In My Time (74 page)

In 2006, he said, the enemy had the momentum, but now because of the surge, we had it. He pointed to what was happening in Anbar Province among the Sunni sheikhs. They were forming their own groups, which came to be known as Concerned Local Citizens, or CLCs, and signing on with the Americans to fight al Qaeda. One of the first questions the CLCs were asking our troops was “Are you here to stay this time?” When they believed we were, they got into the fight with us to restore safety and security in their own towns.

Keane said it was clear that the surge was working, but leaks like those in the
New York Times
the previous weekend weren’t helpful. To the military leadership in the field such stories looked like a signal that the civilians were getting ready to pull the plug. The president explained that his staff was simply working on options, looking for ways to deal with the political problem we had on the Hill. Steve noted that although the president had just won a war-funding vote by threatening a veto, there was concern that the Democrats might succeed in passing other measures to tie our hands. That’s why we needed to be ready with a new plan, a new direction.

I made the point that talking about “a new direction” isn’t cost-free. You can’t suggest a shift in strategy in Washington without it having an impact on our troops in the field, I said.

Jack said that what motivates generals like Petraeus and Odierno is duty. The president gave them a mission. He told them to surge, extend the deployments, and defeat the insurgents. Those generals carry out that mission out of a sense of duty. Now, he said, they may hear from
folks back here in Washington who don’t like the policy, and they may hear criticism or skepticism from visiting members of Congress. But it was critically important that they not hear it from their civilian leaders. He stressed the importance of keeping the chain of command knitted together and moving forward with the mission. He said that our troops in the field wouldn’t be much affected by “Plan B” talk, but for our senior commanders it could be corrosive if they thought that civilian leadership had lost confidence in the mission.

A WEEK LATER SECRETARY GATES announced that he was withdrawing the nomination of Pete Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His nomination, which should have been routine, was pulled after Secretary Gates asked the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, to survey other Democratic senators and let Gates know how the nomination would be received. Not surprisingly, Levin reported back that the confirmation hearings would focus on the last four years of the war. Gates decided to pull the nomination rather than have a fight. When he chose Admiral Mike Mullen to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it meant that Gates’s original choice for vice chairman, Admiral Ed Giambastiani, would have to step aside since those positions can’t both be occupied by individuals from the same service. As a result Gates’s decision not to fight for Pete Pace resulted in the loss of two terrific officers who had served the nation with honor during a time of war. I thought it was a bad call.

On one of my first visits to Walter Reed to spend time with our wounded warriors, I had invited Pete Pace to come with me. We spent a morning together going room to room, and there was an emotional connection between Pete and those young soldiers and marines that I’d never seen with any other senior officer. His connection to these young men and his enormous admiration and respect for them were deep and sincere and returned to him many times over.

I had first met Admiral Giambastiani when I was on the House Intelligence Committee and he was head of an important submarine
command. Extremely smart and highly effective at dealing with both the civilian and military leadership at the Pentagon, Ed had managed through a career of high achievement to maintain a down-to-earth modesty. Secretary Gates got it right at Admiral Giambastiani’s farewell ceremony when he noted that Ed had made an art form of combining distinction and humility.

I would have fought to keep both of them.

I WAS ON AIR FORCE TWO flying to Washington on Sunday, July 8, when I got a call from Steve Hadley. The president had called Steve back to Washington from a family vacation, Steve said. He, Dan Bartlett, Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, and Josh Bolten had been having a series of meetings at the president’s request to try to come up with a change in strategy to satisfy some of the growing opposition on the Hill. I had been in Wyoming for the Fourth of July holiday while the meetings had been going on, but I’m not sure I would have been invited if I had been in town, since I was so opposed to temporizing on the surge in order to placate the Democrats. Not only was this the absolute wrong time to send a message that we were wavering; it wasn’t even good politics. In trying to pacify opponents, we’d drive away supporters who understood the stakes, and in the end the Democrats wouldn’t be appeased. They would simply demand more withdrawals.

The next morning, I picked up my copy of the
New York Times
to find another front-page story by David Sanger, this one titled “In White House, Debate Is Rising on Iraq Pullback.” It opened by saying that “White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them.” It reported that while the president and his aides once thought that decisions about the surge could wait until after General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker made a mid-September report on the effectiveness of the strategy, now some aides were recommending the president “announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback.”

As we sat in the Oval Office a few hours later for the daily communications
session, no one challenged the substance of the piece, though there was speculation about who had leaked it. I made the case that the group was misreading the Congress. I didn’t think the situation was as grim as they thought it was. I went back to my office and called Trent Lott, the Senate Republican whip, who was not at all pessimistic. He said he thought the degree to which Republicans were falling away from the president had been hyped by the press. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as the
New York Times
described it. Trent said he wanted to do a formal whip count before giving me a solid answer on the question of how many Republicans we could count on for any Iraq war vote. He told me he would run the traps and get back to me.

That afternoon, as White House discussions of the strategy continued, I again made the point that compromising now, before Petraeus had a chance to report back, was foolish. The Democrats would simply pocket whatever concessions we made and demand more later.

