PART XIV
“It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.”
—Memorandum to senior Pentagon officials,
October 16, 2003
Samarra, Iraq
FEBRUARY 22, 2006
In war, fortunes can change rapidly. We saw this in the chaotic days after the rapid overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We saw it again nearly three years later, when the limits of American power became painfully obvious, demanding of a war-weary nation new assessments, approaches, and most of all, resolve.
In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaida entered the al-Askari Golden Mosque, a major Shia holy site with a dome two hundred feet high that dominated the landscape in the city of Samarra. The extremists overpowered the mosque’s guards, laid explosives throughout the building, and then detonated the explosives remotely. The blasts reduced the mosque’s famous, venerated golden dome to rubble.
The United States had the most formidable military in the world. We had put men on the moon. Yet as many Iraqis no doubt wondered, why couldn’t we stop a handful of thugs armed with small weapons and a few pounds of high explosives?
No one was killed or wounded in the attack, but the bombing of the Samarra mosque was the most strategically significant terrorist attack in Iraq since liberation, seemingly designed by al-Qaida to trigger an all-out Sunni-Shia civil war. Based on the restraint shown by the Shia up to that point and field reporting from commanders that the country was relatively stable and calm following the bombing, we had expectations that the al-Qaida plan would not succeed. As I reported at a press conference, “From what I’ve seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation, according to General Casey.”1
Nonetheless, hours after the bombing, I asked General Pace, who in October 2005 had succeeded Dick Myers as the first Marine chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Eric Edelman, the new undersecretary for policy, what kind of immediate response we could mount to mitigate the damage of the Samarra mosque bombing.2 Though some press accounts may have been exaggerated, looking back, it is now clear that the effect of the bombing proved a game changer in Iraq. The event marked the ascendance of Shia militia and a new stage of sectarian conflict focused in Baghdad. The militias, loyal to various Shia political leaders and parties, had existed since the first days of post-Saddam Iraq. They had infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that we had made a priority to train and equip. In the wake of Samarra, the Shia militias began a campaign of ruthless ethnic cleansing.
Since the end of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004, our recalibrated strategy had centered on moving responsibility to the Iraqi security forces as quickly as possible. I believed it was the right approach and would work given time and sufficient patience by the American people. And prior to the Samarra bombing, it had seemed promising. The Iraqis had held successful elections amid a period of declining violence. Through 2005, more and more Sunnis had participated in voting, leading to the smooth and successful government elections in December. Declining attacks against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces would trend lower for months before sudden spikes of violence would seem to erase the recent gains. There had been the hope that we might begin to reduce troop levels in a gradual withdrawal. No longer.
CHAPTER 45
He wasn’t on the road to Damascus, but Ambassador Bremer did appear to have had a sudden conversion on his way out of Baghdad. On May 21, 2004, one month before his departure as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and thirteen months after the end of major combat operations against Saddam, he handed a letter to my military aide, Colonel Steve Bucci, and asked him to deliver the letter to me personally when he arrived back at the Pentagon. Bucci had organized a group of senior staff officers to go to Baghdad in the first months of the CPA to strengthen the organization’s management. We were determined to contribute our most capable to the CPA effort.
Bremer’s letter recommended a review of troop levels in Iraq. In particular, he asked that we consider deploying an additional division, consisting of 25,000 to 30,000 troops, which would bring the total number of U.S. troops to over 160,000.1
Two years later, Bremer cited his letter as proof that he always thought U.S. troop levels in Iraq were too low to enable CPA’s mission to succeed. As head of the CPA, Bremer had had ample opportunity to express his opinions, and he had commented favorably on existing troop-level decisions on several occasions. In July 2003, for example, he expressed support for the proposal by CENTCOM’s General Abizaid to “reconfigure our troop profile . . . [to] get away from heavy forces towards lighter more mobile force, forces which have Special Operation skills.”2 That same month Bremer appeared on the television program Meet the Press, and host Tim Russert tried to pin him down on the troop-level issue.
“Have you asked Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for more American troops?” Russert inquired.
“No, I have not,” Bremer replied. “I expressed—”
“Do we need more?” Russert pressed.
“I do not believe we do,” Bremer replied. “I think the military commanders are confident we have enough troops on the ground, and I accept that analysis.”3
I was not pleased that Bremer was recommending more troops for the first time as he was on his way out of Baghdad and not in person to provide his reasoning.* Nevertheless, I treated his recommendation as a serious matter meriting the prompt attention of our most senior military officials.† Immediately after receiving it, I sent it to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, with a memo.
“Questions have been raised about whether US, Coalition and Iraqi force levels in Iraq are adequate,” I wrote to Myers, noting that the issue had been raised by some members of Congress, by some retired generals, and now by Bremer.6 I directed Myers to have General Abizaid and the Joint Chiefs of Staff review Bremer’s letter and report back to me. I also asked Myers to assess possible force requirements over the next six months.
Myers’ formal response on July 13, 2004 noted that General Abizaid “constantly evaluates the number of forces required to be successful in Iraq” and that he “believes forces in theater are adequate to perform the current tasks.”7 Myers wrote that CENTCOM’s plan anticipated a reduction of a brigade of troops by August 2004. The Chairman also noted that “a more optimistic forecast” from CENTCOM envisioned a transition to Iraqi control of security beginning in January 2005, and after which only seven U.S. brigades (the equivalent of some thirty thousand U.S. troops) would be required.8
Myers, Abizaid, and the Joint Chiefs anticipated that more troops might be needed “should the current environment change.” Myers’ memo listed “potential triggers” for such a force increase request: large-scale violent demonstrations, large-scale rioting and looting, a significant increase in attacks on coalition forces, and a general uprising in two major population areas at once.9 In fact, several months later, CENTCOM did request, and I approved, an increase of more than 20,000 troops to help provide security for the January 2005 elections.
This wasn’t the first time I had asked the generals whether troop levels were adequate; I raised the question of whether we had appropriate resources when I visited Iraq and in regular conversations with Myers and Abizaid. Nor was Bremer the first person to suggest that more troops might be needed; there wasn’t a day that went by without some member of Congress or retired military officer on television calling for more troops. We were all well aware of the issue. I raised the possibility with our commanders in theater and with senior Defense Department officials that the critics may have a valid point.
At the time of the invasion in March 2003, I believed we made the right call with approximately 150,000 U.S. and 20,000 coalition troops on the ground and the option to deploy up to 450,000 U.S. troops if General Franks judged them necessary. If anything, troop levels were high for the fight our forces initially encountered. Saddam’s regime fell more quickly than had been anticipated, and the resistance from Iraqi army units was relatively modest. Our Arab friends had consistently urged us to leave Iraq as soon as possible if war came. Riots and demonstrations might break out if the war dragged on, especially if we were seen as occupiers. That argument seemed reasonable to me. I know it also registered with Abizaid, Franks, and, I believe, with President Bush.
After major combat operations against Saddam’s forces came to an end in April 2003, I discussed the issue of troop levels with senior commanders and the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs on a near weekly basis. The arguments against substantially increasing troop levels continued to seem persuasive. More troops do not necessarily mean a greater chance for success. In fact, too many troops could hurt our ability to win Iraqi confidence, and it could translate into more casualties, because more troops would mean more targets for our enemies. To my thinking, even more important than the number of forces on the ground were the types of missions they were undertaking. We could send hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq, and if they didn’t have the right operational approach and tactics, they weren’t likely to achieve our goals.
The potential benefit of deploying more troops was a continuous preoccupation for me and the commanders over the next three years. Could Iraq’s early troubles have been reduced by increasing our force levels? In retrospect, it’s possible there may have been times when more troops could have been helpful. General Franks told me in 2008 that, in hindsight, his recommendation to stop the flow of additional troops into Iraq by holding the 1st Armored Division and the 1st Cavalry Division might have been a mistake. However, I know of no senior officials, military or civilian, who expressed disagreement with the decision at the time. Certainly I did not.
