Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [222]
At the outset, expectations were low, but when major military operations in Afghanistan ended in five weeks, expectations heightened dramatically. Typical was the well-meaning comment of a 10th Mountain Division soldier reported in the Washington Post: “We got hit three months ago and in less than three months we’ve toppled this regime. And within a week from now, we’ve got an interim government that’s stepping in. What more can you ask for than a splendid little war over here?”29
The sentiment was understandable, but I did not think the long struggle against terrorism could or should be viewed as a series of quick, relatively painless, “splendid little wars.” I was convinced that that was not going to be the case. Though the deep-seated pessimism at the outset of the war proved to be misplaced, I knew too that the buoyant optimism after the Taliban was toppled would prove to be just as mistaken. Ending the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan would be only the opening of a long, sustained campaign that would require patience and grit. Taking the fight to the terrorists would mean our military men and women would have to be deployed elsewhere. To keep the pressure on, we would need to continue to pursue the terrorists wherever they took refuge and isolate the regimes that harbored them and could give them the weapons of mass destruction they desperately sought. The President had told me privately what he had in mind.
PART X
Saddam’s Miscalculation
Washington, D.C.
JANUARY 16, 1991
In a televised address from the Oval Office, President Bush announced the start of military operations in Iraq. He set forth the reasons for his decision to go to war. It was a long list. He and the national security officials in his administration—Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz among them—believed that the United States and its allies had exhausted all reasonable diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein’s regime to comply with its obligations to the UN Security Council and, further, the UN’s economic sanctions were not accomplishing their objectives. According to American intelligence officials, Saddam was working to add a nuclear bomb to Iraq’s arsenal, which the CIA judged already contained chemical weapons.1 “Saddam Hussein started this cruel war,” the President said. “Tonight, the battle has been joined.”2
The date was January 16, 1991. And the president was George Herbert Walker Bush.
During that first Gulf War, I had been out of government for nearly fifteen years and living back home in Chicago. I watched the war from afar. I was impressed with the combination of air power and tank warfare in the southern Iraqi desert that decimated Saddam’s army. Television images showed the wreckage of Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks littering what became known as the highway of death.
With Saddam’s forces on the run, the Bush team faced a crucial decision, one that would have lasting consequences. The war’s initial goal had been achieved: Saddam’s forces had been driven from Kuwait. The question then was whether the United States should end the conflict or move to Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime.
“I remember very clearly Colin Powell saying that this thing was turning into a massacre,” Robert Gates, then the deputy national security adviser, later recalled. “And that to continue it beyond a certain point would be un-American, and he even used the word unchivalrous.”3 Others in the administration, including Secretary of State James Baker, said they believed Saddam had suffered such a thorough defeat that he would not be able to retain power.4 Bush agreed, and drew the war to a quick close. After the war ended, President Bush urged Iraqis to “take matters into their own