Last Card

Timothy Andrews Sayle; Jeffrey A. Engel; Hal Brands; William Inboden

Description

This is the real story of how George W. Bush came to double-down on Iraq in the highest stakes gamble of his entire presidency. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly thirty senior officials, including President Bush himself, The Last Card offers an unprecedented look into the process by which Bush overruled much of the military leadership and many of his trusted advisors, and authorized the deployment of roughly 30,000 additional troops to the warzone in a bid to save Iraq from collapse in 2007.The adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy and surge of new troops into Iraq altered the American posture in the Middle East for a decade to come. In The Last Card we have access to the deliberations among the decision-makers on Bush's national security team as they embarked on that course. In their own words, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others, recount the debates and disputes that informed the process as President Bush weighed the historical lessons of Vietnam against the perceived strategic imperatives in the Middle East. For a president who had earlier vowed never to dictate military strategy to generals, the deliberations in the Oval Office and Situation Room in 2006 constituted a trying and fateful moment.Even a president at war is bound by rules of consensus and limited by the risk of constitutional crisis. What is to be achieved in the warzone must also be possible in Washington, D.C. Bush risked losing public esteem and courted political ruin by refusing to disengage from the costly war in Iraq. The Last Card is a portrait of leadership-firm and daring if flawed-in the Bush White House.The personal perspectives from men and women who served at the White House, Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and in Baghdad, are complemented by critical assessments written by leading scholars in the field of international security. Taken together, the candid interviews and probing essays are a first draft of the history of the surge and new chapter in the history of the American presidency.

Sujets

• Iraq
• Iraq War
• History of the Americas
• Central
• Irak

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501715204
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE LAST CARD

THELASTCARD

I NSI DE GEORGE W. BUSH’ S DECI SI ON TO SURGE I N I RAQ

E d i te d by Ti m ot h y A n d r e w s S ay l e , J e f f r e y A . E n g e l , H a l B r a n d s , a n d W i l l i a m I n b o d e n

CORNELLUNIVERSITYPRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2019 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Sayle, Timothy A., editor. | Engel, Jeffrey A.,  editor. | Brands, Hal, 1983– editor. | Inboden, William,  1972– editor. Title: The last card : inside George W. Bush’s decision  to surge in Iraq / edited by Timothy Andrews Sayle,  Jeffrey A. Engel, Hal Brands, and William Inboden. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press,  2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019009158 (print) | LCCN 2019009537  (ebook) | ISBN 9781501715198 (ebook epub/mobi) |  ISBN 9781501715204 (ebook pdf ) | ISBN 9781501715181 |  ISBN 9781501715181? (hardcover ;?alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Iraq War, 2003–2011—Decision making. |  Iraq War, 2003–2011—Campaigns. | Counterinsurgency—  Iraq—History. | Military planning—United States. |  United States—Military policy—Decision making. |  Iraq—Politics and government—2003– Classification: LCC DS79.76 (ebook) | LCC DS79.76 .L37  2019 (print) | DDC 956.7044/34—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009158

Cover images: (top) Detail of President George W. Bush delivering a statement after a meeting with the interagency team on Iraq, Monday, June 12, 2006, in Camp David, Maryland. AP Photo/Evan Vucci; (bottom) US Army soldiers assigned to the First Brigade, First Armored Division wait to board a UH60 Black Hawk helicopter during an air assault mission in the Al Jazirah desert, Iraq, March 22, 2006. Courtesy U.S. Department of Defense.

Contents

Editorial Notevii

 Introduction: The American Occupation of Iraq by 2006 and the Search for a New Strategy T IMOTHY A NDREWS S AYLE AND H AL B RANDS Pa rt 1  1. America’s War in Iraq: 2003–2005  2. This Strategy Is Not Working: January– June 2006  3. Together Forward? June–August 2006  4. Silos and Stovepipes: September– October 2006  5. Setting the Stage: Early November 2006  6. A Sweeping Internal Review: Mid–Late November 2006  7. Choosing to Surge: December 2006  8. What Kind of Surge? Late December 2006–January 2007 Pa rt 2  9. How the “Surge” Came to Be S TEPHEN H ADLEY , M EGHAN O’S ULLIVAN , AND P ETER F EAVER 10. Iraq, Vietnam, and the Meaning of Victory A NDREW P RESTON

