commanded troops in Iraq. A dichotomy emerged: While Generals Casey and Abizaid supported the train-and- withdraw strategy, many of those closest to the fight thought we needed more troops.
One who intrigued me was Colonel H.R. McMaster. I had read his book on Vietnam,
Another practitioner of counterinsurgency was General David Petraeus. I first met him at Fort Campbell in 2004. He had a reputation as one of the smartest and most dynamic young generals in the Army. He had graduated near the top of his class at West Point and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton. In 1991, he was accidentally shot in the chest during a training exercise. He endured a sixty-mile helicopter flight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where his life was saved by Dr. Bill Frist, later the Republican leader of the Senate.
Early in the war, General Petraeus had commanded the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul. He sent his troops to live alongside Iraqi residents and patrol the streets on foot. Their presence reassured residents that we were there to protect them. Petraeus then held local elections to form a provincial council, spent reconstruction funds to revive economic activity, and reopened the border with Syria to facilitate trade. His approach was textbook counterinsurgency. To defeat the enemy, he was trying to win over the people.
It worked. While violence in much of Iraq increased, Mosul remained relatively calm. But when we reduced troops in Mosul, violence returned. The same would happen in Tal Afar.
After overseeing training of the Iraqi security forces, General Petraeus was assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual. The premise of counterinsurgency is that basic security is required before political gains can follow. That was the reverse of our existing strategy. I decided to keep a close eye on General Petraeus’s work—and on him.
Amid all the bad news of 2006, we did have one bright spot. In early June, Special Forces under the command of the highly effective General Stanley McChrystal tracked down and killed Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq. For the first time since the December elections, we were able to show the public a dramatic sign of progress.
A week later, I quietly slipped out of Camp David after a day of NSC meetings. I hopped on an Army transport helicopter with a small group of aides, flew to Andrews Air Force Base, and boarded Air Force One. Eleven hours later, we landed in Baghdad.
Unlike my Thanksgiving trip in 2003, when my meetings took place at the airport, I decided to meet Maliki in the Green Zone, the fortified complex in central Baghdad. Army helicopters flew us over the city fast and low, shooting off an occasional flare as a protection against a heat-seeking missile. The prime minister was waiting for me when I got to the embassy. Ever since his selection in April, I had wanted to see Maliki face to face. In our phone calls, he had said the right things. But I wondered if his assurances were real.
“Your decisions and actions will determine success,” I told him. “It will not be easy, but no matter how hard it is, we’ll help you.”
Maliki thanked America for liberating the country and affirmed his desire for a close friendship. “We will achieve victory over terror, which is a victory for democracy,” he said. “There are a lot of dark people who fear our success. They are right to be worried, because our success will unseat them from their thrones.”
The prime minister had a gentle manner and a quiet voice, but I sensed an inner toughness. Saddam Hussein had executed multiple members of Maliki’s family, yet he had refused to renounce his role in the opposition party. His personal courage was a seed that I hoped to nurture, so he could grow into the strong leader the Iraqis needed.
The prime minister took me into a conference room to meet his cabinet, which included Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders. I introduced him to my team via videoconference. My advisers, who did not know that I had left Camp David, were stunned to see me in Baghdad. The Iraqis were thrilled to address their counterparts for the first-ever joint national security meeting between the United States and Iraq.
The other pivotal meeting of the trip was with George Casey. The hardworking general had been in Iraq for two years, extending his tour at my request. He told me that 80 percent of the sectarian violence occurred within thirty miles of Baghdad. Controlling the capital was vital to calming the rest of the country.
General Casey was planning a new effort to secure Baghdad. The offensive, Operation Together Forward, would attempt to apply the clear, hold, and build approach that had once succeeded in Tal Afar and Mosul.
I saw a contradiction. The “clear, hold, and build” strategy was troop-intensive. But our generals wanted to reduce our footprint. He picked up on my doubts. “I need to do a better job explaining it to you,” General Casey said.
“You do,” I replied.
The summer of 2006 was the worst period of my presidency. I thought about the war constantly. While I was heartened by the determination of the Maliki government and the death of Zarqawi, I was deeply concerned that the violence was overtaking all else. An average of 120 Iraqis a day were dying. The war had stretched to more than three years and we had lost more than 2,500 Americans. By a margin of almost two to one, Americans said they disapproved of the way I was handling Iraq.
For the first time, I worried we might not succeed. If Iraq split along sectarian lines, our mission would be doomed. We could be looking at a repeat of Vietnam—a humiliating loss for the country, a shattering blow to the military, and a dramatic setback for our interests. If anything, the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam. We would leave al Qaeda with a safe haven in a country with vast oil reserves. We would embolden a hostile Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. We would shatter the hopes of people taking risks for freedom across the Middle East. Ultimately, our enemies could use their sanctuary to attack our homeland. We had to stop that from happening.
I made a conscious decision to show resolve, not doubt, in public. I wanted the American people to understand that I believed wholeheartedly in our cause. The Iraqis needed to know we would not abandon them. Our enemies needed to know we were determined to defeat them. Most of all, I thought about our troops. I tried to imagine how it would feel to be a twenty-year-old on the front lines, or a military mom worrying about her son or daughter. The last thing they needed to hear was the commander in chief whining about how conflicted he felt. If I had concerns about the direction of the war, I needed to make changes in the policy, not wallow in public.
I drew strength from family, friends, and faith. When we visited Camp David, Laura and I loved to worship with military families at the base’s chapel. The chaplain in 2006, forty-eight-year-old Navy Lieutenant Commander Stan Fornea, was one of the best preachers I’ve ever heard. “Evil is real, biblical, and prevalent,” he said in one sermon. “Some say ignore it, some say it doesn’t exist. But evil must not be ignored, it must be restrained.” He quoted Sir Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British leader: “The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Stan believed that the answer to evil was freedom. He also knew there would be a cost. “There has never been a noble cause devoid of sacrifice,” he said in one sermon. “If freedom is worthy of defense only to the point it costs us nothing then we are in desperate need as a nation.”
Above all, Stan was an optimist, and his sense of hope lifted my spirits. “The Scriptures put great premiums on faithfulness, perseverance, and overcoming,” he said. “We do not quit or give up. We always believe there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.”
I also found solace in history. In August, I read
The casualties were not his only struggle. Lincoln had to cycle through one commander after another until he found one who would fight. He watched his son Willie die in the White House and his wife, Mary Todd, sink into depression. Yet thanks to his faith in God and his deep belief that he was waging war for a just cause, Lincoln
