"We have to do something about the violence," Hadley insisted. When was the violence going to come down? He had been pressing this point for months. He was still carrying around the chart of escalating violence in his "GWB"
file. As he often said, "I'll believe we got it right in Iraq when that chart starts going down." Because, as Crouch had pointed out, the Iraqi police were "ineffective or worse" and the army was "fragile," Hadley said the best chance to get violence down was "with American forces."
"What if we can't do anything about the violence with more American forces?" Rice asked. What specifically would be the mission of those extra forces? How would it be different from the 150,000 U.S. troops already there? Her worst nightmare was that they would send another 20,000 or 30,000óthe five brigades they were talking aboutóto do the same thing the others had been doing, with the same results.
Rice understood that the idea was population security, sending the U.S. troops out with Iraqi police and army to neighborhood outposts. "But who was going to be responsible for population security?" she asked pointedly. If the Iraqis can't do it, and particularly if they themselves are undermining population security through sectarianism, how in the world are you going to use American forces to do it?
In his briefing, Crouch had argued against the idea that American forces could stay out of the sectarian violence and step in only to prevent genocide. It would be unsustainable politically in the United States, he said, to have a policy where all you're trying to do is stop major humanitarian sufferingómass killings and displacement. More important, he said, it's unsustainable with our forces on the ground. You cannot ask U.S. military personnel to stand by and remain detached as Iraqis are slaughtered in sectarian violence. You simply cannot ask U.S. forces to look the other way.
Bush said they must not lose sight of national reconciliation, and to underscore his point he added, "The U.S. forces will come home if we can't achieve it."
The question arose whether more obvious U.S. support of the Shia and Kurds might ease the pressure on them so they would be more amenable to reconciling with the Sunnis. But the intelligence indicated that the Maliki government still showed signs of backing a sectarian agenda. In addition, it was pretty clear that the Sunnis did not want to reconcile.
The president said the problem was the extremists on both sides. The United States had to fight them and do it in a balanced way, not tilting one way or the other. At the same time, he indicated, they had to support the Maliki government and help the Shia majority succeed.
They returned to Rice's question, which had been one of Hadley's major inquiries during his grilling of Casey and Khalilzad four months earlier: Who could really be responsible for quelling sectarian violence? Who should have that mission? Could the United States take it on?
General Pace made it clear that from a military point of view, the dangers were so great that the task would be virtually impossible. The U.S. military might not have the ability to pull it off.
Also, it would put the U.S. Army between the Shia and Sunnis, Rice said, clearly an untenable position.
She said she felt strongly that they had to be much clearer about what the American interests were, because they were losing sight of that. One was to preserve democratic institutions in Iraq so they could be of use in the future. Is it in America's interest, she asked, to try to achieve population security in Iraq? If you are going to pursue it, you'd better succeed. Because if you don't succeedóif you take on that mission and don't succeedóyou won't be able to go back and secure those other interests. She looked toward the president. "Instead," she said, "you'll be run out of the country."
"I've come into this with no background whatsoever," Treasury Secretary Paulson said. "But I don't understand what it is we're actually talking about here when we talk about putting more American forces in. What is it we're actually talking about? I don't know what it is you're trying to do."
It had been 1,348 days since the invasion of Iraq and six months since the president had privately agreed with his top advisers that they needed a strategy review. But no one had an answer for the treasury secretary's simple question.
The strategy had lost its way, Rice thought. Everything was spiraling downward so badly that the answer to Paulson's question was simply another question: Could they reestablish some kind of minimum security and live to fight another day? In other words, could they survive?
Bush said he would take input from everyone over the next three weeks and that he anticipated announcing a new direction by mid-December.
Crouch left the meeting feeling down. Though it wasn't clear whose arguments had won out, he had the impression that the Iraqis might soon be left with the responsibility for their own security, a job he didn't think they were ready to handle.
* * *
The next day, Monday, November 27, Pace met with the chiefs and the Council of Colonels in the tank to brief them on his meeting at the White House. "I walked out happy because I got my views on the table," he said, making it clear that this was not always the case. "Did Hadley have a new perspective after his trip to Iraq?" Marine Commandant General James T. Conway asked, referring to his recent visit.
Yes, he came back convinced that security is the number one issue, Pace replied, and unless we can find a way to protect the Iraqi people, all the other political and economic objectives remain elusive.
"Since 2003, violence has gone up and never once has security been adequate," Admiral Giambastiani noted.
Everyone knew he was right.
Pace said that Rice had made it clear she wanted more security before the State Department would get serious about the Provincial Reconstruction Teamsóthe small civil-military groups that worked on reconstructionófor Anbar province.
"Was there any sense of urgency displayed at the White House?" Schoomaker asked impatiently and sarcastically.
"There was a clear sense of urgency with the president," Pace answered. "He is leaning into announcing a new phase in the war that will help us achieve our original end stateÖby April 1, 2007, we would have five more brigades in Iraq."
Schoomaker was dismayed. Suppose that didn't work, he asked, "What is our fallback plan?"
