by Susan Rice
Ian had borne the brunt of caring for the kids when I was away—getting them ready for school, serving breakfast and dinner, carpooling, and overseeing homework. Just as I was wrapping up my week, his work at This Week was kicking into high gear, peaking every Friday through Sunday. By late 2010, Ian and I were forced to admit we were ships passing in the night, and the kids had serial parents rather than much collective family time. Given the strain on our family and his waning enthusiasm for the job, Ian decided to take a buyout offer in January of 2011. After leaving ABC, he looked forward to dedicating his talent and time to community service.
Selfishly, I worried that Ian would become a stay-at-home dad, making him the primary parent. My fears ranged from Honey, I’m afraid the kids will see me somehow as less relevant in their lives and even more distant, to Ian, what if you feel unfulfilled as a stay-at-home dad or resent being seen by status-conscious Washingtonians as less respectable? Ultimately, none of my concerns were justified. Ian loved life after ABC, and I was a huge beneficiary of his greater freedom and attention to the home front, including his invaluable assistance to my ailing parents.
Beyond the stresses of the Libya negotiation and our family separation, the time away for spring break would be welcome for another reason. On the morning of March 10, I had received a devastating call from Ticey Westbrooks, the wonderful young nurse who was taking care of my dad at his home in Washington State.
Over a year earlier, on Christmas Day 2009, my ninety-year-old father had suffered a stroke while he was staying with us in Washington for the holiday. He came upstairs to breakfast a bit wobbly, complaining that his vision was partially blocked. After a couple calls to some doctor friends, we hurriedly took him to nearby Sibley Hospital, where he was diagnosed and admitted. While in the hospital, he developed a bowel obstruction that required emergency surgery, which was itself very risky. He survived the surgery, but his blockage did not resolve, requiring a second surgery two weeks later. I spent weeks working out of corners of Sibley Hospital. After six weeks in hospital and rehab, a much weakened and very cranky Dad came home to live with us.
I hired and managed the 24/7 caregivers who helped him bathe, drive, and exercise, while Ian played an outsize role in keeping Dad company in my absence. For the kids, it was a blessing to have many extra months living with my dad. He used his time with Jake and Maris to impart his “life lessons” on race, duty, excellence, and self-esteem. They played chess together, and Jake and Dad spent hours discussing political philosophy.
After flying him back to Camas, Washington, in October and getting him settled in with Ticey, I managed to visit Dad twice. His health remained precarious but not critical, and his mind was still solid. We talked almost every day. In fact, we had spoken the night before the unexpected early morning phone call from Ticey—after I finished at the U.N. Dad was thrilled to hear about Jake’s latest report card, which signaled a sustained improvement in his academic performance.
As usual, we ended the conversation with me saying, “I love you,” and Dad replying in his warm, deep voice, “Honey, I love you too.”
“Night, night,” I said.
“Sleep tight,” he replied, replicating our ritual from my childhood.
When she called that next morning, Ticey was in tears but managed to choke out that Dad had passed away peacefully in his sleep overnight.
Emmett Rice had always been the world to me and, suddenly, he was gone.
I had to break the news to my brother, Johnny, pulling him out of a business meeting. He happened to be in New York, and he hurried over to the Waldorf, where we hugged and cried together. President Obama called almost immediately to offer his condolences, as Johnny and I sat together for some while in disbelief and mourning. Before long, Johnny reminded me that I had work to do, “Dad wouldn’t want you slacking now, with Libya and everything else on your plate.” I had to keep going.
The memorial service in Camas would wait, and we would throw a party in Washington in Dad’s honor some weeks later. Dad wasn’t much of a planner, except in certain matters. He gave us clear instructions years before on how to handle his passing: a very short service with no long speeches; no church; good but inexpensive wine; and his carefully crafted playlist dictated for the occasion. Miles Davis. Duke Ellington. Louis Armstrong. Oscar Peterson. And, of course, Tom Browne’s “Funkin’ for Jamaica” to bring it all home.
Ten days later, I so badly needed this break in Anguilla to process Dad’s passing as well as to comfort and be comforted by the kids and Ian. Soon after our arrival in Anguilla, the president gave the order to initiate air strikes in Libya. I was slowly starting to decompress, absorbing the sunshine and relative quiet.
On our third day, as I played my usual morning game of tennis with Ian, one of the DS agents came abruptly on the court, interrupting our rally to announce that the White House chief of staff needed to talk to me. That’s strange, I thought—Bill Daley almost never called me. I had known the large, balding Bill Daley since he was commerce secretary in the Clinton administration. I left the court and climbed into DS’s SUV to have cool and quiet for the call.
“Where are you?” Daley said as soon as he picked up.
“I’m in Anguilla with my family.”
He shouted, “You start a fucking war and then you go on vacation to the Caribbean?”
Shocked to a chill, I replied evenly: “I am on a long-planned vacation. I am the U.N. ambassador. My part of this equation is done. I passed the resolution, and I did the press work. What else could I possibly do? I don’t control any aspect of the military action.”
