Bob Woodward’s conclusions - an initial response

At the suggestion of Justin, I watched the Larry King Live interview of Bob Woodward for his new book, The War Within, which took place several Mondays ago. Additionally, I watched the 60 Minutes interview from the night before. I have to admit upfront that I have not read any of Mr. Woodward’s four books on the current war. After I read them, I hope to have a more in depth analysis in future posts. However, as an Iraq War veteran who was deployed in 2006 and 2007 when many of these events where taking place, and as someone who has done some research on the subject, I would like to respond to some of the issues that have been raised with these interviews.

Issue 1: Bush did not listen to his generals’ advice over the surge and whether or not more troops would be needed.

Bob Woodward not only makes this point in his two interviews, he also makes it in his recent Washington Post Editorial. The Post piece in particular offers an inside look into the frustrations amongst some military generals in 2006 before the surge. While there is no explicit statement in the interviews that this was the wrong decision, the subtext seems to be that this decision to not listen to General Casey and the Joint Chiefs on the surge was wrong and an example of why Bush was “out of touch with the reality of the Iraq war.” How can a president go against the advice of his top commanders? 60 minutes didn’t specifically report Woodward’s conclusions, but fortunately Larry King picked up the slack. Phrases like “Bush in ‘denial’”, “Bush ‘failed to lead’”, “On Bush’s management of war: ‘never got a full handle on it…’, and “Bush ‘rarely was the voice of realism on the Iraq war’” came up on the screen to ensure viewers knew Woodward’s conclusions.

However, as William McGurn makes clear in his recent WSJ Op-Ed, sometimes presidents and generals disagree. One of the greatest examples in our history, Mr. McGurn points out, was General McClellan and President Lincoln during the Civil War. Recall that during that period, Lincoln lost confidence in McClellan because McClellan wasn’t aggressive enough. Recall that McClellan was one of the most popular generals with the Union Army at that time. At Antietem, McClellan failed to pursue Lee’s forces, which withdrew first and were vulnerable. Perhaps a more aggressive McClellan could have crushed Lee’s forces at this battle in late 1862 and saved the country three more years of war. We’ll never know. But thank goodness for Lincoln’s leadership. Similar to that situation, Bush expressed disappointment and a loss of confidence in Casey’s performance in Iraq and the overall strategy in general. According to Woodward’s interview with the commander-in-chief, Bush wanted to simply know, of Casey, if we were fighting back against the insurgent attacks. The level of improvised explosive device attacks was on everyone’s mind at this point. I know it was on mine, and I’m glad it was on the president’s. Apparently, the answer wasn’t satisfying. Bush felt the need to clarify with Casey that we weren’t playing for a “tie”, as pointed out in the opening of Woodward’s book.

Woodward seems to condemn the decision by Bush to go with his National Security Advisor’s recommendation, along with the recommendation of an outside agency, the American Enterprise Institute, against the advice of the Joint Chiefs and the top commander in Iraq. However, as the New Yorker points out, in the six months leading up to 2007, the Joint Chiefs, the NSC, and the State Department were conducting simultaneous policy and strategy assessments of the Iraq war. This multi-pronged debate and approach showed that instead of dismissing the advice of the Joint Chiefs and the top commander in Iraq, the president was soliciting a much-needed serious debate about the current and future strategy from a variety of policy advising entities. So much for his stubbornness. Ultimately, the commander-in-chief lost confidence in a failed strategy and decided to appoint J. D. Crouch to “chair a new interagency working group on Iraq strategy, a “deputies committee” made up of representatives from a number of Cabinet departments, as well as the Joint Chiefs. This group would pull together and reexamine the various strategy studies percolating at the Pentagon, the N.S.C., and the State Department.” Shortly after hearing the conclusions of this “deputies committee”, the president made a decisive and fateful decision to push for a surge in Iraq. Conveniently, Larry King left out this larger context when his show aired the caption, “Meeting between NSA and Casey…Bush wasn’t there” as if rather than a means of gathering information or generating inter-agency debate, this absence was inexcusable. I’m interested to see how Mr. Woodward’s book deals with this context.

I, for one, am grateful for this change of direction. Many of us who served over there were frustrated that we couldn’t cover the territory we needed because we didn’t have enough troops on the ground. I recall specific missions in which we were searching for suspicious motorcyclists in the open desert. At the time, insurgents were employing motorcycles extensively because they could always outrun humvees. I’ll never forget the futility on several missions of attempting to catch suspicious motorcyclists. We could see them from the air, and we could follow them for a time, but the time-space factor and very small ground force size made it next to impossible to coordinate a capture before we lost them in the towns. I recall other stories from infantry Marines that Iraqis in smaller towns were frustrated with us because of our lack of presence in their towns; we would only come through their town every six months or so. In the meantime, Al Queda would occupy, set up operations, and impose Sharia law. We just didn’t have the numbers to be a lasting presence in many areas. As a result, I, and my service members watched as Al Queda grew weak in certain areas only to displace and grow strong in other formerly weak areas. The last two years indicate that the tactics of the surge, in its aggressiveness and results of holding ground, is a much better approach. This, combined with Gen Patreaus’s push to get bases more decentralized and into the country, has greatly increased our reach and decreased violence. Bush made the right call.

