The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan Read Online Free

presidency, and Obama goes to the Pentagon. He walks into a room on the second floor known as the Tank. The Tank is sacred. The Tank is where the serious matters of state are discussed—“the highly classified conversations,” says a U.S. military official. The Tank gets its name from where it started, in the basement,
Dr. Strangelove
–like, but now it’s upstairs in the E ring with a blond wood table and big leather armchairs. It’s legendary. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates makes sure to go to the Tank once a week. (Rumsfeld didn’t; Rumsfeld made the generals come to him. Gates is wiser; he goes to them like he’s “coming to kiss the ring of the Godfathers,” says a Pentagon official.)
    The president works the room, speaking to Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and about ten other senior military officials, including a three-star general named Stan McChrystal. Gates follows behind him. Obama doesn’t seem quite right, McChrystal will recall, he isn’tacting like a strong leader. He seems “intimidated by the crowd,” a senior military official who attended the meeting will tell me. He’s acting “like a Democrat who thinks he’s walking into a room full of Republicans,” the senior military official added. “You could tell he was tentative.”
    Obama’s mistake: Despite being very impressive, he’s not comfortable with the military, McChrystal thinks. He made a “bad read,” continues the senior military official who attended the meeting. “We wanted to be led; we would have been putty in his hands.” (McChrystal would share similiar feelings with his staff, telling them that Obama seemed “intimidated and uncomfortable.”)
    Obama doesn’t get the military culture, military officials will say privately. They don’t think he likes them or supports them. They sense weakness. Obama doesn’t have the feel. There are questions, from the highest to lowest ranks. He’s a wimp, Barack
Hussein
Obama. One Marine unit teaches a local Afghan kid to call an African-American female Marine “raccoon” or “Obama”; I’ve heard other white soldiers refer to him as a nigger, maybe for shock value. There’s that race thing. There’s his Nobel Peace Prize. Some soldiers say they love him, of course, that he’s the best, that everyone should have voted for him. It’s mixed.
    In the upper ranks of the brass: Obama is a Democrat, always a question mark. The Pentagon is filled with Republicans—it’s been a long eight years, and the last three defense secretaries have all been in the GOP. A popular joke: A soldier walks into an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama Bin Laden. Third floor, going up. He has two bullets in his pistol. Doors open: Pelosi is shot twice, Reid and Bin Laden are strangled.
    A CBS sports announcer tells that joke back home in a magazine story, and he gets condemned for it. He has to issue a public apology. He tells the joke overseas on a USO tour: The troops think it’s hilarious. I tell the joke once on an embed to test it out: The troops laugh hard.
    Still, Democrats: easier to push around.
    Obama was against the Iraq invasion, calling it a “dumb war.” He’s correct, of course, and opposing it was the smart decision, the right decision,yet… He didn’t support Iraq, ergo he doesn’t support us. Or something like that. His perceived antimilitary vibe is a political vulnerability; McCain tries to exploit it during the campaign, pushing a story that Obama snubbed wounded veterans on a trip to Germany. The story is false, but maybe there’s something there.
    As a candidate, Obama visits Afghanistan and Iraq during the summer of 2008. In Kabul, he’s greeted as a hero, he goes to the embassy, goes to ISAF; the word at camp gets out that Obama is there, and by the time he gets to ISAF, dozens of soldiers are out to see him. He works the rope line, poses for pictures; he’s a big hit, according to a U.S. military official who helped arrange the trip