In the early spring of 2003, when the decision was made, the possibility of an organized insurgency had not been included in CENTCOM’s assumptions. On my April 30 trip to Basra and Baghdad, I was briefed by military commanders and intelligence officials. Except for sporadic skirmishes, the country seemed increasingly pacified. The worst of the looting that had swept parts of Iraq in the first weeks of April appeared to be over. It is conceivable that several thousand more troops in Baghdad, where most of the media was located, might have at least kept the capital from appearing so chaotic, a perception that proved damaging throughout our country and the world.
As the situation in Iraq worsened with insurgent attacks increasing through late 2003 and early 2004, we actively weighed the merits of deploying additional troops. On February 23, 2004, three months before Bremer sent his departure memo, I had an encounter on the issue with CENTCOM commander John Abizaid. En route to Baghdad, we met in the Kuwaiti government’s guesthouse for foreign officials. The flight from Washington had been long. I was tired and had a lot of questions.
Abizaid had flown up from CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar to join me for the flight into Iraq the following day. I asked to meet with him along with Bill Luti, the Department’s senior policy adviser on Iraq. A former Navy captain, Luti had a sharp mind coupled with an irreverence and pugnacity I found appealing. Despite his usual knack for lightening the mood in meetings, even Luti couldn’t ease my sense that things weren’t going well in Iraq.
Abizaid and Luti joined me in the office attached to my room. I asked them to close the door.
“Damn it, General,” I said. “We’re getting pounded back in Washington over troop levels.” We appeared to be making little headway against the insurgency. Media pundits, members of Congress, and retired generals were insisting that additional forces were the answer. I needed to know whether Abizaid shared those concerns. If he didn’t, I needed to know why he had confidence in maintaining the troop levels he was recommending.
I asked him directly if we needed more. It was not a rhetorical question. I wanted to hear his professional military advice. I made it clear to all senior military officials that they owed me their best advice not only when I asked for it but whenever they had something to recommend.10 Abizaid replied somewhat wearily that if he thought we needed more troops, he’d tell me so. It was certainly not the first time he had considered the question, and I suspected the constant queries from all quarters were becoming irritating to him. He then listed the reasons he didn’t think more troops were needed. He stressed that we were in an asymmetric war that would be won or lost on intelligence. The need was not to get more Americans in uniform on the ground. The need was to get more intelligence professionals on the ground recruiting local informants. We were fighting an enemy in an Arab land where guests were welcome, but Americans who overstayed their welcome would not be. If Iraq wanted to regain the pride and honor so important in its society, Iraqis would need to take on the fight. We couldn’t do it for them. We needed more of an “Iraqi face” on the coalition effort in Iraq, not more American troops.
Over the years that followed, I prodded many in the Department to give me their personal views on the issue of troop levels in Iraq (and in Afghanistan, for that matter). When I raised questions as to whether other operational approaches might be considered, such as an even greater focus on training and advising Iraqi security forces or securing the population, they told me their area commanders were tailoring their tactics and techniques to fit the different conditions across Iraq. It wasn’t that things were perfect; they did say repeatedly that they needed more civilian experts, better intelligence, and, most of all, more Iraqi troops. There also undoubtedly were areas within Iraq where additional forces were needed due to a request from a local commander. But the overall force level for the country was a different matter, and the view I consistently heard was that the top-line number was sufficient.
I knew that general agreement could be a sign that we were not challenging our own assumptions as rigorously as we might. A comment I made often in meetings, paraphrasing Pat Moynihan, was that in unanimity one often found a lack of rigorous thinking. That’s why I periodically sent memos asking for views that differed from whatever seemed to be the broad consensus. I wrote Generals Myers and Pace, saying, “I would like to know what the general officers, and possibly some key colonels, in Iraq think about the various options we face.”11 I followed up the next day: “I don’t need to know names, but it would be helpful for me to have a sense of what the commanders at various levels think on these issues. Please include minority opinions and their reasoning.”12 The memo continued:
For example, I would be interested in knowing whether or not they believe the US and the coalition
1. Are doing about the right things overall, and with about the right number of troops in their respective areas of operation (specify their AORs).
