Two days later, on September 2, the president and Condi flew secretly to Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq to meet with Petraeus and Crocker, senior Iraqi government officials, and a number of the Sunni sheikhs who had played such a critical role in organizing resistance to al Qaeda and the insurgency in Anbar province. Pace went on his own. I flew separately in a C-17 and took Fallon with me.
Two conversations at Al Asad remain vivid for me. The first was between Crocker and the president. The president made the comment that the Iraqis’ struggle was akin to what we went through with civil rights. (I detected Condi’s influence in that analogy.) He then said to Crocker, “Where’s your head?” Ryan made clear he thought Iraq was very different and much worse than our civil rights struggle. He said it was important to understand what thirty-five years of Saddam had done to Iraq—he had “deconstructed” it. It was a country and a people who had been reduced to their fears, and they were sectarian. It was going to take time, and “the cycle of fear” had to be broken. The U.S. action in 2003 had not been regime change, Ryan said. “It was much more…. And there is no Nelson Mandela because Saddam killed them all.” “This is winnable,” he said, “but it will take U.S. commitment and a long time.” Ryan said there had been successes, but “if we walk away there will be a humanitarian disaster on the scale of Rwanda, it will open the way to al Qaeda to return to ungoverned spaces, and it will open the way for Iran with consequences for all Arab states.” Crocker was as stark and plain-spoken to the president as possible.
The second conversation was with the sheikhs and the provincial governor. It was all about the locals wanting money from the capital for their pet projects, as if they were members of Congress.
The headline from the trip was the president’s statement to the press that “General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”
A sad footnote to the Al Asad meeting was that a few days later, Sheikh Sattar, who had led the Anbar “Awakening” that played such an important role in the success of the surge, was assassinated.
The final hurdle was for Crocker and Petraeus to run the gauntlet on Capitol Hill on September 10 and 11. They testified over two long days against a backdrop of noisy protesters—the so-called Code Pink Ladies, a group of antiwar women dressed in pink clothes, some of whom had to be ejected from the hearing rooms. Crocker and Petraeus were in command of the facts, and they were brutally honest about the challenges in Iraq. Their caution and candor gave skeptics and critics plenty to chew on—and they did. There were some memorable lines. Crocker, in response to a question from Senator McCain about whether the Iraqis would do what we asked of them, said: “My level of confidence is under control.” Senator Clinton said to Petraeus: “The reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.” “Buy time? For what?” said Senator Hagel. The Democrats were predictably furious that there had been so little progress on the political front in Iraq. Many Republicans, who had hoped for more positive testimony or indications of a dramatic change in strategy, were critical as well. Some of those who had been quietly supportive of the president’s war policies, like Senator Elizabeth Dole, called for “action-forcing” measures, while others called for a legislated change in mission.
The quiet competence and honesty of both Crocker and Petraeus had a big impact, especially as they were subjected to incredibly hostile questioning, especially in the Senate, as noted above. The Senate Republican leadership expressed renewed confidence after the hearings that they would be able to prevent Democratic legislation on the war from passing. Meanwhile a full-page ad by an antiwar group, MoveOn.org, accused Petraeus of distorting the facts to please the White House and was headlined, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” I found it despicable and said so. Such an attack on a man who had devoted his life to defending the country infuriated the Republicans and embarrassed the Democrats and, in my view, made it harder for the critics to press their case. At the end of the two days, it was pretty clear that while few members of Congress were happy, the Democrats did not have the votes to change the war strategy. In that respect, Pace’s and my testimony on the twelfth and the president’s speech on the thirteenth announcing the drawdowns—the “return on success”—were anticlimactic.
All year long I had deliberately played my cards very close. As one journalist had written in August, “Even in his private meetings with lawmakers, top aides and his own senior commanders… he has avoided showing his hand…. He is the… administration official whose views are the least understood.” I believed that I would maintain maximum leverage in the process, especially with Congress, if the other players did not know exactly what approach I supported. The only person to know, outside my immediate staff and Pace, was the president. I acknowledged all this in a press conference on September 14: “As the debate here in Washington proceeded in recent months and, more importantly, as we considered future U.S. actions in Iraq, I have kept a fairly low public profile in the belief I could thereby be more effective inside the Pentagon, in working with my National Security Council colleagues, in advising the president and in dealing with the Congress.”
I then shared my view on the multiple objectives that the next steps in Iraq had to address. Above all, we had to maximize the opportunity created by the surge to achieve our long-term goals and avoid even the appearance of American failure or defeat in Iraq. We would need to reassure our friends and allies in the region—and signal potential adversaries—that we would remain the most significant outside power there for the long term. We had to reinforce to the Iraqis that they had to assume ever-greater responsibility for their own governance and security. And at home, we had to work toward winning broad, bipartisan support for a sustainable U.S. policy in Iraq that would protect long-term American national interests there and in the region. We had one further objective: to preserve the gains made possible by our men and women in uniform and thus reassure them that their service and sacrifice truly mattered.
I concluded, “Some say the Petraeus strategy brings our forces out too slowly, that we must withdraw faster. I believe that, whatever one may think about how we got to this point in time in Iraq, getting the next part right—and understanding the consequences of getting it wrong—is critical for America. I believe our military leadership, including a brilliant field commander, is best able and qualified to help us get it right.”
Knowing that the next face-off would come in March, I decided at that press conference to dangle another carrot. I said that I “hoped” that Petraeus would be able to say in March “that he thinks the pace of drawdowns can continue at the same rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year.” I wanted to underscore that the trend line on troops would remain downward and, as I had hoped early in 2007, make the debate in 2008 about the pacing of drawdowns and a long-term security relationship with Iraq rather than about the war itself or our strategy. I believed strongly this approach would be in the long-term best interest of the United States, and I hoped that it would be reflected in the presidential campaign.
A last gasp of those who wanted to change the strategy came in mid-September, with renewed interest in proposed legislation by Senator Jim Webb that would require troops to spend as much time at home as on their most recent tours overseas before being redeployed. This was another way to force the president to accelerate the troop withdrawals. In practical terms, because the amendment focused on individual soldiers instead of units, actually making it work would have been nearly impossible. I said in my September 14 press conference that such an amendment might require extending tours of units already in Iraq, calling up additional National Guard and Reserve troops, and would further stress the force and reduce its combat effectiveness. Pace and I pointed out that the amendment would require us to examine the deployment record of each individual soldier to ensure that he or she had been home long enough—and that could force the breakup of units with some soldiers who met the time limit and others who did not. This amendment had attracted fifty-six votes in the Senate in July and only four more were needed for passage. I worked the phones hard, as determined on this issue as I had been on anything since becoming secretary. After I gave a speech in Williamsburg, Virginia, on the seventeenth, I offered Senator John Warner a helicopter lift back to Washington. I used our time together to explain to the former secretary of the Navy the impossibility of managing what Webb was proposing. He agreed not to support it, which was important given Warner’s seniority on the Armed Services Committee and status as Webb’s partner in the Senate from Virginia.