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  But there was little doubt among most active and retired generals, and the American public, that he was a highly capable combat commander and arguably the Army’s most influential general officer since World War II. In his first combat command, he had led the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq with skill and determination. He then took the Screaming Eagles north to Mosul, where most observers credited him with successfully overseeing post-combat operations in northern Iraq for the rest of the year. The war in Iraq consumed six years of his life. After pacifying Mosul and returning briefly to the United States, he was soon back in Iraq, in charge of the effort to recruit, train and develop the Iraqi military. He returned to the States for fifteen months, overseeing the drafting of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual and helping overhaul numerous aspects of the Army’s preparation of leaders and units for deployment. He will be most remembered, however, for commanding the “surge” in Iraq in 2007, when the country was enveloped in violence and on the brink of civil war. The added troops, Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy and a reconciliation effort he designed that convinced 100,000 Sunni and Shia insurgents to support the new Iraq all helped to stem the violence and salvage some measure of success for the Bush administration.

  At Petraeus’s change of command in Baghdad in the summer of 2008, Secretary Gates claimed that “history [would] regard Petraeus as one of the nation’s great battle captains.” Upon Petraeus’s assumption of command of U.S. Central Command in October 2008, Gates offered that “he is the preeminent soldier-scholar-statesman of his generation, and precisely the man we need in this command at this time.” Petraeus’s success on the battlefield, his status as a military intellectual and his will to succeed allowed him to shape not only doctrine but also organizational design, training, education and leadership development in the Army and, in many respects, the broader military. He was clearly charting the Army’s course for the kind of war the nation was fighting.

  Obama had in one important way done Petraeus a huge favor, given the drama surrounding McChrystal’s firing. Petraeus had always used his reputation to help capture the imagination of those he led. “Given what I was facing in Iraq and then Afghanistan,” Petraeus reflected some months later, “I’ve had a certain affinity for leaders who have been given seemingly lost or at least very difficult causes.” He thought of Grant in the Civil War, Matthew Ridgway in Korea and British field marshal William Slim, who led the Allied Forces’ efforts to retake Burma in World War II, as described in his aptly titled autobiography, Defeat Into Victory. Nations had turned to them to help salvage critical war efforts. All three commanders came to execute the strategies they had helped design. Thanks to Obama, Petraeus was being asked to do the same, having already done so in Iraq under President Bush.

  The following Tuesday, Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Ostensibly there to be confirmed to his new post, Petraeus also had to defend the war effort and the time and commitment it would take to make progress in Afghanistan. He sat alone at a large rectangular witness table in the cavernous hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, across from the U.S. Capitol. His wife, Holly, sat in the first row of seats in the gallery, making her first appearance at one of her husband’s confirmation hearings. Holly preferred to stay out of the public light, but she was there this day to show support and represent the sacrifice of military families—to “show the flag,” she would later say. Petraeus wore his dress green uniform, with decorations on his left breast, the Ranger tab on his left shoulder and the patch of the 101st Airborne Division, the unit he’d commanded in combat in the early days in Iraq, on his right.

  Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, gaveled the hearing to order and thanked Petraeus for his “willingness, at the president’s request . . . to take charge of the campaign in Afghanistan. We appreciate your sacrifice and that of your family.” He acknowledged Holly’s presence and thanked her for her commitment and sacrifice. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the committee’s ranking Republican, also thanked Holly, adding, as a personal aside, “We think you made a wise decision more than thirty-four [sic] years ago to accept a blind date with a young cadet.”

  Hollister Knowlton was the daughter of the West Point superintendent, Lieutenant General William Knowlton, when she arrived one football weekend in the fall of 1973 and wound up attending the game with David Petraeus, a cadet who was the assistant brigade adjutant and who would graduate that spring in the top 5 percent of his class, a “star man.” After an initial wariness passed, they quickly hit it off; they were married in the chapel on West Point’s campus on July 6, 1974.

  Beyond their warm reception for the general and his wife, McCain and his Republican colleagues were on a mission. They wanted to expose what they thought was the folly of Obama’s July 2011 drawdown date. And they tried their hardest to create a rift between Petraeus, who was believed to be no fan of the July 2011 drawdown commitment but had publicly defended it, and the president, who considered it an imperative. Petraeus proved an elusive target.

  “I am, needless to say, humbled and honored to have been nominated by the president to command the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” Petraeus responded, reading from a prepared statement that he had written over the weekend and carefully vetted with his most trusted aides, including nonmilitary colleagues.

  “As we take stock of the situation in Afghanistan, it is important to remember why we are there,” he said. Petraeus took advantage of the bully pulpit to try to convey to the public why the mission mattered. “We should never forget that the 9/11 attacks were planned in southern Afghanistan and that the initial training of the attackers was carried out in camps in Afghanistan before the attackers moved on to Germany and then on to U.S. flight schools. It was of course in response to those attacks that a U.S.-led coalition entered Afghanistan in late 2001 and defeated al-Qaeda and the Taliban elements that allowed al-Qaeda to establish its headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan.”