I also had an interesting visit from Henry Kissinger that day. He told me that he’d been approached by a couple of Republican senators who asked him if he would take a public position on Iraq, something different from the White House position, to give the Republicans something to endorse. He said they’d told him as many as ten Republican senators were prepared to embrace a new position so long as it was different from the White House view and one that Henry recommended. Henry had refused. He supported the president’s policy.

The next day, Tuesday, July 10, 2007, I attended the weekly Republican Senate Policy Lunch, and Iraq was the focus. John McCain was just back from Iraq and gave a terrific presentation about why we were on the right course and why it was so important to stay on it. When he finished I was asked to say a few words. My normal practice was just to listen at these lunches, but given the stakes of the Iraq war debate and the indications of dissatisfaction in the Republican Senate ranks, I decided to speak. I echoed John’s assessment that we needed to continue to back Petraeus. I talked about the consequences of failure for the United States and for our allies and the costs of premature withdrawal or retreat. I also reiterated the point that we could not in good
conscience compromise on what we knew to be the right policy simply because of political pressure.

That night Lynne and I hosted some key Republican senators for dinner at the Vice President’s Residence. Trent and Tricia Lott were there, and Trent pulled me aside. He’d done his whip count and said, “You know, I think we’re going to be okay on the votes. I think we can win them all.” He anticipated we’d lose seven or eight Republicans, but he couldn’t see the Democrats getting the sixty votes they needed to block a filibuster on any measure they might put forward to tie our hands or change the strategy.

As dinner broke up, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell walked over to me. Mitch had been one of the most concerned of the Republicans. He was up for reelection and had suggested to the president that he needed to begin a withdrawal in order to avoid massive defection of Republican senators. “Dick,” McConnell said, “I may have been wrong. Tell the president that I think we may well be able to win these votes and hold the Senate Republicans for the month of July.” That would get us through to the August recess and into September, when Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker were scheduled to testify. That was all we needed.

Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus spent sixteen or seventeen hours testifying in front of Congress on September 10 and 11, 2007. They did a tremendous job, delivering their honest, unvarnished assessment of the situation in Iraq. They exhibited professionalism and competence under some intensely partisan attacks, particularly from senators who were gearing up to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A few nights later, as the president prepared to address the nation to sum up the progress Petraeus and Crocker had reported on, I found myself once again intervening in the speech-drafting process. Despite the fact that the president’s surge strategy was a repudiation of the Baker-Hamilton report, Steve Hadley had inserted a reference to the group into the speech. I am sure Steve thought he was working to forge consensus, but it didn’t make any sense. “Mr. President, you can’t
refer to Baker-Hamilton,” I said. “Our strategy is Petraeus-Crocker, not Baker-Hamilton.” He agreed and removed the reference.

Given the opposition of politicians and the public to putting more troops into Iraq, George Bush was truly courageous to order a new strategy and the surge of troops to carry it out. The next ten months ratified his brave decision. Our troops, together with the Iraqis, defeated the insurgency, dealt a severe blow to al Qaeda, and created a secure environment so that the Iraqi political process could begin to take hold. When historians look back, George Bush’s decision will stand out as one that made a difference for millions and put history on a better track.

AS I REFLECT BACK on why the surge worked so well, the first credit for its success goes to our troops in the field, the men and women of the U.S. military, some of whom gave their lives securing this victory for our nation. The colonels who led these troops and were among the first to understand the importance of counterinsurgency also deserve tremendous credit, as do the generals who led them and one tremendously skilled American diplomat. General David Petraeus was the strategic visionary. Deeply knowledgeable about counterinsurgency doctrine, he took over command in some of Iraq’s darkest days and turned things around with his determination to prevail. General Ray Odierno, commander of the multinational corps in Iraq under Petraeus, took the Petraeus doctrine and made it operational. He designed and commanded simultaneous and sustained offensive operations that denied the enemy any place to hide. Generals Petraeus and Odierno were aided immeasurably by the tireless work of Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq from 2007 to 2009. The surge would not have succeeded without Crocker’s historic efforts to knit diplomatic and military strategies together and to work with the Iraqi government to forge a new relationship between two sovereign nations.

Finally, what we accomplished in Iraq would not have been possible without the work of General Stan McChrystal and America’s special operations forces. Their skill and bravery made it exceedingly dangerous to be an al Qaeda leader in Iraq. America’s special ops forces are among
the most valiant warriors the world has ever known, and I was honored to join some of them at a dinner in 2008. Their chaplain, a young man from Wyoming, said this in his invocation:

We are soldiers, God, agents of correction. May our world see the power of faith. May our nation know the strength of selfless service. And may our enemies continue to taste the inescapable force of freedom.

I am aware of no greater example of selfless service than America’s special operations forces. Someday when the full history of this period can be written, all Americans will know the contributions they made to defend our freedom and our way of life.

I
n the fall of 2006, as violence in Iraq was still escalating, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, setting off an explosion at the Punggye test site some two hundred forty miles northeast of Pyongyang. When the blast was detected, it was Sunday evening, October 8, in Washington, D.C. The next morning President Bush went before the cameras in the Diplomatic Reception Room to condemn the test and issue a warning: