The Fourth Star Part 10

"Yup," Grant replied. "Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

The really difficult days dwindled over the summer as commanders organized former Sunni insurgents into armed neighborhood watch groups, known as the Sons of Iraq. By the fall the United States had almost 70,000 sons of Iraq on the payroll. To control Iraqi neighborhoods, U.S. commanders blocked off neighborhoods with concrete barriers that made it harder for Sunni extremist groups and s.h.i.+te death squads to come and go. In some cases the Americans used the barriers to keep s.h.i.+te-dominated national police and army forces out of Sunni areas. The idea for the walls had come from the field, not headquarters. David Kilcullen, an Australian specialist on guerrilla war whom Petraeus had recruited as his counterinsurgency advisor, referred to the walls as "urban tourniquets," a temporary measure designed to stop the bleeding so that the patient doesn't die.

In September Petraeus returned to Was.h.i.+ngton to give his first a.s.sessment to Congress on whether his strategy was producing lasting results. He and his staff went through twenty-seven different drafts of his opening statement. The final version ran a stunning forty-five minutes. The Iraq debate had become too superheated for logic. So he decided that he was going to bludgeon skeptical lawmakers with data. His testimony was going to be a war of attrition.

A few days before the hearing, the Bush administration arranged for several officials well acquainted with congressional hearings and Iraq to come to Petraeus's house at Fort Myer to fire questions at him in a mock hearing. In Was.h.i.+ngton, it was known as a "murder board." The civilians who had been sent to help him prepare told him to start slas.h.i.+ng his statement. Petraeus began stripping out paragraphs with his executive officer, Colonel Pete Mansoor, and Captain Liz McNally, a Rhodes scholar who acted as his speechwriter.

The final presentation, which Petraeus delivered in a flat monotone, still ran a lengthy eighteen minutes. Violence levels were down in eight of the previous twelve weeks, he told the lawmakers. Civilian deaths had fallen by 45 percent. The number of weapons caches discovered was higher, suicide attacks were down, and Iraqi defense spending was increasing. "The military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met," he concluded. To hold on to the fragile gains, he recommended sustaining the increased troop levels and the fifteen-month tours through the summer of 2008.

A few days after he had returned to Baghdad he met with Prime Minister Maliki, who was ecstatic. "We all thank G.o.d for your successful hearings," he said. "I can now see the beginning of a victory in Iraq." Petraeus tried to tamp down his confidence. "Obviously we are going to need to see continued security improvements, but we are also going to have to show progress in other areas," he said. In particular, Petraeus was eager to see the Iraqis hold provincial elections that would allow Sunni tribal leaders who had boycotted earlier balloting to ama.s.s some political power. The Iraqis also had to settle on a formula for distributing oil revenues and develop a plan to find permanent jobs for the more than 100,000 Sunnis partic.i.p.ating in the Sons of Iraq neighborhood watch program.

Like Casey and Chiarelli in 2006, Petraeus found it almost impossible to pin down Maliki's real intentions toward Sunnis. A few weeks after his fall testimony he and Ryan Crocker met with the president via a video teleconference link from Baghdad. Maliki had been feuding with his Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Has.h.i.+mi, and Bush asked whether the prime minister disliked all Sunnis or just Has.h.i.+mi. "Maliki is not viscerally anti-Sunni, but he thinks that Has.h.i.+mi is out to get him and he might be right," replied Crocker, who had been working closely with the country's political leaders for almost a year. "This is not a government of national unity," the amba.s.sador continued. "The only time the Iraqi leaders behave that way is when you hold their head under water for a while and then let them back up."

The Sunni tribal leaders' fledgling alliance with the United States, the increase in American troops, and Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy continued to drive down violence. The United States also caught a break when radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who was losing control of his militia, called for a six-month cease-fire. The sectarian and ethnic tensions that had sparked the civil war in 2006 were still strong but increasingly were being pushed below the surface.

In September 2008 the last of the U.S. reinforcements started heading home. Petraeus was just a couple of weeks away from leaving as well. He'd been chosen to lead U.S. Central Command, replacing Abizaid's successor, Admiral Fallon, who resigned after a short, rocky tenure. In the United States Petraeus was being hailed as the most influential military officer of his generation. The problem, as he reminded his staff, was that the war wasn't over. Daily attacks had plummeted to levels not seen since early 2004, when the insurgency was in its infancy. But the relative quiet was still dependent on the presence of U.S. forces and the relations.h.i.+ps that they had forged with former Sunni insurgent groups. How dependent? No one actually knew.

In an area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death, the Rakkasans battalion that Petraeus had commanded in the early 1990s was going to find out. Petraeus had visited the battalion more than any other in Iraq, doling out advice on counterinsurgency and just about everything else, including what dance steps to use when the unit went home and partied. "If you want to throw a good welcome-home ball for your troops, you need to learn how to do the electric slide," Petraeus counseled the battalion commander. "Then you need to get out and do it. Everyone else will follow." It was pretty good advice if you were commanding the battalion in 1992, joked Lieutenant Colonel Andy Rohling, the current commander.

By 2008, the Rakkasans epitomized Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy. They had been so successful that they were averaging less than one attack a day and were on the verge of turning over their sector, which only a year earlier had been one of the most violent in Iraq, to a company about one-third the battalion's size. Colonel Rohling called his company commanders together a few weeks before the handover to lay out the plan.

The battalion headquarters was in a half-finished power plant that a Russian construction company had abandoned on the eve of the 2003 invasion. Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters had occupied it for much of 2005 and 2006. American troops had seized the compound in a b.l.o.o.d.y nighttime raid the following year and had held it ever since. The partially completed steel-and-cement skeleton stood ten stories. Graffiti on its support beams praised Saddam Hussein and listed the names and dates of "martyrs" and their suicide missions. Surrounding it were green pastures, reed-choked irrigation ditches, and dirt-poor farmers.

Rohling and his company commanders crammed into the battalion's main conference room, which they had fas.h.i.+oned out of plywood sheets on the power plant's second floor. "This is where we've been and what we're trying to avoid," Rohling said. He flashed a slide showing Vietnamese civilians scrambling to board a helicopter perched precariously on the roof of the CIA building in Saigon. No one laughed.

