I told Hadley we could not fulfill the president’s commitment to provide the Joint Campaign Plan to Congress because of the precedent it would set. Over a period of weeks of tortuous negotiations with the Hill, we finally arrived at a compromise, through which I would send senior officers to brief congressional leaders on the key questions we would be addressing as we planned for the drawdowns.
In September, on Petraeus’s recommendation, the president announced that, conditions on the ground permitting, all of the surge would be withdrawn from Iraq by midsummer 2008, a reduction of five combat brigades bringing us back to the presurge fifteen brigades. As a shield against pressure for faster and steeper drawdowns beyond that, I strongly endorsed Petraeus’s proposal that the next review be in March, at which point he would present his recommendations for additional drawdowns during the second half of 2008. I even dangled a carrot in a press conference the day after the president’s September speech. I said that I hoped Petraeus “will be able to say that he thinks the pace of drawdowns can continue at the same rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year”—in effect, suggesting a further drawdown to ten combat brigades, or about 100,000 U.S. troops, by the end of 2008. My strategy was to make the continuing reduction in our combat forces in Iraq unmistakable, in an attempt to keep Iraq from being a central issue in the presidential election. It would also provide the new president with political cover for a longer troop presence and a sustainable U.S. role in Iraq’s future for the long term. I wanted to focus the Iraq debate on the pacing of drawdowns, a debate I thought the generals would win every time because it would be about battlefield conditions and the situation on the ground.
I felt strongly about a long-term U.S. troop commitment in Iraq for several reasons. Our presence could continue to play an important role in keeping sectarian conflict from boiling over again; we often mediated confrontations, especially between Arabs and Kurds. Our troops were also a deterrent to Iranian meddling. In this regard, a continuing U.S. military deployment in Iraq would also be reassuring to our friends in the region. There was a continuing need for U.S. participation in the counterterrorism mission and in training the Iraqis. And I did not want to put at risk all we had achieved at such great cost in lives by leaving a fledgling Iraqi government at the mercy of its neighbors and its internal divisions. More time was needed.
After the diversions of the fall, I met privately with Petraeus in Baghdad in December 2007, to discuss the March review and further drawdowns. On troop levels, I said, we shared the same objective but had different perspectives on time: he wanted the maximum possible number of troops in 2008 and early 2009. “I don’t know if I can get to ten brigade combat teams [100,000 troops] by the end of 2008,” he said. I was taking a longer view. I believed that a gradual but continuing reduction in force levels throughout 2008 was critical to getting political support at home for the longer-term presence: “If we end 2008 with thirteen to fifteen combat brigades in Iraq, I fear the next president will order everyone or nearly everyone out on a very short timeline, which will be highly destabilizing and possibly catastrophic.” I told him I had noticed he “back-end loaded” the drawdowns in the first half of 2008 (he grinned sheepishly), that is, he had scheduled most withdrawals toward the end of the six-month period rather than spacing them out evenly. I asked if he couldn’t do the same in the second half, even if he recommended in March that the drawdowns continue. I told him I intended the same decision-making process as the preceding September: he would make recommendations, as would Central Command, the Joint Chiefs, the chairman, and I. It would be great to be able to say again that all the senior military leaders agreed on the recommendations; if they didn’t, the president would have to decide on the pacing.
I told Petraeus during our meeting that the president wanted him to remain in place until January 20, 2009. Petraeus said he would prefer to leave in the summer of 2008 and become commander of European Command (and supreme allied commander Europe). I said that I would try to arrange with the president to get him confirmed by the Senate for the Europe job in the summer if he would remain in Iraq until November.
When I talked with the president about my meeting with Petraeus, he mused that maybe we should keep the troop level at fifteen combat brigades but announce further reductions after the election “to force the new administration to follow our timetable.” Observing that this would be an “unwelcome gift” if a Democrat was elected, Bush said, “You wouldn’t believe what Clinton left for us.” It was a refrain I would hear about Bush throughout my time in the Obama administration.
The president met with Petraeus in Kuwait on January 13, 2008, asking that his recommendations in March be strictly “conditions-based.” Petraeus reported to me that the president shared his concerns about the strain on the force but again made his argument that the biggest blow to the military would be to lose in Iraq. The president, Petraeus said, told him that he would be fine if the U.S. force stayed at fifteen combat brigades “for some time”—a point the president later made to the press.
On January 29, I met alone with the president over breakfast to discuss drawdowns in Iraq. I told him I was focused on “setting the table” in both Iraq and Washington and trying to think forward at least a year. The critical question was how to preserve and expand our gains in Iraq while maximizing support at home for a sustainable long-term presence there. The challenge was that steps to do one could jeopardize the other, so how to find the right balance? I said our gains in Iraq were real but fragile. I was coming to believe that continuing the drawdowns in the second half of the year at the same pace as the first—the hope I had expressed the previous September—“may be too aggressive.” At the same time, standing pat for the rest of the year at fifteen combat brigades would also be risky, signaling that the situation in Iraq had stopped improving. It would send the wrong message to both Iraqis and Americans and could have a potentially significant impact on the campaign debate in the United States and decisions after January 20, 2009. It would relieve both the military and political pressure on the Iraqis. Simultaneously, by making it look like we were staying as “occupiers,” negotiation of the Strategic Framework and Status of Forces Agreements would be harder (the former would lay the foundation for future U.S.-Iraqi economic, political, and security cooperation; the latter would provide the legal basis for a U.S. military presence in Iraq over the longer term). Finally, no additional drawdowns would make it more likely that troop levels would fall off a cliff on January 20 if a Democrat was elected. I don’t think the president had thought through these risks.
