* * *
On January 30, 2007, the Senate Armed Services Committee held Fallon's confirmation hearing. "What's your degree of confidence," asked Senator John McCain, "that the Iraqi government and military are up to the task that we are now embarking on in this new strategy?"
Fallon said his initial assessment was that some good Iraqi troops existed and some needed a lot of work. Some Iraqi leaders were effective, others weren't. The important task, he said, was to make an honest assessment of what was realistic and practical.
"And maybe we ought to redefine the goals here a bit," Fallon added, "and do something that's more realistic in terms of getting some progress."
Afterward, Fallon had a private moment with McCain. I hear you're not really behind President Bush's surge plan, McCain said.
"There is no plan," said Fallon. "It's just an allocation of additional resources. We'll have to see the plan when Petraeus gets out there."
* * *
On Saturday, February 10, 2007, Petraeus relieved Casey in a formal ceremony at Camp Victory, not far from Baghdad International Airport, in an opulent main hall of marble columns and crystal chandeliers inside one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. He declared the situation he'd inherited "hard" but "not hopeless." The two generals also met privately for a couple of hours. Casey stood before a map of Iraq and described the current situation in each province. "You know I've asked for two brigades," Casey said. "I don't support the rest. But I've set them up for you if you need to bring them in.
"We have these brigades on a string," Casey said. "One of them will be here next week, the first one. The second one's approved by Maliki. The rest are not, but they're programmed to come into Kuwait one a month, and you work that with him.
"What we're seeing here is a major shift in strategy from them doing it to us doing it. Whatever you do, whatever you decide, just be clear about it, because it's a major change."
Casey was stepping down to become Army chief of staff, technically a promotion. It would put him in the business of recruiting, training and equipping the force, but no longer in the chain of command. A proud man, he said with a measure of sadness, "It is going against everything that we've been working on for the last two and a half years."
Petraeus had been in charge of training the Iraqis when the transition strategy had been developed, and he had supported it. This change, Casey said, must be conveyed clearly to both U.S. troops and Iraqis.
"Everybody you bring in here is going to stay for the full duration of his tour," Casey warned. "You just need to understand that." They had deluded themselves into believing that some troops could be sent home early. But that never happened. "Anybody you get in here, there's so much to do, ultimately becomes indispensable," Casey said. It's what he meant when he called Baghdad a troop sump.
Both men remembered former Secretary of State Colin Powell's warning to President Bush six months before the invasion of Iraq. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell had told Bush. Privately, Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard Armitage, referred to this as the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.
* * *
That first day, with the enormity of the task at hand and the pressure to succeed back home, Petraeus felt the weight of the world was on him. But he told his closest advisers, "Take the rearview mirror off the bus. Let's focus forward. We are where we are. You may be frustrated with it. I'm frustrated with it, candidly. It can make you angry. But now let's figure out, how do you make it better?"
He told his staff he wanted to implement his new approach at once. Right off the bat, he instituted an interim joint campaign plan, making clear that the mission was to protect the population and do it by living among the people.
"The biggest of the big ideas is secure the population and serve the population," he told his staff. "That's a hugely significant, big idea. To secure the population you must live with it, partner in everything you do." They were to move out and establish joint security stations, combat outposts, patrol bases and checkpoints around Baghdad.
He sent a short letter to everyone in his command. He had pondered each word. In it, he used the word "security"
three times. "We will conduct a pivotal campaign to improve security for the Iraqi people," he said. Of those who opposed the new Iraq, he said, "We must strike them relentlessly. We and our Iraqi partners must set the terms of the struggle, not our enemies." The goal was to buy time for the Iraqis to save their country. "To do that, many of us will live and fight alongside of them."
* * *
"We're going out with the troops," Petraeus told his staff. "We're going on some patrols and we're going to do it in Baghdad." He went to a map and selected neighborhoods that he remembered from when he had headed the training of the Iraqi security forces, and about which he had now heard horror stories. "Let's go here and here." The first was Ghazaliya, the neighborhood Meghan O'Sullivan watched closely from the White House. Petraeus remembered it as a vibrant, upper-middle-class neighborhood. Their patrol also took them through Amiriya, a Sunni enclave in western Baghdad, and Dora, another Sunni neighborhood. He walked the neighborhoods for hours, and what he saw hit him like cold water. They were ghost towns. He had never seen anything quite like it.
"This is where we're starting," Petraeus ordered. The first joint security station to protect the Iraqi population would go into Ghazaliya. They called it "pushing cement," literally isolating each day's battlefield with concrete barriers to encircle and protect the population. Al Qaeda or the insurgents could attack, but they would no longer be able to get vehicles carrying explosives or rocket-propelled grenade launchers into the protected sections of the capital.
He realized that Ghazaliya and Dora were the two canaries in the Baghdad mine shaft. Until they could be brought back to life, perhaps even sing a little bit, the new mission would go nowhere. He had ended the first day of his command feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. Now the second day ended with the weight of two worlds. He remembered the Roman dramatist Seneca the Younger's adage that "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." He felt prepared, and this was the opportunity. Would that equal luck?