Rohling's best counterinsurgent was Captain Michael Starz. He stood out for his pa.s.sion, intelligence, and youthful bravado. Under Rohling's plan, Starz's ninety-man company was turning its area over to a thirty-soldier platoon. Starz, who had the look of an earnest graduate student in camouflage, had bluntly told his boss a few days earlier that he thought it was a dangerous and dumb idea. The area was too complex. The fledgling relations.h.i.+p he was trying to foster between the local Sunni tribes that had until recently backed the insurgency and the Iraqi army was too strained and fragile.

When Petraeus ventured out into the field-typically twice a week-he made sure that he spent at least an hour with company commanders such as Starz. He'd kick out their bosses, close the door, and ask the young officers what they thought was really happening in their sector. What had they learned? What mistakes had they made? What did they need to win? Petraeus knew that captains such as Starz had the best understanding of the politics and personalities on the ground.

Starz's sector, which included the cities of Mohmudiyah and Yusufiyah, had been among the most violent and unforgiving in Iraq. Over the years insurgents had inflicted heavy casualties on U.S. troops in the area, and in brazen attacks twice kidnapped U.S. soldiers off checkpoints, torturing and killing them. It also was the place where four angry, drunk soldiers raped a young girl and murdered her and her family. By mid-2008, several thousand of the area's young men had been organized into Sons of Iraq groups and were being paid $400 a month to guard street corners. "We pretty much employ all the extremists in my area," Starz said. He said it without pride or outrage; this was how the war was being won.

A few weeks before he turned over his sector, he grabbed a briefcase packed with crisp $100 bills and paid a visit to the Owesat tribe. The first time that Starz had driven down the dirt road that leads into the tribe's village, insurgents had seeded it with more than twenty roadside bombs, one of which killed Lieutenant Tracy Alger, a thirty-year-old officer from rural Wisconsin. "The people who killed Tracy were all from this tribe that we are going to pay," he said. "To tell you the truth, it doesn't bother me that we are paying them. I am very detached from it. I don't hold any anger in my heart." As Starz entered the village, barefoot tribal elders all rushed to greet him, and the tribe's preeminent sheikh welcomed him with kisses on each cheek. Sheikh Musahim al-Owesat led him past a cl.u.s.ter of boxy one-story cement houses to the tribe's diwan, a large room with benches and pillows lining the walls and a wheezing air conditioner connected to a clanking electric generator. Soon the men of the tribe were lining up to collect their $100 bills from one of Starz's lieutenants.

"How old are you?" Starz asked one boy, no more than fourteen. The United States wasn't supposed to pay anyone younger than eighteen. Before the boy could answer, the sheikh barked at him to take his money and leave. "His father was killed in the fighting and his family needs the money to survive," Sheikh Musahim explained. Starz crossed his name off the list for the next payday but let him keep the money. "I guess he'll be our target audience in a couple of years," he said philosophically. Tables full of cash were replaced by a feast of eggs, watermelon, bread, yogurt, and tomatoes. It was Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day, but few seemed reluctant to eat. Starz was fasting to see what it was like to go without food or water in 120-degree heat. Once the meal was done, Starz said goodbye to Sheikh Musahim, who lavished him with praise. "I respect you and love you as a human," the sheikh told him.

Soon his convoy was back on the road, rumbling past new, U.S.-funded poultry farms. The area south of Baghdad had raised most of the chickens for Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power. Now Starz's unit was trying to relaunch the industry. His brigade commander had spent about $1 million to import 95,000 chicken embryos from the Netherlands, which were of hardier stock than the scrawny, disease-p.r.o.ne local chickens. Petraeus loved the project and demanded regular updates on its progress in the morning briefing.

The chicken-farming initiative might have been borrowed right from one of Petraeus's favorite novels, The Centurions The Centurions, the 1960 book that follows French paratroopers as they fight insurgencies in Vietnam and Algeria. In one of the novel's more memorable pa.s.sages a French officer in Vietnam explains to another, more conventionally minded colleague how his unit had changed its approach, abandoning firepower-intensive attacks for a strategy that focused on winning over the locals and even helping them raise pigs. "We no longer wage the same war as you, Colonel," the officer says. "Nowadays it's a mixture of everything, a regular witches' brew ... of politics and sentiment, the human soul, religion and the best way of cultivating rice, yes, everything, including even the breeding of black pigs. I knew an officer in Cochin-China who by breeding black pigs, completely restored a situation which all of us regarded as lost."

The chicken farming initiative in Starz's sector wasn't producing the same stirring results that pig farming did in Larteguy's novel. It was turning out to be far cheaper to import whole frozen chickens from big industrial poultry farms in Brazil than it was to raise and slaughter fresh ones south of Baghdad.

Starz's most prized project was to rebuild the ancient Sayeed Abdullah shrine, which honored a s.h.i.+te saint and had been leveled by Sunnis when Iraq was melting down in a civil war. He had convinced the Iraqi commander he was partnered with to use some of his reconstruction money to contract with a local Sunni tribe to rebuild it. Whatever their sect, most people in his sector were eager to make peace with the United States. They were less willing to forgive each other, and Starz saw the contract as a step toward a st.u.r.dier peace. On his way to the shrine, he stopped by the office of Captain Mohammed Amjen, the s.h.i.+te commander of the local unit. Loose hand grenades were scattered across Amjen's desk. On the wall hung a picture of his predecessor, who had been killed four months earlier by a female suicide bomber. Amjen pa.s.sed on some rumors about Al Qaeda fighters moving back into the area. A few minutes later the two officers headed out to the shrine.

There they struck up a conversation with the construction foreman, a Sunni tribesman clad in a dirty dishdasha. His face was covered by a few days' worth of stubble. "Al Qaeda destroyed everything in this area," the foreman said, shaking his head.

"Tell the truth," Amjen replied, angrily waving a finger. "Your tribe was Al Qaeda. And they didn't destroy everything. They didn't touch the Sunni mosques. They just killed the s.h.i.+tes."

The foreman, not wanting to alienate his patron, quickly changed the subject. "Without Captain Starz and Captain Amjen none of this would have happened. You both are kind and generous. May G.o.d bless you and make you undefeated in all your battles."

Petraeus had pushed young officers to seek out local leaders, many of whom had supported the insurgency. His "bottom-up" reconciliation strategy required meticulous intelligence work and a deep understanding of local politics. It also demanded a mind-set s.h.i.+ft. In Petraeus's Iraq there were very few good guys or bad guys, and certainly no "anti-Iraqi forces," the Orwellian term that Rumsfeld had once coined to describe the enemy when he decided that insurgent insurgent was too flattering. was too flattering.

Back at his base in an abandoned potato plant, Starz tried to explain how his perspective had changed during his second yearlong tour. He was less idealistic and far more practical. He'd come to realize that concepts such as democracy and loyalty to country or the central government didn't resonate. "Loyalty is constantly s.h.i.+fting here, and there is no moral component to it," he said. "It's so foreign to our way of thinking, and it's hard to respect. But you have to remember that it is a different way of seeing the world."

As for counterinsurgency, "it comes naturally to me," Starz said. "I like the thinking part of it." It was the somewhat hidebound pre-Iraq Army that he had joined out of West Point in 1999 that now seemed strange. As Starz prepared to leave, he resembled one of the French paratroopers in The Centurions The Centurions, who ebulliently celebrates the changes he and his fellow officers have been able to make in battle as they cast off the rigid, bureaucratic tendencies of the French Army and adapted to the messy guerrilla war they were fighting. "I'd like two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, distinguished and doddering generals ... an Army that would be shown for a modest fee on every camp fairground," the French officer says. "The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage who would not be put on display but from whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That's the Army in which I should like to fight."

It was the Army that Petraeus had forged in Iraq.

EPILOGUE.

Big Green First to fight for the right, And to build the nation's might, And the Army goes rolling along Proud of all we have done, Fighting till the battle's won, And the Army goes rolling along.-"THE ARMY SONG"Fort Monroe, Old Point Comfort, Virginia December 8, 2008 The star-shaped fortress lay on an exposed spit of land at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The Army had occupied the ma.s.sive brick battlements for hundreds of years, holding the ground even during the Civil War, when it formed an impregnable Union enclave in the midst of the Confederacy. But the long presence on the sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake was coming to an end. The post, which had ceased being vital to the country's defense almost a century earlier, was slated for closing in a year or so. In the Army, change sometimes came slowly.

On this day, as a frigid wind swept in off the water, another sort of closure was happening on the parade grounds. One of the last U.S. officers to have served in Vietnam was retiring from the Army. As a lieutenant in 1972, Scott Wallace had been an advisor to South Vietnamese troops in the Mekong Delta. He had risen in the following decades through the ranks, eventually commanding troops during the invasion of Iraq, and he'd run Fort Leavenworth prior to Petraeus's arrival there. Now he was set to receive a proper four-star send-off, with a marching band and a thumping seventeen-gun salute fired by howitzers pointed out to sea.

General George Casey, as the Army chief, had flown in from Was.h.i.+ngton to preside. It was the kind of occasion Casey loved, the songs and ceremony recalling his childhood on posts around the world. In his black beret and camouflage fatigues, Casey beamed as he walked to the podium in the middle of the wide lawn. Seeing other officers he had served with for decades, some now retired, reminded him how much the Army had become his extended family. In the crowd he saw retired Army chief Carl Vuono, who had rescued Casey's career nearly twenty years earlier by getting him a job in the 1st Cav. It was a moment to look backward. Wallace's retirement after thirty-nine years in uniform meant that the Army was finally severing one of its last direct links to the war in Vietnam.

That conflict, Casey noted as he addressed the crowd, "was a formative experience both for Scott and for our Army." In its aftermath, the generals who ran the inst.i.tution had asked, "Just how does this Army fight?" The answer they devised "took the Army out of the rice paddies of Vietnam and placed it on the western European battlefield against the Warsaw Pact." Casey had lived through that turbulent transformation as a young officer in Mainz and in Vicenza. He had stood guard in the barracks over his own men, including the drug addicts and the discipline cases that populated the ranks in those days as the Army withdrew from Southeast Asia and s.h.i.+fted to an all-volunteer force. And he had been part of rebuilding its strength, which still sent a surge of pride through him.

As Casey said goodbye to the last of the Vietnam generation, the Army was beginning to come home from Iraq after five years, facing the same questions about the future as it had in that earlier war. It had once rejected the idea that Vietnam had something to teach. No one thought it would repeat the same mistake after Iraq. But what lessons would it take? Casey's experiences had led him to some conclusions. One of the biggest lessons that he'd taken was that counterinsurgency warfare was far harder than he'd thought it could be. "As a division commander in Kosovo, I would have said that if I can do conventional war, I can do anything else," he often said as chief. "Now I know that isn't true." The Army absolutely couldn't lose its ability to wage counterinsurgency wars, he said.

But he worried that young Army officers, who had been schooled in Iraq and Afghanistan, were losing the skills that they'd need in future conventional battles, the sort that he and his generation had spent several decades mastering at the National Training Center. To best prepare the Army, he settled on the split-the-difference approach that reflected the way he had worked through most problems while in command. It was carefully reasoned, meticulously researched, and unlikely to require the major inst.i.tutional changes that some counterinsurgency advocates demanded. Casey wanted to locate the middle point somewhere between counterinsurgency and conventional combat that would allow the military to react in whichever direction it had to in the future.

He found rea.s.surance by examining Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. At first glance the Hezbollah forces didn't look too different from the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They operated in small cells and lived among the Lebanese people. But the Hezbollah fighters were far better armed and trained than the enemies the United States had fought. Over thirty-four days, the insurgents pounded the Israelis with sophisticated ant.i.tank guided weapons and cruise missiles. After the battle, senior Israeli commanders blamed their losses on their long tours in the West Bank and Gaza. The years of occupation duty, they argued, had caused their soldiers' conventional skills to atrophy and left them vulnerable to the disciplined and well-armed Hezbollah fighters. By 2009, the Pentagon had coined a new term to describe the Lebanon battle and others like it. They were "hybrid wars" that combined aspects of a conventional fight, counterinsurgency, and peacekeeping. Much as it had been for the last four decades, the Army was embroiled in a debate about what the next war was going to look like and what kind of military the United States would need to fight it. The truth was that there was no consensus, other than that the Army should not turn its back on Iraq.

