The Secretary (40 page)

Now every morning, I sent e-mails asking about Libya: When were they going to tell
Gaddafi he had to step down? What leverage did they have over him? When were they
going to evacuate all embassy staff? I waited and waited. I called their offices,
but they weren’t there or were too busy to take the call. Hours, days passed. Nothing.
The daily press briefings too were frustrating. Even P. J., prone to making jokes
and often getting out ahead of the policy talking points in his binder, much to the
annoyance of the White House, was exceedingly careful during the briefing, and even
in private, when we cornered him for a few minutes away from the cameras.

On February 21, the State Department ordered families of diplomats out of the country.
The situation was deteriorating quickly. The protests were spreading around the country
and becoming more violent. More than one hundred Libyans had already been killed as
Gaddafi unleashed his police forces and army on civilians. Washington still did not
call for Gaddafi to step down nor order all Americans to leave the country. The praise
for the demonstrators was lukewarm and general. I was baffled. In the briefing, Matt,
from the AP, was poking P. J. with a hot stick.

“Is there a reason why no one, none of the officials who have spoken to this yet,
have actually used Gaddaffi’s name?”

“Well, this—as I just said, we hold the Libyan government, including its leader, responsible
for what is occurring in Libya.”

“And that leader’s name is?

“Colonel Gaddafi.”

“Everybody looks at Washington, and they see a very tepid, if at all, enthusiasm for
toppling Gaddafi, while they have shown more enthusiasm towards what happens elsewhere.
Could you explain that to us?”

“Well, as I suggested yesterday, who leads Libya is a matter between the government
and the Libyan people. As we have said throughout this historic period, it is not
for the United States or any outside power to dictate who should rule or not rule
a particular country.”

Outside of the United States, as usual, people paid close attention to every statement
made by American officials. A few days earlier on Twitter, P. J. had criticized Congress
for banning U.S. funding for a UN panel on climate change and cutting funding for
the State Department’s special envoy for climate change. A Libyan Twitter user replied
instantly: “Mr Crowley, we appreciate your environmental consciousness, but here in
Tripoli we are getting killed.”

When a reporter asked P. J. during the daily press briefing if the United States had
heard from the Libyan foreign minister Musa Kusa, P. J. said the minister hadn’t picked
up his phone for a few days. The next morning, Kusa called Jeff Feltman, the Building’s
Middle East policy man: “Mr. Crowley says you’re having trouble reaching me?”

Unbeknownst to many of us haranguing American officials in Washington, the regime
in Tripoli had made clear that the American diplomatic staff was not to leave the
country. Americans had been evacuated from Egypt and look what had resulted—a revolution
had toppled Mubarak. Gaddafi wanted to keep the diplomats as leverage, an insurance
policy to guarantee his continuing power: a hostage situation was developing. Gaddafi
had been linked to bomb attacks in Europe in the past, and Washington as well as European
countries worried that he still had operatives in the West he could activate. Yael
and her colleagues pleaded with the administration not to publicly call on Gaddafi
to step down until they were able to negotiate a way out of the country for everyone
and had a secure exit route. In the Building and at the White House, the mood wavered
between anguish and fury. The Americans were at the mercy of an erratic dictator who
brought down planes, planted his tent in public parks in Europe, and demanded public
apologies from American officials even if they sounded sarcastic when speaking about
him.

On February 23, Clinton gave a short press conference in the Treaty Room with the
Brazilian foreign minister after their talks. A reporter asked the secretary of state
what the United States was doing about the violence in Libya. She gave a long, circuitous
answer involving pressure at the UN and the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Suddenly,
toward the end, she slipped in a statement calling on all Americans to leave Libya
immediately.

“And we are encouraging Americans to leave Libya,” Clinton said. “We have taken the
step of providing a chartered ferryboat today to take off not only all the Americans
who could get to the ferryboat pier, but also other nationals from other countries
who we have offered to similarly take out of Libya. We urge Americans to depart immediately.”
Within hours, the State Department would issue its standard notice in such cases,
widely e-mailed and posted on the website of the embassy in Tripoli.

After days of pleading, Yael and her colleagues had finally secured permission for
safe passage out of the country. A top Libyan official had somehow agreed to an evacuation.
A ferryboat had arrived in Tripoli, but it would still take a few more days for everyone
to get out. Storms and choppy seas had delayed the ferry’s departure, and the four
hundred Americans whose passports had been stamped for departure out of the country
would have to spend two nights on a boat, with almost no supplies, docked in the port
of a country slipping into chaos.

They were close enough to freedom that later in the evening, President Obama made
his first public statement about Libya. The suffering and bloodshed were outrageous,
he said. The United States was looking at all the options. He was sending Clinton
to Geneva to a special session at the UN Human Rights Council.

During his seven-minute statement, Obama did not once mention Gaddafi by name.

*   *   *

On Sunday morning, February 27, SAM sat on the tarmac waiting for us. In the VIP lounge,
we drank weak coffee, nibbled on some air force chocolate chip cookies, and had our
little lottery. I got a window seat. Clinton’s black armored Cadillac came to a halt
by the nose of the plane. Seven DS agents spilled out of two vans and sprinted up
the steps and into the aircraft, while two others stayed on the tarmac to help unload
luggage from the car, whose trunk was unusually empty: just a couple of bags for a
thirty-six-hour-long mission to Geneva to stop a madman who was on a rampage against
his own people. More than one thousand people had been killed by now. Gaddafi called
the protestors “rats.” He threatened to hunt them down and execute them all. His problems
were America’s fault, he said. He was already starting to lose territory: the eastern
city of Benghazi had fallen to the opposition, soldiers were fast defecting, and rebels
were organizing themselves in the east of the country.

Hillary emerged from the car, sunglasses on. She always wore sunglasses outside, even
on gray, melancholy days like this. She made her way into her cabin on the plane.
On the table, by the secure phone with which she could call president Obama or other
foreign leaders while above the clouds, was the usual sheet of paper with the weather
forecast for our destination, mostly cloudy with a chance of rain or snow—high: 45°
F, low: 35° F. Clinton had traveled to seventy-nine countries by now and covered almost
five hundred thousand miles. But no trip, no crisis, had tested her and her country’s
role as a superpower like the eruption of anger that brought millions of Arabs onto
the streets demanding to be rid of the leaders who had deprived them of hope and freedom.

She never wore makeup on our morning flights out of Andrews Air Force Base. Her freckles
showed, and she looked fresh and much younger without the layers of foundation and
powder that television required. She always smiled when she came to the back of the
plane to chat with us before takeoff. By then, she would be wearing her rectangular
Giorgio Armani glasses, and in her booming voice, a twinkle in her eye, she would
exclaim, “Hi, guys!”

But that day, she looked tired and tense, worn out by two months of an Arab upheaval
that was only gathering momentum. Jake, in his trademark blue fleece, clutching his
notebook, stood behind her, looking more gaunt than ever, the black circles around
his blue eyes even bigger than usual. Only now were people in Washington starting
to grasp the full extent of what was happening. The revolt was engulfing the whole
region, American allies and foes alike. Arabs were rising up against their leaders,
brutal and delusional old men who still dyed their hair jet-black, who gave three-hour-long
speeches because no one had ever dared tell them to shut up, who thought the Botox
injected into their faces served as a facelift for their country. They presided over
a people bored into submission, swindled into poverty, beaten into obedience, tortured
to death. No one knew yet who or what would replace them, but America’s global leadership
and even its economic recovery hung in the balance.

Some also saw an opportunity within the crisis, a chance for America to bring its
stated values and principles into line with its policies, a better way to protect
its national interests in the long term. Oil prices were rising steadily. Oil companies
in Libya had shut down production and evacuated staff, taking Libya’s daily production
of 1.6 million barrels a day off the market. What better way to maintain access to
oil resources and trade routes than to have all the Arab people on your side, not
just their autocratic leaders? Equally, it could turn into another episode of world
history over which the United States had no control but that could deal another blow
to the slow recovery of America’s power and standing in the world.

