The Fourth Star (48 page)

He had begun as a skinny, hyperambitious lieutenant, the kind of officer who sat with a megaphone in the motor pool and instructed his sergeants on the proper way to grease an axle. He had grown into a general who, though still demanding, was far more comfortable with uncertainty and experimentation. His disparagers over the years had said he had risen by connections, but they had been rendered mute by his achievements. Now the Army that had once questioned his combat skills hung on his pronouncements and debated his ideas, even the old war horses from Vietnam. At gatherings of retired generals, Petraeus would listen respectfully as his predecessors urged him to go on the offense in Iraq, as if a flanking maneuver or a rising body count would finally end the war. Petraeus would gently remind them that winning in Iraq required killing the enemy, to be sure, but much more. Above all, it required patience. He was the most influential officer of his generation. In 2008, he had made a special
trip back to the Pentagon to chair a promotion board to select the next group of one-star generals. These were the officers who would lead the Army for the next decade. Petraeus’s panel went out of its way to reward soldiers who had proven themselves as innovators in Iraq. Colonel Sean McFarland, who had forged critical early alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province, made the list of forty new one-stars. So too did Colonel McMaster, whose approach to securing Tal Afar had prefigured the strategy Petraeus employed in Baghdad. Petraeus’s panel ignored the misgivings of some of McMaster’s former superiors in Iraq, who worried that he could be single-minded and stubborn, and focused on his battlefield performance.

The unorthodox ideas that Petraeus had championed years ago in Sosh now dominated high-level Pentagon strategy papers and policy speeches. “The U.S. military’s ability to kick down the door must be matched by our ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates opined. Gates’s message was that the American way of war, built around quick battles and high-tech weapons, was giving way to a new reality in which economic development and improved governance were often more important than overwhelming force.

No one was sure how long Petraeus’s ideas would endure. There was little institutional support in the Pentagon, defense industry, or Congress for the relatively low-tech weapons needed for wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers wanted to focus on big, expensive projects that brought jobs to their districts.

Petraeus’s vision for his Army also was hardly the palliative that the Powell Doctrine had been. At best, it promised more long wars whose considerable burdens would be borne by a military that accounted for less than one-half of 1 percent of American society. Even President Obama’s plan to end the Iraq war reflected this sobering reality. “Let me say this as plainly as I can. By August thirty-first, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” the president promised in a speech delivered in front of thousands of camouflage-clad Marines. He then went on to say that he was going to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq through 2011 to advise Iraqi forces, kill
terrorists, and provide security for military and civilian personnel involved in governance and reconstruction projects. These were essentially the same missions the military had performed in 2008 and 2009.

Only a few days later Obama dispatched 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan. As he had done in Iraq, Petraeus stressed that troops would have to live among the Afghan people, protect the population, and where possible win over reconcilable enemies. In Afghanistan, though, Petraeus faced a new set of problems. The country was larger than Iraq, more fractured, and heavily dependent on the cultivation of opium for its economic survival. The enemy had a safe haven in the ungoverned regions of Pakistan. The ongoing Iraq war and the global economic crisis meant that Petraeus would have to make do in Afghanistan with less reconstruction money, fewer troops, and smaller, more poorly equipped indigenous security forces. “Afghanistan is going to be the longest campaign of the long war,” Petraeus predicted.

The test of whether Iraq had changed the Army permanently would not come in Afghanistan. It would come in the Pentagon, where the decisions were made about who got promoted, what equipment was bought, and how soldiers were trained. Few other officers would be as involved in those decisions as Pete Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief. He had been home from Iraq for a little over a year when a retired colonel named Gary Paxton, one of his old brigade commanders, stopped by his house for dinner. The two officers went back decades to Chiarelli’s stint in Germany in the late 1980s. Paxton had taken command of Chiarelli’s brigade just after the CAT competition. He had learned about the role that then Major Chiarelli had played in pushing the United States to victory in the contest and quickly snapped up the bright young officer to serve as his operations officer, the prime job for a major in a combat brigade.