“I can’t believe you are away.”
Incredulous, I asked, “Did President Obama ask you to call me?”
“No,” he conceded.
“Well, Bill, thank you,” and I politely ended the call.
Angry and upset, I was shaking and my heart was racing. He knew I was on vacation, and his only objective was to ruin it. The rest of the day was horrible until the evening when the phone rang again.
Valerie Jarrett’s warm and steadying voice greeted me. She quickly asked, “Are you okay?”
“No, not at all,” I confessed. Still incredulous, I relayed the conversation with Daley.
“Yeah, I heard he was really rough on you. Don’t worry about it. It’s not about you. He is under a lot of stress. The president is fine with you being away.”
If not for her call, I wouldn’t have recovered enough to regroup and make the most of the remainder of the week with my family.
The following Monday, President Obama made a short trip to New York to dedicate the new U.S. Mission building, which was aptly named after the late commerce secretary, my old neighbor and friend, Ron Brown. Obama greeted me in the elevator as we rode up with his agents to the top floor for the ceremony.
“Nice tan,” he commented, laughing. “I hear my chief of staff had a bad day last week.”
“No kidding.”
He smiled and said apologetically, “Don’t worry about it. We’re cool.”
My relief was complete, but my anger at Daley unabated. I went to see him a couple of weeks later to make sure he understood how I felt about our conversation. He acted like nothing had ever happened.
The operation to protect civilians in Libya accomplished its proximate goal. Benghazi was spared. So were countless thousands of civilian lives. The Libyan army continued to fight rebels, but no major massacres of civilians were reported. Rebel forces steadily gained ground, buoyed by the persistence of NATO air strikes. No Americans were killed in combat, although two U.S. servicemen were safely recovered after their plane went down due to mechanical problems, having been assisted by Libyans grateful for the American intervention.
U.S. involvement in the air campaign lasted longer than expected, as our European partners proved unable to carry the load, despite their pledges. They lacked ordnance and sufficient combat aircraft to sustain the fight. As the mission stretched on for several months, the Ru
ssians and Africans quickly turned against the operation, blaming the U.S. and our allies for vastly exceeding the mandate given.
The mandate was extremely broad, but I had explained plainly before the Security Council how it would be used. Still, Russia resented that the mission lasted months and argued that the objective had seemed to morph from sparing civilians to removing Qaddafi. In fact, regime change was not the original objective of the mission, but Qaddafi would not relent. Consequently, the NATO-led bombing campaign ended only after rebels captured and killed Qaddafi on October 20. The Russians (and Putin in particular) have since tried to portray Libya, falsely, as proof of American duplicity and obsession with regime change. In Putin’s warped mind, Libya is a key milestone on the road of deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations.
Initially, the mission in Libya seemed a triumph of good over evil. The United States was deeply popular, along with France and the United Kingdom. The New York Times reported in May 2011 that, “Many Libyan parents with newborn girls are reportedly naming them Susan, in honor of Susan E. Rice, the Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, for her vote in the Security Council in favor of establishing the no-fly zone”—the imprecise term the Times used to shorthand the totality of the U.S.-led military action.
When I visited Libya in November, less than a month after Qaddafi was killed by rebel soldiers in Sirte, his last stronghold, I was welcomed with more warmth and joy than I have experienced before or since as a representative of the United States on foreign soil. Massive crowds gathered in the central square in Benghazi to greet me, many by raising their right hands and moving their heads swiftly from side to side, mimicking my body language as I scanned the Security Council table to count the yes votes for the historic Libya resolution. On the walls of buildings surrounding the square were pictures of hundreds of young Libyan men murdered or missing under Qaddafi’s rule. I was surprised to see a big sign captioned, “Fantastic Four—God Bless You All. Thanks For All,” with large photos of U.K. prime minister David Cameron, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, President Obama, and me!
In the streets of Benghazi, men and women swarmed me, asked to shake my hand, and thrust their kids into my arms to hold. The large complement of Diplomatic Security and the rebel security guards who protected me seemed a bit nervous, but the tight crowds were clearly friendly, and I was never fearful.
As my team and I flew out of Benghazi, my wise, young special assistant and friend, Priya Singh, shared a message for me from one of our Libyan escorts. He said that for all the public displays of gratitude we saw that day, the people of Benghazi would never be able to thank the U.S. enough, because just before the U.N. vote and President Obama’s decision to intervene, Qaddafi’s troops were closing in on the city with orders to rape and kill. Without U.S. leadership, they would not be there to greet us. Deeply moved by his words, I confessed to Priya, “I feel like I could be done today. I feel I’ve done something.”