Doug, the flight attendant, handed out mimosas in plastic cups. We’d never had those
on SAM before, but perhaps a Sunday morning departure in the midst of a huge crisis
warranted a nod to brunch. We were all tired enough to be immensely grateful. I sipped
my drink and took one last look at my Twitter feed before takeoff. I had been staying
in touch with Libyans in Tripoli and Benghazi thanks to this twenty-first-century
personal telegram, with minute-by-minute updates about the latest outburst of shooting,
which room of the house someone was sheltering in, what the noise around them told
them about the weapons unleashed against them.

I could read the fear in their tweets just as I could hear it in the voice of the
woman who two days earlier had called in to CNN imploring from Tripoli, in very basic
English and a halting voice, “Please help us, Mr. Obama, please help us.” Gaddafi
was threatening to hunt down his opponents alley by alley. His army was shelling neighborhoods
indiscriminately, dragging people out of their houses and shooting them on the street.
A UN resolution had imposed sanctions on the country; an arms embargo was in place.
Now pundits and politicians were talking about the need for more. Maybe a no-fly zone
to protect civilians? This was like a demilitarized zone but in the sky, a swath of
territory over which Gaddafi’s military aircraft would not be able to fly and bomb
civilians on the ground. But someone had to enforce the zone by patrolling it with
fighter jets. No one liked Gaddafi, but military action was a whole different ball
game. And Gaddafi wasn’t really deploying his airpower anyway. He was mostly sending
in mercenaries and tanks to shoot and crush people to death.

*   *   *

In Geneva, foreign ministers from around the world were attending the session at the
UN Human Rights Council, the perfect occasion for Clinton to gauge which way the international
winds blew. On Monday morning, on the ground floor of the Intercontinental Hotel,
a ballet of trays with glasses of juice and cookies mirrored the comings and goings
of foreign ministers who had all come to the hotel to meet her. In one conference
room, she sat down with the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. He was adamant:
no no-fly zone, absolutely not. Clinton was still unconvinced herself about the way
forward. A no-fly zone was fraught with dangers and didn’t protect civilians from
ground fire. But she wanted to keep all options on the table. She pressed Lavrov,
saying that they all had to think about it seriously.

She stepped out into the foyer and into the conference room next door, where she sat
down with the Germans, Italians, and French. More trays, more juice. The Europeans
made their way out. Clinton crossed the hall and walked into a third conference room.
A large table had been set up with little name tags with mini American flags on one
side of the table and a red flag with a white crescent and star on the other. Davuto
ğ
lu stood waiting for Clinton, and the two friends shook hands, greeting each other
warmly. Hillary knew this would be another tough conversation. The Turks were still
talking about their zero-problem policy in the region, especially ironic now that
the Arab world’s problems were multiplying by the day. Erdo
ğ
an had emphatically accused the international community of acting on Libya out of
self-interest, motivated more by the country’s oil riches than concern for its people.
Turkey in fact already had a blossoming relationship with the North African country:
$2.4 billion in yearly trade and $15 billion invested in construction projects. A
war now would slaughter the cash cow.

After listening to all her counterparts, Clinton returned to Washington to brief Obama.
She had a sound sense of where each country stood, but she was the clearest on where
they diverged—there was no consensus about military action, let alone consensus about
a no-fly zone, unlikely to protect civilians from artillery shelling anyway. The French
and British were the most gung ho about reining in Gaddafi. More importantly, the
Arabs were still far behind the rest of the world. They had suspended Libya from the
Arab League but had done little else.

This American administration was not about to embark on a war with a paltry and hastily
assembled coalition to remove a dictator who for now posed no or little strategic
threat to the United States, only to be left with the broken pottery. For two years,
the Obama administration had worked to embed the United States in multilateral organizations
around the world, to make the United States a partner in decision making everywhere.
Obama had invested far too much in not being a bully—at least not on issues that were
of no immediate strategic value to the United States—to undo that work by stampeding
into a war without a UN resolution. The United States also didn’t have the money or
the appetite for another war, but mostly, it didn’t want to do everyone else’s expensive,
dirty work. People were dying, and the United States would do all it could to bring
pressure on Gaddafi, but the calculations that propelled American power were changing;
the world itself was changing. It was time for other countries, other regions, to
take ownership of their problems. For decades, the first reaction of people around
the world had been to ask what America was planning. Now America wanted first to know
what the rest of the world had in mind, and second, what they were willing to contribute
to that plan.