The War Within (35 page)

commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective."

Meese agreed to the language, and the two returned to the others, saying they had settled on a solution.

Perry was relieved. His grandson, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, had by then served two tours in Iraqógung ho the first time around, less enthusiastic on the second. "God, we worried about him," Perry said later. Because the generals had been so opposed to more force and had assured the study groupóand Perry personallyóthat they did not want a surge, Perry convinced himself that its inclusion in the study group report would have no effect. Given Bush's public and private assurances that he looked to General Casey for advice, Perry felt confident that a surge was not going to happen.

Chapter 25

P
resident Bush flew to Amman, Jordan, for a November 30 meeting with Maliki. General Casey also came, and the ice appeared to melt for the moment. "Hey, George," Bush said warmly. "How you doing?"

Casey gave the president a couple of one-liners about what to expect from Maliki. In conjunction with Casey, Maliki had developed a Baghdad security plan. It called for accelerating the transition to Iraqi control by the end of 2007.

The plan divided Baghdad into 10 districts with an Iraqi brigade in every district. Iraqi police and some U.S. and coalition forces would aid them. It included the imposition of military law on Baghdad to keep the Shia militias and the mostly Shia police force from operating by themselves in Sunni areas.

Casey told Bush that the big message to deliver to Maliki was "We've got to have reconciliation if this is going to work. Mechanically, all this can work, but if the government can't cause the factions to reconcile, you'll risk unhinging the whole thing."

Maliki was facing another problem. Moqtada al-Sadr was threatening to pull his loyalists out of the government if Maliki attended the meeting with Bush. But the prime minister had decided to come anyway.

After presenting a plan that would put control in Iraqi hands by the end of 2007, Maliki said he wanted his Iraqi forces to have a free hand in Baghdad. U.S. forces could be around Baghdad, but not necessarily in the city. "This is our first attempt at independence. We developed this ourselves," the prime minister said.

But he added, "I had your people look at it because I wanted to know if it's realistic. We need to take responsibility for this." They all knew the extreme level of violence. "If violence remains in the capital at that level, we can't make any progress on anything," Maliki acknowledged. He seemed uncertain and asked for another review of his plan.

"Now I need your people to go over this and tell me if it's possible. Already I know that they're saying I may not have enough forces. I think I do."

"He was proud of his plan. He's chomping at the bit," Bush recalled to me. "It's like, 'I want to lead! They need to see me in the lead.' I view that as positive. Because I'm pushing him on this thing. Also, I think I'm wise enough to be able to do it in a way that doesn't sound paternalistic. In other words, we're partners. This is a period of time when people have gone to Baghdad and said, 'Get rid of Maliki!'"

Bush offered me his view of how to manage a fellow head of state such as Maliki. "One of the things you've got to understand is, I'm trying to set the conditions so that bold leadership is possible, and that if he thinks that I'm one of these people that says, 'If you don't do it exactly the way I want you to do it, you're going to be removed from office,'

he's going to [reject that]. You can't be a bold leader if somebody's getting ready to knock the ground from underneath you." At the same time, Bush told me, "I'm absolutely tough with him. I work hard to have personal relationships with people, and oftentimes, it opens up a lot of criticism. But you have got to be in a position, if you're the American president, to be able to say to a variety of leaders, 'Here's what I think.' And you have to be in a position where they say, 'I'm willing to listen.' And so, this was a realistic discussion with Maliki. But I have spent a lot of time with Maliki, both on the phone, SVTS [secure videoconference] eventually and also in person. I've worked hard to get in a position where we can relate human being to human being, and where I try to understand his frustrations and concerns, but also in a place where I am capable of getting him to listen to me."

In Amman, Maliki's proposed plan was dead on arrival. Bush had listened, but he had a different idea. "We can't be in a situation like we got into last summer, where your army would go to do something, and then they'd get a phone call saying, 'Oh, you can't go after that person.'"

Bush then asked to meet privately with Maliki. Only their translators stayed. Rice and Hadley were banished to the hallway, where they pulled up chairs alongside Maliki's aides. One of them started in about all the problems Maliki was having with the Sunnis.

"No," Rice said, "there is also a Shia problem, and you must recognize that. Look, we've got reportsópeople going into villages, killing all the men and sending the women into exile. Are you telling me that's not true?"

None of Maliki's aides challenged her.

In their private meeting, Bush was direct with Maliki. "I'm willing to commit tens of thousands of additional forces,"

he said. He would surge U.S. forces if necessary. "You've lost control of your capital," he told the prime minister.

"That's right," Maliki confided. "And I've got to do something about it. I can't have this happen."

"You're losing control of your country," Bush continued. "Now, we are willing to help, but we will not do thatóbecause it won't workóunless I have certain assurances from you. They are: There will be no further interference in the conduct of military operations. There will be no political intervention in your generals' decisions."

Bush then went through a list of additional requirements. There could be no areas that were off limits and no more

"don't touch" lists of Shia leaders or Shia militia who were free to do as they pleased. "No matter who the perpetrators of violence may be, weóyour forces and oursówill go after them. And that includes the JAM and the Sadrists"ómeaning the Mahdi Army and its political wing. "We are going to take on elements of any group engaged in violence. If they don't engage in violence, they don't get hurt.

"And," Bush continued, "I have to have your assurance that you are committed to a political reconciliation process, because that has to be moving on as well."

Yes, Maliki said. He was.

Later, Bush told me about Maliki in Amman, "He's a man who is in many ways overwhelmed by the moment. And he's getting his feet on the ground. And I've spent a lot of time talking to him. But he has always assured me that he is going to take on the extremists. I remember distinctly telling him, 'A Shia murderer is just as guilty as a Sunni murderer. And in order for you to be viewed as a just and fair leader, you have to deal with both equally.'"

