Known and Unknown (83 page)

Three days later I talked with Khalilzad, Abizaid, and Casey by a secure videoconference. Our military operations seemed to be having little impact on the growing sectarian violence. “Are we at an inflection point?” I asked. “If we are, it's helpful to consider the alternatives.” I raised a number of ideas that might change the worsening dynamics that appeared to be approaching a tipping point. Could we just let Iraqis separate themselves and stand aside? Could we “side” with the Iraqi Sunnis or Shia instead of being caught in the middle? Could we deploy an additional number of U.S. forces? Would they be able to stanch the sectarian bloodletting?

Abizaid responded, “The level of violence isn't the measure of success. We have to make this point.”
¹⁶
He didn't want the enemy dictating the terms of battle. They could easily increase their savagery. He thought there were better ways to measure progress: The intelligence cooperation we were getting from local Iraqis, electricity production, the number of Iraqi troops and police we were training, the number of provinces turned over to Iraqi control, and the like.
¹⁷

 

I
n August 2006, Casey told General Pace and me that he thought we needed to put more troops into Baghdad in an attempt to curb the sectarian killings. He thought the best way to increase troops temporarily was to not only deploy new units to Iraq, but to extend the yearlong tour of the 172nd Stryker Brigade by three or four months. Strykers are armored patrol vehicles, light enough to conduct operations in cities and armored enough to defend against gunfire and some roadside bombs. The four thousand men and women of the 172nd had done a superb job in securing Mosul. General Casey now needed them in Baghdad.
^*

I decided to fly to Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the 172nd Stryker Brigade was based. My unpleasant task was to explain to the spouses why their loved ones would not be coming home from Iraq when they had been scheduled to. They had been due back in mere days. Some members of the unit had already returned to prepare for the brigade's homecoming and were themselves now going back to Iraq.

Before I had left for Alaska, I was told by senior Army officials that they had talked with the families and explained the situation to them. As I learned when I arrived, that was not the case. They had only talked by video teleconference to a few of the senior officers' spouses. In fact, I would be the first Pentagon official to meet personally with these understandably disappointed and in some cases angry family members. As I headed to the base from the airport, “welcome home” signs dotted the road—signs that now were sadly premature. I then went to meet some eight hundred family members who were gathered in a gymnasium.

I explained the reasons behind the rare extension. General Casey had told me he needed more troops in Iraq at this time. “It's something we don't want to do, but in this case we had to,” I told them. One woman asked me to wear a green bracelet she had braided until her husband came home. I kept it on my left wrist until that December, when the last of the 172nd Stryker Brigade finally made it home to Alaska.
¹⁹
I still have it to this day.

After brief remarks I opened it up for questions from the audience. Some emotionally expressed their deep disappointment that their family members would not be coming home when they had been told; most were polite, surprisingly so. I knew it was a terrible disappointment for all of them. Everyone in the large gymnasium had endured a year of waiting and praying for the safe return of their loved ones.

After taking questions, I stayed for a long time visiting personally with the military families. As I was about to leave, a woman from behind me whispered in my ear, “You have to have big brass ones to come in here and face this crowd.” Amused, I turned and saw she was smiling, too.

 

I
n September 2006, a sensational press report fueled the calls for withdrawal from Iraq. Citing an August 2006 Marine intelligence report, an article in the
Washington Post
claimed that the Iraqi province of Anbar, a Sunni-majority area on Iraq's western border, was “lost” to the enemy. “[T]he prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim. . . . There is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there,” it concluded.
²⁰
The notion that terrorists had won a part of Iraq was the psychological equivalent of reporting that parts of postwar Germany were lost and would remain under the control of the Nazis.

What the author of the misguided article ignored was that the report the article cited was being overtaken by events on the ground. The Sunnis in Anbar province were turning against the Baathist-jihadist axis and seeking a new way forward for Iraq's Sunni minority. In fact, six months before the article appeared, General Casey had briefed the President that “Anbarites are tired of violence,” and a wedge existed between the Sunni resistance groups and al-Qaida in Iraq.
²¹
We had been working assiduously over 2006 to expand and exploit those differences. By late summer, the efforts were beginning to bear fruit.