  Petraeus had been watching international terrorist organizations since his days as the executive officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1990s. He understood the challenging battle against an extremist ideology. There was resignation among many policy makers that there would be no “victory” over extremists. Petraeus acknowledged as much when he noted that the ongoing conflicts were not ones that would be ended by “taking the hill, planting the flag, and going home to a victory parade.” Rather, he saw the efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere as elements in what was a long, tough fight against extremists who were ideologically committed to attacking the United States, its Western allies and even many of the governments in power in the Middle East. Afghanistan was a key location in this fight, a country that had been a sanctuary for al-Qaeda before and had to be sufficiently “hardened” to enable it to avoid becoming one again.

  Petraeus knew that the president, as commander in chief, felt the burden of command for this war. He also knew how strongly the administration was committed to beginning the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan in July 2011. In an attempt to preempt the Republican assault on Obama’s pending drawdown of forces a year hence, Petraeus tried to make it clear that he and Obama were in synch, something he felt was important for the Republicans—and Obama’s wary aides—to hear. “I was part of the process that helped formulate the president’s strategy for Afghanistan, and I support and agree with his new policy,” he said. This was a delicate issue, since it was known that the White House had not fully embraced the advice that he, McChrystal, Mullen and Gates had offered the previous fall. But he knew what he needed to do to support a policy decision after it had been made. “During [the policy’s] development, I offered my forthright military advice, and I have assured the president that I will do the same as we conduct assessments over the course of the months ahead. He in turn assured me that he expects and wants me to p
rovide that character of advice.”

  His assessment of the conditions in Afghanistan was sober. He worried about insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, corruption in the Afghan government and Taliban strongholds in Kandahar Province. “There is no question that levels of violence in Afghanistan have increased significantly over the last several years. Moreover, the Taliban and their affiliates had, until this year, steadily been expanding the areas they control and influence. This year, however, ISAF has achieved progress in several locations.” Petraeus went on to describe the main effort in Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold in southwestern Afghanistan, while admitting that it had been two steps forward, one back in many locations.

  To Petraeus, a sign of progress earlier in the spring had been his ability to walk through markets in Marjah with the district governor. The area had been Taliban-infested just six months prior, with only four market shops open. By summer there were dozens of shops, and the displaced population was returning home. With heavy fighting ongoing and casualties mounting, however, it was hard to convey the feeling of progress he had witnessed. To him it was a bit of Fingerspitzengefühl—the German word for “fingertip feel.” Though he knew he had a lot to learn about the country, he had been devouring intelligence on operations and threats in Afghanistan daily for nearly two years, which had helped him understand the way the campaign was heading. It was hard to convince Congress of progress by describing what his Fingerspitzengefühl told him, however, so he talked about the slowly expanding security bubbles and the successful operations by Special Forces that General McChrystal had increased with Petraeus’s support at Central Command. There was only so much he could say in an unclassified forum, but he had been able to meet with nearly all the senators on the committee prior to the hearing, and he had shared classified assessments with them in those sessions.

  With a glance over his shoulder, he concluded his remarks by thanking his wife, seated behind him. “As you noted, Mr. Chairman, my wife, Holly, is here with me today,” he said. “She is a symbol of the strength and dedication of families around the globe who wait at home for their loved ones while they’re engaged in critical work in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. She has hung tough while I’ve been deployed for over five and a half years since 9/11. So have untold other spouses, children and loved ones as their troopers have deployed and continued to raise their right hands time and time again. Clearly, our families are the unsung heroes of the long campaigns on which we have been embarked over the past decade.”

  He closed with a flourish. “One of America’s greatest presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, once observed that far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. There are currently nearly 140,000 coalition troopers and over 235,000 Afghan security force members engaged in hard work very much worth doing in Afghanistan,” Petraeus said. “If I am confirmed by the Senate, it will be a great privilege to soldier with them in that hard work that is so worth doing in that country.”

  Petraeus had spent hours preparing for this testimony and, beyond the Republican attempt to attack Obama, was not anticipating tough questions from either side. He’d been in this seat many times before. He also commanded the high ground. Both Obama and his Republican opponents were committed to salvaging the war effort in Afghanistan, if not prevailing outright.

  Levin began the questioning. “General, you’ve commented on these questions in your testimony, and I want to ask them again to get very clear, direct answers to them. Two fundamental elements of the Afghanistan strategy that the president announced in December 2009 are, first, a surge of thirty thousand additional U.S. troops by the end of the summer to help regain the initiative and, second, the setting of a July 2011 date for the beginning of the reduction in our combat presence in Afghanistan, with the pace of a reasonable drawdown to be determined by the circumstances at that time. Do you agree with the president’s policy?”

  “I do,” Petraeus said.

