In My Time (72 page)

Many of our wounded soldiers are hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Visiting Walter Reed Army Medical Center with Liz, talking to Marine Lieutenant Andrew Kinard who was wounded in Al Anbar province Iraq in 2006. Andrew is one of the incredibly brave and inspirational warriors who have sacrificed so much for this nation. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)

I never came away from my visits there without being moved beyond words at the courage and the dedication of the warriors. Countless times, the only request they made when I asked if there was anything we could do for them was that they be allowed to return to their units.

Organizations like Fisher House do wonderful work providing support and a place for families of these soldiers to stay. Diane Bodman, wife of Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, dedicated herself to making sure the young men and women who were well enough to leave the hospital for even a brief time had places to go and things to see. Lynne and I were honored to invite them to the Naval Observatory. We had barbecues and some outstanding country and western music. Singers such as Charlie Daniels and Rodney Atkins regarded entertaining at these events as a privilege—and we felt the same way about hosting them.

The wounded warriors are exemplary of the tremendous caliber of men and women who make up America’s armed forces. They are the greatest fighting force—and the greatest force for good—the world has ever known. And we must never lose sight of the fact that they are the reason we, and many millions more all around the world, live in freedom today.

THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP, co-chaired by Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker, came to the White House to brief us on their report on December 6. Hamilton, whom I had known since we were in the House together, opened the presentation. He said the goal of the Iraq Study Group was to recommend a way to achieve a reduction of the U.S. commitment to Iraq over time without setting a specific timetable. He talked about shifting the role of U.S. forces to be more focused on training. He suggested we needed conditions for the Iraqis to meet, as well as a broad diplomatic effort in the region. My friend Jim Baker spoke next. He said the military effort should shift from efforts to suppress
sectarian violence to a mission of training, equipping, and supporting Iraqi forces. He believed a new diplomatic initiative was necessary and should include direct talks with the Syrians and Iranians.

Other members of the group followed, with several urging that we restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Chuck Robb, former Democratic senator from Virginia and a veteran of Vietnam, stressed how important it was that we not withdraw immediately and raised the possibility of a surge if we decided it was needed. When my Wyoming friend Al Simpson spoke, he said that the group understood the difference between a committee making recommendations—even a committee as prestigious as this one—and those of us in power making decisions. He said he was praying for us.

I appreciated the work this bipartisan group had done. They had taken their responsibilities seriously and worked hard to come up with sound recommendations. But I was troubled as I listened to their suggestions and later as I read the report. The only place the word
victory
appeared in the document was in connection with the chances for an al Qaeda victory. This was not a strategy for winning the war.

While we all knew that ultimately the Iraqis would have to stand up and take on responsibility themselves for securing their nation, the ISG failed to recognize the stakes for the United States if we withdrew before the Iraqis were capable of defending themselves. The report’s focus on political reconciliation and finding political solutions to the nation’s problems left out the importance of a secure environment in which reconciliation could occur and political agreements could be reached. I was also disappointed with the group’s suggestions with respect to Iran and Syria. The group recommended that we open a dialogue with each nation, asserting that neither had an interest in seeing a chaotic Iraq—but both Iran and Syria were working hard to encourage precisely that.

The next morning we had our Oval Office intelligence brief earlier than normal because the president and Prime Minister Tony Blair were having breakfast at 8:00 a.m., followed by a joint press conference. As the intelligence briefing wrapped up, a staffer came in with a copy of the president’s opening remarks for the press conference. I didn’t usually get
involved with drafts of presidential speeches, but a quick glance at this one sent up a red flag. I’d seen an earlier version and it had the word
victory
in it. Someone had taken it out of the remarks.

For some time, Dan Bartlett, the director of communications, and Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, had been arguing that the president shouldn’t say “victory.” They viewed that as the equivalent of arguing to stay the course. They were concerned the press would hear it and write that the president hadn’t understood the message of the midterms we’d just lost. They worried it would lead to stories that the president was “stubborn” and “wasn’t listening.” They urged repeatedly that for optics’ sake, we make clear we had a changed strategy—and that meant deleting references to “victory.”

I disagreed. Our national security depended on victory in Iraq. That was simply the truth, and the president should be clear about it. I also thought about our soldiers and their families and what they would think when they heard the president’s remarks. The commander in chief could not be sending men and women into harm’s way if we weren’t fighting to win.

“Mr. President,” I said, holding up the proposed remarks, “you can’t refuse to talk about winning. That will be a huge signal that you no longer believe in victory.” The president understood immediately, and a few hours later when he appeared with Prime Minister Blair, he said, “We agree that victory in Iraq is important; it’s important for the Iraqi people, it’s important for the security of the United States and Great Britain, and it’s important for the civilized world.” It could not have been any clearer.

At four that afternoon the president’s principal national security advisors met in the secure conference room in the Old Executive Office Building, across West Executive Avenue from the White House, to discuss Iraq. Secretary Rice and I had a vigorous debate. She argued that Iraq was experiencing the kind of sectarian violence that American forces should not be in the middle of. Our troops should stand back, she said, and engage only if they think they are witnessing a massacre, the kind of violence that had happened in 1995 when Serbian forces
had slaughtered thousands of Bosnians in Srebrenica. I did not think this was realistic. My view was that we had to stay actively and aggressively engaged in the fight, that the outcome mattered too much for us to simply pull back and watch the Iraqis battle it out.

