With Zal Khalilzad (left) and Nouri al Maliki. White House/Eric Draper
A dissident who had been sentenced to death by Saddam, Maliki had lived in exile in Syria. I called him the day he was selected. Since he had no secure phone, he was at the U.S. embassy. “Mr. President, here’s the new prime minister,” Zal said.
“Thanks,” I said, “but stay on the phone a little longer so the prime minister will know how close you and I are.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Prime Minister,” I said when Maliki got on. “I want you to know the United States is fully committed to democracy in Iraq. We will work together to defeat the terrorists and support the Iraqi people. Lead with confidence.”
Maliki was friendly and sincere, but he was a political novice. I made clear I wanted a close personal relationship. So did he. In the months ahead, we spoke frequently by phone and videoconference. I was careful not to bully him or appear heavy-handed. I wanted him to consider me a partner, maybe a mentor. He would get plenty of pressure from others. From me he would get advice and understanding. Once I had earned his trust, I would be in a better position to help him make the tough decisions.
I hoped the formation of the Maliki government would provide a break in the violence. It didn’t. The reports of sectarian killings grew more gruesome. Death squads conducted brazen kidnappings. Iran supplied militants with funding, training, and highly sophisticated Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) to kill our troops. Iraqis retreated into their sectarian foxholes, looking for protection wherever they could find it.
Our ground commander in Iraq was General George Casey, an experienced four-star general who had commanded troops in Bosnia and served as vice chief of staff of the Army. Don Rumsfeld had recommended him for the Iraq command when General Ricardo Sanchez stepped down in the summer of 2004.
Before George deployed to Baghdad, Laura and I invited him and his wife, Sheila, to dinner at the White House. We were joined by Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte**—an experienced and skilled diplomat who had volunteered for the job—and his wife, Diana. George gave me a biography of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. George had worked as an equipment manager for the Washington Redskins during Lombardi’s final season. The gift was telling. Like the coach he admired, George was not flashy or glamorous. He was a solid, straightforward commander—a “block of granite,” as Lombardi was once known.
General Casey—like General Abizaid and Don Rumsfeld—was convinced our troop presence created a sense of occupation, which inflamed violence and fueled the insurgency. For two and a half years, I had supported the strategy of withdrawing our forces as the Iraqis stepped forward. But in the months after the Samarra bombing, I had started to question whether our approach matched the reality on the ground. The sectarian violence had not erupted because our footprint was too big. It had happened because al Qaeda had provoked it. And with the Iraqis struggling to stand up, it didn’t seem possible for us to stand down.
Everyone on the national security team shared my concerns about the deteriorating conditions. But it was my national security adviser, Steve Hadley, who was first to help me find a solution.
Steve came to my attention during the 2000 campaign, when he was part of the foreign policy advisory group assembled by Condi. Steve was a reluctant public figure. Yet when he was placed before the camera, his scholarly demeanor and logical presentation carried great credibility. Behind the scenes, he was thoughtful and steady. He listened, synthesized, and pondered without brooding. He articulated options clearly. Once I had reached a decision, he knew how to work with the team to implement it.
Steve is a formal person. He would board the airplane for long overseas flights in his tie, sleep in his tie, and emerge with a crisp knot still in place. He once volunteered for cedar chopping at the ranch. His job was to pile up cut branches. He performed the task meticulously, effectively, and in his brogan shoes. Behind the formality, Steve is a kind, selfless, humorous man. I spent many weekends at Camp David with him and his wife, Ann. The two have a great love affair. Both are cerebral. Both are hikers. And both are great parents to their two lovely girls.
With Steve Hadley. White House/Eric Draper
I met with Steve almost every morning of my second term. After a particularly rough day in the spring of 2006, we reviewed the blue sheet at the Resolute desk. I shook my head and glanced up. Steve was shaking his head, too.
“This is not working,” I said. “We need to take another look at the whole strategy. I need to see some new options.”
“Mr. President,” he responded, “I’m afraid you’re right.”
Steve went to work organizing a detailed review. Every night, the Iraq team on the NSC staff produced a memo detailing the military and political developments of the past twenty-four hours. The picture they painted was not pretty. One day in the late spring, I asked Meghan O’Sullivan, a Ph.D. who had spent a year working for Jerry Bremer in Iraq, to stay behind after a meeting. She maintained contacts with many senior officials in the Iraqi government. I asked what she was hearing from Baghdad. “It’s hell, Mr. President,” she said.
In mid-June, Steve arranged to have a group of outside experts brief me at Camp David. Fred Kagan, a military scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, questioned whether we had enough troops to control the violence. Robert Kaplan, a distinguished journalist, recommended adopting a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy. Michael Vickers, a former CIA operative who helped arm the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s, suggested a greater role for Special Operations. Eliot Cohen, the author of Supreme Command, a book about the relationship between presidents and their generals that I had read at Steve’s suggestion, told me I needed to hold my commanders accountable for results.
To provide another perspective, Steve brought me articles from colonels and one-star generals who had commanded troops in Iraq. A dichotomy emerged: While Generals Casey and Abizaid supported the train-and-withdraw strategy, many of those closest to the fight thought we needed more troops.