Paxton was nothing like the brainy officers who inhabited the Sosh department. He was brash, loud, and tactless. Chiarelli never forgot how Paxton had addressed his troops at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Gelnhausen two decades before. “Everybody’s going to get some time off,” he said. “Some of you guys will go home and be with family, and some of you guys are single and are going to go downtown and get drunk and try to get laid.” Chiarelli went rushing up to him after the speech. “Sir, you can’t
say that stuff anymore,” he laughed. “Twenty percent of the people out here are females.”

Despite their differences, Chiarelli admired Paxton immensely. He was the archetypal Cold Warrior, ready to face off against the Soviet Red Army, stationed only a few hundred miles from their base. Paxton had retired from the Army in the early 1990s and moved to Alaska, but he and Chiarelli and their families had kept in close touch. Their eldest sons had both served as best man at each other’s wedding. Their wives spoke often. So when Paxton and his wife passed through Washington the Chiarellis invited them for dinner. Soon the talk turned to Iraq, where the violence had finally begun to fall. Only a few months earlier the war had seemed lost. Now there was at least a reasonable hope that it was salvageable.

“Well, what do you think about Iraq?” a delighted Paxton asked Chiarelli.

The progress under Petraeus had been “absolutely fantastic,” Chiarelli replied, but unless there was matching economic and political progress in the coming months, the sectarian violence would spike as U.S. troops withdrew, and the gains could be transitory. Paxton listened, but Chiarelli could tell that he wasn’t buying it. His old mentor, who had done a tour in Vietnam, was pretty sure he knew what had happened in Iraq: Petraeus had taken command and after years of dithering had finally ordered his troops to start punishing insurgents. Instead of behaving like some academic or city administrator, Paxton thought he’d acted like a soldier. “You know, Pete, the problem with you is that you just never were tough enough,” Paxton said.

Chiarelli stared right at his former mentor. His voice tightened with anger. “Petraeus feels exactly the way I do,” he growled. “I promise you that.” Chiarelli carried the insult around with him for months. “I don’t think I’ve ever been hurt quite that much,” he recalled. “It just tore my heart out.”

The testy exchange between the two old friends showed how much had changed since the first tanks crossed from Kuwait into southern Iraq in 2003. Then the Army had for years believed almost unquestioningly in the wisdom of the Powell Doctrine and in its ability to bludgeon just about any foe. Six years and many painful losses later, it had emerged from Iraq as a
far more flexible, modest, and intellectually nimble force. Colonels, majors, and captains in Iraq and Afghanistan took risks and saw themselves as more than just combat officers. They understood that in today’s wars building and brokering disputes were sometimes as important as killing the enemy.

It was that army that Chiarelli had wanted badly to lead in combat. Even after getting passed over for the Iraq command in 2007, he held out hope that President Bush would pick him to replace Petraeus the following year. Once again, it didn’t happen. Although he had been on the short list, Bush gave the position to General Odierno, whose knowledge of the country was more current, senior White House officials reasoned. Unlike Chiarelli, who had presided with Casey over Iraq’s descent into civil war, Odierno had a proven track record of success from having served as Petraeus’s deputy. Fairly or not, Chiarelli and Casey would always be marked as the officers who had been in command when the place came apart.

When Chiarelli got his fourth star in the summer of 2008 and was named vice chief, he was an odd choice for the position, which didn’t exactly lend itself to the pursuit of soaring strategic thoughts. He’d also be working directly for Casey. Ever since their tour together their relationship had been civil but strained.

Chiarelli didn’t want to be a typical vice chief, stuck behind a desk administering the Army’s far-flung posts and installations and fighting to save its weapons programs from the budget axe. He had to do those things, to be sure. But he also saw his job as making sure the military’s penchant for order and discipline didn’t cut off the argument and debate about what the Army had undergone in Iraq. One of his responsibilities was to talk to all of the new brigadier generals, who gathered several times a year in groups of about two dozen to think about the service’s future and the role they would play in shaping it. At one of these meetings, at a conference center outside Washington just before Christmas in 2008, he ended his presentation with a quotation:
“‘America’s generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq… The intellectual and moral failures common to America’s general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship.’
Does anyone know who wrote these words?” he asked.

