The good captain, p.38
The Good Captain, page 38
On one of our last nights together I took a moment to address my commanders and staff. By now we had become more than a team. As I gazed around the command post I felt a welter of emotions: gratitude, pride, affection, and sincere regret that it was coming to an end. We had begun as a motley collection of regulars, reservists and guardsmen of all branches and specialties. Over time we had grown into a remarkable organization, expert in our mission, used to pressure and at home in the crucible of war. I spoke from the heart:
Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to take a moment and look around the room. This is a special place filled with special people. Years from now you’ll look back at this time and I promise—you will treasure it. It will always be a part of you. In the next day or so this team will begin to break up and we will never be together like this again. Remember this moment. Remember each other. I know I will.
As our tour came to an end, we began to send our troops home in waves. In early January, I officially handed over and boarded the plane with the last of my troops for the tedious flight back. As my headquarters staff slept all around me, I pondered. I was of course aware that mine had been only a small part of a much larger whole. Our task had been essentially to free my commanders to focus on their larger and graver responsibilities. The 30,000 soldiers and civilians at Victory needed and deserved a safe place to sleep and to rest inside the wire. We had given them that. It had not been easy. After 365 days of ceaseless labor and stress I felt worn out. But I also felt a solemn pride. I had helped to build a first class team. We had accomplished our mission in preventing any major penetration of our huge footprint. No disaster had befallen us—and after a year in Iraq at the height of the war, that said a lot. I couldn’t say we were winning the war. At best, we seemed to be holding our own. But we had done our part. I said a quiet prayer for those we had not been able to bring back, and for their families. Then I slept and dreamed of home.
1The statue commemorated Abbas Ibn Firnas, a legendary Muslim scholar from Cordoba, said to have built a primitive glider in AD 875.
CHAPTER 7
All the Way!
We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
JAMES ELROY FLECKER
Our return to home station was a blur of recovery operations, as our equipment containers arrived and we settled back into a garrison routine. In a private interview, General Vines congratulated me on our success and expressed his personal gratitude, an accolade worth more than any award. What came next was hard to swallow. The Army Staff had finally remembered that Dragon Brigade was a one-of-a-kind unit not found in the Army’s other corps. We had been programmed for elimination as part of “Army Transformation.” Our success would now be rewarded with deactivation. Having built the brigade into something it had never been before, my primary task now was to superintend its demise.
That gloomy news coincided with the pressures of readjustment and reintegration common to all soldiers returning from war. I found myself easily irritated at small things, like squabbling kids or bad weather. Beverly had been running things for a solid year without my help, and at times I felt unneeded, even superfluous. I had carried a weapon for 365 days and now felt naked without one. Behind the wheel, I experienced an instinctive startle reflex when traffic got too close, causing my wife to gently ban me from driving for weeks. After so many months of living in a heightened state, routine work at Fort Bragg seemed unimportant, even boring. Things improved as time went on, but for a while, I can’t have seemed an ideal husband or father. All of this was the small change of returning from war. Like most I worked through it, helped greatly by a loving and understanding spouse. Not everyone was so lucky.
My final six months in command sped by as I waited for news of my next assignment. When I finally got the word, it wasn’t good. I learned that I had been programmed for the Army G8, the budget and acquisition part of the Army Staff back in the Pentagon. When not with troops, I had previously served in policy/ strategy jobs and, given my prior history and civilian graduate education, that made sense. As I told my assignment officer, “I can’t even spell G8!” Nevertheless, I was told the G8 himself, a senior general and former Sosh department alum, had insisted.
After some reflection, I reached out to former contacts and quietly let it be known that I’d much prefer to return to the National Security Council. The war in Iraq was at its height, it wasn’t going well, and I was sure I could make a greater contribution there than toiling away in the Army budget office. A few weeks later I fielded a phone call from Meghan O’Sullivan, the brilliant young senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan at the NSC. After some sparring with the Army, orders materialized, and I found myself back in a suit at the White House.
Upon arrival, I was assigned as director for Iraq, with responsibilities for coordinating the military and security aspects of our policy and strategy there. Unlike my first tour at the NSC, I felt on familiar ground now. I was older, more experienced, with an intimate knowledge of Iraq and the Pentagon. With a network of contacts spanning the State Department, the Department of Defense, at CENTCOM in Tampa and the major headquarters in Iraq, I was able to keep a finger on the pulse of the war and, hopefully, give my bosses ground truth.
That truth was sobering. If our war aim was to enable an orderly transition to a capable Iraq government that could keep Iran out and the country together, we were losing. Shortly after my return to the States, in February of 2006, al Qaeda had attacked the famous mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad and one of the holiest sites in all of Shia Islam. Hundreds had been killed in the factional fighting that ensued. A second attack in June had destroyed the mosque’s famous minarets, causing another round of massive sectarian violence. Now, the Shia militias, led by Muqtada al Sadr’s Jaysh al Mahdi and the Iranian-backed Badr Corps, came off the sidelines with a vengeance. Violence soared, and Sunni, Shia and Kurdish political leaders found themselves driven to their corners as the blood literally ran in the streets.