"A 1 January decision should allow us to get five brigades in place by mid-April at the latest," Pace answered. There was no fallback.
"Are people engaged on this," Schoomaker asked almost defiantly, "or is this politics?"
"They are engaged," Pace replied. That's why the administration was contemplating the ways a surge might help. But if the progress is still lacking "after we surge five brigades," Pace said, "then you are forced to conscription, which no one wants to talk about." So this was the last desperate effort, and if it didn't work, they might have to return to the draft. To mention a draft was to invite the ghosts of Vietnam into the tank.
"Folks keep talking about the readiness of U.S. forces. Ready to do what?" Schoomaker growled, launching into a long monologue. "We need to look at our strategic depth for handling other threats. How do we get bigger? And how do we make what we have today more ready? This is not just about Iraq!"
Their jobs were to make the U.S. military ready for the unexpected crisis which would someday come. We have to figure out how to accelerate our overall global readiness and capacity, Schoomaker said. "I sometimes feel like it is hope against hope. I feel like Nero did when Rome was burning. It just worries the hell out of me."
Several colonels wanted to stand up and applaud. It worried them too. Others disagreed, feeling it was more important to fight the current war. But they all maintained their poker faces.
"Look, no one is whistling Dixie here," Pace said. "Serious folks are giving this a dispassionate and balanced look."
He insisted, "The president and the White House understand the resource constraints."
It was not clear that anyone believed what the chairman was saying or whether he believed it. What was clear was that there was lots of "whistling Dixie."
"I
want to be sure we are using time to the best advantage," Schoomaker said. "We can't recover lost time. I fear we will be caught flat-footed, the president and Rumsfeld will make a decision and we won't be able to execute."
"We need to position ourselves properly for the decision likely to come," Pace said.
As chief of staff of the Army, Schoomaker was responsible for recruiting, equipping and training. He worried about the long-term strength and future of the Army. He wanted to recruit a larger overall force. "If there is a spike in violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, North Korea, we don't want to be caught flat-footed." He told Pace, "I know your meeting was not about this."
"The sense of urgency is over Iraq, but not over the other issues," Pace said. "Now, I want to be able to tell him
[Bush] what is possible with a bigger Army and Marine Corps. What does it buy the nation?"
Admiral Mullen was worried. "We need to do the worst-case, not best-case planning here," he said. "We might want to hold some reserves out for other threatsósay, eight brigades for Iran."
Schoomaker knew they didn't have eight extra brigades.
Mullen said that they would break the all-volunteer force with extended and repeated deployments. "We will continue to hollow out the forceÖ. Bottom line: You decrease the deployments or make the force bigger. This is a small price to pay for sustainable security."
"I agree we need larger ground forces," Air Force chief Moseley said. "We are using Marines as a second land army."
Pace returned to five months earlier, when Casey had decided not to reduce the force in Iraq by two brigades, as he had planned. "Let me tell you, my world changed in July when I realized we were not going to off-ramp," Pace said.
Along the wall, Colonel Greenwood was startled. All the talk about drawing down was empty. They didn't have a strategy. When they had a plan for a drawdown but did the opposite, there was no one in the system to blow the whistle.
Pace asked for a wrap-up summary.
Mullen said he was worried that combining a JCS paper with one from the civilians in Rumsfeld's office would result in their "best military advice being watered down."
Pace knew what Bush wanted. "I am more interested in how a surge will work," the chairman said.
"I am still searching for the grand strategy here," Mullen said. No one seemed to disagree, including Pace. Mullen continued, "How does a five-brigade surge over the next few months fit into the larger picture? We have so many other issues and challengesóAfghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and places we are not even thinking about today."
* * *
For several days during the last week of November, the members of the Iraq Study Group met to hammer out the final details of their report. Lee Hamilton thought the Democrats favored what he called "a responsible exit" from Iraq, and Bill Perry had drawn up a timetable for withdrawal. The Perry draft recommendation said, "By the first quarter of 2008"óbarely a year awayó"all combat brigades not necessary for force protection should be out of Iraq."
"I can't accept that," Baker said. He did not want a rigid timetable. He knew that President Bush was adamantly opposed to anything that would tie his hands.
Perry wondered what was so awful about a timetable. Businesses and armies live by them. They make for good planning. "Look," he said in his gentle voice, "I'm not willing to sign a report that papers over it."
"Well," Baker replied in his steely Texas drawl, "maybe we'll have to go with the report without you signing it."
Perry knew it wasn't a bluff.
"We can work this out," insisted Hamilton. He wanted a target date for withdrawal.
Panetta noted that General Casey himself had suggested the first quarter of 2008 as a goal.
Baker would not accept a hard-and-fast timetable. He knew that Bush would dismiss it out of hand and argue that wars can't be fought on timetables.
Baker and Perry went off alone to hash out their differences.
Any recommendation had to be tentative to give the president some flexibility, Baker insisted. The "should" in Perry's draft had to be ditched. "Suppose it said, 'could,'" he proposed.