Unfortunately, it was not enough and, before long, Libya’s tide of joy began to recede. After some months, the interim Libyan government proved to be divided and ineffectual. The international effort to support the new government faltered for lack of strong leadership from the U.N., Europe, or the U.S. We underestimated the difficulty of establishing a unified, stable government in a country where there had never been actual institutions, only the writ and whim of one man. Wishfully perhaps, having internalized the lessons of Iraq, the administration sought to minimize U.S. involvement in Libya, while expecting our European allies to drive the state-building effort—a challenge they embraced in principle but lacked the capacity to meet. In New York, I gathered Arab, European, and U.N. counterparts with some regularity to try to galvanize and concert our diplomatic and peace-building efforts. Meanwhile, in Washington, lingering ambivalence among some Principals about the original operation led the NSC to convene few Principals Committee meetings at a time when our efforts might have had maximum impact.
Then, in September 2012, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three U.S. officials were killed in a terrorist attack on our diplomatic facilities in Benghazi. Heartbroken, my colleagues and I mourned the deaths of all four Americans. For me, it also brought back the trauma of the 1998 terrorist attacks on our embassies in East Africa. Yet, this latest assault was equally personal, as I had come to know Chris as a valued colleague in Washington. Warm, handsome, and fearless, Chris was deeply knowledgeable and committed to the Libyan people. He couldn’t wait to get back out there as ambassador to a post-Qaddafi Libya. Like all who knew Chris, I was shocked and profoundly pained by his loss in a country he so loved and a city that so loved him. Benghazi and its highly politicized aftermath caused policymakers in Washington to shy away from Libya even more.
In the president’s second term, as national security advisor, I tried to refocus and sustain senior-level attention on Libya in order to support a unified national government, stabilize what was increasingly becoming a failed state, and dislodge the ISIS terrorists who had filled the vacuum created by the Qaddafi government’s collapse and the opposition’s failure to install an effective replacement. While we did manage to reduce the terrorist threat in coastal Libya, extremists flowed through Libya to the Sahel, destabilizing Mali, Niger, and other parts of the region.
Libya remains a state without an effective government, and an exporter of refugees and instability. As in Somalia, I believe the U.S. intervened for the right reasons. We made fewer mistakes and paid a far lesser price for our success protecting civilians in Libya than we did in Somalia. And yet what we left behind is not dissimilar—a fractured state without an effective central government, continued factional fighting, a lingering terrorist threat, and a source of insecurity in the region. Though I remain conflicted, on balance I still think we did the right thing to intervene in Libya and save thousands of innocent lives. Libya was an urgent case, I believe, where the risks and costs of intervention to the U.S. were tolerable when weighed against the humanitarian benefit. That said, while we and our European partners won the war, we failed to try hard enough and early enough to win the peace. Whether it could have been won at all is a real question; but not having given it our best shot, we will never know.
15 Star Wars Cantina
I was groggy.
It was too early, even on a regular Sunday morning, for a call from the White House. But on this Sunday, after I had been out until the wee hours at the after-parties following the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the last thing I was prepared for was an order to get to the White House as soon as possible. John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism and homeland security advisor, needed to see me. I scrambled into the shower and tried to call my Diplomatic Security detail. They were supposed to accompany me everywhere I went, but in Washington they did not sit overnight outside my house. They came when they knew I planned to leave. Once in a rare while, however, I would need to leave home unexpectedly and would try to give them as much of a heads-up as possible. Without my detail, I jumped into my red convertible (which I never got to drive anymore) and sped to the White House. I parked on the street and made my way through layers of White House security, which I was accustomed to bypassing when driven into the complex by my agents.
Inside, I went directly to Brennan’s basement office, a low-ceilinged, windowless cave downstairs from the Oval Office. Brennan and I sat at the small round table in his office, and he pulled out some photographs and maps. “The president and I want you to know that we are about to launch a surprise raid into Pakistan with the aim of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden,” Brennan began with no ceremony. “We’ve been planning this for some time. Our intelligence seems solid, but we’re not certain he is where we think he is.” Brennan outlined the various strands of intel that added up to their assessment of bin Laden’s location. It was by no means a slam dunk.
We talked through the political and security risks of the mission and its timing. Like a few other principals, I had not been part
of the small team involved in the decision making on the raid. It was exceedingly sensitive, and I fully understood that, without an operational role, I had no “need to know.” Still, the White House did not want to blindside me or other NSC cabinet officials who would have learned about this in the press if not for our early Sunday morning briefing. After about a half hour, I was sworn to secrecy and sent on my way with the promise that I would be updated later when the outcome was known.
I went on with my day as planned—attending a brunch and playing tennis. With Ian and the kids, I maintained a studied nonchalance. My stomach was doing flips for hours, but on the outside, I was “maintaining my composure,” as Johnny and I used to joke with one another. By well into the evening, I had heard nothing and was starting to worry.
Then the phone rang with the White House on the line. Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough reported, “We got him.” He explained that the raid became more complicated than anticipated when a helicopter crash-landed in the compound, but our troops had found bin Laden, killed him after he resisted, confirmed his identity, evacuated his body, got safely out of Pakistani airspace, and buried the mastermind of 9/11 at sea. Denis told me the president would make an announcement within an hour. “Thank you,” was all I could think to say. My heart pounding, I turned on the television to see all the networks heralding the breaking news of a presidential announcement on a subject TBD.