John Abizaid's long experience in the Arab world gave him a different view than most about the changes the military needed to make. He'd retired from the Army and moved home to the Sierra Nevada, an hour's drive from Coleville, where he and Kathy had grown up. They loved the soaring, snowcapped peaks that surrounded their home. Abizaid also loved the fact that he was far from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., a place where he'd never felt entirely comfortable. He jokingly said he was living in "ungoverned s.p.a.ce," a term the Pentagon applied to terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan and Somalia.

Even in retirement, the Middle East and its problems still dominated his thoughts. He'd watched the conflicts between moderates and extremists, s.h.i.+tes and Sunnis, Israelis and Palestinians unfold since his days at the University of Jordan in the late 1970s. It had taught him to take the long view of events in the region and to appreciate the limits of military power on its own to make lasting changes.

After his retirement, he tried to explain his ideas at universities, foreign policy think tanks, military bases, and even at the monthly Rotary Club luncheon in Gardnerville, a town about thirty miles from Coleville. The source of the instability in the Middle East, as Abizaid saw it, was the conflict between moderates and extremists within Islam. The United States couldn't decide this struggle. "I came to the conclusion a long time ago that you can't control the Middle East," he often said. But America could help its more moderate allies prevail. His solution amounted to an anti-Powell Doctrine for the Arab world. Rather than relying on military force to remake the Middle East, he wanted to send small teams of soldiers and civilians to work with allies to reform their economies and build competent local armies and police. "Throughout the region we need to quit being the primary military force and over time do less as we increase the capacity more and more of indigenous forces," he said.

If there was a model, it was one he had seen on his travels years earlier when he had come across a tiny band of British soldiers in the wilds of Oman, training and fighting with the Sultan's army. Britain had shed its empire and most of its global commitments, but it still pursued its interests where and how it could, with a clear-eyed sense of limits built up over centuries. The United States had far more resources and more places where it needed to be present, but it could learn from Britain's example, he thought.

The problem was finding soldiers who could put his ideas into practice. They had to be soldiers like John Abizaid. In his retirement he sat on the board that chose officers for the Olmsted Scholars.h.i.+p, the program that had first sent him to the Middle East. The program could produce officers who were culturally aware and comfortable in foreign lands, the qualities he thought were needed. The problem was that there weren't nearly enough of them. During the Cold War the Defense Department had trained tens of thousands of Sovietologists and nuclear strategists. The Olmsted program paid for only twenty-seven officers each year to study overseas. "Why not have 270 or 2,700?" Abizaid wondered.

His approach offered a plausible source for a segment of the military, but it was no panacea for the entire Army, a force of over a million active and reserve soldiers, few of whom had Abizaid's curiosity about historical and cultural forces shaping the places where they might be called on to fight. Abizaid recognized this.

But his unhappy experience in Iraq was a poignant example of a fact Abizaid had long warned about: generals didn't get to pick the wars they were asked to win. There was no guarantee that a future White House wouldn't send the Army into another misbegotten conflict or that a crisis wouldn't emerge requiring a large conventional ground force. The Army had to be ready for a whole range of contingencies-as Iraq had shown.

While Abizaid was talking about changes that would take decades, soldiers in Iraq had been forced to adapt as best they could. And though it had taken too long, they had done so. The best officers had worked tirelessly to understand the politics and culture of their areas. They brokered local cease-fires between warring Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes, bought off sheikhs with reconstruction projects, and even rebuilt religious shrines if that was what it took to achieve even a tentative peace. The most curious among them pored over works of history and counterinsurgency theory from Vietnam and Algeria. The learning process had often been slow and costly. Many still lacked the kind of deep cultural understanding that Abizaid wanted. But, spurred on by dissidents in its ranks and painful battlefield failures, the Army had become a very competent counterinsurgency force.

It was Petraeus who both drove this change and benefited from it. A few days before he gave up command in Iraq several hundred soldiers gathered in Al Faw Palace for a party to say goodbye. The lights dimmed in the palace banquet hall and a highlight video, set to thumping rock music, began to play on a movie-theater-sized screen. Images of exhausted soldiers and wailing, grief-stricken Iraqis gave way to a clip of Petraeus testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The situation in Iraq is dire. The stakes are high. There are no easy choices, and the way ahead will be hard," he said in a flat monotone. "But hard is not hopeless." The music quickened. Soon the soldiers on the big screen were collaring insurgents, handing out school supplies, and cutting ribbons on new police stations and sewage-treatment plants.

When the lights came back on Petraeus stood atop a plywood riser. Although he would never admit it to Holly, he was sad to leave Iraq. His life there had settled into a comfortable rhythm. The daily battle update, the regular trips to visit his field commanders, and the weekly meetings with Maliki all had afforded him a feeling of control over the war that had dominated six years of his life. His new job as the top commander in the Middle East would give him a continuing role in Iraq. But it was clear that most of his attention was going to be consumed by the growing violence and instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In truth, the U.S. military's influence in Iraq was on the wane. Iraqi-led victories over Sadr's militia in Baghdad and Basra in the spring of 2007 had given Maliki, who only months earlier had been fighting for his political survival, a new swagger. Iraq was returning to real self-government, though where it would lead was uncertain.

The soldiers who gathered for Petraeus's farewell weren't really there to celebrate the gains in Iraq. They'd come to thank the general for what he'd done for them. In his nineteen months in command he'd imbued his troops-many of whom had begun to doubt whether victory was even possible-with a new resolve. He'd made the Army feel smart again, and convinced his brigades and battalions that they could prevail.

As custom dictated, his soldiers had brought gifts for their departing commander. The noncommissioned officers in the palace arranged with the Pentagon to have him named the Army's first honorary command sergeant major. It was an accolade freighted with irony. Petraeus's tendency toward micromanagement early in his career had often made him the scourge of his sergeants. Now they wanted to welcome him into their fraternity. Next Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, Petraeus's deputy in Iraq, presented him with a replica of the "Iron Mike" statue that stands across the street from the Fort Bragg officers' club. The statue depicts a World War II-era paratrooper who has just alighted in enemy territory. His foot rests on a pile of rubble. He is fingering the trigger of his weapon. His helmet is unbuckled and slightly askew. For decades the type of fighting man the statue represented was the Army ideal, one that Petraeus had always aspired to. He turned the statue in his hands. "I have never received one of these, but it means an awful lot," he said, his voice breaking with emotion.

The embrace of his own army was important to Petraeus, but so was the regard of his hero Marcel Bigeard. They had kept up an occasional correspondence over the years. Now that the legendary French paratrooper was over ninety, the letters from France came less frequently and were written by an a.s.sistant. But Bigeard's sentiments were unmistakable. He had followed Petraeus's exploits in Iraq and now treated the younger American officer as an equal. One letter arrived on the anniversary of Dien Bien Phu, the French defeat in Indochina where Bigeard had been taken captive. He had come home to France years later determined to rebuild the spirit of the French paratroopers. He had not forgotten those days. "The last will of General Bigeard is to have his ashes spread over the Dien Bien Phu area," the letter said. It closed with these words to Petraeus: "I wish you all the best for your mission. I know how difficult it is... Airborne, all the way."

He had begun as a skinny, hyperambitious lieutenant, the kind of officer who sat with a megaphone in the motor pool and instructed his sergeants on the proper way to grease an axle. He had grown into a general who, though still demanding, was far more comfortable with uncertainty and experimentation. His disparagers over the years had said he had risen by connections, but they had been rendered mute by his achievements. Now the Army that had once questioned his combat skills hung on his p.r.o.nouncements and debated his ideas, even the old war horses from Vietnam. At gatherings of retired generals, Petraeus would listen respectfully as his predecessors urged him to go on the offense in Iraq, as if a flanking maneuver or a rising body count would finally end the war. Petraeus would gently remind them that winning in Iraq required killing the enemy, to be sure, but much more. Above all, it required patience. He was the most influential officer of his generation. In 2008, he had made a special trip back to the Pentagon to chair a promotion board to select the next group of one-star generals. These were the officers who would lead the Army for the next decade. Petraeus's panel went out of its way to reward soldiers who had proven themselves as innovators in Iraq. Colonel Sean McFarland, who had forged critical early alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province, made the list of forty new one-stars. So too did Colonel McMaster, whose approach to securing Tal Afar had prefigured the strategy Petraeus employed in Baghdad. Petraeus's panel ignored the misgivings of some of McMaster's former superiors in Iraq, who worried that he could be single-minded and stubborn, and focused on his battlefield performance.

The unorthodox ideas that Petraeus had championed years ago in Sosh now dominated high-level Pentagon strategy papers and policy speeches. "The U.S. military's ability to kick down the door must be matched by our ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward," Defense Secretary Robert Gates opined. Gates's message was that the American way of war, built around quick battles and high-tech weapons, was giving way to a new reality in which economic development and improved governance were often more important than overwhelming force.

No one was sure how long Petraeus's ideas would endure. There was little inst.i.tutional support in the Pentagon, defense industry, or Congress for the relatively low-tech weapons needed for wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers wanted to focus on big, expensive projects that brought jobs to their districts.

Petraeus's vision for his Army also was hardly the palliative that the Powell Doctrine had been. At best, it promised more long wars whose considerable burdens would be borne by a military that accounted for less than one-half of 1 percent of American society. Even President Obama's plan to end the Iraq war reflected this sobering reality. "Let me say this as plainly as I can. By August thirty-first, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end," the president promised in a speech delivered in front of thousands of camouflage-clad Marines. He then went on to say that he was going to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq through 2011 to advise Iraqi forces, kill terrorists, and provide security for military and civilian personnel involved in governance and reconstruction projects. These were essentially the same missions the military had performed in 2008 and 2009.

Only a few days later Obama dispatched 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan. As he had done in Iraq, Petraeus stressed that troops would have to live among the Afghan people, protect the population, and where possible win over reconcilable enemies. In Afghanistan, though, Petraeus faced a new set of problems. The country was larger than Iraq, more fractured, and heavily dependent on the cultivation of opium for its economic survival. The enemy had a safe haven in the ungoverned regions of Pakistan. The ongoing Iraq war and the global economic crisis meant that Petraeus would have to make do in Afghanistan with less reconstruction money, fewer troops, and smaller, more poorly equipped indigenous security forces. "Afghanistan is going to be the longest campaign of the long war," Petraeus predicted.

The test of whether Iraq had changed the Army permanently would not come in Afghanistan. It would come in the Pentagon, where the decisions were made about who got promoted, what equipment was bought, and how soldiers were trained. Few other officers would be as involved in those decisions as Pete Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief. He had been home from Iraq for a little over a year when a retired colonel named Gary Paxton, one of his old brigade commanders, stopped by his house for dinner. The two officers went back decades to Chiarelli's stint in Germany in the late 1980s. Paxton had taken command of Chiarelli's brigade just after the CAT compet.i.tion. He had learned about the role that then Major Chiarelli had played in pus.h.i.+ng the United States to victory in the contest and quickly snapped up the bright young officer to serve as his operations officer, the prime job for a major in a combat brigade.

Paxton was nothing like the brainy officers who inhabited the Sosh department. He was brash, loud, and tactless. Chiarelli never forgot how Paxton had addressed his troops at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Gelnhausen two decades before. "Everybody's going to get some time off," he said. "Some of you guys will go home and be with family, and some of you guys are single and are going to go downtown and get drunk and try to get laid." Chiarelli went rus.h.i.+ng up to him after the speech. "Sir, you can't say that stuff anymore," he laughed. "Twenty percent of the people out here are females."

Despite their differences, Chiarelli admired Paxton immensely. He was the archetypal Cold Warrior, ready to face off against the Soviet Red Army, stationed only a few hundred miles from their base. Paxton had retired from the Army in the early 1990s and moved to Alaska, but he and Chiarelli and their families had kept in close touch. Their eldest sons had both served as best man at each other's wedding. Their wives spoke often. So when Paxton and his wife pa.s.sed through Was.h.i.+ngton the Chiarellis invited them for dinner. Soon the talk turned to Iraq, where the violence had finally begun to fall. Only a few months earlier the war had seemed lost. Now there was at least a reasonable hope that it was salvageable.

"Well, what do you think about Iraq?" a delighted Paxton asked Chiarelli.

The progress under Petraeus had been "absolutely fantastic," Chiarelli replied, but unless there was matching economic and political progress in the coming months, the sectarian violence would spike as U.S. troops withdrew, and the gains could be transitory. Paxton listened, but Chiarelli could tell that he wasn't buying it. His old mentor, who had done a tour in Vietnam, was pretty sure he knew what had happened in Iraq: Petraeus had taken command and after years of dithering had finally ordered his troops to start punis.h.i.+ng insurgents. Instead of behaving like some academic or city administrator, Paxton thought he'd acted like a soldier. "You know, Pete, the problem with you is that you just never were tough enough," Paxton said.

Chiarelli stared right at his former mentor. His voice tightened with anger. "Petraeus feels exactly the way I do," he growled. "I promise you that." Chiarelli carried the insult around with him for months. "I don't think I've ever been hurt quite that much," he recalled. "It just tore my heart out."

The testy exchange between the two old friends showed how much had changed since the first tanks crossed from Kuwait into southern Iraq in 2003. Then the Army had for years believed almost unquestioningly in the wisdom of the Powell Doctrine and in its ability to bludgeon just about any foe. Six years and many painful losses later, it had emerged from Iraq as a far more flexible, modest, and intellectually nimble force. Colonels, majors, and captains in Iraq and Afghanistan took risks and saw themselves as more than just combat officers. They understood that in today's wars building and brokering disputes were sometimes as important as killing the enemy.

It was that army that Chiarelli had wanted badly to lead in combat. Even after getting pa.s.sed over for the Iraq command in 2007, he held out hope that President Bush would pick him to replace Petraeus the following year. Once again, it didn't happen. Although he had been on the short list, Bush gave the position to General Odierno, whose knowledge of the country was more current, senior White House officials reasoned. Unlike Chiarelli, who had presided with Casey over Iraq's descent into civil war, Odierno had a proven track record of success from having served as Petraeus's deputy. Fairly or not, Chiarelli and Casey would always be marked as the officers who had been in command when the place came apart.

When Chiarelli got his fourth star in the summer of 2008 and was named vice chief, he was an odd choice for the position, which didn't exactly lend itself to the pursuit of soaring strategic thoughts. He'd also be working directly for Casey. Ever since their tour together their relations.h.i.+p had been civil but strained.

Chiarelli didn't want to be a typical vice chief, stuck behind a desk administering the Army's far-flung posts and installations and fighting to save its weapons programs from the budget axe. He had to do those things, to be sure. But he also saw his job as making sure the military's penchant for order and discipline didn't cut off the argument and debate about what the Army had undergone in Iraq. One of his responsibilities was to talk to all of the new brigadier generals, who gathered several times a year in groups of about two dozen to think about the service's future and the role they would play in shaping it. At one of these meetings, at a conference center outside Was.h.i.+ngton just before Christmas in 2008, he ended his presentation with a quotation: "'America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq... The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq const.i.tute a crisis in American generals.h.i.+p.' "'America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq... The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq const.i.tute a crisis in American generals.h.i.+p.' Does anyone know who wrote these words?" he asked. Does anyone know who wrote these words?" he asked.

"Paul Yingling," several officers in the small crowd replied. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling's essay "A Failure in Generals.h.i.+p" had been published almost two years earlier, but his words still drew winces and groans from most senior Army officers. Since it appeared, Yingling's career had not gone smoothly. His artillery battalion had received orders to Iraq earlier that year. Because his troops were going to be guarding prisoners and not in combat, the Pentagon had decided to send the battalion but not Yingling or his staff officers. He had taken command of the battalion only a few months earlier, and now it was being ripped away from him. Many in the Army saw the move as punishment for his criticism of the generals.

When Chiarelli learned what was happening, he called Yingling at Fort Hood to offer his help. Although the two shared a connection to Sosh, they had never met. Petraeus, meanwhile, interceded from Baghdad. A few days later Yingling learned that the Army had changed its mind. He was going to be allowed to serve alongside his soldiers in Iraq. The fifteen-month deployment was Yingling's third in five years. He had volunteered for all three.

Chiarelli understood why some of the new one-star generals groaned when they saw Yingling's incendiary words. But he was also determined to change their mind-set. "Isn't this the kind of officer we want in our Army?" he asked. "He's pa.s.sionate, intelligent, and engaged."

Iraq had forced ma.s.sive changes to the Army's equipment, training, and strategy. But the most important legacy of the war had been cultural. The war had upended most of the service's basic a.s.sumptions about how it should fight, undermining the Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on short, intense wars but not replacing it with anything nearly so straightforward. Chiarelli wasn't sure he could predict what the next war would look like. But he knew what kind of officers would be needed. He wanted an officer corps that argued, debated, and took intellectual risks. Even that laudable goal was far from accepted within the Army.

NOTES.

CHAPTER ONE.

