“Doug, if this reaches you”: Email, Petraeus to Ollivant, January 8, 2007 (obtained by author).

  “clear-control-retain”: Cited in MNC-I [Odierno] Campaign Plan, February 2007; and interviews.

  The Coven’s intelligence analysis: Most of this section relies on interviews, although I was also provided with some of their briefing slides on the maps and the Baghdad Belts.

  “chaos, violence, and fear . . . This . . . is where you”: General Raymond Odierno, MNC-I, “Counterinsurgency Guidance,” June 2007 (provided to author); backstory on the memo’s origins comes from interviews.

  For the first half of 2007, the violence: Data come from briefings and charts assembled by MNC-I and US Central Command; the material on Phantom Thunder comes from those sources and from interviews.

  Chapter 18: The Insurgent in the Pentagon

  When he got back to the Pentagon: Some of this portrait of Gates comes from two articles I wrote about Gates at the time: Fred Kaplan, “The Professional,” New York Times Magazine, February 10, 2008; and Fred Kaplan, “The Transformer,” Foreign Policy, September–October 2010; the rest comes from interviews conducted since.

  The first glaring sign: The article was Dana Priest and Anne Hull, “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility,” Washington Post, February 18, 2007.

  By promoting Schwartz: I wrote about the cultural change in the Air Force in Fred Kaplan, “Attack of the Drones,” Newsweek, September 8, 2009; much else in this section comes from subsequent interviews.

  He also read an article: The article was Paul Burka, “Agent of Change,” Texas Monthly, November 2006.

  “continuing to strengthen”: Robert M. Gates, confirmation hearings, Senate Armed Services Committee, December 5, 2006.

  “In the years following the Vietnam”: Robert Gates, speech before the Association of the United States Army, October 10, 2007. I wrote about the significance of the speech at the time, in Fred Kaplan, “Secretary Gates Declares War on the Army Brass,” Slate, October 12, 2007. The backstory on Scott and how the speech came to be written comes from interviews since.

  Scott got the idea: Yingling gained notoriety for writing an article called “A Failure in Generalship” (Armed Forces Journal, May 2007), accusing the Army’s general officer corps of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence,” and “moral courage,” specifically for remaining silent while Bush and Rumsfeld sent “a nation to war with insufficient means,” adding, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” The article was widely circulated and reinforced the sense, shared by many junior officers, that their commanders were out of touch.

  “the surest means the Army”: Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl and Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Yingling, “New Rules for New Enemies,” Armed Forces Journal, October 2006.

  Geren had read: I reported some of this bitterness on the part of junior officers in Fred Kaplan, “Challenging the Generals,” New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2007. Geren read that article and heard similar reports elsewhere. (All of the material about Geren and the promotion board comes from interviews.)

  Among the forty colonels: I covered the unique promotion board at the time in Fred Kaplan, “Promoting Innovation,” Slate, November 21, 2007; Fred Kaplan, “Annual General Meeting,” Slate, August 4, 2008, although I didn’t have the full story until researching this book.

  Chapter 19: “It Is Folly”

  “indirect colonial rule”: Roberto J. Gonzalez, “Toward Mercenary Anthropology?” Anthropology Today, June 2007.

  “a brutal war of occupation”: https://sites.google.com/site/concernedanthropologists.

  “an unacceptable application”: www.aaanet.org/pdf/EB_Resolution_110807.pdf.

  McFate rattled off several: Montgomery McFate, “Building Bridges or Burning Heretics?” Anthropology Today, June 2007. See also McFate and Steve Fondacaro, “Reflections on the Human Terrain System During the First 4 Years,” Prism, vol. 2, no. 4; Richard Shweder, “A True Culture War,” New York Times, October 27, 2007.

  Kilcullen went further: David Kilcullen, “Ethics, Politics, and Non-State Warfare,” Anthropology Today, June 2007. In this reply to Gonzalez’s article, Kilcullen, besides defending the humanitarian aspects of his work in Iraq, countered that anthropologists held no unique wisdom for judging whether a particular war was itself legitimate. “Since support for government, in democracies, is expressed through the ballot box,” he wrote, “the proper course of citizens who disagree with the war (including anthropologists) is to say so, and to vote for anti-war candidates at election . . . Once war is declared, the job of officials is to execute it effectively and humanely in line with the policy of the government of the day or, if they cannot support that policy, to resign.” It is this view that Kilcullen would soon repudiate.

