I tried not to let the shenanigans on the Hill distract me from moving forward with my plans for Iraq, chiefly extending the surge as long as possible into 2008. On March 9, I told my staff that if we were not in a better place in Iraq by October, the strategy would have to change. On March 20, in a videoconference with Petraeus, I said that when I visited Baghdad in mid-April, I wanted to discuss with him how he would define success with respect to the surge. In that regard, he said he thought the surge should last at least until January 2008, a year from its start.
I told Pace on March 26 that I wanted to meet privately with the president before going to Iraq in April to make sure “I know where his head is on October.” I told Pete I believed we needed a long-term presence in Iraq, and to achieve that, Iraq had to “be moved off center stage by mid-fall” politically in the United States. That meant, in turn, that the security situation had to improve to the point where Petraeus could honestly say we were making progress and that he could begin to pull out a brigade at a time starting in October, which would have the effect of extending the surge until February. Pace correctly said that it should not just be Dave who defined success; Petraeus should tell us his view, but the president and I needed to make the final call.
As you enter the Oval Office, to the right of the president’s desk—a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, built from the timbers of the British ship Resolute—is a disguised doorway that leads to the president’s private lair, the most exclusive “inner sanctum” in Washington. There is a bathroom (which Bush 41 named for a staff member he didn’t like) on the right side of the passageway, a very small office to the left, and straight ahead a modest-size dining room with a small galley, where White House stewards prepare coffee, tea, and other drinks. At one end of the dining room is a door leading to the hallway between the Oval Office and the vice president’s office, and on the other end, French doors leading to a small patio, where the president can sit outside in private. I had been in this dining room on many occasions while working for Bush 41; it’s where we sat to watch the launching of the air war against Iraq in January 1991 on television. I never saw either President Bush in the Oval Office or even in these adjacent rooms without a coat and tie. On the several occasions, I had breakfast with Bush 43 in that dining room, I always wanted to order a “real” breakfast—bacon, eggs, toast. But Bush ate a healthy breakfast of cereal and fruit, and so I reined in my proclivity for greasy fare and made do with an English muffin.
I met privately with the president in that dining room on March 30 and told him I thought we had to turn the corner in Iraq by fall one way or another. I said we needed to get the issue of Iraq off the front burner politically by the presidential primaries in February 2008 so that the Democratic candidates did not lock themselves into public positions that might preclude their later support for sustaining a sizeable military presence in Iraq for “years to come,” which I believed necessary to keep things stable there. I had been talking to Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs, I told him, and we all thought we probably could begin a drawdown of troops in October but pace it so Petraeus could keep most of the surge through the spring of 2008. I again emphasized that whether the strategy could be shown to be working by October or not, a change would be needed by then to accomplish our long-term goal of a sustainable troop presence in Iraq.
The president said he agreed with me. He also said he didn’t know how long he could hold the Republicans to sustain vetoes. The initiative for any drawdown would have to come from Petraeus, and the president asked, “How will he define success?”
The president then said, I thought somewhat defensively, that he was not cutting Cheney or Hadley out of this discussion, though he and I needed to talk privately on occasion. He said he would not raise the issue of drawdowns again, but I should feel free to see him or call him.
I left the breakfast believing we were in agreement on the need to start a withdrawal in October and the initiative had to come from Petraeus. My challenge was to get Dave to agree to that.
EXTENDING THE SURGE
Before I could pursue the strategy of extending the surge beyond October, I had to address a painful reality. In January, I had announced several initiatives to give members of the National Guard and Reserves more predictability in their deployments; they would henceforth deploy as units—many had deployed before as individuals to larger, cobbled-together units—and not be mobilized for longer than a year. These decisions had been very well received by Guard and Reserve leaders, the troops themselves, and Congress. At the same time, I understood there was a similar challenge in establishing clear, realistic long-term policy goals for the deployment of active duty forces, particularly for the Army. As early as December 27, 2006, I had asked Robert Rangel and my first senior military assistant, Air Force Lieutenant General Gene Renuart, for the pros and cons of calling up units with a shorter time at home than current policy. In terms of morale (and the forthcoming announcement of the surge), I asked whether we were better off approving such early call-ups only for engineering battalions (in demand especially as part of the counter-IED effort) as a “one-off,” or changing the policy for the whole force in Iraq as long as we had the current level of forces there. Also, I wondered about the domestic and congressional political dimensions of such a change. I was told that unless current policies were altered, the level of deployed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would require active duty units to redeploy before they had spent a full twelve months at home. This had been a major factor in my decision to recommend significant growth in the size of the Army and Marine Corps. This was even before the president ordered the surge. Something would have to give.