"Okay," Perry said. It wasn't a legal document, after all, and the "could" was acceptable to get the issue out in the public. So the final language read, "By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq."
Meese, the former attorney general to Reagan, had served 32 years in the U.S. Army Reserve. He felt that qualified him as much as anyone to make military judgments, and he was convinced that there had not been enough troops in Iraq from the beginning.
It was a mistake that President Reagan would not have made, he said later. "He would have had many more troops there. And the reason I say that is, the first time he put troops in combat in any large way was Grenada." Meese recounted how Reagan had made the decision. "He had said to [Army General] Jack Vessey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 'General, figure out how many troops you're going to need for this operation, and then double that number. There'll be less casualties on both sides.'"
Meese and Chuck Robb wanted to make sure that the report included a "surge" option of more troops. So Meese sat down with Bill Perry to see if there was some way to work out a compromise.
Meese wanted the report to say something like "We could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad."
That was okay, Perry said, but he wanted two qualifiers. First, a surge could also "speed up the training and equipping mission," which he believed was the ultimate goal so that everything could be turned over to the Iraqis.
Meese said okay. They could add that.
But given that General Casey and his deputy, Lieutenant General Chiarelli, had said unequivocally that they did not need or want more U.S. forces, Perry said that the study group had to say it could support a surge only "if the U.S.
commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective."
Meese agreed to the language, and the two returned to the others, saying they had settled on a solution.
Perry was relieved. His grandson, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, had by then served two tours in Iraqógung ho the first time around, less enthusiastic on the second. "God, we worried about him," Perry said later. Because the generals had been so opposed to more force and had assured the study groupóand Perry personallyóthat they did not want a surge, Perry convinced himself that its inclusion in the study group report would have no effect. Given Bush's public and private assurances that he looked to General Casey for advice, Perry felt confident that a surge was not going to happen.
Chapter 25
President Bush flew to Amman, Jordan, for a November 30 meeting with Maliki. General Casey also came, and the ice appeared to melt for the moment. "Hey, George," Bush said warmly. "How you doing?"
Casey gave the president a couple of one-liners about what to expect from Maliki. In conjunction with Casey, Maliki had developed a Baghdad security plan. It called for accelerating the transition to Iraqi control by the end of 2007.
The plan divided Baghdad into 10 districts with an Iraqi brigade in every district. Iraqi police and some U.S. and coalition forces would aid them. It included the imposition of military law on Baghdad to keep the Shia militias and the mostly Shia police force from operating by themselves in Sunni areas.
Casey told Bush that the big message to deliver to Maliki was "We've got to have reconciliation if this is going to work. Mechanically, all this can work, but if the government can't cause the factions to reconcile, you'll risk unhinging the whole thing."
Maliki was facing another problem. Moqtada al-Sadr was threatening to pull his loyalists out of the government if Maliki attended the meeting with Bush. But the prime minister had decided to come anyway.
After presenting a plan that would put control in Iraqi hands by the end of 2007, Maliki said he wanted his
Iraqi forces to have a free hand in Baghdad. U.S. forces could be around Baghdad, but not necessarily in the city. "This is our first attempt at independence. We developed this ourselves," the prime minister said.
But he added, "I had your people look at it because I wanted to know if it's realistic. We need to take responsibility for this." They all knew the extreme level of violence. "If violence remains in the capital at that level, we can't make any progress on anything," Maliki acknowledged. He seemed uncertain and asked for another review of his plan.
"Now I need your people to go over this and tell me if it's possible. Already I know that they're saying I may not have enough forces. I think I do."
"He was proud of his plan. He's chomping at the bit," Bush recalled to me. "It's like, 'I want to lead! They need to see me in the lead.' I view that as positive. Because I'm pushing him on this thing. Also, I think I'm wise enough to be able to do it in a way that doesn't sound paternalistic. In other words, we're partners. This is a period of time when people have gone to Baghdad and said, 'Get rid of Maliki!'"
Bush offered me his view of how to manage a fellow head of state such as Maliki. "One of the things you've got to understand is, I'm trying to set the conditions so that bold leadership is possible, and that if he thinks that I'm one of these people that says, 'If you don't do it exactly the way I want you to do it, you're going to be removed from office,'
he's going to [reject that]. You can't be a bold leader if somebody's getting ready to knock the ground from underneath you." At the same time, Bush told me, "I'm absolutely tough with him. I work hard to have personal relationships with people, and oftentimes, it opens up a lot of criticism. But you have got to be in a position, if you're the American president, to be able to say to a variety of leaders, 'Here's what I think.' And you have to be in a position where they say, 'I'm willing to listen.' And so, this was a realistic discussion with Maliki. But I have spent a lot of time with Maliki, both on the phone, SVTS [secure videoconference] eventually and also in person. I've worked hard to get in a position where we can relate human being to human being, and where I try to understand his frustrations and concerns, but also in a place where I am capable of getting him to listen to me."
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