  “measurable data”: Email, Kilcullen to Houtman and Gusterson, July 29, 2007 (provided to author); and interviews.

  “I am very impressed”: Email, Houtman to Kilcullen, April 30, 2007 (provided to author). The sequence of Kilcullen’s evolution comes from interviews.

  the “formulation of policy”: US Government Counterinsurgency Guide, January 2009, 36; and interviews. The backstory on the conference and the guide comes entirely from interviews.

  “should not be taken lightly”: Ibid., 3.

  “However great its know-how”: Ibid., 2.

  “will almost always need to co-opt”: Ibid., 29.

  It is folly: Ibid., 37. A condensed version of this thought (including the word “folly”) is also on pp. 3–4.

  “Unfortunately, there will inevitably”: US Government Counterinsurgency Guide, 40. The original draft, which did not contain this passage, was provided to author.

  “to bring about regime change”: Ibid., 43.

  “The biggest fucking stupid idea”: Quoted in Spencer Ackerman, “A Counterinsurgency Guide for Politicos,” Washington Independent, July 28, 2008; background for the story comes from interviews.

  The Huffington Post . . . picked up: “Rice Adviser: Iraq Invasion Was ‘F*cking Stupid,’” Huffington Post, July 28, 2008.

  “did not seek to clear”: Dave Kilcullen, “My Views on Iraq,” Small Wars Journal, July 29, 2008.

  Rice finally signed the guide: The signatures and date are in US Government Counterinsurgency Guide, opening page.

  Chapter 20: COIN Versus CT

  “I don’t oppose all wars”: He made the speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002, action.barackobama.com/page/share/2002iraqfull.

  Soon after he won the November 2008 election: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 33. The material on Riedel comes from interviews.

  On March 12: The date comes from Woodward, ibid., 112; the account of the meeting comes from interviews.

  “The circumstances under which”: I was the journalist, reporting for the New York Times Magazine. Much of the material in this section about Gates comes from that profile (“The Professional,” op. cit.) and another one I wrote, later, for Foreign Policy (“The Transformer,” op. cit.). Much also comes from subsequent interviews.

  “covert action”: I was the journalist here, too, interviewing him for Foreign Policy. Kaplan, “The Transformer,” op. cit.

  “deeply skeptical”: Testimony, Robert M. Gates, Senate Armed Services Committee, January 27, 2009; see also Fred Kaplan, “What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?” Slate, February 5, 2009.

  You could pay twenty Afghan: When Obama learned a few months later that the Taliban were luring Afghan soldiers by paying them more, he doubled the latter’s pay (the United States was financing the Afghan army’s payroll). Even then, the cost-ratio between an American and Afghan soldier would be an enormous 10:1.

  “will take the fight”: Press conference, President Barack Obama, March 27, 2009.

  “fresh thinking”: Press conference, Robert M. Gates, May 11, 2009.

  In September 2003, Donald Rumsfeld signed: Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2011), 236.

  By fusing all this intelligence: Ibid., esp. ch. 11; Spencer Ackerman, “How Special Ops Copied al-Qaida to Kill It,” Wired (Danger Room blog), September 9, 2011; Sean Naylor, “3-Star to Lead JSOC: Report Suggests Renewed Focus on Spec Ops,” Army Times, February 27, 2006.

  A top-secret detention center: Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, “Task Force 6-26: In Secret Unit’s ‘Black Room,’ a Grim Portrait of US Abuse,” New York Times, March 19, 2006.

  “This is how we lose”: Ackerman, op. cit.

  “No Blood, No Foul”: Schmitt and Marshall, op. cit.

  The questions he asked the “assessment team”: The questions are recited on the opening pages of the report. Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, “COMISAF Commander’s Initial Assessment,” August 30, 2009, i. A leaked copy was reprinted in full in the Washington Post’s online edition, September 21, 2009, media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted _092109.pdf.

  Among them were Fred Kagan: The full list is in Laura Rozen, “Winning Hearts and Minds: All of McChrystal’s Advisors,” Foreign Policy (The Cable blog), July 31, 2009. The near-appointment of Nagl and the substance of the deliberations come from interviews.

