In the Iraq War as a colonel he led 5,300 soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, successfully using protect-the-population counterinsurgency tactics to reclaim the city of Tal Afar in 2005. President Bush had publicly cited it as a model operation to give “reason for hope for a free Iraq.”
In McMaster’s 1997 book Dereliction of Duty, he called the Joint Chiefs who oversaw the Vietnam War “five silent men” who had failed to establish the essential personal rapport with civilian leaders so they could speak their minds. Dereliction of Duty was a field manual for avoiding another Vietnam.
The irony was that Trump was now saying that Afghanistan was Vietnam, a quagmire with no clear national security purpose, the latest example of the incoherence of American policy. McMaster’s job was to align the military’s recommendations for Afghanistan with the president’s goals, but this president’s only goal was to get out.
Staff work at the NSC ground on. On March 1 and 10, 2017, Army Ranger Lieutenant Colonel Fernando Lujan, the National Security Council staffer for Afghanistan, chaired the first middle-level meetings of the interagency in the Trump administration. It included representatives from the State Department, Pentagon and the intelligence agencies.
Lujan, a holdover from the Obama administration, knew the Afghanistan policy under Obama had been simple in practice: Avoid catastrophe. There was lots of uncertainty, and the possibilities of calamity were immense. He gave the Afghan police, for example, key to long-term stability, a D minus or F.
At the first meeting, a State Department official teed up the discussion with a series of fundamental questions: Why do we think we need a counterterrorist base in Afghanistan to prevent another attack? What’s the justification for it? What do we think the terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan really is? Why do we think thousands of U.S. troops and intelligence specialists are needed to combat that when we have drones and everything else? Our enduring presence, he noted, can cause further instability from not only insurgents but also regional players, such as Pakistan.
The State official said the United States maintained it did not want to establish a permanent presence when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. So how do we square that now, after 16 years?
No, no, no, said the military representative. The U.S. presence was not to be permanent.
This led to the question, When might it all end? Was a political settlement possible? Would a political settlement be the ends or the means? How could a political settlement be possible if the insurgent Taliban did not want the United States to have any kind of a presence in Afghanistan? Could a possible political settlement be a way to sell continued engagement?
If a political settlement became a top priority, that would require compromise. Was President Trump willing to do so?
Was all of this a fig leaf so the United States could continue doing what it wanted to do? Was a democratic or stable government needed in Afghanistan? How invested was the U.S. in a real political settlement?
Another State Department representative noted that the central government lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan public, the lowest in 10 years, according to polling done in the country. He observed that the illicit economy, opium and illegal mining, was the size of the regular economy, and a significant portion was under control of Taliban insurgents.
After 9/11, the CIA and military had paid off the Afghan warlords to go after the Taliban. Some of that money had been used to target political opposition. Now the U.S. was spending about $50 billion a year in Afghanistan. Was the government, which was deeply corrupt, just taking money from the U.S. and the allies to fund themselves? Was the large level of assistance taking away the Afghan government’s incentive to develop real reforms and the political will to take on opium and profits from mining? American money was one of the poisons in the Afghan system.
A larger question loomed: Should the United States be playing to win in Afghanistan, or merely not to lose?
After one meeting they took whiteboards and broke into three groups to attempt to define the problem and state vital strategic objectives. Common to all three was the goal of preventing further attacks on the homeland.
They raised additional questions: What kind of government did Afghanistan need? And what kind of stability did the U.S. need to achieve the goal of preventing further terrorist attacks?
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Initially, in meetings with representatives from the Pentagon, State Department and the intelligence agencies, McMaster laid out his four frames or goals: 1. Achieve political stability that will include a political settlement with the insurgent Taliban. 2. Push for institutional actions by the Afghan government to counter the Taliban. 3. Increase pressure on neighboring Pakistan, which was playing a double game—nominally allied with the United States, but also supporting terrorists and the Taliban. 4. Maintain international support from the 39 countries allied with the United States in a coalition.
Casting about for a middle ground on more troops, McMaster considered a proposal for adding thousands more, perhaps 3,000 to 5,000, to prevent another terrorist attack. One staff proposal called for thinking about eventually adding tens of thousands.
At a Principals Committee meeting—so-called because unlike a NSC meeting, the principals meet without the president—Attorney General Sessions erupted at everyone, including McMaster, over the idea of more troops.
You’re basically walking the president into exactly what he doesn’t believe in, to a place he doesn’t want to go, Sessions said. We’re losing too many lives in Afghanistan. I don’t understand what you guys don’t get. This is not where the president’s at.
Priebus said, You have not spent the time working with the president on what his basic philosophy and foreign policy positions are, and why. With the president, he said, “why” is the most important part. Why are we here? Why are we doing this? What do you want to happen? And what exactly are we trying to accomplish?
This was precisely the question that Peter Lavoy had been asking in the Obama administration. Neither Priebus nor Lavoy received a satisfactory answer.
The principals’ consensus settled on adding up to 4,000 troops.
“Has anyone told the president,” Priebus asked, “that the option you’re choosing basically says we’re going to be in Afghanistan for decades? If you explain it to him, he’s going to go crazy. Who’s talking to him about these details?”
Silence.
Afterward, Priebus called a meeting of the key players.
“Look,” he said, “we’ve got a problem. We are not connecting with the president over the more basic issues. Why do you want to be there? What is the purpose? What is the fundamental value to the United States for risking American lives? You have to come to a fundamental understanding and agreement on those basic issues before you start talking about how many troops are we going to have in Afghanistan. You guys are like 10 steps ahead of yourselves.”
It was not enough for McMaster to declare the objective was to prevent another terrorist attack. The question was simple: How would several thousand more troops help to achieve that?