Sometimes a man’s appearance can be misleading. This one is about 5ft 9in
tall, not especially powerful in build; he has ears that stick out and teeth
that seem too big for his mouth and he walks with a slightly asymmetric
tilt. Yet this is General David Petraeus, the warrior whose “surge” saved
America from a humiliating scuttle out of Iraq and who is now the head of
United States Central Command (Centcom).
Only when Petraeus engages in conversation does everything snap into place.
Each of his words is chosen with painstaking precision and the gaze is
similarly well directed. Above all there is a sense of restless
intelligence; so perhaps it is not so extraordinary that this 56-year-old
soldier has been named the world’s leading public intellectual by a panel
nominated by two prominent magazines of the thinking classes, Prospect and
Foreign Policy.
The winner’s citation declared: “The so-called ‘Petraeus doctrine’ is the only
written piece of intellectual output in the last two years that has made a
direct difference to the lives of millions. It is the first actively humane
warfighting doctrine to come out of the Pentagon, enshrining the idea that
winning a modern war requires ensuring the security and wellbeing of the
civilian population. Petraeus has also waged a war of ideas against many in
Washington who argued that fewer constraints and more ruthless tactics were
required in Iraq.” And, it points out, he won.
Petraeus, who tells me that “the most powerful tool any soldier carries is not
his weapon but his mind”, has the distinctive battle honour of the
intellectual, namely a PhD. His was won in the examination halls of
Princeton, with a 328-page doctoral dissertation entitled The American
Military and the Lessons of Vietnam.
It seems Petraeus drew precisely the opposite conclusions from the Vietnam war
to those drawn by the likes of General Colin Powell. Powell believed that
the US army should become a machine that delivered a massive,
technologically awe-inspiring military punch at high speed but would not get
involved in “nation-building” or the “messy stuff”. In contrast, Petraeus
believes that “we don’t get to choose what kinds of wars we fight” and that
the lesson of Vietnam is not that the US army should avoid
counterinsurgency, but that it should become much better at it. Petraeus’s
Princeton dissertation of 1987 also forecast that this would be made
necessary in any case by “the rise of terrorism”.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. When the situation in Iraq had conclusively
demonstrated the limitations of US firepower divorced from human
intelligence and political know-how, Petraeus’s doctrine of pouring men on
the ground into the homes of those most threatened came into its own.
When I first met Petraeus, three months ago, he showered me with page after
page of his “doctrine”, notably the “counterinsurgency guidance”. Rule 3 is:
“Money is ammunition.”
This was certainly central to the surge’s success: Petraeus put 100,000 or so
gunmen from the Sunni militia on the payroll in return for their help in
slaughtering Al-Qaeda fighters. It seems almost certain that he will
implement a similar strategy in Afghanistan against the resurgent Taliban.
Other phrases that leap out of the presentation Petraeus gives me are less
redolent of the black arts. They contain such advice to his troops as, “Live
among the people. You can’t commute to this fight”; “We cannot kill our way
out of this endeavour”; and “Walk. Work dismounted. Stop by, don’t drive by.
Awareness can only be gained by interacting face to face, not separated by
ballistic glass”.
In the earliest stages of the surge Petraeus gave his security detail
conniptions by acting on his own advice and taking off his helmet when
walking through villages still harbouring those who would have liked nothing
more than to have killed a US general. This is where Petraeus the
intellectual morphs into Petraeus the man of action – after all, his
slightly tilted gait is not eccentricity but the legacy of a malfunctioning
parachute and a resulting crushed pelvis.
When I call the general to congratulate him on his award, I ask him whether he
is missing the field of combat, now that he is based at Centcom headquarters
in Florida. “Yes, there is something undeniably – and I hope your readers
don’t misunderstand this – exhilarating about being in combat. That is,
until you get the casualties, the damage, the loss.”
Although Petraeus is now associated indelibly with the US’s attempt to
“nation-build” in Iraq, don’t forget that in 2003, as a major-general, he
commanded the 101st Airborne Division, which undertook the longest
helicopter assault in military history. Has he become in any way hardened as
a result of these experiences? “If you mean: did I get hardened to losses,
to casualties, I never found that I did. They never got any easier to
accept. You have to keep thinking about it, otherwise it’s as though the
casualty reports are like water poured into a vessel with holes, and it
shouldn’t be like that. I would make a point of going personally to the
memorial ceremonies whenever possible and certainly when there were multiple
losses.”
There is, he says, a paradox to soldiering that no commander can afford to
ignore. Peacekeeping just isn’t as inspiring as the rough stuff. The level
of violence in Iraq has, he says, come down sharply since the surge. “In one
day in June 2007 there were 180 attacks on coalition troops, but in the last
month or so it’s been down to around 10 a day.” And while this is evidently
good news, it also brings problems.