By now the Army was three years into the grinding conflict and the force was fraying. Though the Marine Corps and SOF troops were restricted to shorter tours (seven months for the Marines and six for SOF), the Army served 12-month tours with its brigades returning barely a year later. Even at home, field training kept soldiers away from their families for extended periods. This crushing “OPTEMPO” gravely concerned Army leaders, who faced not one, but two simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Staring ruin in the face, the military chain of command and the State Department could think of no other option but to accelerate the transition to Iraqi control and back out. This approach was manifestly doomed to fail—we had not come close to building up capable new Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government was both hopelessly corrupt and riven by sectarian feuds. In daily updates, NSC Iraq reported to President Bush: we are not winning.
The report card was grim across the board. Despite spending more than $16B on reconstruction since the invasion, our efforts lagged below Iraq pre-war levels in every major category. Violence had spiked more than 200 percent over the previous year. Several attempts to secure Baghdad had collapsed. The 2005 “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” published by the White House was clearly failing.
All through the summer of 2006 our office pushed for a policy review that might lead to a different outcome. Steve Hadley, now the national security advisor, was supportive. But as they had since coming to power, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld held most of the cards. Secretary of State Colin Powell had departed in 2004, to be replaced by former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, but despite a close relationship with the president, Rice was no match for the Cheney/Rumsfeld tag team. They remained invested in the strategy they had birthed.
All that changed with the mid-term elections in November 2006, which swept the Democrats into the majority in both the House and the Senate. President Bush realized at once the implications of this crippling defeat. The American people had spoken emphatically, rejecting his approach to the war and much else besides. Heretofore, he had been guided if not controlled by his vice president and secretary of defense. Overnight, that changed. On election day, I boarded a plane at Andrews Air Force Base with Deputy National Security Advisor J. D. Crouch, bound for Baghdad. By the time we landed, Rumsfeld was out.
The president moved swiftly to contain the damage and reverse course. Announcing Rumsfeld’s departure the day after the election, he named former director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates as his replacement. Down in the NSC trenches, it seemed clear to us that the vice president had lost much of his influence; at last, a vigorous policy review was now in train, led by O’Sullivan and championed by Hadley. In the next few weeks, scores of experts would be consulted by the president and national security advisor. Some talked sheer nonsense, as when one well-known academic urged President Bush to “cut his losses” and reinstall a Sunni military strongman. Many were vague, arguing that we needed to “reconcile the warring factions,” “build partner capacity” and “strengthen Iraqi governance,” as though we had not been trying to do exactly that for three years.
One presentation, however, was compelling. Delivered by retired Army General Jack Keane and Fred Kagen from the American Enterprise Institute, the proposal called for a major troop surge of five additional Army combat brigades to the Greater Baghdad area, along with 4,000 additional Marines to Anbar province. Having traveled many times to Iraq, the authors were steeped in the details of the insurgency and could speak knowledgeably down to the district and neighborhood level. Their basic premise was that, until basic security was restored, economic and political progress would continue to fail. The plan was more sophisticated than merely a call for more troops. Now, they would move off the large Forward Operating Bases and actually live among the people, in smaller fortified combat outposts (COPs) as McMaster had done in Tal Afer.
Keane’s session with the president excited strong resentment from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine General Peter Pace, and the other Joint Chiefs. Summoning Keane to the Pentagon, Pace scolded him harshly. Keane fired back. “I’m an old, retired guy. How come I know more about Iraq than you do?” In our cramped offices on the White House campus, we fielded the same complaints from irate generals and civilian officials from every direction. Our answer was always the same. “The president is free to get his advice anywhere he wants to. And right now, he isn’t very impressed with yours.”
Intrigued by Keane and Kagan, the president ordered the NSC into something like permanent session to explore the proposal. Where previously we had conducted separate meetings for deputies and principals once per week, both groups now met several times per week to discuss and assess the Keane/Kagen plan. This meant an enormous increase in an already crushing workload for the tiny NSC Iraq team, as each session required prep sessions, staffing papers and much besides. I recall getting text messages at one and two in the morning from Meghan as we labored far into the night. Still, we were fired up. We now had some momentum of our own.
Amid this churn, the much publicized “Iraq Study Group” issued its report. Chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, the congressionally chartered, bipartisan group painted a bleak picture. Describing the situation in Iraq as “serious” and “deteriorating,” the study called for a phased withdrawal from Iraq and negotiations with Iran and Syria to mediate an end to the civil strife consuming the country. The report was received courteously by the White House but rejected out of hand. There would be no disengagement. Not while there was one more hand to play.
It soon became clear that the uniformed military was not backing down in its opposition to troop increases. Understandably, the service chiefs were alarmed at the possible impact of a major surge on an already overstretched force—above all, in the Army. By now, Iraq and Afghanistan had consumed our ground forces, leaving little to respond to threats elsewhere. I, too, wondered if we could stand the strain. But the president was determined, and it was hard to argue with his rejoinder: “You know what will break the force? Losing a war will break the force.” After thorough discussion, the president made the tough decision to surge, announcing it to the nation on January 10, 2007.
