Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (84 page)

President Obama’s first official statement on developments in Tunisia was on the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, January 14, when he condemned the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators, urged all parties to avoid violence, and called upon the government to respect human rights and hold free and fair elections in the near future. He devoted one sentence to Tunisia in his State of the Union address on January 25, saying that the United States “stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

Young, Internet-savvy Egyptians read Facebook pages and blogs about developments in Tunisia and in the latter half of January began to organize their own demonstrations at Tahrir Square, a huge traffic
circle in downtown Cairo, to protest the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president for nearly thirty years. The first large demonstration was on the same day as the State of the Union address, and the peaceful protests would grow daily as more and more Egyptians of all ages and backgrounds joined. The administration was divided on how to respond, with the NSS staff—perhaps sensitive to the criticism of some conservatives and human rights activists that Obama had been too slow and cautious in reacting to developments in Tunisia—urging strong support for the demonstrators in Tahrir Square.

On January 28, Mike Mullen called me at home to tell me the president had joined a principals’ meeting that afternoon on the Middle East peace process and turned immediately to events in Egypt. Mike walked next door to my house and briefed me on the meeting. He said that the deputies, led by NSS members Denis McDonough, John Brennan, and Ben Rhodes, had proposed “very forward leaning” support of the protesters in Egypt and a change of leadership there. According to Mullen, Biden, Clinton, and Donilon had urged caution in light of the potential impact on the region and the consequences of abandoning Mubarak, an ally of thirty years. The president, Mike went on, was clearly leaning toward an aggressive posture and public statements.

Alarmed, I called Donilon and asked to see him first thing the next day, a Saturday. He said the president might call me that night. The president didn’t call, and I met with Donilon at eight-thirty a.m. on the twenty-ninth. I reminded him that I had been sitting in the office he now occupied with Zbigniew Brzezinski when the shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, and I spoke about the role the United States had played in that revolution. I expressed my great concern that we were entering uncharted waters and that the president couldn’t erase the Egyptians’ memory of our decades-long alliance with Mubarak with a few public statements. Our course, I said, should be to call for an orderly transition. We had to prevent any void in power because it likely would be filled by radical groups. I said we should be realistically modest “about what we know and about what we can do.” Donilon reassured me that Biden, Hillary, he, and I were on the same page. All of us were very concerned that the president and the White House and NSS staffs were leaning hard on the need for regime change in Egypt. White House staffers worried about Obama being “on the wrong side of history.” But how can anyone
know which is the “right” or “wrong” side of history when nearly all revolutions, begun with hope and idealism, culminate in repression and bloodshed? After Mubarak, what?

The internal debate continued through the weekend. I missed a principals’ meeting on Saturday afternoon because of a commitment in Texas, but former ambassador to Egypt and retired career diplomat Frank Wisner was dispatched to Egypt by the president on Sunday to meet with his old friend Mubarak and deliver a message from the president: start the transition of power “now.”

That same morning I made the first of multiple calls to my counterpart in Egypt, the minister of defense, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. I urged him to ensure that the army would exercise restraint in dealing with the protesters and to support political reforms that would protect the dignity of the Egyptian people. He was quite gracious and reassuring, saying that the Egyptian military’s primary mission was to defend Egypt and secure critical facilities, “not to harm its people or shed blood in the streets.” I told him we were concerned about the government’s lack of decisive action to develop a political solution to the crisis and that, without moving toward a political transition—including “meaningful discussion” with key members of the opposition—Tantawi would likely be hard-pressed to maintain stability in Egypt. “Nothing bad will happen to Egypt, I assure you,” he said.

The afternoon of February 1, the principals met again with the president, and there was a heated debate about whether he should call Mubarak and, if so, what he should say publicly about the call. We interrupted the meeting to watch Mubarak’s televised speech to the Egyptian people. He said he would change the constitution, not run for president again (his term would expire in the fall), begin a dialogue with the opposition, and appoint a vice president—in short, he promised to do exactly what the administration had asked him to do through Wisner. Timing is everything, though, and I would often wonder whether, if Mubarak had made that speech two weeks earlier, the outcome for him might have been very different. What he promised was now too little, too late.

NSS staffers McDonough, Brennan, and Rhodes, and the vice president’s national security adviser, Tony Blinken, all argued the president should call Mubarak and tell him he should leave office in the next few days. We needed, they said yet again, “to be on the right side of history.”
Biden, Clinton, Mullen, Donilon, and I were in strong agreement, urging caution. We had to consider the impact of such a statement throughout the region. What would come next?

I asked what would happen if Mubarak didn’t leave. The president would have scored a few public relations points that would, at the same time, have registered with every Arab friend and ally we had in the entire region, all of whom were authoritarian to one degree or another. Thirty years of American cooperation with the authoritarian government of Egypt, I said, could not be wiped out by a few days of rhetoric. Besides, people in the region didn’t pay any attention to our—I wanted to say “your”—rhetoric anymore. If we humiliated Mubarak, I warned, it would send a message to every other ruler to shoot first and talk later. What if he did go? I asked. Who then? A military dictatorship? Would we have promoted a coup d’état? If you wanted to be on the right side of history, I argued, let Mubarak depart from office with some dignity, turning over power to elected civilians in “an orderly transition.” That would send the message to others in the region that we wouldn’t just “throw them to the wolves.” I repeated, “We have to be modest about what we know and what we can do.”

All the meeting participants finally agreed that the president should call Mubarak and congratulate him on the steps he had announced and urge his early departure. I argued that Obama should not use the word “now” in asking for a change but rather the more vague phrase “sooner rather than later.” The suggestion was rejected. All of the senior members of the team recommended against the president going public with the call and what he said to Mubarak. The president overrode the unanimous advice of his senior-most national security advisers, siding with the junior staffers in terms of what he would tell Mubarak and in what he would say publicly. He telephoned Mubarak and, in a difficult conversation, told Mubarak that reform and change had to begin “now,” with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs saying the next morning that “ ‘now’ started yesterday.”

