Petraeus on history

Roger Cohen has an article in The New York Times about a great American general:

When I asked General David H. Petraeus what the biggest U.S. mistake of the past decade has been, he did a Zhou Enlai on the French Revolution number to the effect that it was too early to say. The outgoing commander in Afghanistan and incoming Central Intelligence Agency chief is adept at politics, one reason he’s the object of the sort of political speculation once reserved for General Colin L. Powell, who was the face of the military to most Americans before Petraeus assumed that role later in the post-9/11 era. Powell adopted the Pottery Barn rule as a cautionary military dogma: “You break it, you own it.” A Petraeus adaptation might be: “You own it, you stick with it.” He reckons he’s seen the movie of what disasters happen when America turns its back on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s called Charlie Wilson’s War. I’ll get to that in a minute.
But first, on mistakes, Petraeus became more forthcoming. He’s like that: a soldier-scholar with an impish smile who speaks in sinuous patterns that you sometimes have to read forwards and backwards before realizing: Oh, that’s what he means! He’d be with Kierkegaard: Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Nobody over the past decade has absorbed more setbacks or reflected more on what policy corrections the bad stuff required.
He told me that, as Libya illustrates, the United States is no longer “eager to get all the way in on the ground”; and that “we have long since recognized that the ideal situation in the fight against extremists, against terrorists, is, first and foremost, to provide intelligence to the host nation.” Then, “if they cannot act on it, help them develop the ability to do it for themselves”. As for “actually doing it ourselves”, that must be a “much more remote option”.
A decade of fighting has slashed the U.S. appetite for war. It eats cash, costs lives, and, these days, there’s never a victory parade. That “much more remote option” struck me as the politic Petraeus version of the Robert Gates Pentagon-exit credo: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
A century after World War One, a half-century after Vietnam, a decade of Afghanistan, the United States is at a military turning-point. Think drones, not divisions on the ground.
But it is still at war. Petraeus has little time for the easy fixes. Switch from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism? Forget about it. Targeted raids are fine. But on Afghan terrain you also need “clear, hold and build operations” of the kind seen around Kandahar. “The press is seized with the idea there’s an alternative,” he told me. “It’s either counterinsurgency or counterterrorism.” But the reality is: “Counterinsurgency includes counterterrorist operations. You cannot choose between them.”
Let’s think about that. In practice, an Afghan drawdown has begun: 33,000 U.S. troops out in the next fourteen months, with a 2014 target for the remaining 68,000. Afghanistan has eight million-plus kids in school, some bustling cities, burgeoning cellphone coverage, glimmerings of life. Insurgent attacks on NATO forces are down. The country is also heroin central, corruption central, ethnic-rivalry central, and, still, illiteracy central. Attacks on civilians are up. Gains are “reversible” and a “resilient” enemy “has sanctuaries outside the country”, as Petraeus put it. In short, Afghanistan still hangs in the balance. But the American and European appetite for war is exhausted. Counterterrorism is going to be the way forward. Petraeus, in reality, is arguing for a significant on-the-ground presence for as long as possible, and that means beyond 2014. He’s right to fight that rearguard action, because of nuclear-sinkhole Pakistan more than Afghanistan. When I asked him if Pakistan finds the Taliban and the Haqqani network are useful to their strategic aims, Petraeus said: “It is unclear to us at this time,” adding that “there have been incidents that we have seen” that were troubling. Still he praised Pakistan’s sacrifice “in their counterinsurgency efforts”.
The truth about Pakistan is that it's impossible to trust, impossible to ditch. No wonder relations are “in a difficult stage”. As Petraeus noted, they see the Bin Laden killing “as an affront to their national sovereignty”. Poor dears. But yes, “we have to continue to work it,” and that means some boots on the ground and the Bagram and Kandahar bases in Afghanistan. Or Pakistan will do its worst.
Some other Petraeus nuggets: al-Qaeda is “a damaged, tarnished brand.” Bin Laden’s death is “very significant”, because he was the “iconic leader” who could bring in cash. Reconciliation talks with the Taliban? “I would not say we are close” and perhaps not “ultimately necessary.” Watch Yemen east of Aden, now a chief al-Qaeda concern.
Of course I asked about the presidency. The resumé will look good after the CIA. No, no, no, said Petraeus. But does he discuss it with Powell? Long pause. “I would never divulge my sources.”