The Army had presented only two options: extend troop deployments from twelve to fifteen months or shorten soldiers’ time at home to less than one year. This was the most difficult decision I would make in my entire time as secretary, difficult because I knew how hard even the one-year deployments were, not only because of the absence from family but because, for those in combat units in Iraq (and Afghanistan), the fighting and the stress of combat were constant. There was no respite from primitive living conditions, the heat, and not knowing what the next moment might bring in terms of danger, injury, and death. Missing one anniversary, one child’s birthday, one holiday was hard enough. My junior military assistant, then-major Steve Smith, told me that a fellow midgrade officer had said that a fifteen-month tour was more than just twelve plus three. Steve also reminded me that fifteen-month tours brought to bear the “law of twos”—soldiers would now potentially miss two Christmases, two anniversaries, two birthdays. Still, Pete Chiarelli, who had become my senior military adviser in March, told me that the troops were expecting this decision—the fifteen-month tours—and with the directness I so valued, went on to say, “And they think you’re an asshole for not making it.”
I once received a letter from the teenage daughter of a soldier who had been deployed for fifteen months. She wrote,
First of all, fifteen months is a long time. It is just long enough so when the family member comes home it’s kind of awkward. Not kind of, really awkward. There are so many things they missed out on and so much more to do. Secondly, they are not really “home” for a year. Sure, they are in the states [sic], but not home. My father was off doing training for the entire summer. So I really hadn’t been able to see him very much. That’s not even the worse [sic], the worse [sic] is when he is supposed to be home and he’s been called to do something at the last minute.… Thank you for your time and I hope that you will take all that I have said into account when future decisions are made about the deployments. Megan, AKA Army brat.
I don’t know if Megan’s father ever knew she wrote me, but if he did, I hope he was very proud of her. I certainly was. After all, not many teenagers can make the secretary of defense feel like a heel. But her letter, and others like it, were so important because they did not let me forget the real-life impact of my decisions and the price our mi
litary families were paying.
After consulting with the Joint Chiefs and then the president, on April 11 I announced the deployment extension. All combat tours for the Army in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa would be extended to fifteen months. I had no idea when we could revert to twelve-month tours. Both Republicans and Democrats were critical of the decision because to them it reflected the failure and costs of the president’s war in Iraq.
Experience would show that the fifteen-month deployments for both Iraq and Afghanistan would be even worse for the troops and their families than I expected. While I couldn’t prove it statistically, I believe those long tours significantly aggravated post-traumatic stress and contributed to a growing number of suicides, a belief reinforced by comments made to me by both soldiers and their spouses. While I could guarantee them a full year at home between tours, it wasn’t enough.
While the troops may have been expecting the decision, a number of soldiers and their families shared their frustration and their anger with reporters. I couldn’t blame them. They were the ones about to suffer the consequences of the “law of twos.”
GETTING TO SEPTEMBER
The difficulty of extending the surge to September 2007 (when Petraeus would submit his report on progress), much less to the spring of 2008, was underscored by the rhetoric coming from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The frequently used line “We support the troops” coupled with “We totally disagree with their mission” cut no ice with people in uniform. Our kids on the front lines were savvy; they would ask me why the politicians didn’t understand that, in the eyes of the troops, support for them and support for their mission were tied together. But the comments that most angered me were those full of defeatism—sending the message to the troops that they couldn’t win and, by implication, were putting their lives on the line for nothing. The worst of these comments came in mid-April from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, who said in a press conference, “This war is lost” and “The surge is not accomplishing anything.” I was furious and shared privately with some of my staff a quote from Abraham Lincoln I had written down long before: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” Needless to say, I never hinted at any such feelings publicly, but I had them nonetheless.
The president met with his senior team on Iraq on April 16, with Fallon, Petraeus, and our new ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, participating by videoconference. Crocker was a great diplomat, always eager to take on the toughest assignments—Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan. He quickly earned the president’s confidence, though Ryan’s consistent realism would lead to Bush teasing him as “the glass-half-empty” man, and sarcastically calling him “Sunshine.” Crocker had forged a remarkably strong partnership with Petraeus. The ambassador described the disruptive impact of the recent bombing of the parliament building on the Iraqi Council of Representatives, and the prospects for progress on a de-Baathification law setting forth terms for amnesty for some Baath Party members and on the law for distributing oil revenues, two of the key benchmarks, as I’ve said, for both the administration and Congress in terms of national reconciliation. The president told Crocker to make clear to the Iraqis that they needed “to show us something.” Congressional delegations would come back from visits, he said, say there was no political progress and that the military therefore couldn’t do its job, and urge that the troops be withdrawn. “The political elite needs to understand they need to get off their ass,” the president said. “We don’t need perfect laws, but we need laws. We need something to back off the critics.”
Petraeus reported that despite continuing extremist attacks that attracted considerable publicity, our troops were making slow, steady progress and that the preceding week there had been the lowest number of sectarian murders since June 2006. He warned that we were headed into a tough week as U.S. forces moved into areas where we had not had a presence before. He described his plans for deploying the remaining troops and Marines coming to Iraq. At the end of his briefing, Petraeus said he appreciated the announcement on extending tours to fifteen months: “It gives us much greater flexibility. It was the right call and not a big surprise for most units.”