“Paul Yingling,” several officers in the small crowd replied. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling’s essay “A Failure in Generalship” had been published almost two years earlier, but his words still drew winces and groans from most senior Army officers. Since it appeared, Yingling’s career had not gone smoothly. His artillery battalion had received orders to Iraq earlier that year. Because his troops were going to be guarding prisoners and not in combat, the Pentagon had decided to send the battalion but not Yingling or his staff officers. He had taken command of the battalion only a few months earlier, and now it was being ripped away from him. Many in the Army saw the move as punishment for his criticism of the generals.

When Chiarelli learned what was happening, he called Yingling at Fort Hood to offer his help. Although the two shared a connection to Sosh, they had never met. Petraeus, meanwhile, interceded from Baghdad. A few days later Yingling learned that the Army had changed its mind. He was going to be allowed to serve alongside his soldiers in Iraq. The fifteen-month deployment was Yingling’s third in five years. He had volunteered for all three.

Chiarelli understood why some of the new one-star generals groaned when they saw Yingling’s incendiary words. But he was also determined to change their mind-set. “Isn’t this the kind of officer we want in our Army?” he asked. “He’s passionate, intelligent, and engaged.”

Iraq had forced massive changes to the Army’s equipment, training, and strategy. But the most important legacy of the war had been cultural. The war had upended most of the service’s basic assumptions about how it should fight, undermining the Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on short, intense wars but not replacing it with anything nearly so straightforward. Chiarelli wasn’t sure he could predict what the next war would look like. But he knew what kind of officers would be needed. He wanted an officer corps that argued, debated, and took intellectual risks. Even that laudable goal was far from accepted within the Army.

1. The helicopters descended onto the hilltop clearing:
This account relies on coverage of General Casey’s press conference in the
New York Times
on June 30, 1970, “Last Combat Unit out of Cambodia After Two Months,” and interviews with the elder Casey’s daughters Joan Gettys, Winn Cullen, and Ann Bukawyn, who watched television coverage of the event.

2. Casey climbed into the copilot seat of his Huey helicopter:
The details of Casey’s disappearance are taken from
Incursion
by J. D. Coleman, a journalist and retired Army lieutenant colonel who served with Casey.

5 That evening, the Caseys hosted a party at their house to celebrate:
The description of the party comes from interviews with George W. Casey Jr., Winn Cullen, and Casey’s Georgetown University friends Christopher Muse and Ray O’Hara.

8. As the funeral party gathered at Fort Myer’s Old Post Chapel:
The account of the funeral and gathering at Quarters One came from interviews with the elder Casey’s children and Sheila Casey. It also relies on news coverage in the
Washington Post
.

9. After three days of battling a low-grade forest fire:
The biographical material on Abizaid and his family comes from interviews with him, Kathy Abizaid, Michael Krause, and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Karl Eikenberry, Abizaid’s West Point roommate.

12 The telephone calls came late at night:
The biographical material on Chiarelli and family relies on interviews with him, Beth Chiarelli, and Theresa Chiarelli.

14. Rummaging in the garage one day as a teenager:
This account comes from interviews with Chiarelli and is also covered in
The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family
by Martha Raddatz.

15. As a kid Dave Petraeus used to sneak onto the West Point campus:
The account of Petraeus’s time at West Point comes from interviews with Petraeus, Holly Petraeus, General (Ret.) William Knowlton, and fellow cadets Chris White, John Edgecombe, Dave Buto, and Reamer Argot.

19 A few months after he arrived, a gang of soldiers tore through:
The account of Casey’s time in Mainz and Vicenza was based on interviews with Casey, Lieutenant General Tom Metz, Ed Charo, E. K. Smith, Joseph Tallman, Jeff Jones, Jack O’Conner, L. H. “Bucky” Burruss, Jim Simms, Turner Scott, and Jeff Rock.

19 “The
price
of Vietnam has been a terrible one”:
General Michael’s letter was quoted in
The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966
by Rick Atkinson.

22 A few weeks earlier Lufthansa flight 181, bound for Frankfurt:
The description of the origins of Delta Force comes from
Delta Force: The Army’s Elite Counterterrorism Unit by
Colonel (Ret.) Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox.

24 Some days Casey and the other soldiers started before dawn:
The description of Casey’s Delta Force tryouts came from interviews with Casey and fellow participants L. H. “Bucky” Burruss and E. K. Smith.