Issue 2: Bush was not straightforward with his public statements on Iraq when the military had concluded that we were losing. Or as Larry Kings show told us, “Bush ‘never found a way to level with the American people’”.

Mr. Woodward makes the case that the decision to not be straightforward with the public was two-fold. First, he wanted to succeed in war and not affect the morale of the troops. Second, he didn’t want to admit problems before the congressional elections of 2006. I would submit that instead of “never finding a way to level with the American people” as Woodward asserts, the commander-in-chief truly appreciated something that Mr. Woodward perhaps did not. Publicly admitting a failed or faulty policy would have greater consequences than merely losing seats in a congressional election. It would have greatly increased the chances of a total defeat in Iraq for two reasons. First, it would have demoralized the military and the public. An unpopular war with a public admission of failed policy would have all but guaranteed the war’s loss. Second, the enemy, namely Al Queda, and other anti-Iraqi forces would have been emboldened. I was there during the 2006 elections, and after seeing the evil of this enemy first hand, I would have preferred them to be demoralized rather than emboldened. An emboldened enemy with an American withdrawal would have soon resulted in an Iraq that was more dangerous to us and its neighbors than before the invasion of 2003. As if this weren’t bad enough, the sectarian violence that could have ensued from an American withdrawal would have been Vietnam and Cambodia circa 1975-1977 all over again. I’m grateful that the Iraqis have so far been spared this similar fate.

Issue 3: The success in Iraq is not because of the surge but because of a secret program to target and kill insurgent leadership.

Woodward admits that the degree to which the current success in Iraq can be attributed to the surge versus this secret killing program is debatable. However, the implication is that the surge is not the whole story. Well, it isn’t. More troops on the ground with a continued failed strategy would have made for continued future failures. Instead, the surge was accompanied by a complete change in strategy which not only included increased troop strength but also an expanded targeting capability of senior insurgent leaders and a spreading out of forces from large defensively postured bases. In Al Anbar, we were able to see early signs of success with this change of mission in late 2006 and early 2007. Green Beret units were embedded with Iraqi swat teams to generate intelligence, locate insurgent leaders, and then together, capture or kill those leaders. It was beautiful to watch and beautiful to participate in. The reduction in violence in Al Anbar preceded the reduction in violence in the rest of Iraq, largely due to this tactic combined with the Sunni awakening. Disappointingly, the interviews fail to describe 2006-2008 as an overall change in strategy that was multi-faceted, requiring increased strength, decentralized presence, and increased covert lethality.

George W. Bush did an unpopular thing by advocating a new strategy in Iraq. But he believed it was necessary for success. The recent New Yorker article contains a very good discussion on the lead up to this change in strategy and it’s effects to date.

“The surge is a particularly complex subject; the term is not easy to define, because the scope of Petraeus’s command has encompassed much more than the deployment of additional American combat troops, as ordered by Bush. These days, when “the surge” is employed as a shorthand label, it is usually intended to refer also to the application of new battlefield tactics by Petraeus and his commanders, and to the political work carried out by the General and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during 2007 and 2008. (Crocker arrived in Iraq shortly after Petraeus, in early 2007, and they have worked together closely.)” (my emphasis)

The above quote points to the broader definition of the surge as not only a change in tactics within Petraeus’s command but also the larger strategic shifts. Specifically, the old strategy, under Casey, and before him Abizaid, focused on first promoting Iraqi political stability in order to subsequently increase Iraqi self-security. The overall surge strategy reversed this prior failed policy. This strategy focused on first providing security in order to obtain and grow political stability and self-sufficiently. This is why the broader definition of the surge was a change in strategy that represented a completely different intellectual approach to the war. Conveniently, the two interviews and various articles barely mentioned this important change in direction. So the audiences are left to draw conclusions in the absence of context.

Overall, the biggest thing we can take away from these interviews and articles is what applies to the future. General Patraeus has called the success in Iraq fragile and reversible. The affect a timed withdrawal could have on this success should be discussed and debated. I think that it could very likely hurt our fragile success. Additionally, in Mr. Woodward’s interview with President Bush, the president’s advice for the next administration was “don’t let it fail.” Obama, if he is elected, would do well to heed both pieces of advice. McCain already gets it.

Cheers,
Joel