But that wasn't happening at the time. Sunni and Shia extremists were running wild in Baghdad. "Out of self-preservation, people begin to pick sides," Bush recalled. "Not, you know, political sides, but they begin to pick the side of the closest strongman or the most reliable strong person or the most active gang to hide behind."

It was not clear that day in Amman that Maliki had understood how seriously Bush was considering a surge. And Casey, left on the sidelines, had no idea that the president had so bluntly told Maliki how willing he was to send more U.S. troops.

Casey left the Amman meeting believing that the president and Maliki had agreed with Maliki's Baghdad security plan.

In a joint press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Amman afterward, Maliki said that he and Bush were "very clear together about the importance of accelerating the transfer of the security responsibility." And in a joint statement, the two leaders said only that they had "discussed accelerating the transfer," not that they had agreed on it, but no one apparently picked up the difference.

In the statement, they agreed that they would take steps to "track down and bring to justice those responsible for the cowardly attacks last week in Sadr City." The week before, a barrage of car bombs, mortars and missiles had killed more than 200 people in the massive Shia slum.

Afterward, Bush told Rice that he thought Maliki had gotten it. Maliki had pledged to save Baghdad. That was the bargain. And he added, "He said the right things. I heard the right things. And now we'll see."

* * *

From Amman, Rice went on to the Dead Sea in Jordan for a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Gulf states, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The gathering of predominantly Sunni Muslim states was called "Forum for the Future."

About this time, reporter David Sanger of
The New York Times
published two detailed, front-page stories on what the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group was going to recommend. The first was headlined "Panel to Weigh Overture by U.S. to Iran and Syria." The second, headlined "Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops," ran the day Rice arrived at the GCC forum.

When Rice sat down with the foreign ministers, she expected the usual complaints about peace between Palestine and Israel or the conflicts in Lebanon.

Instead, it was all about Iraq. One by one, the foreign ministers said they felt convinced the United States was about to fold and leave Iraq. In turn, they would then have to make their own deals with the Sunnis in Iraq and with one another. Their big fear was what they called a Shia Crescentóa half-moon-shaped swath of large Shia populations running from Iran, through Iraq and into Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, among other countriesóthat would threaten the Sunnis of the region.

Rice received an earful. "America is going to give up," one foreign minister told her. Bush was going to redeploy and talk to Iran and Syria. They went so far as to say that they were worried that the president was going to make a separate peace with Iran. That would be like Nixon going to China or Reagan going to the Soviet Union. Such an outreach would upset the regional balance of power.

"You don't need to be thinking about pulling your forces down," said one of the foreign ministers, "you need to think about doubling your forces."

* * *

After returning to Washington, Rice went to talk to Bush. They both knew the regional allies had split personalities.

As she once put it, "On the one hand, the countries of the region don't want us to be aggressive and bellicose, and on the other they want us to be aggressive and bellicose." Because of the chaos and uncertainty in Iraq, she told the president, others in the region now worried that the United States wasn't going to be aggressive enough. They were terrified about a pullback or an exit.

"I came out of that meeting convinced," she said bluntly, "that not only did they believe that we were about to fold in Iraq, but that that was going to be the end of American power in the Middle East."

"Are you saying to me that we can't win it?" the president asked.

Rice said she believed that the 60-plus years of American influence in the Gulf, dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt, were very much at risk. The stakes were that high. "If you don't show strength and resolve," she said,

"then they're going to have to cut their own deals." There was no better way to persuade Bush than to urge him to show strength and resolve.

More than ever, they had to find a way to turn things around, Rice continued. What was clear from the meeting, she said, was that "The very act of increasing American forces would have a salutary effect, whether or not it achieved population security. The fact that the president of the United States, against all odds, against all voices, would in effect double down, would have a hugely important effect on the region." Rice herself was not yet in favor of adding more U.S. forces, but the benefit of sending a needed message to the regional allies was now clear.

"Can we win this?" the president asked again.

"I can tell you," Rice said, "we're not winning it now."

* * *

On December 5, former President George H. W. Bush broke down in tears as he was speaking to the Florida House of Representatives. His son, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, was leaving office after serving two terms. Referring to Jeb's loss in his first governor's race years earlier, the former president said, "He didn't whine about it. He didn't complain." He went on, "A true measure of a man is how you handle victory, and also defeat." The 82-year-old Bush choked up, began to sob and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his tears. The rare emotional display by a former president made the national television news.

Peggy Noonan, Bush senior's former chief speechwriter and close friend, wrote a column about it in
The Wall Street
Journal,
saying, "No one who knows George H. W. Bush thinks that moment was only about Jeb." It was more likely about "another son." She noted that "growing older can leave you more exposed to the force of whatever it is you're feeling. Defenses erode like a fence worn by time.

"Think of what a loaded moment in history it was for Bush the elder," she wrote, noting that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report would be out the following day. "Surely" Jim Baker, Bush senior's oldest adviser, had called to say the report "would not, could not, offer a way out of a national calamity." Bush senior had to know "his son George had (with the best of intentions!) been wrong in the great decision of his presidencyóstop at Afghanistan or move on to Iraq?óand was now suffering a defeat made clear by the report.

"And the younger President Bush, what of his inner world?ÖThe president presents himself each day in his chesty way, with what seems a jarring peppinessÖ. Unlike anguished wartime presidents of old, he seems resolutely un-anguished. Think of the shattered LincolnÖ. Or anguished Lyndon B. Johnson." Was it "serenity or a confidence born of cluelessness? You decide. Where you stand on the war will likely determine your answer. But I'll tell you, I wonder about it and do not understand it, either what it is or what it means. I'd ask someone in the White House," she wrote, but they were still stuck on the talking point that the president was sustained "by his knowledge of the ultimate rightness of his course."