Gen. David Petraeus with Col. Peter Mansoor (right)
The former second-in-command to Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007 "surge" of U.S. troops to Iraq just finished up a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AmA) that's a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes strategy during the Iraq War.
Col. Peter Mansoor (Ret.), now a professor of military history at Ohio State University, served 26 years in the Army with two tours in Iraq, to include duty as Petraeus' executive officer in 2007.
While much of the credit for counterinsurgency goes to Petraeus (and Gen. James Mattis), who literally wrote the book on the subject, it was Mansoor who edited the work.
He had some great questions thrown at him, and we're sharing the ones here we found the most fascinating. You can read the full AmA here.
Most interesting to us (and the answer most upvoted) was his answer to what the U.S. faced as its greatest threat. Notably absent from his answer was talk of nation-states or terrorists, when he wrote, " Collapse from within - the increasingly polarization of our domestic politics. We need to find common ground and work from the middle outward, not from the extremes inward."
Some answers have been edited for clarity.
On whether the war in Afghanistan is or was "winnable" and what that would be considered to be:
"I think the United States had to fight the war in Afghanistan, but we took our eye off the real objective, which was the destruction of Al Qaeda. The mishandling of the fight at Tora Bora in 2001 was incompetence at its finest. The Bush administration then took its eye off the ball again through its ill-considered invasion of Iraq, leaving Afghanistan to fester.
At this point the best the United States can hope for is to support an Afghan government that can keep the country together after 2014 and convince the Taliban that it cannot win the war in any conceivable time frame. In my view, this will require the election of an Afghan president with some real leadership abilities, unlike Hamid Karzai. With good leadership and support from the United States and our NATO allies, anything is possible.
For a view of what winning might look like, look at Colombia. A decade ago the country seemed on the verge of disaster with the FARC on the ascendancy, but now the war there is all but over. Good Colombian presidential leadership and U.S. support were the keys to victory."
On what the average citizen without military service probably doesn't grasp about Gen. Petraeus:
"I don't think the average person understands just how open Gen. Petraeus was to advice from below. He had an open e-mail channel to anyone in Multi-National Force-Iraq — and often received messages from junior leaders on problems in their areas that they could not get resolved through their chain of command (or problems that the chain of command were creating). I often discussed issues with Gen. Petraeus and found him willing to listen — provided you had something intelligent to say and were ready for the give and take that followed. I think this aspect of his leadership style is one that other leaders can and should follow — but they have to be willing to listen and accept advice and thoughts from below (which means reining in their egos)."