  “Do you agree that the setting of that July 2011 date to begin reductions signals urgency to Afghan leaders that they must more and more take responsibility for their country’s security, which is important for success of the mission in Afghanistan?”

  “I do,” Petraeus said.

  But McCain, who went next in the questioning, was undeterred.

  “General, at any time during the deliberations that the military shared with the president when he went through the decision-making process, was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the military that we set a date of July 2011?”

  “There was not,” Petraeus said.

  “There was not by any military person that you know of?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Petraeus said.

  McCain appeared to have found a way to cleave the general from the president, but Petraeus had merely stated a fact, not a point of policy disagreement. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and a reserve military colonel, continued the assault.

  Hadn’t Vice President Joseph Biden, Graham asked, been quoted as saying, “Come July we’re going to begin to leave in large numbers—you can bet on it”?

  Petraeus tried to answer, but Graham, pressing his point, cut him off twice. Finally, Petraeus explained that Biden had expressed his full support of the administration’s Afghan policy during a National Security Council meeting immediately after Obama tapped him to command the war. What’s more, Petraeus said, Defense secretary Gates had recently told Congress in testimony that he’d never heard Biden say that—and neither had Petraeus.

  As he told Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat, who asked him at another point in the hearing about Obama’s planned drawdown in July 2011: “Let me be very clear, if I could, Senator. Not only did I say that I supported it, I said that I agreed with it. This is, again, an agreement that was made back . . . in the fall of last year, based on projections about conditions that we hoped we’d obtain, that we were going to strive to achieve in Afghanistan a full year from now. So that was . . . an 18-month or more projection at that time.”

  Petraeus had defended Obama’s announced troop drawdown in July 2011. It was the president’s policy decision, which trumped whatever desires Petraeus may have had for more troops on the ground. He accepted that as a soldier. He took orders from the commander in chief, and, after proffering his best advice, it was his job to execute them. But he was firm that all decisions about how many troops to withdraw and where to deploy those that remained had to be made with the goal of preserving hard-fought gains at the village, district and province levels so that momentum would not swing back to the Taliban. He noted that the president had stressed in announcing the policy that decisions on the pace of the drawdown would be conditions-based.

  Throughout his testimony, Petraeus played his political, as well as military, role; he also executed the four tasks he felt strategic leaders had to perform. Regarding the first—getting the big ideas right—he described the fundamentals of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign, which he had employed in Iraq and pushed continually in Afghanistan. “You must capitalize on every capability that is out there—host nation, U.S., international, whatever it may be. That’s what this takes: everything from the very hard-edged, targeted Special Mission Unit operations to the reintegration of ‘reconcilables’ to conventional forces expanding their security zones,” he said.

  Petraeus repeated the word “relentless” and repeatedly stressed the importance of the United States’ “will” to win, underscoring the second task of a strategic leader: effectively communicating the big ideas. “This is a test of wills. And again, the enemy has to know that we have the will to prevail.”

  To the third task of a strategic leader—overseeing the implementation of the big ideas—he promised, once he arrived in country, to review the Tactical Directive and the rules of engagement, which were seen as too restrictive by many soldier
s on the ground. “I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform and the Afghan security forces with whom ISAF troopers are fighting shoulder to shoulder,” he said. “Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation.”

  To accomplish the fourth task—capturing best practices and lessons and cycling them back through the system to help refine the big ideas—he noted that he already had his favorite think-tank analysts, academics and military experts packing their bags, and that he was in communication with commanders and key staff officers on the ground in Afghanistan.

  The tasks of strategic leadership he described had been the keys to the success of the “surge” that pulled Iraq back from the brink of civil war in 2007. His three tours in Iraq enabled him to speak with confidence about another important concept—achieving unity of effort among all participants—as he prepared to take command yet again: “We know, in fact, that we can achieve such unity of effort because we’ve done it before.” But as Petraeus himself had said on many occasions, Afghanistan was not Iraq. Indeed, Afghanistan, in some ways, made Iraq look simple.

  “You certainly can’t take lessons learned in Iraq and just apply them in a rote manner in Afghanistan,” Petraeus told Senator Mark Udall, the Colorado Democrat. “They have to be applied with a keen understanding of the situation on the ground, village by village, valley by valley. All counterinsurgency is local, as they say.”

  He created a sense of measured optimism as he noted that the arrival in Afghanistan of the final surge brigade (nicknamed Currahee) from the 101st Airborne Division was scheduled for September. He concluded:

  The combination of all these initiatives is intended to slowly but surely establish the foundation of security that can allow the development of viable local political structures, enable the improvement of basic services, and help Afghan leaders and local governance achieve legitimacy and greater support. . . . While relentless pursuit of the Taliban will be critical in Kandahar and elsewhere, we know from Iraq and other counterinsurgency experiences that we cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency like that in Afghanistan. Clearly, as many insurgents and citizens as possible need to be convinced to become part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem.