Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [376]
I decided to fly to Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the 172nd Stryker Brigade was based. My unpleasant task was to explain to the spouses why their loved ones would not be coming home from Iraq when they had been scheduled to. They had been due back in mere days. Some members of the unit had already returned to prepare for the brigade’s homecoming and were themselves now going back to Iraq.
Before I had left for Alaska, I was told by senior Army officials that they had talked with the families and explained the situation to them. As I learned when I arrived, that was not the case. They had only talked by video teleconference to a few of the senior officers’ spouses. In fact, I would be the first Pentagon official to meet personally with these understandably disappointed and in some cases angry family members. As I headed to the base from the airport, “welcome home” signs dotted the road—signs that now were sadly premature. I then went to meet some eight hundred family members who were gathered in a gymnasium.
I explained the reasons behind the rare extension. General Casey had told me he needed more troops in Iraq at this time. “It’s something we don’t want to do, but in this case we had to,” I told them. One woman asked me to wear a green bracelet she had braided until her husband came home. I kept it on my left wrist until that December, when the last of the 172nd Stryker Brigade finally made it home to Alaska.19 I still have it to this day.
After brief remarks I opened it up for questions from the audience. Some emotionally expressed their deep disappointment that their family members would not be coming home when they had been told; most were polite, surprisingly so. I knew it was a terrible disappointment for all of them. Everyone in the large gymnasium had endured a year of waiting and praying for the safe return of their loved ones.
After taking questions, I stayed for a long time visiting personally with the military families. As I was about to leave, a woman from behind me whispered in my ear, “You have to have big brass ones to come in here and face this crowd.” Amused, I turned and saw she was smiling, too.
In September 2006, a sensational press report fueled the calls for withdrawal from Iraq. Citing an August 2006 Marine intelligence report, an article in the Washington Post claimed that the Iraqi province of Anbar, a Sunni-majority area on Iraq’s western border, was “lost” to the enemy. “[T]he prospects for securing that country’s western Anbar province are dim. . . . There is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there,” it concluded.20 The notion that terrorists had won a part of Iraq was the psychological equivalent of reporting that parts of postwar Germany were lost and would remain under the control of the Nazis.
What the author of the misguided article ignored was that the report the article cited was being overtaken by events on the ground. The Sunnis in Anbar province were turning against the Baathist-jihadist axis and seeking a new way forward for Iraq’s Sunni minority. In fact, six months before the article appeared, General Casey had briefed the President that “Anbarites are tired of violence,” and a wedge existed between the Sunni resistance groups and al-Qaida in Iraq.21 We had been working assiduously over 2006 to expand and exploit those differences. By late summer, the efforts were beginning to bear fruit.
Since 2003, I had encouraged our military and the CPA to form alliances with local tribal leaders, particularly as part of an outreach effort to Sunnis.22 Abizaid was an early and consistent advocate