week. He asked Howell if he was ready to go, too. “Might as well,” Howell said. “We’ve spent more time together over the past three years than I’ve spent with my wife.”

  “I know, Chief,” Petraeus agreed. “We have. . . .”

  THE WHITE HOUSE was full of skeptics—chief of staff Rahm I. Emanuel and senior adviser David M. Axelrod among them. They had come to see Petraeus as an inflexible commander who wanted as many troops as possible for Afghanistan and was never interested in giving the president options for fewer troops, despite clear requests for this during the 2009 Afghanistan policy review. They had suspicions that he was a Bush general, given his close personal relationship with the former president.

  Petraeus also had his detractors in a military in which every service was fiercely committed to its own new high-tech weapons systems. None of them particularly benefited from Petraeus’s advocacy of counterinsurgency, which didn’t rely on new ships or tanks or fighter jets. Generals from the heavy Army built to defeat the Russians at the Fulda Gap thought his belief in counterinsurgency bordered on religious zeal. They were worried that he was taking the Army down a path that was diminishing its ability to fight a formidable opponent such as China. Others who had crossed paths with him during his relentless rise to the top saw him as an overly ambitious self-promoter.