"The Professor of War"

Vanity Fair has an excellent article about General David Petraeus, mastermind of the successful 'surge' in Iraq and now in charge of US Central Command, overseeing the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a very interesting portrait of possibly the single most important military mind in America today. Here's a brief excerpt.

[David Petraeus] ... is a man of such distinction that in the army legends have formed about his rise. Beyond his four-star rank, he possesses a stature so matchless it deserves its own adjective—call it “Petraean,” perhaps. It is an adjective that would be mostly complimentary, but not entirely so—there can be a hard edge to the man, a certain lack of empathy, and there is something vaguely unseemly in his obvious ambition. But when Petraeus tests himself, he usually wins. When he assumed command in Iraq, he had accepted a challenge few thought even he could meet, turning around the longest and most mismanaged war in American history. But Iraq is only part of the story. Through his writing and teaching, Petraeus was at the same time redefining how the nation will fight in the 21st century. And he was doing something more difficult still: leading a cultural and doctrinal revolution inside one of the most hidebound institutions in the world, the United States Army. Whatever the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan, this transformation is a Petraean legacy that will be felt for years to come.

Obama, Biden, and Clinton are now even more directly Petraeus’s bosses than they were on that day in September 2007. As they proceed to escalate the war in Afghanistan and dial down the operation in Iraq—and as they confront new dangers in Pakistan and Iran—they are now on the same team with the general, no matter how far apart they were back then. For them, and particularly for President Obama, the responsibility and consequences of wielding American power have become very real—as they long have been for the general. On the hard questions of war, the Obama White House is not just listening to Petraeus but heeding his advice.




. . .

A fellow former commander of the 101st Airborne, Keane knew Petraeus as well as anyone. He had been standing beside him during a live-fire exercise at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in 1991, when an accidental M16 discharge sent a high-velocity 5.56-mm. round through Petraeus’s chest, just above his right nipple. The round tore away a portion of his lung and blew a four-inch hole in his back on its way out. Keane flew with him in the rescue helicopter to the post hospital and on to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville. On the way, he watched the 38-year-old lieutenant colonel drift in and out of consciousness.

“Dave, I want you to stay with us,” Keane told him.

Petraeus said, “Yes, sir.”

He was back at work in record time, demonstrating to the hospital staff, just days after surgery, that he was not an ordinary patient by removing the IV tubes from his arm and dropping to the floor to do push-ups. The medical staff took note of his toughness. The insertion of a chest tube between his ribs, without anesthesia, had produced only a grunt.

. . .

As part of an overhaul of army instructional materials, he recruited a team of unprecedented diversity to draft a new field manual on counter-insurgency, inviting not just scholars and soldier-scholars but human-rights activists, journalists, and diplomats. In addition to emphasizing population protection and civic rebuilding efforts, the new manual underscored the importance of earning trust through transparency. It stressed telling the truth even when the news was bad, bending over backward to avoid arresting and killing the wrong people, and persuading those among the enemy who were reconcilable to abandon the fight in return for concessions, incentives, and opportunity. It also (and this piece is often overlooked) called for relentlessly isolating and targeting extremists, those who will not reconcile. So as you add friends, you subtract enemies. Petraeus says, “The idea is to go to bed every night with fewer enemies than you had in the morning.” The manual not only galvanized a movement within the military but also became a national best-seller, the first army manual ever reviewed in The New York Times Book Review (and favorably at that).

. . .

From his command at CentCom, Petraeus may not hold the highest rank, but he is without a doubt the most influential military officer in America. His conquest of the U.S. Army is complete. He has a deep and devoted following in the ranks—his “counter-insurgency nation.” His doctrines now shape the way we fight, and because his position allows him to select and promote the institution’s next generation of colonels and generals, his values and ideas are shaping the army’s future.

He still steers the Iraq war, and he oversees the developing strategy for routing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The all-out assault on Marjah in February demonstrated strict Petraean principles in action. It was announced months in advance, which gave civilians a chance to either dig in or clear out. There were civilian deaths, tragedies that were clearly inadvertent and which McChrystal publicly apologized for, but the numbers were a fraction of those common in such urban assaults. By so carefully reducing the potential for civilians to be caught in the crossfire, the offensive all but eliminated what is, perhaps, the strongest incentive for Taliban troops to stand and fight: to exploit such deaths to turn public opinion against America. Since they could not hope to defeat the onslaught of allied and Afghan troops, the insurgents largely melted away. The end result was the same: the allied and Afghan forces reclaimed Marjah, but they did so with relatively little bloodshed. This approach runs directly counter to military convention, which prizes secrecy and surprise. It recognizes that the real battle is not chasing the Taliban out of the city or underground but winning the population, a process which can begin only after the city has been retaken. American commanders have already announced an even larger offensive for later this year, on Kandahar.

There's much more at the link. Very highly recommended reading.

Peter