2. Need more troops and, if so, where and for what purposes.
3. Would be better off with fewer US troops (where) and doing less of what types of activities.
4. Would be better off with the same (larger or smaller) number of troops, but refocusing coalition efforts to put X% (i.e., 10%? 50? 90%?) of our forces on the tasks of organizing, training, equipping, and mentoring Iraqi Security forces.
5. Should cut back dramatically on US-only patrols and focus most of their efforts on joint patrols and/or mentoring Iraqi Security forces.
6. Put more coalition forces [on] Iraq’s borders (with Syria? Iran? and/or [in] Baghdad? Mosul? other?), but remain available to conduct raids throughout the country as required.
7. Should establish a larger presence in the relatively secure North and South, and less coalition presence in the Sunni Triangle.
8. Other.13
I wanted candor, which is why I was willing to accept anonymous responses in case less senior officers might be hesitant to express views that differed from their immediate superiors. The lives of our troops and the success of the war were at stake, so mine was as serious an inquiry as one could make. I wanted to reach down the chain of command to find what more junior officers were thinking. I did not receive any responses that they wanted more forces or that they disagreed with the strategy.
I also had in mind my recollections of the U.S. involvements in Vietnam and Lebanon. In both cases I had observed that local populations, if permitted, would lean more and more on Americans to solve their problems. In the end, the South Vietnamese and the people of Lebanon were left vulnerable and relatively defenseless when American public support for these missions eroded and the United States pulled out.
I was concerned that U.S. and coalition forces might inadvertently discourage Iraqis from taking on increased responsibility for bringing order to their country. Having the United States as a crutch might delay the hard work required for them to build a safe and stable society appropriate to their circumstances. I sometimes used the analogy of teaching someone how to ride a bicycle. After you run down the street steadying the bicycle by holding the seat, you eventually have to take your hand off the seat. The person may fall once or twice, but it’s the way he learns. If you’re not willing to take your hand off the bicycle seat, the person will never learn to ride.
Never much of a handwringer, I don’t spend a lot of time in recriminations, looking back or second-guessing decisions made in real time with imperfect information by myself or others. In my press conferences I did not always conceal my lack of regard for hindsight “wisdom.” While in office, I resisted answering the frequently asked, breezy, politically loaded questions, along the lines of “What do you regret most?” or “What do you wish you had done differently?” or “Was this or that a mistake?”
A secretary of defense has to be careful about what he says in public. His comments can affect troop morale or limit the president’s options in the future. Nonetheless, officials need to periodically reexamine their own views and judgments. Human beings are fallible, and the information policy makers use to make their judgments is always incomplete, imperfect, and ever changing. The assumptions that underlie strategy can become stale or even proved wrong to begin with. It sometimes requires exquisite balancing skills to be properly skeptical and yet open to criticism in internal deliberations, while not suggesting to allies or enemies abroad that one is adrift or lacking confidence in a policy.
The senior Department advisers were accustomed to receiving skeptical “big think” snowflakes from me. I did this periodically—for the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global defense posture realignment, major alliance management issues, transformation, and other significant activities. When one of these internal memos urging a reassessment of our strategy in the war on terror was leaked to the press, however, it made headlines. The front page of the October 22, 2003, USA Today read “DEFENSE MEMO: A GRIM OUTLOOK—RUMSFELD SPELLS OUT DOUBTS ON IRAQ, TERROR. ” “Despite upbeat statements by the Bush administration, the memo to Rumsfeld’s top staffreveals significant doubts about progress in the struggle against terrorists,” the paper reported, adding: “The memo, which diverges sharply from Rumsfeld’s mostly positive public comments, offers one of the most candid and sobering assessments to date of how top administration officials view the 2-year-old war on terrorism.”14 Even though I had limited the addressees to Myers, Pace, Wolfowitz, and Feith, the memo had leaked when it was more broadly distributed to their staffs.