Since 2003, I had encouraged our military and the CPA to form alliances with local tribal leaders, particularly as part of an outreach effort to Sunnis.
²²
Abizaid was an early and consistent advocate of approaching the Sunnis with financial and other assistance. And as early as 2005, Sunni tribal sheikhs in parts of Iraq formed alliances with our military to take on the jihadists, most of them non-Iraqis, who had established roots in some Sunni cities and neighborhoods. In post-Saddam Iraq, many Sunnis had until that point pursued a strategy of allying with foreign jihadists to kill Shia, create maximum disorder, and hope to ultimately drive out the impatient Americans. The theory was that the Sunnis would inherit the chaos and restore themselves to power.

But Iraq's Sunnis were contemplating a major change in their strategy just as our military commanders were pursuing new tactics. In late 2005, our commanders had brought to bear new counterinsurgency tactics and forged alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in the western cities of Tal Afar and Qaim.
²³
Enterprising colonels such as H. R. McMaster and Sean MacFarland were forging new operational techniques and tactics and applying the art of counterinsurgency.
²⁴
U.S. troops were clearing neighborhoods infiltrated with insurgents and al-Qaida. They held the ground until Iraqi security forces were sufficiently capable of maintaining security. The yields were impressive in a part of Iraq that many had written off to the enemy.

Though the terrorists often invoked the lessons of Vietnam and Lebanon, they did not heed all of them. Unlike other successful insurgency movements, al-Qaida in Iraq and its many affiliated organizations did not offer the Iraqis the promise of a better life. Instead, they offered the Iraqi people brutality and terror. Their approach was to bully and intimidate the local people into submission. Al-Qaida's vision was a kind of nihilism cloaked in the trappings of a twisted version of their religion.

The local population had an opportunity to see the kind of a future that al-Qaida would offer them and the rest of Iraq. Iraq's Sunnis recognized the need to break with the Islamist insurgency and to seek the protection U.S. forces could provide from their violence-obsessed former allies in al-Qaida and from the retribution of Iraq's Shia. The barbaric behavior of al-Qaida and its affiliated organizations had frayed their relations with Sunni tribes. Al-Qaida members were skilled in the arts of intimidation: They would “marry”—an al-Qaida euphemism for sexual assault—local women, push tribes off their land, and seize profitable activities traditionally under tribal purview. Rather than integrating with the Sunni tribes, al-Qaida sought to colonize Iraq's western provinces and turn them into the “Islamic State of Iraq.” Raising revenues through smuggling and extortion, al-Qaida achieved tribal acquiescence by kidnapping, torturing, and murdering the tribal leaders and their families who stood in their way.

So in August 2006, even as some in the media were mistakenly proclaiming Anbar “lost” to the enemy, our military was actively negotiating with tribal sheikhs for them to turn against al-Qaida and join the side of the Iraqi government and our forces. In Anbar's capital of Ramadi, Army officers were establishing small outposts in the heart of enemy territory, enduring fierce enemy fire in the process. They pressed ahead on reconstruction projects and began craing deals with the local sheikhs. If the sheikhs encouraged tribal members to join the police, Army commanders agreed to let them protect their own localities. Police recruits tripled in both June and in July. In August alone, there were close to one thousand new recruits.
²⁵

Part of the reason Sunni sheikhs were willing to change sides was their growing understanding that our forces would stay in Iraq only as long as necessary. In September 2006, a fledgling movement among Iraqi tribal sheikhs around Ramadi was starting to take shape, which became known as “the Awakening.”
²⁶
By October 2006, we were briefing the President on the Anbar tribal leaders leading the resistance.
²⁷
And by the end of 2006, this alliance, also called “the Sons of Iraq,” was one hundred thousand strong. The Sons of Iraq took the lead in reclaiming Anbar province for the Iraqi people and in driving al-Qaida out.

Unquestionably, the rise of this movement was an essential factor in the later turnaround in Iraq. But there was still another significant change afoot.

 

A
s calls for a fundamental reassessment of the Iraq strategy grew louder, former vice chief of the Army, retired General Jack Keane, came to visit me on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 19, 2006. He got right to the point. Violence in Iraq was spiraling upward. The American people were fed up and ready to get out. He did not think Generals Abizaid and Casey were sufficiently aware of the gravity of the situation and how perilously close the nation was to withdrawing its support.

