All In by Paula Broadwell

to this effort,” Campbell said.
    Privately, many in Petraeus’s inner circle harbored concerns about whether the general, despite his lifelong emphasis on physical fitness, could keep up the pace. “He isn’t twenty-five anymore,” one of Petraeus’s mentors said. “He knows he has been given the challenge of his life—can he manage this with detachment and balance?” But there was no letting up. Petraeus’s jam-packed schedule, since the day he arrived in Kabul, most often featured twenty meetings, briefings, appearances and visits a day; it typically began at 5:30 A.M., when the general, pedaling his exercise bike, read his morning intelligence brief. His aide and his executive officer knew to fill each minute with something productive. There was no time to spare.
    By the tenth day of his command, Petraeus had met with Karzai for the seventh time on creating the Afghan Local Police. By then, Petraeus had helped his Afghan partners address the concerns that Karzai and other Afghan leaders had harbored, and ultimately Karzai assumed the role of championing the initiative and leading the Afghan debate (with Petraeus privately admiring how Karzai had initially represented the concerns of others as his own before guiding the push to final approval of a program Petraeus suspected Karzai had wanted for years).Karzai’s government announced the following day that it had approved creation of the local police. The deal came after the security ministers and Petraeus agreed to a proposal that would ensure the ALP would report to district police chiefs and be paid by Karzai’s Interior Ministry, thereby guaranteeing central control and reducing the risks of the elements being warlord militias. The agreement called for as many as ten thousand to be trained by U.S. Special Forces and Afghan National Police, many of whom would be focused in the south, where the insurgency was strongest. Petraeus publicly lauded the accomplishment and saw the development, achieved in less than two weeks, as one that could potentially affect the outcome of the war.
    The same morning, Petraeus had begun his stand-up by projecting a painting by Frederic Remington,
The
Stampede,
on the wall of the briefing room, saying it was symbolic of the challenges they faced in Afghanistan. He had taken the idea from his mentor General Jack Galvin, who had used the painting when Petraeus was his aide in the 1980s. Petraeus had also used it as a tool during his command in Iraq. “I use this painting to convey what it is we do,” he told his staff officers, explaining the metaphor.
    Â 
    I use this image to tell you that I am comfortable with semi-chaotic situations. The picture depicts an outrider galloping at full tilt over rough terrain at the height of a violent storm while steering a willful mount and guiding a sometimes frightened and unthinking herd of cattle to its destination. It represents getting the job done despite the challenges. The terrain is rocky, the wind is in their faces and it is raining sideways. Some of these cattle will get out ahead of us—that’s fine, we will catch up. Some cattle will fall behind and we will have to circle back and get them—that’s fine, we will bring them on. We must be comfortable with this environment of uncertainty, challenge, risk, danger and competing agendas. We need to accept it. But we need to do more than simply hang on to the saddle. We must master our mount and we must flourish in the apparent chaos. I am comfortable with this. It is a privilege to be part of the Kabul stampede—kick on.
    AFTER A MONTH in Afghanistan, Petraeus issued his updated Tactical Directive, a statement of war-fighting policy, to the 150,000 U.S. and NATO forces under his command. Stressing a “disciplined use of force,” the unclassified portions of the directive provided his guidance and intent for following the rules of battlefield engagement. In practical