27 “Well, we have finally made it to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”:
All letters to the Olmsted Foundation were provided by General Abizaid and Kathy Abizaid.

27 the seven other winners that year had all gone off to Europe:
Information on the other scholars came from the Olmsted Foundation website.

27. Toward the end of his stay Abizaid decided to run the entire length of Jordan:
Some details of Abizaid’s run came from an article in the
Jordan Times
that was published in 1980.

33. “One of the most intelligent officers I have ever known:”
Abizaid’s fitness reports were included in his application for the Olmsted Scholarship.

35. The letter from a captain named David Petraeus:
The description of Petraeus’s letter came from an interview with Brigadier General (Ret.) James Shelton.

36. When, shortly after arriving, she heard a radio commercial:
The account of Petraeus’s arrival at Fort Stewart came from Holly Petraeus. The description of the 24th Infantry Division’s readiness came from several sources, including interviews with Petraeus, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) George Stotser, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ed Soyster, and the Department of the Army Historical Summary for fiscal year 1980.

36. A picture snapped that evening:
The account of the training exercise in France comes from Gen. Petraeus and from Rick Bursky, who served in the 509th and took the photograph.

37. he had lobbied to come to Fort Stewart for one main reason:
Holly Petraeus and others described his interest in joining the Ranger battalion. Petraeus described
his interest in Bigeard and receiving the autographed picture as a Christmas present.

38. So he began spending one day a week in the motor pool:
From interviews with Petraeus and Dan Grigson, a fellow company commander in the 24th Infantry Division.

39. His success in the EIB competition “put Petraeus on the map”:
The accounts of the basketball championship and the Expert Infantry Badge ceremony come from Petraeus, Shelton, and Col. (Ret.) George Wilkins.

40. “We thought he was the best guy for the job”:
From interview with Shelton.

40. It was like the Fourth of July, only with real rockets:
From interview with Marty Gendron.

41. “basically what we have is a hollow Army”:
The account of Meyer’s speech at Camp David comes from James Kitfield’s
Prodigal Soldiers
, an excellent history of the Army from Vietnam to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

41 When a
New York Times
reporter showed up at Fort Stewart:
Shelton is quoted in the
New York Times
, September 24, 1980.

41. “The difference between you and me, Dave”:
From interview with Grigson.

42. He wanted Petraeus to be his eyes and ears, to carry out sensitive assignments:
From interview with General (Ret.) John Galvin.

42. “Sir, your April evaluation,” read the cover sheet:
Document provided by Galvin.

43. Their close relationship did not always go over well:
From interview with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H. G. “Pete” Taylor.

44. “Some people compared Petraeus to Massengale”:
From interview with Martin Rollinson.

45. For two weeks, he and Petraeus crisscrossed the battlefield:
From interviews with Taylor and Brigadier General (Ret.) Taft Ring.

47. Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group:
For an account of Hezbollah’s rise, see
Hezbollah
by Augustus Richard Norton.

48. He and the four dozen or so other United Nations observers:
The accounts of Abizaid’s time in Lebanon come from interviews with Abizaid and other members of the observer group: John Wagner, Larry Colvin, and Greg Von Wald.

49. “War in southern Lebanon is difficult to imagine by common standards of reference”:
Taken from a paper written by Abizaid entitled “In Defense of the Northern Border: Israel’s Security Zone in Southern Lebanon.” December 30, 1986. It was written for the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

49.
“There was no shortage of willing martyrs”:
Taken from Abizaid, “In Defense of the Northern Border.”

50. “Moderates in Amal, unable to deliver on promises”:
Taken from Abizaid, “In Defense of the Northern Border.”

51. Shortly after he returned, Thurman marched down:
This scene was recounted by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Dan Christman, who was also in the office with Thurman and Miller.

52. Beth Chiarelli was just about to tee off:
From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and General Peter Chiarelli.

55. they were joining a high-powered crowd:
From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and Peter Chiarelli, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Lee Donne Olvey, and Jeffrey S. McKitrick.

56. Chiarelli
was
a little intimidated:
From interview with Chiarelli.

57. Throwing together freethinkers and ambitious young officers:
The history of the Social Sciences Department comes from
The Lincoln Brigade
by Capt. Martha S. H. VanDriel and from numerous interviews. Biographical material on Brig. Gen. George A. Lincoln came from interviews and from
Issues of National Security in the 1970’s: Essays Presented to Colonel George A. Lincoln on His Sixtieth Birthday
.