  “The overall situation is deteriorating”: “COMISAF Commander’s Initial Assessment,” op. cit., 1-1.

  “shape / clear / hold”: Ibid., A-2.

  “better understanding”: Ibid., 1-2.

  “a condition where the insurgency”: Ibid., 2-2.

  “Progress is hindered”: Ibid., 1-2.

  “the weakness of state”: Ibid., 2-4.

  “have given Afghans little reason”: Ibid., 2-2.

  “must protect the people”: Ibid., 1-2.

  “by, with, and through”: Ibid., 2-4.

  “conventional force . . . poorly”: Ibid., 1-2; cf. also 2-11.

  “under-resourced”: Ibid., 1-3, 2-20.

  One in particular caught his attention: Gates told me of Kagan’s influence; see Kaplan, “The Transformer,” op. cit. The article in question was Frederick W. Kagan, “We’re Not the Soviets in Afghanistan: And 2009 Isn’t 1979,” Weekly Standard (The Blog), August 21, 2009.

  He’d honed this craft during his time as deputy: Scowcroft told me this, and Gates confirmed it, in my interviews for the New York Times Magazine profile. Kaplan, “The Professional,” op. cit.

  That summer, he’d invited: Kenneth T. Walsh, “Obama’s Secret Dinner with Presidential Historians,” U.S. News & World Report, July 15, 2009; Peter Baker, “Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?” New York Times (Week in Review), August 22, 2009.

  The specter of Vietnam haunted: Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, “Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2009; George Packer, “What Obama and the Generals Are Reading,” New Yorker (“Interesting Times” blog), October 8, 2009. Soon after these articles appeared, the two authors wrote dueling op-ed pieces in the New York Times: Lewis Sorley, “The Vietnam War We Ignore,” and Gordon M. Goldstein, “From Defeat, Lessons in Victory,” both in the October 17, 2009, edition. The Vietnam parallels were further pursued in a piece that Goldstein cowrote with Bob Woodward, “The Anguish of Decision,” Washington Post, October 18, 2009.

  McChrystal had listed a range of options: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 192; Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), esp. ch. 21; and interviews.

  The vice chairman of the JCS: Woodward, ibid., 235–36; Peter Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad (New York: Crown, 2012), 173; and interviews.

  “President Karzai . . . is not an adequate”: Cable, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry to Secretary Hillary Clinton, US Department of State, “COIN Strategy: Civilian Concerns,” November 9, 2009. There were two cables, sent on the same date; the second was much shorter and consisted of a few recommendations. Stories about the cables appeared in several papers within a few days. The full documents were reprinted in the New York Times’s online edition of January 25, 2010, to accompany an article by Eric Schmitt, “US Envoy’s Cables Show Worries on Afghan Plans.” See http://documents.nytimes.com/eikenberry-s-memos-on-the-strategy-in-afghanistan#p=1.

  Petraeus and Mullen had testified: Admiral Mike Mullen, hearings, Senate Armed Services Committee, September 15, 2009.

  Western inspectors calculated: Jon Boone and Ed Pilkington, “Fired UN Envoy Claims Third of Hamid Karzai Votes Fraudulent,” Guardian, October 4, 2009; Peter Galbraith, “How the Afghan Election Was Rigged,” Time, October 19, 2009 (Galbraith was another one of the monitors); “Focus on Karzai Following Afghan Election Fraud Report,” Voice of America, October 20, 2009; Fred Kaplan, “Karzai Salesman,” Slate, October 21, 2009. The “300 cups of tea” line is quoted in Fred Kaplan, “McChrystal: Gone and Soon Forgotten,” Slate, June 23, 2010.

  “not fully resourced counterinsurgency”: Obama’s order on Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, dated November 29, 2009, is reprinted in full in Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 385–90; that it corresponded with what Obama told the advisers, and other details of the meeting, come from interviews.

  So he asked them, one at a time: Alter, op. cit., 390; and interviews.

  Petraeus was asked afterward: Woodward, op. cit., 338; and interviews.

