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Canceling the Crusader, dismissing the Army secretary, expanding special operations forces, bringing a four-star officer out of retirement to lead the Army, and a Special Forces officer to boot, encouraging war planning that takes into account speed, precision, agility, and deployability, and shifting from divisions to brigade combat teams—all were decisions that triggered fierce disagreement, and even resentment. I knew that change is hard. But I was always heartened when I met with the troops, because they seemed to appreciate that I was willing to do what it took to get the job done.

PART XIV

THE LONG, HARD SLOG

“It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.”

—Memorandum to senior Pentagon officials,

October 16, 2003

Samarra, Iraq

FEBRUARY 22, 2006

In war, fortunes can change rapidly. We saw this in the chaotic days after the rapid overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We saw it again nearly three years later, when the limits of American power became painfully obvious, demanding of a war-weary nation new assessments, approaches, and most of all, resolve.

In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaida entered the al-Askari Golden Mosque, a major Shia holy site with a dome two hundred feet high that dominated the landscape in the city of Samarra. The extremists overpowered the mosque’s guards, laid explosives throughout the building, and then detonated the explosives remotely. The blasts reduced the mosque’s famous, venerated golden dome to rubble.

The United States had the most formidable military in the world. We had put men on the moon. Yet as many Iraqis no doubt wondered, why couldn’t we stop a handful of thugs armed with small weapons and a few pounds of high explosives?

No one was killed or wounded in the attack, but the bombing of the Samarra mosque was the most strategically significant terrorist attack in Iraq since liberation, seemingly designed by al-Qaida to trigger an all-out Sunni-Shia civil war. Based on the restraint shown by the Shia up to that point and field reporting from commanders that the country was relatively stable and calm following the bombing, we had expectations that the al-Qaida plan would not succeed. As I reported at a press conference, “From what I’ve seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation, according to General Casey.”1

Nonetheless, hours after the bombing, I asked General Pace, who in October 2005 had succeeded Dick Myers as the first Marine chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Eric Edelman, the new undersecretary for policy, what kind of immediate response we could mount to mitigate the damage of the Samarra mosque bombing.2 Though some press accounts may have been exaggerated, looking back, it is now clear that the effect of the bombing proved a game changer in Iraq. The event marked the ascendance of Shia militia and a new stage of sectarian conflict focused in Baghdad. The militias, loyal to various Shia political leaders and parties, had existed since the first days of post-Saddam Iraq. They had infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that we had made a priority to train and equip. In the wake of Samarra, the Shia militias began a campaign of ruthless ethnic cleansing.

Since the end of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004, our recalibrated strategy had centered on moving responsibility to the Iraqi security forces as quickly as possible. I believed it was the right approach and would work given time and sufficient patience by the American people. And prior to the Samarra bombing, it had seemed promising. The Iraqis had held successful elections amid a period of declining violence. Through 2005, more and more Sunnis had participated in voting, leading to the smooth and successful government elections in December. Declining attacks against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces