Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [356]
Abizaid and Luti joined me in the office attached to my room. I asked them to close the door.
“Damn it, General,” I said. “We’re getting pounded back in Washington over troop levels.” We appeared to be making little headway against the insurgency. Media pundits, members of Congress, and retired generals were insisting that additional forces were the answer. I needed to know whether Abizaid shared those concerns. If he didn’t, I needed to know why he had confidence in maintaining the troop levels he was recommending.
I asked him directly if we needed more. It was not a rhetorical question. I wanted to hear his professional military advice. I made it clear to all senior military officials that they owed me their best advice not only when I asked for it but whenever they had something to recommend.10 Abizaid replied somewhat wearily that if he thought we needed more troops, he’d tell me so. It was certainly not the first time he had considered the question, and I suspected the constant queries from all quarters were becoming irritating to him. He then listed the reasons he didn’t think more troops were needed. He stressed that we were in an asymmetric war that would be won or lost on intelligence. The need was not to get more Americans in uniform on the ground. The need was to get more intelligence professionals on the ground recruiting local informants. We were fighting an enemy in an Arab land where guests were welcome, but Americans who overstayed their welcome would not be. If Iraq wanted to regain the pride and honor so important in its society, Iraqis would need to take on the fight. We couldn’t do it for them. We needed more of an “Iraqi face” on the coalition effort in Iraq, not more American troops.
Over the years that followed, I prodded many in the Department to give me their personal views on the issue of troop levels in Iraq (and in Afghanistan, for that matter). When I raised questions as to whether other operational approaches might be considered, such as an even greater focus on training and advising Iraqi security forces or securing the population, they told me their area commanders were tailoring their tactics and techniques to fit the different conditions across Iraq. It wasn’t that things were perfect; they did say repeatedly that they needed more civilian experts, better intelligence, and, most of all, more Iraqi troops. There also undoubtedly were areas within Iraq where additional forces were needed due to a request from a local commander. But the overall force level for the country was a different matter, and the view I consistently heard was that the top-line number was sufficient.
I knew that general agreement could be a sign that we were not challenging our own assumptions as rigorously as we might. A comment I made often in meetings, paraphrasing Pat Moynihan, was that in unanimity one often found a lack of rigorous thinking. That’s why I periodically sent memos asking for views that differed from whatever seemed to be the broad consensus. I wrote Generals Myers and Pace, saying, “I would like to know what the general officers, and possibly some key colonels, in Iraq think about the various options we face.”11 I followed up the next day: “I don’t need to know names, but it would be helpful for me to have a sense of what the commanders at various levels think on these issues. Please include minority opinions and their reasoning.”12 The memo continued:
For example, I would be interested in knowing whether or not they believe the US and the coalition
Are doing about the right things overall, and with about the right number of troops in their respective areas