1. The helicopters descended onto the hilltop clearing: This account relies on coverage of General Casey's press conference in the This account relies on coverage of General Casey's press conference in the New York Times New York Times on June 30, 1970, "Last Combat Unit out of Cambodia After Two Months," and interviews with the elder Casey's daughters Joan Gettys, Winn Cullen, and Ann Bukawyn, who watched television coverage of the event. on June 30, 1970, "Last Combat Unit out of Cambodia After Two Months," and interviews with the elder Casey's daughters Joan Gettys, Winn Cullen, and Ann Bukawyn, who watched television coverage of the event.2. Casey climbed into the copilot seat of his Huey helicopter: The details of Casey's disappearance are taken from The details of Casey's disappearance are taken from Incursion Incursion by J. D. Coleman, a journalist and retired Army lieutenant colonel who served with Casey. by J. D. Coleman, a journalist and retired Army lieutenant colonel who served with Casey.5 That evening, the Caseys hosted a party at their house to celebrate: The description of the party comes from interviews with George W. Casey Jr., Winn Cullen, and Casey's Georgetown University friends Christopher Muse and Ray O'Hara. The description of the party comes from interviews with George W. Casey Jr., Winn Cullen, and Casey's Georgetown University friends Christopher Muse and Ray O'Hara.8. As the funeral party gathered at Fort Myer's Old Post Chapel: The account of the funeral and gathering at Quarters One came from interviews with the elder Casey's children and Sheila Casey. It also relies on news coverage in the The account of the funeral and gathering at Quarters One came from interviews with the elder Casey's children and Sheila Casey. It also relies on news coverage in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post.9. After three days of battling a low-grade forest fire: The biographical material on Abizaid and his family comes from interviews with him, Kathy Abizaid, Michael Krause, and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Karl Eikenberry, Abizaid's West Point roommate. The biographical material on Abizaid and his family comes from interviews with him, Kathy Abizaid, Michael Krause, and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Karl Eikenberry, Abizaid's West Point roommate.12 The telephone calls came late at night: The biographical material on Chiarelli and family relies on interviews with him, Beth Chiarelli, and Theresa Chiarelli. The biographical material on Chiarelli and family relies on interviews with him, Beth Chiarelli, and Theresa Chiarelli.14. Rummaging in the garage one day as a teenager: This account comes from interviews with Chiarelli and is also covered in This account comes from interviews with Chiarelli and is also covered in The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family by Martha Raddatz. by Martha Raddatz.15. As a kid Dave Petraeus used to sneak onto the West Point campus: The account of Petraeus's time at West Point comes from interviews with Petraeus, Holly Petraeus, General (Ret.) William Knowlton, and fellow cadets Chris White, John Edgecombe, Dave Buto, and Reamer Argot. The account of Petraeus's time at West Point comes from interviews with Petraeus, Holly Petraeus, General (Ret.) William Knowlton, and fellow cadets Chris White, John Edgecombe, Dave Buto, and Reamer Argot.19 A few months after he arrived, a gang of soldiers tore through: The account of Casey's time in Mainz and Vicenza was based on interviews with Casey, Lieutenant General Tom Metz, Ed Charo, E. K. Smith, Joseph Tallman, Jeff Jones, Jack O'Conner, L. H. "Bucky" Burruss, Jim Simms, Turner Scott, and Jeff Rock. The account of Casey's time in Mainz and Vicenza was based on interviews with Casey, Lieutenant General Tom Metz, Ed Charo, E. K. Smith, Joseph Tallman, Jeff Jones, Jack O'Conner, L. H. "Bucky" Burruss, Jim Simms, Turner Scott, and Jeff Rock.19 "The price price of Vietnam has been a terrible one": of Vietnam has been a terrible one": General Michael's letter was quoted in General Michael's letter was quoted in The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Cla.s.s of 1966 The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Cla.s.s of 1966 by Rick Atkinson. by Rick Atkinson.22 A few weeks earlier Lufthansa flight 181, bound for Frankfurt: The description of the origins of Delta Force comes from The description of the origins of Delta Force comes from Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorism Unit by Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorism Unit by Colonel (Ret.) Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox. Colonel (Ret.) Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox.24 Some days Casey and the other soldiers started before dawn: The description of Casey's Delta Force tryouts came from interviews with Casey and fellow partic.i.p.ants L. H. "Bucky" Burruss and E. K. Smith. The description of Casey's Delta Force tryouts came from interviews with Casey and fellow partic.i.p.ants L. H. "Bucky" Burruss and E. K. Smith.

CHAPTER TWO.

27 "Well, we have finally made it to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan": All letters to the Olmsted Foundation were provided by General Abizaid and Kathy Abizaid. All letters to the Olmsted Foundation were provided by General Abizaid and Kathy Abizaid.27 the seven other winners that year had all gone off to Europe: Information on the other scholars came from the Olmsted Foundation website. Information on the other scholars came from the Olmsted Foundation website.27. Toward the end of his stay Abizaid decided to run the entire length of Jordan: Some details of Abizaid's run came from an article in the Some details of Abizaid's run came from an article in the Jordan Times Jordan Times that was published in 1980. that was published in 1980.33. "One of the most intelligent officers I have ever known:" Abizaid's fitness reports were included in his application for the Olmsted Scholars.h.i.+p. Abizaid's fitness reports were included in his application for the Olmsted Scholars.h.i.+p.

CHAPTER THREE.

