The War Within (44 page)

BOOK TWO
Chapter 32

T
he morning after his speech announcing the surge, the president went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to address military personnel and their families. His decision had been opposed by General Casey and General Abizaid, his military commanders on the ground. General Pace and the Joint Chiefs had suggested a smaller increase, if any at all. And General Schoomaker, the Army chief, had made it clear that the five brigades didn't really exist under the Army's current policy of 12-month rotations. Gates had been largely a bystander in the process, though the execution would now fall to him. But on this morning, the president delivered his own version of history.

"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen toóby the way, that's what you want your commander in chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics or focus groups or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan, and they said to me and to the Iraqi government, 'This won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence.'"

Bush explained, "And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, 'Mr. President, it's not going to work untilóunless we supportóprovide more troops.'"

* * *

No matter how he looked at it, Casey kept coming to the conclusion that the surge was more a political maneuver than a military one.

"I've always felt that the surge was more to build domestic support than it was for success on the ground in Iraq," he later said privately. "It bought the president some time. How much time it bought in Iraq, I don't know."

Even so, Casey thought building domestic support was legitimate, because without it, the war effort could never succeed. The question was whether the president had bought himself enough time to turn the tide of the war or had merely postponed a day of reckoning.

* * *

On January 23, Lieutenant General David Petraeus sat before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing. Susan Collins, the independent-minded Maine Republican, said, "I have read a very interesting article that you wrote on counterinsurgency that was published a year ago in the
Military Review.
And you offered 14

observations based on your previous tours of duty.

"And as I look at those observationsóobservations that I think are insightful and that I agree withóI conclude that they don'tóthat they are not consistent with the new strategy that we're about to embark on. Your first observationóyou quote T. E. Lawrence in August of 1917, and you say, 'Do not try to do too much with your own hands.' And you talk about the need for the Iraqis to step up to the plate. I worry that the strategy that we're about to pursue in this country relieves pressure on the Iraqis to do what must be doneÖand that we're making the mistake that you caution against."

"What you described really has been truly an intellectual tension, frankly, about the mission in Iraq all along,"

Petraeus replied. "You do have in the back of your mind always the wisdom of Lawrence of Arabia about not trying to do too much with your own hands, and we used to say, 'What we want to do is we want to help the Iraqis get up on their feet. We want to sort of be near them. We want to back up.' But there are times when they start to wobble, and the question is: When do you move back in and provide assistance? And in the wake of the bombing of the Samarra mosque and the violence that escalated throughout the latter part of 2006, I think we have arrived at a point where, in fact, we do need to help them a bit more in providing security in particular."

Nearly four years after the initial invasion, Petraeus would be starting over in Iraq.

* * *

Three days later, on January 26, the Senate unanimously confirmed Petraeus by a vote of 81 to 0. Bush met that morning with Gates, Hadley, Pace and Petraeus in the Oval Office.

"I'd like to talk with my commander," Bush said after a while. When they were alone, the president briefly reviewed his decision to surge the forces, what he called a "double down."

"Mr. President," Petraeus said, "this is not double down." The entire U.S. government and the entire U.S. military needed to be involved. "This is all in."

* * *

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 again 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.