Though I didn't share with Keane our internal deliberations or my discussions with the President, his thoughts largely dovetailed with mine. What we were doing in Iraq was not working well enough or fast enough. This also was not the first time I had heard the suggestion that Abizaid and Casey should come home. General Pace and I already had been giving thought to their replacements. Casey had originally gone to Iraq on a twelve-month tour, and he had agreed to stay for two six-monThextensions. Abizaid had already come to me and told me he believed we needed, as he put it, “fresh eyes” on the situation. As early as June 2006, Pace and I had begun discussing with the President potential candidates for both positions.
^*

No one on the National Security Council or Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended to me that either Abizaid or Casey should be removed. Nor were there even suggestions from anyone on the NSC that they were doing a poor job. To the contrary, by autumn 2006, the President was making a strong pitch to keep Abizaid working for him and had offered Abizaid a post in the White House to oversee the war on terror after he left CENTCOM. Bush also was considering Abizaid for director of national intelligence. As the wheels were in motion to replace Abizaid and Casey, perhaps by assigning them to new duties, Pace, Vice Chairman Ed Giambastiani, Deputy Secretary Gordon England, and I had narrowed the short list of replacements for Casey to Lieutenant Generals David Petraeus, Stan McChrystal, Pete Chiarelli, and Martin Dempsey. For CENTCOM commander, we were considering McChrystal, Chiarelli, and Dempsey.

In one Friday morning meeting on October 20, with Pace and Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Abizaid and Casey reporting via secure video teleconference, there were signs that there was little new thinking about our course of action. With an NSC meeting at the White House scheduled for the following morning, I wanted us prepared to answer the President's likely questions. He had been growing impatient. Again I raised the possibility of deploying more troops into Iraq. I asked Abizaid and Casey if that could help stem the violence.

“If we put another division into Baghdad it could actually be more damaging,” Casey responded. By Casey's logic, someone could reasonably ask if we needed to reduce our forces. That didn't seem like the right course of action, so I asked, “General, if that's true, would pulling one division out of Baghdad be helpful?”
²⁸

He responded that he believed that with some fifteen thousand U.S. troops in Baghdad we had the right number. Two months earlier, we had sent more than five thousand additional U.S. troops and more than six thousand Iraqi troops into the capital as part of Operation Together Forward II to curb the violence across the city. The operation had yielded few visible dividends. Frustration with the lack of progress was growing within the Pentagon and the administration. With the declining public confidence in the war, the Commander in Chief was readying a different plan—one that would involve a new strategy with new generals and a new secretary of defense.

P
ersonnel changes occur in every presidential administration. Some are by mutual consent, some are not. By the fall of 2006, only two of George W. Bush's original cabinet members remained: Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and me. I had tried to resign twice in the wake of the abuse at Abu Ghraib, but President Bush had opposed my leaving. At his insistence that I stay in 2004, I had acquiesced, but in the months that followed, I became increasingly convinced that I should have left.

The start of the President's second term in 2005 was a natural transition point, a time for new beginnings and an opportunity to take a fresh look at his national security policies. But President Bush may have felt uncomfortable changing both his secretary of defense and his secretary of state in a time of war. I too felt obligated to remain if the President wanted me to do so. I thought it would be almost unpatriotic to resign from the Department when we had so many troops engaged abroad and over the President's request that I stay. I knew our troops couldn't walk away from their jobs. I felt reluctant to walk away from mine.

In the spring of 2006 another flap erupted when a small group of retired generals called for me to step down. A few of the most vocal seemed to align themselves with the Democrats, speaking out against the invasion and appearing before what was billed as a Senate “oversight hearing”—in actuality, a partisan forum set up on Capitol Hill by some Senate Democrats and opponents of the President.
¹
At least two called for the election of Democrats in the November general election.
²

The most curious aspect of the retired generals' grievances was that I didn't listen to the advice of the military.
³
I met with military leaders constantly and routinely deferred to those on the battlefield for making decisions on everything from troop levels to how to pursue insurgents. There were many times when the decisions on the ground didn't seem right—such as the first battle of Fallujah—but I took pains to try not to micromanage with the proverbial five-thousand-mile screwdriver. I encouraged generals to form their own relationships with the President. The senior military had been given ample opportunity to express their views to the President, even if those views might have differed from mine. Indeed, I thought that a more accurate criticism would have been that I too often deferred to the views, opinions, and decisions of the generals who were in charge.