In my meetings with the combatant commanders I had solicited their thoughts on where the United States was doing well and where we needed to do better. This memo was my way of prodding top Pentagon officials to think about the war on terror comprehensively, not one slice at time. The memo centered on three key questions: First, how do we know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror? Second, is the U.S. government organized properly to prosecute the war? And third, how can the United States do better in countering the enemy ideologically—that is, not just in capturing or killing terrorists, but in preventing young people from becoming our murderous enemies in the first place?
I questioned whether the Defense Department, and the U.S. government in general, were changing fast enough to do what was necessary to win. I assessed the “mixed results” of our efforts against al-Qaida. Many terrorists remained at large. I pointed out that we had done a good job in reorienting the Defense Department to take the offensive in the war with islamist extremists, but I wondered: “Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?” My memo continued:
My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves. . . . [W]e lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions.
Do we need a new organization?
How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?
Is our current situation such that “the harder we work, the behinder we get”?
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
Does CIA need a new finding [a presidential authorization for covert activity]?
Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas [sic] to a more moderate course?
What else should we be considering?15
This document, which became known as the “Long, Hard Slog” memo, was cast by some as a rebuke of the Bush administration’s strategy. It was not a sign of doubt, much less of disapproval. Rather, it was my view of what a senior official needed to do to ensure that we were not operating on autopilot—that we did not become complacent or closed-minded.
I was concerned that if the United States focused too narrowly on military means to defeat the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida and other Islamist extremists, we could end up doing more harm than good over the long term. Even as early as October 2003, it was clear that bullets alone would not win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. And in the much broader war against Islamist terrorism, without a serious and sustained ideological campaign to discredit radical Islamism, our enemies were going to be able to recruit and indoctrinate far more terrorists than we could capture or kill—and they’d be able to exploit our counterterrorism measures to feed anti-American resentment.
I also worried that an exclusive concentration of resources on fighting terrorism might invite other powers—perhaps North Korea or Iran—to challenge us by means other than terrorism. Terrorists and insurgents had become a serious threat, but there was no telling what kind of conflicts we might need to deter or defend against down the road a few years or decades hence. In short, we needed to give appropriate priority to other aspects of our national security strategy as well.
My October 2003 memo launched a useful recalibration of the administration’s strategy in the war on terror, which resulted in a somewhat greater emphasis on the nonmilitary instruments of national power. We conducted a strategic review of the global war on terror and presented several important thoughts to President Bush, including a proposal for a new U.S. information agency and a civilian reserve corps at the State Department to provide civilian partners for our military in performing stabilization missions. The key elements of our strategic review were incorporated into formal presidential directives. They became the foundation of the 2005–2006 National Military Strategic Plan for the war on terror and helped shape the administration’s 2006 National Security Strategy.16
One phrase in my October 2003 memo gained special attention: “long, hard slog.” For some it evoked the Vietnam War and images of quagmire.17 I hadn’t intended the unflattering comparison, but I did feel we needed to caution ourselves and the American people that the broader war against Islamist extremists might last many years like the Cold War.
We had done much work we could be proud of. We were putting the pressure on al-Qaida and other Islamist terrorist groups around the world. While there had not been another attack on our country, we knew that our enemies were reorganizing as decentralized terrorist cells and as insurgent groups. They would take advantage of our troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, using the fighting there to train their next generation of terrorists. And they would use support from Syria and Iran to arm themselves. They would launch headline-grabbing attacks to try to convince the American public that our fight with them was futile, much as the Tet Offensive in Vietnam had. Theirs was a waiting game. They knew that they didn’t have to win; they simply had to outlast us.