35. The letter from a captain named David Petraeus: The description of Petraeus's letter came from an interview with Brigadier General (Ret.) James Shelton. The description of Petraeus's letter came from an interview with Brigadier General (Ret.) James Shelton.36. When, shortly after arriving, she heard a radio commercial: The account of Petraeus's arrival at Fort Stewart came from Holly Petraeus. The description of the 24th Infantry Division's readiness came from several sources, including interviews with Petraeus, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) George Stotser, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ed Soyster, and the Department of the Army Historical Summary for fiscal year 1980. The account of Petraeus's arrival at Fort Stewart came from Holly Petraeus. The description of the 24th Infantry Division's readiness came from several sources, including interviews with Petraeus, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) George Stotser, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ed Soyster, and the Department of the Army Historical Summary for fiscal year 1980.36. A picture snapped that evening: The account of the training exercise in France comes from Gen. Petraeus and from Rick Bursky, who served in the 509th and took the photograph. The account of the training exercise in France comes from Gen. Petraeus and from Rick Bursky, who served in the 509th and took the photograph.37. he had lobbied to come to Fort Stewart for one main reason: Holly Petraeus and others described his interest in joining the Ranger battalion. Petraeus described his interest in Bigeard and receiving the autographed picture as a Christmas present. Holly Petraeus and others described his interest in joining the Ranger battalion. Petraeus described his interest in Bigeard and receiving the autographed picture as a Christmas present.38. So he began spending one day a week in the motor pool: From interviews with Petraeus and Dan Grigson, a fellow company commander in the 24th Infantry Division. From interviews with Petraeus and Dan Grigson, a fellow company commander in the 24th Infantry Division.39. His success in the EIB compet.i.tion "put Petraeus on the map": The accounts of the basketball champions.h.i.+p and the Expert Infantry Badge ceremony come from Petraeus, Shelton, and Col. (Ret.) George Wilkins. The accounts of the basketball champions.h.i.+p and the Expert Infantry Badge ceremony come from Petraeus, Shelton, and Col. (Ret.) George Wilkins.40. "We thought he was the best guy for the job": From interview with Shelton. From interview with Shelton.40. It was like the Fourth of July, only with real rockets: From interview with Marty Gendron. From interview with Marty Gendron.41. "basically what we have is a hollow Army": The account of Meyer's speech at Camp David comes from James Kitfield's The account of Meyer's speech at Camp David comes from James Kitfield's Prodigal Soldiers Prodigal Soldiers, an excellent history of the Army from Vietnam to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.41 When a New York Times New York Times reporter showed up at Fort Stewart: reporter showed up at Fort Stewart: Shelton is quoted in the Shelton is quoted in the New York Times New York Times, September 24, 1980.41. "The difference between you and me, Dave": From interview with Grigson. From interview with Grigson.42. He wanted Petraeus to be his eyes and ears, to carry out sensitive a.s.signments: From interview with General (Ret.) John Galvin. From interview with General (Ret.) John Galvin.42. "Sir, your April evaluation," read the cover sheet: Doc.u.ment provided by Galvin. Doc.u.ment provided by Galvin.43. Their close relations.h.i.+p did not always go over well: From interview with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H. G. "Pete" Taylor. From interview with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H. G. "Pete" Taylor.44. "Some people compared Petraeus to Ma.s.sengale": From interview with Martin Rollinson. From interview with Martin Rollinson.45. For two weeks, he and Petraeus crisscrossed the battlefield: From interviews with Taylor and Brigadier General (Ret.) Taft Ring. From interviews with Taylor and Brigadier General (Ret.) Taft Ring.47. Hezbollah, the militant s.h.i.+te group: For an account of Hezbollah's rise, see For an account of Hezbollah's rise, see Hezbollah Hezbollah by Augustus Richard Norton. by Augustus Richard Norton.48. He and the four dozen or so other United Nations observers: The accounts of Abizaid's time in Lebanon come from interviews with Abizaid and other members of the observer group: John Wagner, Larry Colvin, and Greg Von Wald. The accounts of Abizaid's time in Lebanon come from interviews with Abizaid and other members of the observer group: John Wagner, Larry Colvin, and Greg Von Wald.49. "War in southern Lebanon is difficult to imagine by common standards of reference": Taken from a paper written by Abizaid ent.i.tled "In Defense of the Northern Border: Israel's Security Zone in Southern Lebanon." December 30, 1986. It was written for the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Taken from a paper written by Abizaid ent.i.tled "In Defense of the Northern Border: Israel's Security Zone in Southern Lebanon." December 30, 1986. It was written for the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.49. "There was no shortage of willing martyrs": "There was no shortage of willing martyrs": Taken from Abizaid, "In Defense of the Northern Border." Taken from Abizaid, "In Defense of the Northern Border."50. "Moderates in Amal, unable to deliver on promises": Taken from Abizaid, "In Defense of the Northern Border." Taken from Abizaid, "In Defense of the Northern Border."51. Shortly after he returned, Thurman marched down: This scene was recounted by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Dan Christman, who was also in the office with Thurman and Miller. This scene was recounted by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Dan Christman, who was also in the office with Thurman and Miller.

CHAPTER FOUR.

52. Beth Chiarelli was just about to tee off: From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and General Peter Chiarelli. From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and General Peter Chiarelli.55. they were joining a high-powered crowd: From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and Peter Chiarelli, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Lee Donne Olvey, and Jeffrey S. McKitrick. From interviews with Beth Chiarelli and Peter Chiarelli, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Lee Donne Olvey, and Jeffrey S. McKitrick.56. Chiarelli was was a little intimidated: a little intimidated: From interview with Chiarelli. From interview with Chiarelli.57. Throwing together freethinkers and ambitious young officers: The history of the Social Sciences Department comes from The history of the Social Sciences Department comes from The Lincoln Brigade The Lincoln Brigade by Capt. Martha S. H. VanDriel and from numerous interviews. Biographical material on Brig. Gen. George A. Lincoln came from interviews and from by Capt. Martha S. H. VanDriel and from numerous interviews. Biographical material on Brig. Gen. George A. Lincoln came from interviews and from Issues of National Security in the 1970's: Essays Presented to Colonel George A. Lincoln on His Sixtieth Birthday Issues of National Security in the 1970's: Essays Presented to Colonel George A. Lincoln on His Sixtieth Birthday.59 "I am going to take your file and I am going to keep it upside down": From interview with Chiarelli. From interview with Chiarelli.59. "A member of the department is always always a member of the department": a member of the department": From interviews with Olvey and McKitrick. From interviews with Olvey and McKitrick.60. Petraeus, who admired him immensely, decided to take the gamble: From interviews with Petraeus and from "Beyond the Cloister," an article he wrote for From interviews with Petraeus and from "Beyond the Cloister," an article he wrote for The American Interest The American Interest in July-August 2007 that recounts his experiences in graduate school. in July-August 2007 that recounts his experiences in graduate school.61. His foray into civilian graduate school had its humbling moments: From interviews with Petraeus, John Duffield, and from "Beyond the Cloister." From interviews with Petraeus, John Duffield, and from "Beyond the Cloister."61 When Taylor arrived at West Point in the 1970s: From an interview with William Taylor. Other details about the Social Sciences Department and Vietnam come from interviews with Petraeus, Chiarelli, Asa Clark, McKitrick, and Andrew Krepinevich. From an interview with William Taylor. Other details about the Social Sciences Department and Vietnam come from interviews with Petraeus, Chiarelli, Asa Clark, McKitrick, and Andrew Krepinevich.63 The two officers long had been on parallel intellectual paths: From interviews with Petraeus and Krepinevich. From interviews with Petraeus and Krepinevich.64 The acclaim from outsiders made the Army even more defensive: General (Ret.) Bruce Palmer Jr.'s review of General (Ret.) Bruce Palmer Jr.'s review of The Army and Vietnam The Army and Vietnam appeared in appeared in Parameters Parameters, Autumn 1988. The details of Krepinevich's treatment by the Army came from an interview with Krepinevich.64 Petraeus later referred to Krepinevich's treatment as "unsettling": From Petraeus's dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era." From Petraeus's dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era."66 After returning to West Point, Petraeus finished his dissertation: From interviews with Petraeus and Galvin, and from Petraeus's dissertation. From interviews with Petraeus and Galvin, and from Petraeus's dissertation.66 Olvey had to pull another officer out of graduate school: From interviews with Olvey and William Sutey. From interviews with Olvey and William Sutey.

CHAPTER FIVE.