Secretary Rumsfeld had already gone, but General Keane had foreseen that a new strategy would require fresh eyes and new leaders, and he urged POTUS to promote Lieutenant General Petraeus, then commanding the Army’s doctrine center at Fort Leavenworth, and put him in charge of the war in Iraq. Petraeus had commanded the 101st during the invasion, and later the training command in Iraq.1 He had done well but was not seen as standing out from his peers in those jobs. Theater command at the four-star level would be his true métier. He was duly elevated, while General Casey was named to be the new Army chief of staff. In the next few months General Abizaid, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the Middle East, would also retire. General Pace was asked to step down that spring after only two years, a rare occurrence. Petraeus would need the right kind of diplomatic counterpart and he was found, in the person of Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Crocker was deeply experienced in the Islamic world and a veteran Washington insider. The selection of Petraeus and Crocker would later be seen as inspired. They would form the ideal team to execute the president’s high-risk strategy.
The selection of General Abizaid’s replacement at Central Command was anything but. Apparently without much vetting, Admiral “Fox” Fallon was named as the new commander. Neither NSC Iraq nor NSC Defense was consulted. Both offices were stunned. Fallon, at the time the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, was vastly senior but not experienced in the Middle East. Pacific Command, a maritime theater, had always been commanded by an admiral. Central Command, primarily focused on land operations, had never been. Fallon was also known to be opinionated and abrasive, even haughty, and we felt sure that he and Petraeus would be oil and water. It did not take long for the sparks to fly.
Part of my job as an NSC director entailed meeting with allies and partners, as coalition backing for the Surge was important. Some offered nominal support, but our most important allies declined. I pressed my British counterpart hard, reminding him that if the UK refused to get on this train, many others would hide behind them and do the same. By now, the British had largely retreated from Basra city, their stronghold in the south, to the airport, leaving only a garrison of some 700 troops in the city center. It was known to us that British commanders had cut side deals with the radical Shia militias there, ceding control of the oil-rich south in exchange for being left alone. By now, Prime Minister Tony Blair had left the scene, leaving the colorless Gordon Brown in charge. We were informed that the British public had soured on the war, and as we surged the British accelerated their disengagement, endangering our ground line of communication from Kuwait. The UK had been with us since the beginning and would be for years more in Afghanistan. But they were done with Iraq.
In late January, the first Surge brigade arrived in Iraq, and through the spring one arrived each month until all of the additional units were in place. Some Army brigades were required to extend their tours from 12 to 15 months, further inflaming relations with the Marine Corps, which stuck to its seven-month rotation policy throughout the war. I didn’t begrudge the commandant of the Marine Corps for trying to ease the burden on his Marines. But the impact on the Army was profound, and the load was far from fairly apportioned. The Marine Corps would stay on short tours for the duration and would insist on operational independence from the theater commander all the way through 2012, when our troops were out of Iraq and only Afghanistan remained as an active theater of war. The special operations community enjoyed the same considerations. Eventually, Secretary Gates put an end to the bifurcated chains of command.
Late in the spring of 2007, I flew to Iraq and met with Petraeus and his staff. The Surge was in full career, but it would take some months for its effects to be felt and the general was already being accused of failure. His problems were complicated by the fact that from the beginning, his relations with Admiral Fallon were poor, something we knew well at the NSC. I did not fault Petraeus, who was unfailingly smooth and deferential. But under the civility was a burning determination to succeed, and it had become clear that Fallon was an obstacle, not an enabler. A small group of brilliant colonels staffed Petraeus’ inner office. In private, their message to me was clear. “This isn’t working.”
The Petraeus-Fallon relationship was marred by two principal factors. The first was one of personalities. On his fourth four-star job, Fallon clearly considered the ambitious and newly promoted Petraeus a junior and an inferior. Possessed of a strong ego and imperious nature, Fallon was physically much larger and determined to impose his will on the slight, intellectual Army general. In an early meeting, Fallon reportedly called Petraeus an “ass-kissing chickenshit” to his face, an almost unbelievable breach of decorum between senior military officers, prompting one anonymous senior official to observe that reports of bad relations between the two “were the understatement of the century.” For his own reasons, Fallon poisoned this crucial dialogue from the outset.
The other irritant was based on a difference of perspective. Fallon was instinctively opposed to the Surge, more concerned with Pakistan and Iran, and not well versed in the intricacies of counterinsurgency. Petraeus had literally written the book on the subject as the author of the Army’s “COIN” manual at Leavenworth. Soon after taking command, Fallon described the Surge as likely to “wrap up” in October, a far shorter timeline that Petraeus’. An “independent assessment,” led by a rear admiral from CENTCOM, confirmed Fallon’s views. The system had failed to vet Fallon properly and it was now apparent that his policy views were out of synch with the president’s.
