After the meeting, Sessions called Bannon. “He spit the bit,” Sessions said, using a term for an exhausted, worn-down racehorse’s rejection of its rider’s control.
“Who?” Bannon asked.
“Your boy, Pompeo.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That was the worst presentation I ever saw,” Sessions said. He and Kellogg had done their best. “I couldn’t have been any better. Kellogg was fantastic. McMaster was actually better than he’s ever been, because you weren’t around. The president actually said afterwards that I and Kellogg made the best presentation. But clearly the president was looking for the middle option as an alternative.”
“How bad was Pompeo?”
“His heart wasn’t in it.”
“How could it not be?”
Bannon called Pompeo. “What the fuck happened? We set this whole thing up for you to come and own it.”
“I can take that building only so far,” Pompeo said of the CIA. “I’ve got other fights I’ve got to win.”
Pompeo reported what the senior officials at Langley were telling him: What are you doing? Pompeo was getting excellent reviews and Trump liked his style. You’re on a roll. But you’re going to be held accountable for this.
One person at Langley had told him, We spent 10 years in Washington making sure we weren’t held accountable for anything in Afghanistan. Why are you volunteering? We never volunteer for anything. Don’t worry about Bannon. He is a clown. He’s crazy. This is the Pentagon trying to trap us because they want out, too.
Pompeo described the CIA’s position. “We don’t have the apparatus to take command of this. This is something the Army’s got to do. You’re saying make it a joint venture. We don’t have those kinds of resources. We don’t have that kind of expertise on the scale they’re talking about. We’re not going to take responsibility. Are you going to take responsibility for Afghanistan? Because we’re not going to win. You understand we’re not going to win!” And that would be hard because Trump was saying, “How come we’re not winning? How come they’re [the Taliban] blowing up guys?”
Bannon talked to Trump by phone. “You know where I stand on this,” Bannon said. “I think eventually you’re going to come to see the middle ground.”
“You didn’t hear the whole thing,” Trump said. “There’s really a new strategy in there, and we’re going to win.”
At the August 18 NSC meeting, Trump approved McMaster’s four Rs. Summarized in a 60-page strategy memo dated August 21 signed by McMaster, they were formalized as, Reinforce: “provide more equipment and training but leverage support with conditions to drive reforms”; Realign: “US civilian assistance and political outreach will be realigned to target key areas under government control with contested areas considered on case by case basis”; Reconcile: “diplomatic efforts will urge government to undertake broader efforts to foster inclusivity and political accommodation, promote elections, and conduct outreach of ethnic and regional powerbrokers”; and Regionalize: “work with regional actors.”
The memo said the meeting established that the goal in Afghanistan was to “reshape the security environment” to limit the Taliban’s military options and “encourage them to negotiate a political settlement that reduces violence and denies safe haven to terrorists.”
Trump authorized Mattis to designate the Taliban and the terrorist Haqqani Network in Pakistan as hostile forces.
Buried in the 19-page section on integrated strategy was an admission: “Stalemate likely to persist in Afghanistan” and “Taliban likely to continue to gain ground.”
In the tradition of concealing the real story in a memo, “Win is unattainable” was the conclusion signed by McMaster.
* * *
“You’re the first person I called,” Trump told Graham. “I just met with the generals. I’m going to go with the generals.”
“Well, Mr. President that’s probably the smartest thing any president could have done.”
“That was a hard one,” Trump said. “It’s the graveyard of empires.” It was a reference to a book by Seth G. Jones on Afghanistan.
“It’s my luck the only book you ever read was that one,” Graham joked.
Trump laughed along.
* * *
“Off the record,” Trump said to his senior staff on Air Force One, though there was no press present on Friday, August 18, “I just fired Bannon. Did you see what he said about North Korea and having no military option? Motherfucker!”
Bannon had just given an interview to Robert Kuttner of the liberal American Prospect suggesting that Trump’s belligerent language to North Korea threatening “fire and fury” was a bluff.
“There’s no military solution here,” Bannon said. “They got us.” He added, “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Trump was worried about a prolonged war of words with Bannon and upset that he wasn’t going quietly.
* * *
A nationally televised Afghanistan strategy speech was set for Monday night, August 21, in front of a military audience at Fort Myer in Virginia. This was a big deal—one of Trump’s first formal announcements of a policy before a large audience.
“My original instinct was to pull out—and historically, I like following my instincts,” Trump said. Three times he said the goal was to “win” and said, “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military.”
With that, Trump dodged Bush’s and Obama’s Achilles’ heel. His strategy had the effect of pushing the Afghanistan War debate away, off the front page and out of the news unless there was a major act of violence.
John McCain commented, “I commend President Trump for taking a big step in the right direction with the new strategy for Afghanistan.” Democratic senator and Clinton running mate Tim Kaine said the U.S. needed to “make sure that Afghanistan is not a breeding ground for things that can come back and hurt us.”
Bannon spoke with Stephen Miller. “What the fuck was that speech about?” Bannon said. “First of all, it just went around in circles.”
The speech did not really go in circles. It was both new and more of the same Obama strategy. Bannon’s chief objection was the lack of realism. “You can’t have him sitting there talking about victory. There’s not going to be a victory.”
Trump clung to the rhetoric of winning. He had given the military, Mattis and McMaster, just enough. The military had saved face and did not have to admit defeat.
The day after the president’s speech, Tillerson found another way to declare that a win was not attainable. He addressed the Taliban at a press briefing: “You will not win a battlefield victory. We may not win one, but neither will you.”
Stalemate.
CHAPTER
32
Kelly and Porter spent several weeks at Bedminster with the president during the August congressional recess. The new chief of staff was of the view that the White House was a muddle. Priebus and Bannon had been amateurs. He would instill some order and discipline.
“We’ve sort of tried to do this a little bit,” Porter said. He told Kelly how Priebus had taken a run at establishing order. Several months earlier Priebus had the top staffers—McMaster, Cohn, Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and Porter—for a meeting in a strategy room in the Executive Office Building.