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vi CONTENTS

11. Decisions and Politics R OBERT J ERVIS 12. Blood, Treasure, and Time: StrategyMaking for the Surge R ICHARD K. B ETTS

13. Strategy and the Surge J OSHUA R OVNER 14. CivilMilitary Relations and the 2006 Iraq Surge K ORI S CHAKE 15. The Bush Administration’s Decision to Surge in Iraq: A Long and Winding Road R ICHARD H. I MMERMAN 16. The President as Policy Entrepreneur: George W. Bush and the 2006 Iraq Strategy Review C OLIN D UECK

Appendix A. Cast of Characters361 Appendix B. Time Line363 Notes367 Acknowledgments394 Contributors395 Index397

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E d i to r i a l N ot e

This is a work of oral history, allowing the participants in a historic event an opportunity to tell their story, and recast their memories, in their own words. It is also a work of analysis, putting those memories to the test. The eight narrative chapters in part 1have been crafted from the transcripts of twentyeight interviews conducted between March 2015 and September 2016. (Individual interview dates can be found in appendix A.) Textual accuracy has been one of our central goals. For the sake of clarity, however, we have made emendations, corrections, and annotations, elimi nating some stock words, phrases, and quirks of speech, such as “you know.” We have also on occasion eliminated false starts and corrections and neces sarily imposed sentence and paragraph structure on the spoken language. Natural breaks made by the speakers have been signified by the em dash (—). We have used ellipses (. . .) to inform of the removal of text within a para graph. For the sake of clarity and readability, the editors have not signified textual breaks between paragraphs. Text may have been eliminated between paragraphs, or paragraphs reordered if a speaker returned, later in the inter view, to provide context to an earlier thought. These changes are made for reading clarity, but without loss of accuracy. Full transcripts, and more importantly video, of nearly every interview are concurrently available for public scrutiny on our associated website, at https://www.smu.edu/CPH/.Toallowreaderstoidentifytherelevantpas sages and quotations in either the transcript or the video of the interview, citations to the oral histories use minute markers instead of page numbers. Minute markers in the notes indicate the last minute marker in the transcript or the video before the quotation or paraphrased remark. The entire project is a memory archive; this book is an attempt to impose order on views from partners—and sometimes competitors—in one of the most critical strategic decisionmaking processes in recent American history. We therefore encour age considering the following pages as an appetizer for those scholars, stu dents, and citizens who yearn to draw a fuller conclusion of their own.

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Source:Adapted from “Ethnic Distribution in Iraq,” in US Government Accountability Office, “Stabilizing Iraq: An Assessment of the Security Situation,” no. GAO-06-1094T (September 11, 2006), p. 13, https://www.gao.gov/ products/GAO-06-1094T.

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Ethnic distribution in Iraq

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EDI TORI AL NOTE

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Introduction

The American Occupation of Iraq by 2006 and the Search for a New Strategy

T IMOTHY A NDREWS S AYLEAND H AL B RANDS

“Itisclearweneedtochangeourstrategyin Iraq.” President George W. Bush’s announcement, beamed to the nation from the White House library on January 10, 2007, was the first public announce ment of what would come to be known as “the surge.” On his command, more American troops would go to a country embroiled in war since 2003, in hope of finally quelling incessant, and increasing, violence. It was a desperate attempt to bring order to chaos, and to salvage his administration’s signa ture foreign policy achievement: the ouster of Iraq’s tyrannical despot, Sad dam Hussein, nearly four years before. Unlike in 2003, however, when Bush ordered troops into harm’s way, this time there was no similar confidence or seeming guarantee of success. In 2003, the Americanled coalition against Saddam expected to win. This time, they weren’t sure. Thespeechandthechangeinpolicyitannouncedwerehardlythework of spontaneous initiative, but instead marked the end of a long and secre tive process designed to determine whether and how to change the course of a failing war in Iraq. The president’s decision had not been easy. In fact, it had been resisted by most of his advisors, including many of his top mili tary commanders, who feared greater loss of lives and treasure, and ulti mately defeat. That was a sentiment Bush shared as well. “The president’s job is to decide if we want to win or not,” Bush said nearly a decade later when recalling that moment and the difficult months that led to it. “And if

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