officials had expressed misgivings about disturbing the status quo, arguing that the presence of U.S. troops abroad was important not just to fight but to show political will and to demonstrate continued U.S. security guarantees. "There were indeed some in the State Department who wanted nothing more than for the initiative to go away and who feared damage to alliances if it went forward," recounted Lincoln Bloomfield, who headed State's bureau of political-military affairs at the time.

At the White House meeting, Rumsfeld laid out the plan's concepts, underscoring the enormity of the undertaking and the need for the administration to work together on it. He said that if there was going to be resistance, it wouldn't be worth doing.

Hoehn briefed on some details. Questions and comments followed. Finally,from Harvard to run this place," Rumsfeld lamented during one video teleconference with the command in Kabul.

Ronald Neumann, a veteran diplomat whose father had been ambassador to Afghanistan, replaced Khalilzad. Barno's successor, Army lieutenant general Karl Eikenberry, was also a seasoned professional with experience in the country. But the two men never established the synergy that had existed between their predecessors, and at the Pentagon, the focus on Afghanistan was allowed to drift. "Afghanistan writ large didn't receive the kind of attention that it had while Barno and Khalilzad were there," said Mary Beth Long, then the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, "in part because people thought, at least in the beginning, that things were on track and chugging right along, so we