Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [371]
In cabinet meetings I asked all of the departments to expedite sending the people we needed. While there were never enough civilian experts, those who did go to Afghanistan and Iraq contributed greatly to the coalition effort. Nonetheless, military officials complained frequently that other government departments were letting them down. On one occasion, when lawmakers came to the White House to meet with President Bush and the NSC, they inquired about the modest numbers of Foreign Service officers being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Rice responded that she did not have the power to compel Foreign Service officers to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Secretary of State technically does have the authority to send Foreign Service officers wherever the President deems necessary. However, as Rice pointed out, there was considerable opposition within the career ranks against her using that authority. Military officers expected to be deployed to war zones, which was not the case in our civilian departments or agencies. It was disturbing that we were spending billions of dollars to provide security, but we could not properly staff the U.S. embassy with the needed civilian advisers.
In a meeting on May 26, 2006, President Bush called the NSC together to try to increase civilian support for our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rice updated us on the numbers of Foreign Service officers who were going to Iraq. The number was below what had been expected and well below what had been promised. General Casey, speaking from Iraq on secure video, remarked that the number of diplomats was inadequate.33
Rice, who was unaccustomed to being questioned in front of the President, took issue. “You’re out of line, General!” she snapped.34 This was the first time in the nearly six years I had been in the Bush administration that this type of underlying tension between State and Defense had boiled to the surface in an NSC meeting. I told Rice that if she thought a general officer needed calibration, she should tell me and I would attend to it if I agreed.
In the Situation Room, discussion would often turn to which needed to come first: security or the diplomatic and economic tracks. Defense officials sought more political and economic progress. Officials from State would express concerns about the security situation. The reality was that all three—security, diplomacy, and the economy—had to be closely linked. If progress was absent in one, the others would be hindered. But from the Defense Department’s standpoint, we knew that while our military would not lose a battle, it was also true that we could not win strategic success by military means alone, particularly in irregular warfare and counterinsurgency.35 Because of the various committee and subcommittee jurisdictions, Congress hampered our ability to engage more non-military support in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our non-military institutions were bound by outdated regulations and statutes, slowed by bureaucratic inertia, and in large measure kept away from the action by a government culture that did not promote and reward individuals willing to deploy abroad.
There were encouraging signs of progress alongside harbingers that the real fight for Afghanistan’s future was yet to come. With an elected government under Karzai, the Afghan people were taking charge of their destiny. NATO was involved with thousands of troops on peacekeeping, security, and reconstruction missions.
At the same time, there was a growing awareness of a threat to the nascent stability we had strived to create. The Taliban had established strongholds in Pakistan. They