59 “I am going to take your file and I am going to keep it upside down”:
From interview with Chiarelli.

59. “A member of the department is
always
a member of the department”:
From interviews with Olvey and McKitrick.

60. Petraeus, who admired him immensely, decided to take the gamble:
From interviews with Petraeus and from “Beyond the Cloister,” an article he wrote for
The American Interest
in July-August 2007 that recounts his experiences in graduate school.

61. His foray into civilian graduate school had its humbling moments:
From interviews with Petraeus, John Duffield, and from “Beyond the Cloister.”

61 When Taylor arrived at West Point in the 1970s:
From an interview with William Taylor. Other details about the Social Sciences Department and Vietnam come from interviews with Petraeus, Chiarelli, Asa Clark, McKitrick, and Andrew Krepinevich.

63 The two officers long had been on parallel intellectual paths:
From interviews with Petraeus and Krepinevich.

64 The acclaim from outsiders made the Army even more defensive:
General (Ret.) Bruce Palmer Jr.’s review of
The Army and Vietnam
appeared in
Parameters
, Autumn 1988. The details of Krepinevich’s treatment by the Army came from an interview with Krepinevich.

64 Petraeus later referred to Krepinevich’s treatment as “unsettling”:
From Petraeus’s dissertation, “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era.”

66 After returning to West Point, Petraeus finished his dissertation:
From interviews with Petraeus and Galvin, and from Petraeus’s dissertation.

66 Olvey had to pull another officer out of graduate school:
From interviews with Olvey and William Sutey.

68 Lieutenant Ed Massar poked his helmet out of the turret:
The account of the Canadian Army Trophy competition comes from interviews with Chiarelli, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Tom Griffin, John S. Luallin, Joe Schmalzel, John Menard, and Joe Weiss, as well as from archival video and Defense Department after-action reports.

70. His Army was determined to win the trophy:
The account of the competition came from Luallin and others.

71. the Chiarellis were still settling into their new life:
The description of the life in Gelnhausen came from Beth Chiarelli and her children, Peter and Erin.

71 A few weeks after taking command, Powell came to Gelnhausen:
The description of the dinner at the officers’ club came from Luallin, Schmalzel, and Menard. Powell’s memories of Gelnhausen are described in his memoirs,
My American Journey
.

73. “You have a problem,” he warned Luallin:
From an interview with Luallin.

74. Enraged, the younger Abrams summoned Lieutenant Joe Weiss, the maintenance officer:
From an interview with Weiss.

76. It would only confuse them, he told his superior:
From interviews with Chiarelli and Luallin.

77. “You took a hell of a chance,” the officer said finally:
From an interview with Chiarelli.

77 Powell allowed himself the general’s prerogative of claiming credit:
From Powell’s
My American Journey
.

77 “Warning to the Warsaw Pact,” it read:
From
Americans on Target
, Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, August 1989.

78. “Don’t tell anybody, but by February fifteenth you guys will be out of here”:
From interview with Beth Chiarelli.

79. Vuono had come to rely so heavily on Petraeus:
From interview with Petraeus.

80. He spent hours drafting forty-page playbooks that his troops could stuff into a pocket:
The account of Casey’s leadership as a battalion commander is based on interviews with Dan Hampton, Johnny Parker, Bill Carter, and Tom Carrick.

82 “The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula”:
This quote is from a radio address by the president to U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf region, March 2, 1991.

82 “Could you help this guy Casey out?”:
From interviews with Gen. (Ret.) Carl Vuono and Gen. (Ret.) John Tilelli Jr.

85 “I know you understand the rules of engagement”:
This account of Operation Provide Comfort is developed from interviews with Abizaid and more than a dozen soldiers from his battalion and higher headquarters, including Chris Cavoli, Ron Kluber, Greg Brouillette, Chuck Cardinal, Sean Callahan, Kim Kadesch, Pete Johnson, and Gen. (Ret.) John Shalikashvili. Abizaid also described his experiences in a March 1993 article in
Military Review
entitled “Lessons for Peacekeepers.”