On the next secure video with the president, Rice and Gates, he reported that the neighborhoods he had visited were
"ghost towns."
"You have to recognize," Petraeus said, "this is going to get harder before it gets easier."
* * *
On Monday, February 19, 2007óa chilly, breezy Presidents DayóBush visited Mount Vernon, George Washington's sprawling estate on the banks of the Potomac River, 16 miles south of Washington. "With the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to take George Washington's successes for granted," he said. But
"America's path to freedom was long, and it was hard, and the outcome was never really certain." Washington's Continental Army "stood on the brink of disaster many times," but "his will was unbreakable."
He kept portraits of Washington and Lincoln in the Oval Office and repeatedly compared himself to some of his predecessors, noting that history often judged them more kindly than did contemporary accounts.
Rice had been present when Bush pointed out certain paintings to White House visitors. "George Washington, you know, they're still writing books about number one," he said. "I'm not going to worry about what they're saying about 43." Or he would mention how Lincoln, whom Bush called the greatest president, had persevered during the Civil War despite the massive casualties, the many battlefield losses, and persistent doubts that the war could be won.
Harry Truman was another Bush favorite.
"President Truman made clear that the Cold War was an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom," Bush had told the graduating class at West Point the previous year. "By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged, and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundation for America's victory in the Cold WarÖ. Today, at the start of a new century, we are aga
in engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before. And like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victoryÖ. We have made clear that the war on terror is an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom."
* * *
Within days of his arrival, Petraeus invited Jack Keane, his mentor and the retired Army vice chief of staff, to spend nearly two weeks in Iraq. Keane spent four days in Baghdad, a day in Anbar province, another in Diyala province. He met with Khalilzad and the embassy staff. He coached commands at the brigade, battalion, company and even platoon level.
On March 6, Keane briefed Vice President Cheney on his trip, establishing a secret backchannel line of communicationóPetraeus to Keane to Cheney to Bushóaround the chain of command.
"There are early signs of success, but the operation is just beginning," Keane reported. "We cannot predict success."
But he said Petraeus had reenergized the mission. "He's given them a hope that we can do it."
Keane said he had attended a meeting between Petraeus and former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi. Since losing to Maliki, Allawi had not been helping the new prime minister. Allawi wanted to be prime minister again. "This government isn't going away," Petraeus told him. "Stop sitting on the fence hoping it will. Get behind what we're doing here. Get in the game."
Keane said Petraeus had won permission from Maliki to go after the Shia militias. Maliki wanted to take control over his Iraqi forces for the first time, and Petraeus had let him, but "we call most of the shots," Keane said, and Iraqi tactical commanders "in just about all cases default to ours."
"We must be cautiously optimistic, not triumphant. We have always underestimated this enemy," Keane said. It would take 12 to 18 months to realize the full effect of the surge and the new population security strategy. Any notion of judging the results in six months "is an absurdity," he told the vice president.
"The embassy is unsatisfactory," Keane added. As far as he was concerned, it might as well be in Singapore or Paris, given its commitment to the war.
"You need to guard against having success in the summer and then beginning to withdraw by the end of the year,"
Keane said. "It's a recipe for disaster in '08. What's happened is, we'll just start to slip back gradually to '06 levels of violence." Everyone needed to be on the same page, he said, "CentCom, the DOD, JCS, Department of State, interagency effort, NSC."
He said Secretary Gates and others in the Pentagon weren't on the same page with Petraeus.
"What do you mean?" Cheney asked.
Look at Gates's recent comments that he wanted to pull back by the end of the year, Keane responded. Gates had said during a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that if the plan to quiet Baghdad succeeded and the Iraqis began to step up, that he hoped "to begin drawing down our troops later this year."
"That is an indication to me that he really hasn't embraced this policy," Keane said, "because from the military perspective, you've got to go into '08 to cement this thing. We're two brigades into the surge. Why would a secretary be already giving ground on something unless he doesn't necessarily agree with it?"
As far as Cheney was concerned, Keane was outstandingóan experienced soldier who maintained great Pentagon contacts, had no ax to grind, and had been a mentor to Petraeus. There was nothing esoteric about Keane. He was all meat and potatoes, blunt and to the point. His reports proved accurate, and he didn't inflate expectations or waste Cheney's time.
Later, Cheney's deputy, John Hannah, informed Keane that the vice president had passed along his report to the president.
* * *
In Iraq, Petraeus had another "big idea." He asked his staff: Who's the enemy? They were fighting al Qaeda, insurgents and extremists, both Shia and Sunni.
But some were reconcilable, while others would have to be captured, killed or driven out. The question was how to identify them. It required the meticulous shifting of intelligence to pinpoint exactly who could be won over and who could notóthe reconcilables and the irreconcilables.