“The company commanders I talk to will often say that, in the last six months
or so, we’re dealing with the challenge that soldiers can’t get as fired up
about, say, the restoration of fish farms or poultry industries or local
market revival as they can about true combat operations. So they need to be
reminded what happens when you have real operations: there may be an
adrenaline moment . . . but it’s often the moment after which some of their
buddies and they might never be the same. And so it is paradoxical.”
Petraeus concludes with the observation that “Sherman had it right about war”.
He is, of course, referring to the much-quoted remark made by General
William Sherman, the great American civil war leader, to a graduating class
of the Michigan Military Academy: “There is many a boy here today who looks
on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
Petraeus compares America’s soldiers of today to their forefathers who fought
the second world war. They were called “the greatest generation”, he says,
but the young warriors of the Iraq campaign “should be called the new
greatest generation”.
It’s an interesting comparison – even if, as I point out, the public will
always find it easier to acknowledge and appreciate the sacrifices made by
the second world war generation. The fight to destroy Nazism is one thing; a
deeply controversial preemptive invasion quite another.
Petraeus gives a little sigh: “Ever since I came back from my first tour of
Iraq, people have asked me: was this the right thing to do? I said then that
this would have to be left to history and I still firmly believe that.
However, I do think it is fair for soldiers to ask whether their sacrifice
has been meaningful. Without going back into the whole difficult question of
Iraq, the decision to go to war and so forth, I think the Iraq that is
emerging now, for all its imperfections and flaws, is encouraging to those
who have given so much.”
This hedged and equivocal assessment may suggest that Petraeus is filled with
more misgivings about the whole Iraq enterprise than he would like to
express in public; but even if he were secretly to share the view of Barack
Obama that the war was not justified, he does not seem sympathetic to the
president-elect’s stated position that US troops must leave Iraq within 16
months of his taking office.
When I ask Petraeus whether this is a sensible or reasonable objective on
thepart of his future commander-in-chief, he notably avoids saying “yes” and
gives a carefully constructed response. “What we are looking forward to is a
discussion between the senior elected leader and the military advisers. It
starts with a discussion of objectives, and this is what the dialogue must
focus on first. That is, what are we seeking to achieve in Iraq and in the
region? All of these things have to be looked at regionally.
“One of the big points about Afghanistan, for example, is that you can’t
grapple with that issue solely in Afghanistan; obviously you have to include
Pakistan, and you have to look more broadly than that, at India and China,
Iran and a host of other countries. But you have to start by agreeing on the
objectives, the mission, if you will, and the purpose of achieving the
task.” In other words, he seems to be hinting, no merely political deadline
should supersede the overall strategic objective.
In our conversation Petraeus finds an elegant way to describe the tensions
that inevitably exist between politicians contesting electoral campaigns and
generals who fight on a less ephemeral battleground. He observes: “Al-Qaeda
and its allies are keenly aware of the strategic context in which they
operate. They are very aware of the Washington clock, the Nato clock, the
London clock.
“I have to tell you that I sometimes thought that the Washington clock was
running a lot more rapidly than the Baghdad clock – occasionally you had to
tap the Baghdad clock to make sure that it was still ticking. So, again, an
awareness of Al-Qaeda’s appreciation of the global context, and its
resilience, must be considered as we craft and refine our strategy.”
The “London clock” is certainly ticking fastest: last month Britain confirmed
that it would be withdrawing all its troops from Iraq by May. When he was
interviewed by a British newspaper a year ago, Petraeus expressed the wish
that America’s British allies in Iraq would “continue in the in-together,
out-together spirit that has characterised this venture”. Is he disappointed
that the Brits have not so continued? “I don’t see it that way now, frankly,
because where I am here, I’ve got a broader perspective, and I’m looking at
the overall fight against extremism, which obviously encompasses
Afghanistan. It would have been very different if the British forces had
left when they were still hugely engaged [in southern Iraq] but . . .the
Iraqi forces in Basra have actually begun to perform relatively credibly.”
Sometimes, when talking to Petraeus, he comes across so much as the
politically astute intellectual that it is necessary to recall that he is
first and foremost a soldier. So finally I ask why he decided to join the
army.
“The first thing to say is that you are around wonderful people, who have
raised their right hand as volunteers to put themselves in harm’s way for
their country. Beyond that, I’ve always enjoyed the fact that in the
military you start the day with physical training. I’ve always enjoyed
running and other athletic activities.”
He’s not kidding. In 2007 Petraeus gave an interview to Runner’s World, whose
reporter began his breathless piece as follows: “Gen David Petraeus has just
challenged me to a push-up contest. A moment later he’s prone – ramrod
straight, back and arms rigid. Then in a 90-second blur he hammers out 81
push-ups while deconstructing David Ignatius’s latest novel. How can anyone
keep up with that?”
Fortunately Petraeus does not want to issue a physical challenge to this
hopelessly unfit interviewer. Instead, he summarises his love of his chosen
career by quoting, from memory, President Teddy Roosevelt’s great speech The
Man in the Arena.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly . . . and who at
the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know
victory nor defeat.”