Pending Petraeus’s recommendations, I said, the president might announce in April that we could take out “several” more combat brigades by January 2009. I urged him to consider one out in September–October and two more in late November–early December. This would allow us to keep fourteen combat brigades in Iraq until nearly the end of 2008, and a new president would be on a path to twelve brigades in Iraq on Inauguration Day. This would signal that things were getting better in Iraq and could forestall a precipitous withdrawal under a Democratic president.
The president said he would think about what I had said. Then he shocked me as the breakfast ended by saying that he wished he’d made the change in secretary of defense “a couple of years earlier.” It was the only thing I ever heard him say even indirectly critical of Rumsfeld.
Before traveling to Iraq to continue the dialogue with Petraeus on troop drawdowns, I endured another hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee. It continued my yearlong experience on the Hill of not a single Democrat having anything positive to say about the war in Iraq, even though Levin had publicly acknowledged the success of our military operations. Now Levin echoed the Pelosi-Reid theme that the surge had failed because it had not brought reconciliation among the Iraqi factions, a view disappointingly echoed by Senator Warner, the ranking Republican on the committee.
There was more discussion of possible legislation requiri
ng increased time at home for the troops, a back-door political strategy to cut the number of troops that had been tried by Democrats but blocked by Senate Republicans the previous fall. Senators wanted to make sure the agreements we were negotiating with the Iraqis did not commit us to their defense, and Senator Edward Kennedy pushed for any agreements to be approved by Congress. After the hearing, Speaker Pelosi exploited Mullen’s comment that the U.S. military was accepting significant risk by having so many troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that his testimony “confirms our warning that the war in Iraq has seriously undermined our nation’s military strength and readiness” and that we needed “a new direction.” There was no mention of Afghanistan. She was shameless and relentlessly partisan on the Iraq War. In fact, it was impossible to have a sensible discussion with Democrats in Congress on anything to do with Iraq in the presence of television cameras. I had never liked testifying; I was now beginning to really hate it. Every time someone in a hearing criticized the lack of reconciliation among Iraqi factions, I wanted to suggest the committee members get a mirror and take a long, hard look at themselves and maybe try a little reconciliation nearer to home. The posturing and partisanship were requiring me to exert more and more effort to be respectful, nonpartisan, and deliberative. January 20, 2009, seemed a long way off.
On February 11, I spent nearly two hours with Petraeus in Baghdad. I agreed that getting down to ten brigades before the end of the year was unwise militarily and also that a “pause” for “evaluation and consolidation” after the last surge brigade came out in July made sense. We agreed that the president should announce the pause in April and then, conditions permitting, resume the drawdown in the fall, giving Petraeus fourteen brigades through the end of the year. I said I would support keeping the “glide path” of withdrawals as modest as possible but that we had to keep drawing down. I told Dave I believed most Americans thought the war was a huge mistake and that a continued reduction in troops was key. I repeated my mantra about maintaining minimal public and congressional support for our long-term goals in Iraq. I thought Petraeus and I were on the same page.
On the plane ride home, I told the press aboard that I thought “the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense.” I was thinking of about forty-five days. My comments seemed to make nearly everyone mad. The White House was thinking of the pause in terms of months rather than weeks. Hillary Clinton said she was “disheartened” by what I said and called on the president “to end the war he started.” Obama said he strongly disagreed with plans for a pause in the “long overdue removal of our combat brigades from Iraq.” The chiefs weren’t all that pleased either with my agreement to a pause. The Washington Post, on the other hand, editorialized that “at last, a Bush administration defense secretary listens to his commanders.” And USA Today observed that “the success of the surge quiets the issue of Iraq in the election.”
The day after I returned from Iraq, I passed along to the president what I thought would be Petraeus’s recommendation, one I agreed with: an announcement by the president in early April of a pause for consolidation and evaluation, and resumption of a conditions-based drawdown in the fall. The plan was to announce on September 1 that another combat brigade was coming out and then at some point between October and early December announce that another one or two would come out.
That same evening I slipped on the ice and broke my shoulder, as I mentioned earlier. I had been scheduled for a congressional hearing the next morning, which I could not attend. I had complained so much about hearings that some colleagues jokingly said I had purposely fallen just to avoid another “close encounter” with Congress. I received a very nice note from Ted Kennedy wishing me a quick recovery because “we need you my friend.”