By the next morning, when we gathered in the Roosevelt Room for a meeting on this topic with the president, much of the distinction between Secretary Rice’s view and mine had been airbrushed away. Instead of two crisply drawn options for the president, the NSC staff presented what they described as “an emerging consensus.” They were following a practice for managing conflicting views that Rice had started when she was national security advisor. I’d never been a fan of it, but I was particularly concerned that in the case of Iraq the president should be presented with clear choices, not halfway measures, not policy recommendations that split the difference.

I spoke up. “These aren’t the options we discussed last night. The distinction has been blurred here.” There was a big difference between letting the Iraqis fight it out and staying engaged to defeat the enemy, and I observed that attempting to find some sort of compromise position, some view that made everyone happy around the table, might in fact produce policy that was incomprehensible and impossible to implement as a military strategy.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Pete Pace, followed up, pointing to the suggestion that U.S. troops get involved only if there were a massacre on the order of Srebrenica. “How do I write that into an order for the troops?” he asked. “Hold your fire unless you think it looks like Srebrenica?” That just doesn’t work, he said. “Either we’re in or we’re not in. Either we’re operating or we’re not operating.”

THE PRESIDENT WANTED TO hear from outside experts and get their thoughts on a new strategic approach for Iraq, and so a group gathered in the Oval Office on the afternoon of December 11. Retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey, who had played a major role during Desert Storm as commander of the 24th Infantry Division, was there. Wayne Downing, a retired four-star who had been teaching at West
Point, was another member of the group. When I was secretary of defense, he had commanded the Joint Special Operations Command that oversees our special operations forces worldwide. Several civilian experts were also at the session, including Eliot Cohen and Stephen Biddle. The group was united in the notion that we were in trouble in Iraq and needed to clean it up, but they weren’t united in recommending a course of action. Jack Keane, the retired vice chief of staff of the army, was the most direct and had the best developed concept. Keane made the point that Iraq was in crisis, but that we were a long way from having to accept defeat. He said that Baghdad was the key, and we needed our troops in the neighborhoods around the clock. He also urged that we not be distracted by the Shiite militias. “They are not the issue,” he said. We needed to keep our energies focused on defeating al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents, who were at the heart of the security problem across Iraq.

When the meeting with the president concluded, Jack came back to my office, and Fred Kagan, the military historian with whom Jack had been working, joined us. Their basic idea was a shift to a counterinsurgency strategy, where the primary focus would be protecting the population, since their cooperation and the intelligence they could provide were crucial to success. Under this strategy troops would secure Baghdad by hitting targeted areas, putting up a cordon, then going house to house, arresting and capturing the enemy. Our troops would be in the neighborhoods 24/7, no longer going back at night to the large and sometimes isolated forward operating bases. The increase in forces and our increased visibility and contact with the local population would, Keane and Kagan believed, convey the notion that we were in it to win and would stay until the enemy was defeated.

Without this change of strategy, simply adding more troops would not bring a victory, but this new strategy could not be successful without more troops. To achieve the increase, Keane and Kagan proposed to speed up the deployment of troops getting ready to go to Iraq and then delay bringing some troops home, so that there would be a surge of as many as seven extra brigades into Baghdad. They also recommended
sending a Marine Regimental Combat Team, the equivalent of roughly another brigade, to Al Anbar Province, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.

We would also work very closely with the local forces, making sure they understood that even when the combat operation was over, we would leave some troops behind to secure the area and maintain order. Assisting Iraqi forces in holding these areas until they were capable of operating without us would be manpower intensive, which was one of the reasons a surge was crucial. A surge would also give us additional capability to speed up and improve the effectiveness of the Iraqi forces.

Keane and Kagan had the full package: a new strategy and the way to implement it. The next day I described for the president in general terms what they were proposing and what they believed was feasible, which led us to a conversation about the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They knew there was a strategy review under way and that there was talk of a surge, and they were concerned that it would have a negative impact on overall force readiness and troop morale. But it was pretty clear, as the president observed, that the worst thing for troop morale would be losing the war.

The president was scheduled to see the chiefs at the Pentagon the next day, December 13, and I told him I thought it was important to have an in-depth discussion. We rode over together, along with Steve Hadley, went in through the River Entrance, and after a couple of left turns, were in the chiefs’ windowless conference room, the Tank.

General Pace opened the meeting, summarizing the chiefs’ recommendations. Their emphasis was on expanding the U.S. advisory effort, shifting the U.S. focus to developing the Iraqi Security Forces, and transitioning to Iraqi control. “The question is when do you shift to advising,” the president said. “You don’t want to do it too early.” Pace responded that General Casey did not believe that the Iraqi forces would fall apart if we shifted now. “We need to get the Iraqi Security Forces in charge,” he said.

Then I spoke. I emphasized the importance of winning in Iraq and said that the chiefs’ plan seemed to put the burden on the Iraqi people
and the Iraqi Security Forces at a time when they weren’t ready. “We’re betting the farm on Iraqi Security Forces,” I said, and I wanted to know why, given the importance of prevailing in Iraq, we were willing to do that. “Wouldn’t it be better to make a major push with our own forces to get it done?” I also talked about the consequences of losing, the way it would destabilize the entire region and frighten off the moderates in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan who had signed on with us. “Suddenly it will be very dangerous to be a friend of the United States,” I said. “There’s an awful lot riding on this.”