Abu Ghaith was not altogether correct; many of Egypt’s youth were then dreaming of democracy. But the correlation between U.S. attacks and Arab (but also Pakistani) youth packing up to fight America was surely correct. Still, it was not just the words he used that came through loud and clear to us. It was his dismissiveness and frustration at having to once again support a plan that made no sense to him and that was being presented as a near fait accompli.
Reactions only worsened after that. At our next meeting with an Arab foreign minister, we sipped tea and nibbled on dates as Holbrooke went through his talking points, this time giving a long, glowing description of what America hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan. By this time he had a good idea what the reaction would be, but Holbrooke was always a loyal soldier. It was his job to sell our plan. And he tried.
Once again the diplomats on the other side of the table made it painfully clear that they thought we were way off in la-la land with our talk of building democracy and a strong civil society and everything else we were offering.
And when it was their turn to talk, they said just that. “It is much better you buy local warlords to keep al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan,” our host responded. “I figure that will cost you $20 billion, which is what, one fifth of what you spend every year in Afghanistan? Spend that and then just go home!”
I had to repeat those last words to myself—just go home!—to have the meaning sink in. It was such a stunning rebuke that for a moment neither side said anything. It wasn’t as if the foreign minister was trying to put us down; you could tell from the way he spoke that he truly believed that we didn’t understand and that he was doing us a favor. Once again it was not the response we were looking for, but perhaps it was a response we should have listened to. About a year later, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post reported that in the parts of Afghanistan that experienced the least violence, credit went to American-backed local warlords.1
Between this meeting and the next, I asked Holbrooke about the responses we had encountered. I could see that he was deeply disturbed by how dismissive our interlocutors were about America’s ability to do good in the region. At first he said little, fumbling for an answer. Then he managed the rejoinder that the doubters did not understand our strategy. Our problem was communication—we had to exorcise the ghosts of Iraq before we could create new hopes for Afghanistan. And then, after a pause, he came clean. “They have a point,” he said.
Next on our list was another Arab foreign minister. I could have closed my eyes and thought I was in the previous meeting. In fact, had there been more time between the two meetings we could have concluded that the two foreign ministers had compared notes. As Holbrooke went through the same talking points—which, I have to admit, had lost a little oomph by now—our host fidgeted, as if he were impatient for Holbrooke to finish so he could bring the discussion back to reality. When his turn came, he jumped right in.
“You can pay to end this war,” he began. Then he moved to the edge of his seat and raised his index finger in the air and said, “One billion dollars. It will cost you one billion dollars, no fighting needed.” He put out the number as if he were giving us his best discount price!
Then, as if he were talking to someone who clearly had little to no understanding of the dynamics in the region, he told us we were fighting the wrong war. “You should talk to the Taliban, not fight them. That will help you with Iran.” Then he gave us a big, knowing smile. Since the Iraq war, Persian Gulf countries have been worried about the rise of Iran’s influence in the region, and are especially worried about its steady march toward nuclear capability. They wanted America to focus on Iran—even if it meant playing nice with the Taliban.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia couldn’t have agreed more. “You have to look to the root of the Taliban problem,” he told Holbrooke. And what did the king think was the source of our problems in Afghanistan? Iran, of course.
Holbrooke was correct when he referred to the ghosts of Iraq diminishing our credibility in the region. As far as the leaders of the Middle East were concerned, we didn’t understand the difference between defeating an opponent on the battlefield (which we did quickly enough) and psychologically breaking his will to resist. We’d been flummoxed by—and totally unprepared for—what came after military victory in Iraq, a long-simmering but predictable outbreak of Sunni-Shia violence. What our allies understood—even if we couldn’t admit it to ourselves—is that after ten years of war, Iraq was a country broken into dozens of pieces held together by a few pieces of Scotch tape. The tape started to come off the moment we left. Should it really have come as a surprise to us that there was no more confidence in our wisdom regarding Afghanistan than in the delusions that got us into Iraq?
When the week was over and we returned to Washington, Holbrooke dutifully reported what our allies thought of our plans for war. He did so carefully, in terms that would not make it seem as if he were scoring points. For his part, Holbrooke was concerned enough to caution against doubling down on war. But his counsel was dismissed as overblown and outdated. “When I talk about counterinsurgency and Vietnam at the White House,” he once said, “those guys roll their eyes as if I am from another planet.”
Six weeks later, on December 1, 2009, with no further discussion of the clear reservations on the part of the allies in the region whose cooperation we needed to make our plans work, President Obama announced his much-anticipated decision about the war in Afghanistan. It was reported that he spent hours and hours, indeed months, considering all the relevant information before sending another 33,000 American troops to continue the fighting there. The world held its breath for a new vision, one that would not be a mere reiteration of the familiar impulse to turn to the generals to fix a vexing foreign policy problem. But Obama did just that. There would be no attempt to restore diplomacy to primacy in foreign policy. To the American people it seemed that Obama had shown resolve, telling the world that America would fight the war to victory. But those whom America had to work hardest to convince of its wisdom were unimpressed. They did not think our strategy would work, and at any rate, they did not believe we would stick with it for long.
The drumbeat of skepticism continued. Almost a year later, in October 2010, during a visit to the White House, Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, gave President Obama a thirteen-page white paper he had written to explain his views on the outstanding strategic issues between Pakistan and the United States. Kayani 3.0, as the paper was dubbed (since it was the third paper Pakistanis gave the White House on the subject), could be summarized as follows: You are not going to win the war, and you are not going to transform Afghanistan. This place has devoured empires before you; it will defy you as well. Stop your grandiose plans and let’s get practical, sit down, and discuss how you will leave and what is an end state we can both live with.
Kayani expressed the same doubt time and again in meetings. We would try to convince him (as we did other regional leaders) that we were committed to the region and had a solution for Afghanistan’s problems: we would first beat the Taliban and then build a security force to hold the place together after we left. He, like many others, thought the idea of an Afghan military was foolish and that we were better off negotiating an exit with the Taliban.
In one small meeting around a narrow table, Kayani listened carefully and took notes as we went through our list of issues. I cannot forget Kayani’s reaction when we enthusiastically explained our plan to build up Afghan forces to 400,000 by 2014. His answer was swift and unequivocaclass="underline" Please don’t try to build that Afghan army. “You will fail,” he said. “Then you will leave and that half-trained army will break into militias that will be a problem for Pakistan.” We tried to stand our ground, but he would have none of it. He continued, “I don’t believe that the Congress is going to pay nine billion dollars a year for this four-hundred-thousand-man force.” He was sure it would eventually collapse and the fragments of the broken army would resort to crime and terrorism to earn their keep. That after all was pretty much what happened when the Soviet Union stopped paying for the Afghan army it had built—sixty days after Soviet cash dried up the Afghan army melted away and Kabul fell to the insurgents. Memories in the region run long, much longer than ours.