One who intrigued me was Colonel H.R. McMaster. I had read his book on Vietnam, Dereliction of Duty, which charged the military leadership with not doing enough to correct the strategy adopted by President Johnson and Defense Secretary Bob McNamara. In 2005, Colonel McMaster commanded a regiment in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar. He had applied a counterinsurgency strategy, using his troops to clear out insurgents, hold the newly taken territory, and help build the local economy and political institutions. This doctrine of clear, hold, and build had turned Tal Afar from an insurgent stronghold to a relatively peaceful, functioning city.
Another practitioner of counterinsurgency was General David Petraeus. I first met him at Fort Campbell in 2004. He had a reputation as one of the smartest and most dynamic young generals in the Army. He had graduated near the top of his class at West Point and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton. In 1991, he was accidentally shot in the chest during a training exercise. He endured a sixty-mile helicopter flight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where his life was saved by Dr. Bill Frist, later the Republican leader of the Senate.
Early in the war, General Petraeus had commanded the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul. He sent his troops to live alongside Iraqi residents and patrol the streets on foot. Their presence reassured residents that we were there to protect them. Petraeus then held local elections to form a provincial council, spent reconstruction funds to revive economic activity, and reopened the border with Syria to facilitate trade. His approach was textbook counterinsurgency. To defeat the enemy, he was trying to win over the people.
It worked. While violence in much of Iraq increased, Mosul remained relatively calm. But when we reduced troops in Mosul, violence returned. The same would happen in Tal Afar.
After overseeing training of the Iraqi security forces, General Petraeus was assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual. The premise of counterinsurgency is that basic security is required before political
gains can follow. That was the reverse of our existing strategy. I decided to keep a close eye on General Petraeus’s work—and on him.
Amid all the bad news of 2006, we did have one bright spot. In early June, Special Forces under the command of the highly effective General Stanley McChrystal tracked down and killed Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq. For the first time since the December elections, we were able to show the public a dramatic sign of progress.
A week later, I quietly slipped out of Camp David after a day of NSC meetings. I hopped on an Army transport helicopter with a small group of aides, flew to Andrews Air Force Base, and boarded Air Force One. Eleven hours later, we landed in Baghdad.
Unlike my Thanksgiving trip in 2003, when my meetings took place at the airport, I decided to meet Maliki in the Green Zone, the fortified complex in central Baghdad. Army helicopters flew us over the city fast and low, shooting off an occasional flare as a protection against a heat-seeking missile. The prime minister was waiting for me when I got to the embassy. Ever since his selection in April, I had wanted to see Maliki face to face. In our phone calls, he had said the right things. But I wondered if his assurances were real.
“Your decisions and actions will determine success,” I told him. “It will not be easy, but no matter how hard it is, we’ll help you.”
Maliki thanked America for liberating the country and affirmed his desire for a close friendship. “We will achieve victory over terror, which is a victory for democracy,” he said. “There are a lot of dark people who fear our success. They are right to be worried, because our success will unseat them from their thrones.”
The prime minister had a gentle manner and a quiet voice, but I sensed an inner toughness. Saddam Hussein had executed multiple members of Maliki’s family, yet he had refused to renounce his role in the opposition party. His personal courage was a seed that I hoped to nurture, so he could grow into the strong leader the Iraqis needed.
The prime minister took me into a conference room to meet his cabinet, which included Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders. I introduced him to my team via videoconference. My advisers, who did not know that I had left Camp David, were stunned to see me in Baghdad. The Iraqis were thrilled to address their counterparts for the first-ever joint national security meeting between the United States and Iraq.
The other pivotal meeting of the trip was with George Casey. The hardworking general had been in Iraq for two years, extending his tour at my request. He told me that 80 percent of the sectarian violence occurred within thirty miles of Baghdad. Controlling the capital was vital to calming the rest of the country.
General Casey was planning a new effort to secure Baghdad. The offensive, Operation Together Forward, would attempt to apply the clear, hold, and build approach that had once succeeded in Tal Afar and Mosul.
I saw a contradiction. The “clear, hold, and build” strategy was troop-intensive. But our generals wanted to reduce our footprint. He picked up on my doubts. “I need to do a better job explaining it to you,” General Casey said.
“You do,” I replied.
The summer of 2006 was the worst period of my presidency. I thought about the war constantly. While I was heartened by the determination of the Maliki government and the death of Zarqawi, I was deeply concerned that the violence was overtaking all else. An average of 120 Iraqis a day were dying. The war had stretched to more than three years and we had lost more than 2,500 Americans. By a margin of almost two to one, Americans said they disapproved of the way I was handling Iraq.
For the first time, I worried we might not succeed. If Iraq split along sectarian lines, our mission would be doomed. We could be looking at a repeat of Vietnam—a humiliating loss for the country, a shattering blow to the military, and a dramatic setback for our interests. If anything, the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam. We would leave al Qaeda with a safe haven in a country with vast oil reserves. We would embolden a hostile Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. We would shatter the hopes of people taking risks for freedom across the Middle East. Ultimately, our enemies could use their sanctuary to attack our homeland. We had to stop that from happening.