I took heart that those I worked closely with were supportive. General Myers, who had retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to my defense, as did Generals Mike DeLong, Tommy Franks, and others.
⁴
Still, the idea of retired generals publicly calling for the removal of a sitting secretary of defense was troubling. With notable exceptions, most military officers avoided becoming politicized after leaving active duty. I knew President Bush would not favor a precedent whereby a handful of disgruntled retired officers could determine who the elected President of the United States had as secretary of defense. Indeed, President Bush proclaimed himself “the decider” on the subject and announced I would stay on.
⁵

By the summer of 2006, with declining public support for the Iraq war and for the administration, I had made up my mind that I definitely would not remain if the Democrats took control of either house of the Congress in the November elections as they seemed likely to do. Even if Republicans held the House and Senate, I was giving serious thought to leaving so that President Bush could have new leadership at the Department. If the Democrats took power in the legislative branch, the President knew as well as I did that it would not be productive to have a secretary of defense constantly being summoned by members of Congress for hearings designed to promote partisan politics in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. By then, many Democrats were campaigning against the Iraq war and would press to cut its funding. They would use their positions on congressional committees to relitigate old questions such as prewar intelligence on Iraq for their political advantage. Some were even considering impeachment hearings against President Bush.
⁶
All of this meant there would have to be changes in personnel and strategy if the country was to avoid the ugly ending in Iraq that new congressional majorities would be counseling.

In early October 2006, Vice President Cheney mused after a meeting in the Oval Office, “The good news is that there are only 794 days left until the end of the term.”

“Dick, there are 794 days left for you,” I said. “Not for me.”
⁷

President Bush then said something that confused the tea-leaf readers, not to mention Joyce and me. Asked on November 1 if he still had confidence in me as secretary of defense, and if he wanted me to stay on, the President announced that he wanted me to stay in his administration “until the end.”
⁸
This ran against everything I had discussed with Joyce and suggested to Cheney, who I assumed might have passed on my less than subtle comments that I was likely to leave if the Democrats were victorious on Election Day.

In the days before the November election, it looked as though Republicans would lose the House. Americans had soured on congressional Republican scandals and profligate spending. Republicans would be lucky if they held the Senate.

Joyce and I were having dinner with some friends one evening shortly before the election when I received a phone call from the Vice President. “Don,” Cheney said matter-of-factly, “the President has decided to make a change. He wants to see you Tuesday.” He did not elaborate on the President's decision.

“Fair enough,” I said to Cheney. “I'll prepare a letter of resignation. It makes sense.”

“We're going to lose the House of Representatives, and the next two years are going to be rough,” Cheney said.

“I agree. It's not helpful for the military if I stay. Fresh eyes are a good thing,” I responded.
⁹

Thirty-one years earlier, Dick Cheney had been the one who called me to urge that I accept President Gerald Ford's request to become secretary of defense. In August 1976, he had called me on behalf of President Ford to let me know I would not be Ford's vice presidential nominee. And in December 2000, Cheney called me in Taos to say President-elect Bush wanted me to become his defense secretary. Now Dick was on the phone one more time, confirming what Joyce and I had already concluded. Two and a half years earlier I had given President Bush a signed note saying he had my resignation whenever it might be helpful to him. That time now had come.

 

S
everal days later, as millions of Americans went to the polls on November 7, I sat in the Oval Office alone with the President. Bush was visibly uncomfortable. I tried to make the situation easier for him.

“Mr. President,” I said, “I've prepared this letter for you.”

I handed him a single sheet of paper. “With my resignation as Secretary of Defense comes my deep appreciation to you for providing me this unexpected opportunity to serve,” the letter began. “I leave with great respect for you and for the leadership you have provided during a most challenging time for our country. . . . It has been the highest honor of my long life to have been able to serve our country at such a critical time in our history and to have had the privilege of working so closely with the truly amazing young men and women in uniform. . . . It is time to conclude my service.”
¹⁰

As he took the letter from me, Bush's first thoughts were personal. “Is Joyce all right?” he asked.

“She's fine. And she's ready,” I said. “She even typed the letter for me.”

I could see that the President was still concerned. I said, “Look, Joyce and I are tracking with you on this.”

“This is hard for me,” Bush said, shaking his head slowly. “You are a pro. You're a hell of a lot better than others in this town.”

