In My Time - Dick Cheney [243]
I made the point that talking about “a new direction” isn’t cost-free. You can’t suggest a shift in strategy in Washington without it having an impact on our troops in the field, I said.
Jack said that what motivates generals like Petraeus and Odierno is duty. The president gave them a mission. He told them to surge, extend the deployments, and defeat the insurgents. Those generals carry out that mission out of a sense of duty. Now, he said, they may hear from folks back here in Washington who don’t like the policy, and they may hear criticism or skepticism from visiting members of Congress. But it was critically important that they not hear it from their civilian leaders. He stressed the importance of keeping the chain of command knitted together and moving forward with the mission. He said that our troops in the field wouldn’t be much affected by “Plan B” talk, but for our senior commanders it could be corrosive if they thought that civilian leadership had lost confidence in the mission.
A WEEK LATER SECRETARY GATES announced that he was withdrawing the nomination of Pete Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His nomination, which should have been routine, was pulled after Secretary Gates asked the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, to survey other Democratic senators and let Gates know how the nomination would be received. Not surprisingly, Levin reported back that the confirmation hearings would focus on the last four years of the war. Gates decided to pull the nomination rather than have a fight. When he chose Admiral Mike Mullen to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it meant that Gates’s original choice for vice chairman, Admiral Ed Giambastiani, would have to step aside since those positions can’t both be occupied by individuals from the same service. As a result Gates’s decision not to fight for Pete Pace resulted in the loss of two terrific officers who had served the nation with honor during a time of war. I thought it was a bad call.
On one of my first visits to Walter Reed to spend time with our wounded warriors, I had invited Pete Pace to come with me. We spent a morning together going room to room, and there was an emotional connection between Pete and those young soldiers and marines that I’d never seen with any other senior officer. His connection to these young men and his enormous admiration and respect for them were deep and sincere and returned to him many times over.
I had first met Admiral Giambastiani when I was on the House Intelligence Committee and he was head of an important submarine command. Extremely smart and highly effective at dealing with both the civilian and military leadership at the Pentagon, Ed had managed through a career of high achievement to maintain a down-to-earth modesty. Secretary Gates got it right at Admiral Giambastiani’s farewell ceremony when he noted that Ed had made an art form of combining distinction and humility.
I would have fought to keep both of them.
I WAS ON AIR FORCE TWO flying to Washington on Sunday, July 8, when I got a call from Steve Hadley. The president had called Steve back to Washington from a family vacation, Steve said. He, Dan Bartlett, Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, and Josh Bolten had been having a series of meetings at the president’s request to try to come up with a change in strategy to satisfy some of the growing opposition on the Hill. I had been in Wyoming for the Fourth of July holiday while the meetings had been going on, but I’m not sure I would have been invited if I had been in town, since I was so opposed to temporizing on the surge in order to placate the