I made a conscious decision to show resolve, not doubt, in public. I wanted the American people to understand that I believed wholeheartedly in our cause. The Iraqis needed to know we would not abandon them. Our enemies needed to know we were determined to defeat them. Most of all, I thought about our troops. I tried to imagine how it would feel to be a twenty-year-old on the front lines, or a military mom worrying about her son or daughter. The last thing they needed to hear was the commander in chief whining about how conflicted he felt. If I had concerns about the direction of the war, I needed to make changes in the policy, not wallow in public.
I drew strength from family, friends, and faith. When we visited Camp David, Laura and I loved to worship with military families at the base’s chapel. The chaplain in 2006, forty-eight-year-old Navy Lieutenant Commander Stan Fornea, was one of the best preachers I’ve ever heard. “Evil is real, biblical, and prevalent,” he said in one sermon. “Some say ignore it, some say it doesn’t exist. But evil must not be ignored, it must be restrained.” He quoted Sir Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British leader: “The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Stan believed that the answer to evil was freedom. He also knew there would be a cost. “There has never been a noble cause devoid of sacrifice,” he said in one sermon. “If freedom is worthy of defense only to the point it costs us nothing then we are in desperate need as a nation.”
Above all, Stan was an optimist, and his sense of hope lifted my spirits. “The Scriptures put great premiums on faithfulness, perseverance, and overcoming,” he said. “We do not quit or give up. We always believe there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.”
I also found solace in history. In August, I read Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, by Richard Carwardine, one of fourteen Lincoln biographies I read during my presidency. They brought to life the devastation Lincoln felt as he read telegrams describing Union defeats at places like Chancellorsville, where the Union suffered seventeen thousand casualties, or Chickamauga, where sixteen thousand were wounded or killed.
The casualties were not his only struggle. Lincoln had to cycle through one commander after another until he found one who would fight. He watched his son Willie die in the White House and his wife, Mary Todd, sink into depression. Yet thanks to his faith in God and his deep belief that he was waging war for a just cause, Lincoln persisted.
One hallmark of Lincoln’s leadership was that he established an affectionate bond with rank-and-file soldiers. In the darkest days of the war, he spent long hours with the wounded at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington. His empathy taught a powerful lesson and served as a model for other war presidents to follow.
One of the most moving parts of my presidency was reading letters from the families of fallen service members. I received hundreds, and they spanned the full spectrum of reactions. Many of the letters expressed a common sentiment: Finish the job. The parents of a fallen soldier from Georgia wrote, “Our greatest heartache would be to see the mission in Iraq abandoned.” A grieving grandmother in Arizona emailed, “We need to finish what we started before pulling out.”
In December 2005, I received a letter from a man in Pensacola, Florida:
Dear President Bush,
My name is Bud Clay. My son, SSgt Daniel Clay [United States Marine Corps] was killed last week 12/01/05 in Iraq. He was one of the ten Marines killed by the IED in Falluja.
Dan was a Christian—he knew Jesus as Lord and Savior—so we know where he is. In his final letter (one left with me for the family—to be read in case of his death) he says, “If you are reading this, it means my race is over.” He’s home now—his and our real home.
I am writing to you to tell you how proud we (his parents and family) are of you and what you are trying to do to protect us all
. This was Dan’s second tour in Iraq—he knew and said that his being there was to protect us. Many do not see it that way.
I want to encourage you. I hear in your speeches about “staying the course.” I also know that many are against you in this “war on Terror” and that you must get weary in the fight to do what is right. We and many others are praying for you to see this through—as Lincoln said “that these might not have died in vain.”
You have a heavy load—we are praying for you.
God bless you,
Bud Clay
I invited Bud; his wife, Sara Jo; and Daniel’s widow, Lisa, to my State of the Union address the next month. Before the speech, I met the Clays in the Oval Office. We hugged, and they reiterated that I was in their prayers. I was inspired by their strength. God had worked an amazing deed, turning their hearts from grief to compassion. Their faith was so evident and real that it reconfirmed my own. I was hoping to lift the Clays’ spirits, but they lifted mine.
They weren’t the only ones. On New Year’s Day 2006, Laura and I traveled to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. We visited fifty-one wounded service members and their families. In one room, we met Staff Sergeant Christian Bagge of the Oregon National Guard, along with his wife, Melissa. Christian had been on patrol in Iraq when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. He was pinned in the vehicle for forty-five minutes and lost both legs.
Christian told me he used to be a runner and planned to run again someday. That was hard to imagine. I hoped to buoy his spirits. “When you’re ready, just call me,” I said. “I will run with you.”
On June 27, 2006, I met Christian on the South Lawn. He had two prosthetic legs made of carbon fiber. We took a couple of laps around the jogging track Bill Clinton had installed. I marveled at Christian’s strength and spirit. I could barely believe this was the same man who had been confined to a hospital bed less than six months earlier. He did not look at himself as a victim. He was proud of what he had done in Iraq, and he hoped his example might inspire others.
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