A little more than a week after senators trashed the Iraqis for inaction on key legislation (the pot calling the kettle black), the Iraqi Council of Representatives passed three significant pieces of legislation: a budget, a de-Baathification/amnesty law, and a provincial powers law. After months of deadlock, a grand bargain had been reached that had something for all the major factions. This was a vital step forward for the Iraqis and for our efforts to sustain support in the United States. Also in February, Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin replaced Ray Odierno as the corps commander in Iraq. Petraeus had been the primary architect of the new strategy in Iraq, but Ray had been instrumental in making it work on the ground and deserved great credit for its success. During one week that month fewer than five hundred violent incidents took place in Iraq for the first time since January 2006. In March, the command recorded the fourth-lowest number of incidents in a week since 2004. We still had very bad days—on March 10, five soldiers were killed by a deeply buried IED and a suicide bomber killed three more—but Petraeus was convinced that the insurgents were trying to crank up the violence in anticipation of his and Ambassador Crocker’s congressional testimony in April.
As we approached the April decision point, Petraeus, the chairman, and I were talking every week, often more frequently. Dave gave us a preview of his recommendations in a videoconference on March 20. He said the postsurge mission would remain “security while transitioning.” He spoke of a forty-five-day period of consolidation and evaluation beginning in mid-July, when we were down to fifteen combat brigades; moving two more brigades out by the end of the year; and removing a third just after the Inauguration.
I told Dave I thought the withdrawal of the first additional brigade as early in the process as conditions permitted would be helpful, as would a statement that we were going back to twelve-month deployments. “Trend lines and impressions are what count,” I said. We should also make clear that “evaluation” is a continuous process; that is, we would not be withdrawing brigades if the situation in Iraq went to hell.
Just a few weeks before Petraeus’s and Crocker’s next appearance before Congress, Iraqi prime minister Maliki, frustrated and angered by Iranian-backed Shia extremist actions in Basra, ordered units of the Iraqi army into the city to reestablish control. The U.S. commanders were horrified that Maliki had taken such a risk without proper preparation. They scrambled to provide the logistics, planning, and military advice to support Maliki’s effort; without such help, he almost certainly would have failed. But he didn’t and therefore won significant recognition all across Iraq for acting like a “national” leader by suppressing his Shia brethren. The president told the chiefs, “We ought to say hurray to Maliki for going down to Basra and taking on the extremists.” He characterized it as a “milestone event.” “Maliki used to be a paralyzed neophyte—now he is taking charge.” Bush was right.
In the same meeting where Bush expressed his opinion, he had a wide-ranging dialogue with the chiefs about Afghanistan and, independently, the health of our forces. Mullen observed that success in Iraq would allow a reallocation of forces to address competing demands, above all Afghanistan. “So is Iraq causing Afghanistan to fail?” Bush asked, not expecting—and not getting—an answer. The president asked about post-traumatic stress, and General Casey talked about the efforts under way to “de-stigmatize” it “from commanders on down.” Bush ended by saying, “The worst thing for morale is if you have a president who is apologetic for the action and not confident that it was the right thing to do.”
The congressional response to testimony by Petraeus and Crocker on April 8 and 9 was vastly different in both tone and substance from the preceding September. Petraeus spoke to the fragility of the security gains in Iraq and said that after the last surge brigade returned home during the summer, he had asked for a forty-five-day evaluation period, followed by an indefinite “assessment” period before making a recommendation on further troop drawdowns. On April 10, the president spoke to a veterans group, along with the Department of Defense civilian and military leadership and others, in the cross hall (the intersection between the north foyer and the hallway connecting the East Room and the State Dining Room) at the White House. He
confirmed his approval to withdraw the last of five surge brigades from Iraq by July, and his strong support of Petraeus’s request to halt further reductions until after a period of evaluation and assessment. The president said, “I’ve told him [Petraeus] he’ll have all the time he needs.” He said the war was not “endless” and announced that all units deploying after August 1 would have twelve-month tours, not fifteen.
Mullen and I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee a few hours after the president’s statement. Petraeus naturally had wanted to err on the side of caution in terms of further drawdowns and the president wanted to support him. I described the halt in troop withdrawals as a “brief pause.” “I do not anticipate this period of review to be an extended one, and I would emphasize that the hope, depending on conditions on the ground, is to reduce our presence further this fall.” I said Petraeus would provide recommendations in that regard in September. The senators jumped on the difference between Petraeus’s more open-ended period of evaluation and assessment and my characterization, and I responded, “One of the benefits of being the secretary of defense, I suppose, is that I’m allowed more to hope than the field commander is.” My comments were portrayed as being at odds with—or contradictory to—both the president’s and Petraeus’s statements, and the truth is, they were, at least in tone. I was convinced we needed to keep the drawdown carrot dangling to lower the political temperature.
But my motives in staking out a more forward-leaning position were broader than that. As I’ve said, I was convinced a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq was in our national interest. I believed that continued drawdowns in 2008 were critical to make that outcome politically possible after our elections. That meant keeping pressure on the president and Petraeus to continue the drawdowns while simultaneously resisting Democratic efforts to change the strategy even as I pressed them to support a long-term approach. I knew I was walking a political tightrope.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Page 30