He had his analysts draw diagrams and charts. Al Qaeda was clearly irreconcilable. But what about the 1920
Revolutionary Brigades, a Sunni insurgent group named after an uprising against the British in the wake of World War I? What about the various elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army? Who could be broken away?
Individuals? Groups?
"This is where you have to be immersed," Petraeus told his staff. He also brought in Derek Harvey, the DIA intelligence analyst, who would report directly to him.
Chapter 33
That spring, Admiral Fallon attended a White House meeting on Iran.
"I think we need to do something to get engaged with these guys," Fallon said. Iraq shared a 900-mile border with Iran, and he needed guidance and a strategy for dealing with the Iranians.
"Well," Bush said, "these are assholes."
Fallon was stunned. Declaring them "assholes" was not a strategy. Lots of words and ideas were thrown around at the meeting, especially about the Iranian leaders. They were bad, evil, out of touch with their people. But no one offered a real approach. No one wanted to touch diplomatic engagement.
I later asked the president about this, and he insisted that he had been clear about the Iran policy. "Our strategy was to try to first convince them to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, which means verifiably suspending their enrichment program," he told me. "And if they were willing to do so, they could come to the table. We'd be there with our other partners. Secondly, is to push them back where they're trying to promote their brand of government, one with the creation of a Palestinian state, two helping the young democracy in Lebanon, and three, succeeding in Iraq. And I was pretty clear about what our strategy was all along and our objectives."
Fallon tried to work the problem with others in the White House and Pentagon. But every time he tried to raise the issue, tried to argue that they couldn't solve Iraq without involving its neighbors like Iran, the reaction was negative.
"Don't go there," he was told.
"Bullshit. We're going to go there," he told some of Hadley's and Gates's deputies. "Because I can't do my job unless we get engaged with these guys."
The same went for the Syrians. He explained that when he went to see the other leaders in the Middle East, each had a variation on the same theme: "You started this goddamn war, and you had no idea what the hell you were getting into, and look what you've done, and look at the mess we're in now, and what are you going to do about this problem?"
There was lots of private hand-wringing about Fallon. Even Gates got involved.
"If they want to spend all their time worrying about me," Fallon told Gates, "and what I'm saying and what I'm doing, as opposed to trying to figure out where this country [the United States] ought to be, then I guess I'm the wrong guy for this job. Somebody probably made a big error when they decided to sign me up."
* * *
Petraeus traveled to every region of Iraq. He sought input from generals and privates. He walked the streets. He toured the neighborhoods where residents had been forced out and took stock of how much had changed for the worse. E-mail by e-mail, phone call by phone call, he also assembled his own team to come to Iraq and study the situation in depth. He tapped Colonel H. R. McMaster, the bulldog architect of the Tall Afar campaign, to lead the effort. The assignment was to round up the sharpest military and civilian minds to appraise the current coalition strategy and determine how best to change it. It would become known as the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, or JSAT.
By early March, Petraeus and McMaster had assembled a team of nearly two dozen people, including economists, counterinsurgency experts, Iraq scholars, military officers and diplomats. Petraeus knew that many of them were critical of the effort in Iraq. That was fine by him. He could bear people saying that the emperor had no clothes, as long as they helped find a solution.
The group gathered in the North Ballroom of a former palace in the Green
Zone. At the center of the ballroom, a table sagged under the weight of a stack of paper several feet tall. The documentsómostly classifiedódealt with every aspect of the war. The reading list included current campaign plans, character assessments of Iraqi politicians and statistics on violence, government services and institutional capacity. The JSAT members dove into the mountain of reading. They split into small teams. One team headed into the Kurdish territories and Ninewa province. Others headed to Kirkuk, Tikrit and Baquba and west to Anbar. A group went south to Basra and neighboring provinces.
Another toured Baghdad. Other members of the JSAT exploited their many Iraqi contacts to try to gather as much information as possible.
Back in the North Ballroom, the group members briefed one another. The Iraqi government was in worse disarray than they had expected. Levels of violence remained alarmingly high. The U.S. strategy that Casey had pursued until his last dayóto train the Iraqis and withdraw as soon as possibleóhad made the security situation more tenuous.
At present, the JSAT determined, the United States was "rushing toward failure."
After weeks of 14-to 20-hour workdays, the JSAT concluded that the conflict boiled down to a struggle for power and survival. The question was one that Hadley had asked months earlier: Is seeking reconciliation a fool's errand?
The JSAT recommended that coalition officials demand transparency from the Iraqi ministries and insist that they spend their budgets, something they hadn't done in 2006. It also recommended what some called the "lamppost strategy." Basically, that meant the Americans should take corrupt and incompetent Iraqi officials and publicly rebuke them, making it clear they were being removed from office because of their sectarian tendencies and setting an example that such behavior wouldn't be tolerated.
Militarily, the main thrust was to deliver population security on a local level by expanding "joint security stations,"
The War Within Page 34