The telephone lines between Washington and the Middle East were, by this time, burning up. The previous week there had been demonstrations in Oman, Yemen, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Biden, Clinton, and I were either calling or being called by our counterparts across the Middle East with regard to events in Egypt and in the region. On the second, I talked with Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain
and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE. The latter, whose insights and judgment I had always regarded highly, gave me an earful, saying that he was getting mixed messages from the United States, that the message from the vice president and me was not the same as what he was hearing from the White House or the media. He went on that “if the regime crashes, there is only one outcome, which is Egypt to become a Sunni version of Iran.” He said that the U.S. stance reminded him of the days of Jimmy Carter during the fall of the shah, “and Obama’s message needs to be tuned differently.” He did not disagree that Mubarak had moved too late, but “we are here.” We agreed to talk every few days.

With violence increasing in Cairo, I talked to Tantawi again that day, stressing the need for the transition “to be meaningful, peaceful, and to begin now,” and for a wide spectrum of the opposition to be included. I expressed concern that if the transition process did not proceed quickly, the demonstrations would continue, food shortages and economic conditions would worsen, and the emotions of the Egyptian people would heighten—all of which could well lead to the situation spinning out of control. Tantawi said that pro-Mubarak demonstrators had gone to Tahrir Square to show support for Egypt’s longtime leader and that there had been clashes between the pro- and anti-Mubarak forces. “We will make efforts to terminate them soon,” he assured me, referring to the clashes (or so I hoped). I commended him for the military’s handling of the protests “so far” and urged continued restraint.

I had lunch that day with White House chief of staff Bill Daley, who had been in the job less than a month. He was smart, tough-minded, open, honest, and funny. Over sandwiches, he told me that he had been doing a press roundtable and “pontificating” about Egypt when he thought to himself,
What the fuck do I know about Egypt?
Daley said he had had the same thought looking at Ben Rhodes at the NSC meeting the day before. I responded that I thought Ben believed in the power of Obama’s rhetoric and the effectiveness of public communication but was oblivious to the dangers of a power vacuum and the risks inherent in premature elections where the only established and well-organized party was the Muslim Brotherhood. Moderate, secular reformers needed time and help to organize. I told Bill that all our allies in the Middle East were wondering if demonstrations or unrest in their capitals would prompt the United States to throw them under the bus as well.

Contrary to Tantawi’s assurances, violence escalated that day, with
pro-Mubarak thugs riding horses and camels into the crowds of demonstrators at Tahrir Square, lashing out with sticks and swords, creating a panic. The next day gunmen fired on the protesters, reportedly killing 10 and injuring more than 800. Our information, admittedly sketchy, suggested that these attacks were enabled, encouraged, and/or carried out by pro-Mubarak officers from the Ministry of the Interior. I called Tantawi again on the fourth. Courageously, I thought, he had gone on foot into Tahrir Square that morning to reassure the demonstrators that the army would protect them. He had been well received and so was very upbeat when I called him. He emphasized there had been no more violence. I asked about reports that Interior forces had lost discipline and attacked their fellow Egyptians. Tantawi rather carefully answered that “if the allegations were true, it is no longer an issue.”

The demonstrations at Tahrir Square continued, intensified, and spread to other parts of Egypt over the next several days despite the efforts of the new vice president, Omar Suleiman, to negotiate with representatives of the opposition. Biden talked with Suleiman on February 8, urging him to move forward with the negotiations, to eliminate laws that had been used to maintain the authoritarian government, and to show that Mubarak had been sidelined. Biden later told me Suleiman had complained that it was hard to negotiate with the young people in Tahrir Square because they had no leaders. Mubarak again addressed the nation on February 10. Most Egyptians—and we—thought he was going to announce his resignation, but to the contrary, he said that while he would delegate some of his powers to Suleiman, he would remain as head of state. Afterward I thought to myself,
Stick a fork in him. He’s done
. We were all alarmed as Egyptian anger and frustration boiled over. Donilon asked me to call Tantawi to see if we could find out what was going on. The hour was very late in Egypt, but Tantawi took my call. I said it was unclear to us whether Suleiman was acting as president. Tantawi said Suleiman would “execute all powers as acting president.” I asked about Mubarak’s status and whether he was still in Cairo. Tantawi told me that preparations were being made “for his departure from the palace, and there is the possibility he will leave for Sharm el-Sheikh.” He reassured me yet again that the army would protect the people, and I again stressed that it was critical the government implement its commitments to reform.

At six o’clock the next night, February 11, Suleiman announced that
Mubarak had resigned and that the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces would assume control. The next day the Supreme Council promised to hand over power to an elected civilian government and reaffirmed all international treaties—a subtle way to reassure Israel that the new government would adhere to Egypt’s bilateral peace treaty. On the thirteenth, the council dissolved the parliament, suspended the constitution, and declared it would hold power for six months or until elections could be held, whichever came first.

Six weeks later, I arrived in Cairo to meet with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, in office three weeks, and Tantawi. Both were, I thought, unrealistically upbeat. I asked Sharaf how they intended to give the many different groups vying for power the opportunity to organize and get experience so they could run credible campaigns. I added that a leading role for the Muslim Brotherhood would send shivers around the region and be a deterrent to foreign investment. Tantawi, who was in the meeting, answered, “We don’t think the Muslim Brotherhood is that powerful, but they are one of two organized groups [Mubarak’s National Democratic Party was the other], so people will need some time to be able to organize themselves as a party and share their positions.”