  Chapter 21: “Storm Clouds”

  It was headed up by a three-star: The sections about Barno’s command in Afghanistan and about Eikenberry’s follow-up tour come mainly from interviews, but also from Christopher Koontz, ed., Enduring Voices: Oral Histories of the US Army Experience in Afghanistan, 2003–2005 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2008), especially chs. 1–3.

  Led by Louis Hughes: Ibid.; Beth Cole DeGrasse and Christina Parajon, “The Afghanistan Reconstruction Group: An Experiment with Future Potential,” USIPeace Brief, September 2006, www.usip.org/publications/afghanistan-reconstruction-group-experiment-future-potential; and interviews.

  All in all, the NATO allies issued eighty-three: Colonel Douglas V. Mastriano, Faust and the Padshah Sphinx: Reshaping the NATO Alliance to Win in Afghanistan (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 2010); Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, Mobilizing NATO for Afghanistan and Pakistan: An Assessment of Alliance Capabilities, Washington, DC, 2010; “ ‘Caveats’ Neuter NATO Allies,” Washington Times, July 15, 2006; and interviews.

  “An operation that kills five”: US Army, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, 1-25.

  “for the support and will”: HQ, International Security Assistance Force, Kabul, Afghanistan, “Tactical Directive.” The classified document was issued on July 1, 2009; unclassified excerpts were released July 6. www.nato.int/isaf/docu/official_texts/Tactical_Directive_090706.pdf.

  “Protecting the people is the mission”: HQ, ISAF, Kabul, “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance.” www.nato.int/isaf/docu/official_texts/counterinsurgency_guidance.pdf. The document is undated; a historian at US Central Command told me it was issued on August 26, 2009.

  Sewall began work in November: The section on Sarah Sewall’s CIVCAS study comes entirely from interviews. As far as I know, the only published mention of it is Colonel Tim Ryan, “Chairman’s Joint Lessons Learned Program,” JCAO Forum (vol. 1, no. 2, Winter 2012), a publication of the Joint and Coalition Operation Analysis, a division of the Joint Staff J7 deputy directorate for joint and coalition warfighting; but it’s wrong on most of the details.

  “We’ve got a government in a box”: Dexter Filkins, “Afghan Offensive Is New War Model,” New York Times, February 12, 2010.

  forty-eight “focus districts” . . . eighty “key terrain districts”: These figures are cited in US Department of Defense, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, April 2010; the rest of this section comes from interviews.

  Two days before the offensive began: Dexter Filkins, “Afghans Try to Reassure Tribal Elders on Offensive,” New York Times, February 11, 2010.

  McChrystal’s staff figured that Marja: Dianna Cahn, “Months After Marjah Offensive, Success Still Elusive,” Stars and Stripes, July 10, 2010; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “ ‘Still a Long Way to Go’ for US Operation in Marja, Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 10, 2010; Carlotta Gall, “US Gains Evaporate, Taliban Go on Offensive,” New York Times, May 17, 2010. There’s also a very good, grim HBO documentary, The Battle for Marjah, directed by Ben Anderson.

  They brought together 160: This section relies mainly on interviews, but also on Colonel Randy George and Dante Paradiso, “The Case for a Wartime Chief Executive Officer: Fixing the Interagency Quagmire in Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs, June 21, 2011, and on a longer, unpublished version of the article, “The Interagency Scrum in Afghanistan: Time for Unity of Command,” provided by the authors.

  from “attacking the enemy in remote areas”: CJTF-82, 4 IBCT, 4th Infantry Division, “Towards the Tipping Point: The Separate, Connect, Transform (SCT) Strategy in N2KL,” July 22, 2009 (provided to author); and interviews.

  One week after the signing: The story was Dexter Filkins, “Afghan Tribe, Vowing to Fight Taliban, to Get US Aid in Return,” New York Times, January 27, 2010.

  “This is classic counterinsurgency”: CNN, interview with Hillary Clinton, January 28, 2010.

  “we must focus on”: Quoted in Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 386.

  “really stirred things up”: Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe, “US’s Good Intentions Go Awry in Afghan Tribal Area,” Washington Post, May 15, 2010.

  A few days later, McChrystal and his staff: The article was Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, July 8–22, 2010. It was posted on the magazine’s website June 22 (the White House obtained an advance copy), and it appeared on newsstands June 25.