We talked briefly about my successor, Robert Gates. During the 1991 Gulf War, Gates had been deputy national security adviser under Brent Scowcroft. He later became CIA director. Gates had been a member of the Iraq Study Group, led by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker, which had counseled a withdrawal in light of their conclusion that “stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating.”
¹¹
The President expressed confidence that despite those recommendations, Gates would hang tough on Iraq.
¹²

Bush did not appear to be considering a wholesale change in strategy. In fact, he discussed his efforts to bring General Abizaid to Washington to help coordinate the war effort from the White House. I told the President that my impression from Abizaid was that as a professional soldier he felt he would be uncomfortable with a position in the White House. With General Casey slated to leave his post in Iraq, the President was planning to nominate Casey to be chief of staff of the Army. He asked for my opinion on who might replace Abizaid and Casey. I again mentioned David Petraeus.
¹³

After twenty minutes, we stood up and shook hands.

As the election returns came in later that evening, it became clear that November 7 would not be good for Republicans. Democrats won a sizable victory in the House and defeated incumbent Republicans in the United States Senate, putting Democrats in control of both houses. Representative Nancy Pelosi, a liberal representative from San Francisco, would become the first female Speaker of the House.

With the midterm elections over, attention soon turned to the 2008 presidential election. Senators planning to seek the presidency, such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, would use their new majority to hammer away at the administration and try to burnish their liberal credentials for the Democratic primary voters. John McCain, in turn, was going to serve as ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Without mentioning the President by name, he had been opportunistically undermining the administration's policies in his quest for the Republican nomination for the presidency. It seemed to be his way of separating himself from President Bush and burnishing his image as a maverick without directly taking him on.

The day after the election, I stood with the President and Bob Gates in the Oval Office for the announcement of my resignation and Gates' nomination. I wished my successor well. I couldn't resist quoting Winston Churchill to the effect, “I have benefitted greatly from criticism and at no time have I suffered from a lack there of.”
¹⁴
I thanked the President for giving me the opportunity to serve and for the privilege of working so closely with the men and women in uniform.

There were many who sent well wishes over the next few days. Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, telephoned. Referring to his wife, he joked, “Irina said this morning, ‘Don is a free man. I envy Joyce.'”
¹⁵
Henry Kissinger called me at home. He was disappointed by my departure, saying, “The irony is you are being attacked for overruling the generals, and, the truth is, if anything you may have overruled them too little.”
¹⁶
He may have been right.

I appreciated the many kind comments I received. One of the more personal came from Congressman John Dingell, that, in a way, closed a loop on my public career. The Michigan Democrat was one of the first people I met when I had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives back in 1962. We had played paddleball together in the House gymnasium and had been friends since, now more than forty years. “I look forward to shaking your hand and recalling the old days,” he said fondly.
¹⁷
It was a nice memory for me of how the Congress had once been.
^*

I promptly shifted from leading the Department of Defense to simply presiding over it, while Gates prepared for his confirmation hearings. I would be available if a crisis occurred, but I decided to remove myself from policy making to the extent possible so that the new secretary would have all of his options open when he arrived.

 

O
n a bright Friday in December, with the sun pouring onto the Pentagon's parade field and with the President and Vice President of the United States and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs beside me, I attended my second and, as I mused at the time, my last farewell ceremony as secretary of defense. My departure was not what Joyce and I had envisioned. I had planned on a smaller Department-only event. Then word came from the White House that the President and Vice President would be attending and speaking. I was pleased our three grown children had come in for the day to be there alongside Joyce and me. My family had been through it all with me and I had relied heavily on their unfailing support. Despite the ups and downs of public life, they never wavered.

Cheney spoke at the ceremony, not only as the current vice president and a former secretary of defense, but also as a friend.
¹⁹
Our time together in public service had started more than thirty-five years earlier and was now at an end. As I listened to his thoughtful words, I wished for a moment that more people could know Dick as Joyce and I did. There are facets of his personality that the public rarely, if ever, had a chance to see. Many years ago, our family took a trip with the Cheneys. One evening after a long day, one of the Cheney girls fell asleep in the living room and Dick gently lifted his child to carry her to bed. It was not an unusual gesture for a father, but it struck me then that his tenderness contrasted sharply with what most people, even his admirers, saw of Cheney. Few know the dedicated husband and father—not to mention friend—behind the calm and professional public servant.