Just before leaving for Iraq, I met with Pete Pace about how to approach Petraeus. I told him I didn’t want Petraeus walking out of our meeting thinking, I’ve been told to wrap this thing up by October and I have to recommend an off-ramp by October. We agreed that we were going to need a long-term presence in Iraq and that we had to set the conditions for that.
I arrived in Baghdad at midafternoon on April 19. Pace, Fallon, and Petraeus all met me at the plane. We immediately jumped in helicopters and flew to Fallujah. The security situation was still too tenuous for me to go into the city, so I was briefed at our military headquarters on progress in Anbar province. It was very encouraging. On leaving, I shook hands and had pictures taken with a number of troops, including one group of officers holding a Texas A&M flag. I ran into Aggies in the war zones all the time, and it was always special for me, although encountering in combat zones those I had given their diplomas was always unsettling.
We returned to Petraeus’s headquarters and got down to the business of war strategy—specifically, how to lower the level of violence and buy time for internal political reconciliation. We all agreed that accomplishing those goals required extending the surge beyond September. I had a two-hour private dinner with Pace, Fallon, Petraeus, and Chiarelli, followed by a two-hour session with the same group the next day. We addressed three questions: how to sustain politically at home a significantly higher number of troops for a year; how to maximize the possibility of keeping a substantial number of troops in Iraq for years to come; and how to establish a long-term security and strategic relationship with Iraq. The answers to all three questions had to take into account the twin realities of growing opposition in the U.S. Congress and the growing desire of the dominant Shia in Iraq—especially those within the government, including Maliki himself—to be rid of the “occupiers.” The key would be Crocker’s and Petraeus’s evaluation of success in September.
I emphasized to Dave that his recommendations were to be his own, not dictated by me or anyone else, but with a view to prolonging the surge to a year or more and enabling a sustained U.S. presence. Petraeus said he likely would recommend drawing down one brigade in late October or early November, a second in early to mid-January, and then a brigade every six weeks or so after that. This would allow him to keep 80 percent of the surge through the end of 2007, and 60 percent through the end of February. This would signal to both Americans and Iraqis that a corner had been turned (one way or another) and, hopefully, enable rational decision making regarding a long-term presence. Pace and Fallon both endorsed this approach.
As usual, when I visited Iraq—this was my fourth visit in four months—I met with all the senior Iraqi government officials. It was getting to the point where I could write their talking points for them, from President Talabani’s unrealistic optimism and usually empty promises to take action on problems to Sunni vice president Tariq Al-Hashimi’s constant complaints of being ignored, insulted, and sidelined, as well as his concerns about Maliki’s dictatorial approach. What was new on this trip, though, was that in a private meeting, Prime Minister Maliki aimed a litany of complaints at me personally that he offered “as a brother and partner.” While expressing appreciation for President Bush’s steadfast support, he said that my statements expressing disappointment in Iraqi government progress toward reconciliation, particularly the oil law and de-Baathification, would encourage the Baathists to come back. He said he understood that the United States was keen to help the Iraqi government, but the realities were very tough. He couldn’t fill ministerial positions, among other problems. He went on to say that “benchmarks give the terrorists incentives and encourage the Syrians and Iranians.” He concluded that the political situati
on was very fragile and that we needed to avoid certain public statements that only helped our “enemies.”
When he concluded, I was seething. I told him that “the clock is ticking” and that our patience with their lack of political progress was running out. I angrily told him that every day that we bought them for reconciliation was being paid for with American blood and that we had to see some real progress soon. After the meeting, I stewed over the fact that I had been arguing the case for this guy for months in Congress, trying to avoid mandatory benchmarks and deadlines, trying to buy him and his colleagues some time to work out at least some of their political issues.
As usually happened, a visit to our troops revived my morale. I went to a joint U.S.-Iraqi military and police facility in Baghdad meant to provide neighborhood security. It was a centerpiece of Petraeus’s strategy, getting U.S. forces out of large bases and into local areas with Iraqi partners. I had imagined a police station like those in most U.S. cities, in the middle of a densely occupied urban area. The one I visited was instead in the middle of a huge open area—in essence, a small fort with concrete outer walls protecting a large concrete building in the center. In the entryway were pictures of Iraqis who had been killed operating out of this facility. I was escorted to a medium-size conference room crowded with Iraqi army officers and police as well as U.S. soldiers and officers, nearly everyone in body armor and carrying weapons. And right there in the middle of a war zone, in the equivalent of Fort Apache, Baghdad, I got a PowerPoint briefing by Iraqi officers. PowerPoint! My God, what are we doing to these people? I thought. It took a lot of self-control to keep from bursting out laughing. But what these men—both Iraqis and Americans—were trying to do, and the courage it took, was no laughing matter. I came away immensely impressed, not least by the awful conditions in which our young soldiers were having to work day and night.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Page 8