In My Time - Dick Cheney [238]
THE PRESIDENT WANTED TO hear from outside experts and get their thoughts on a new strategic approach for Iraq, and so a group gathered in the Oval Office on the afternoon of December 11. Retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey, who had played a major role during Desert Storm as commander of the 24th Infantry Division, was there. Wayne Downing, a retired four-star who had been teaching at West Point, was another member of the group. When I was secretary of defense, he had commanded the Joint Special Operations Command that oversees our special operations forces worldwide. Several civilian experts were also at the session, including Eliot Cohen and Stephen Biddle. The group was united in the notion that we were in trouble in Iraq and needed to clean it up, but they weren’t united in recommending a course of action. Jack Keane, the retired vice chief of staff of the army, was the most direct and had the best developed concept. Keane made the point that Iraq was in crisis, but that we were a long way from having to accept defeat. He said that Baghdad was the key, and we needed our troops in the neighborhoods around the clock. He also urged that we not be distracted by the Shiite militias. “They are not the issue,” he said. We needed to keep our energies focused on defeating al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents, who were at the heart of the security problem across Iraq.
When the meeting with the president concluded, Jack came back to my office, and Fred Kagan, the military historian with whom Jack had been working, joined us. Their basic idea was a shift to a counterinsurgency strategy, where the primary focus would be protecting the population, since their cooperation and the intelligence they could provide were crucial to success. Under this strategy troops would secure Baghdad by hitting targeted areas, putting up a cordon, then going house to house, arresting and capturing the enemy. Our troops would be in the neighborhoods 24/7, no longer going back at night to the large and sometimes isolated forward operating bases. The increase in forces and our increased visibility and contact with the local population would, Keane and Kagan believed, convey the notion that we were in it to win and would stay until the enemy was defeated.
Without this change of strategy, simply adding more troops would not bring a victory, but this new strategy could not be successful without more troops. To achieve the increase, Keane and Kagan proposed to speed up the deployment of troops getting ready to go to Iraq and then delay bringing some troops home, so that there would be a surge of as many as seven extra brigades into Baghdad. They also recommended sending a Marine Regimental Combat Team, the equivalent of roughly another brigade, to Al Anbar Province, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.
We would also work very closely with the local forces, making sure they understood that even when the combat operation was over, we would leave some troops behind to secure the area and maintain order. Assisting Iraqi forces in holding these areas until they were capable of operating without us would be manpower intensive, which was one of the reasons a surge was crucial. A surge would also give us additional capability to speed up and improve the effectiveness of the Iraqi forces.
Keane and Kagan had the full package: a new strategy and the way to implement it. The next day I described for the president in general terms what they were proposing and what they believed was feasible, which led us to a conversation about the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They knew there was a strategy review under way and that there was talk of a surge, and they were concerned that it would