Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Evaluating The Iraq Surge 20240713

Podcasts. In our final program looking back for president george w. Bushs decision to increase troop levels in iraq, scholars offered their analysis of the surge. From Southern Methodist university this is almost two hours. So its my pleasure to introduce the chair of this panel who is the executive director of the center at the university of texas at austin. And he has, i think, not unique but certainly worth while perspective, duel perspective of being a person who has both studied Decision Making in the white house and been part of Decision Making in the white house. He was a valuable member of really making the Network Connections and the interviews that are the underlying factor and underlying base of this project work. Will, i thank you for. That i turn the mike over to you. Thank you very much, jeff. Im honored to be moderating this panel here with four very dear friends and valued colleagues. There is a concern afoot that as a moderator i may let i got to my head and try toint jekt myself too much in the discussion. Ill be sitting down in while they make presentations and then well come up here during the q a tichlt y q a time. You have the details bios in your programs. A few things i want to highlight for each person that were going to be hearing from. First is professor richard immerman. He recently retired from temple university. That may be technically correct. I know richard well. Richard does not know the meaning of retirement. He we are Close Friends and collaborate rateo collaborators. Very active as a scholar and mentor and very active citizen in the guild of National Security scholars. Next to him is mel lefler of the university of virginia. Again, another titan in the field of diplomatic history. I started reading his books when i was in undergrad. Continued reading more when i was a graduate student. Continue to benefit from his books today. Mel is the only one of our four who does not technically have a chapter in this edited collection. But without giving up too much in the peer review process, lets say he played a very Important Role in improving all the products and seeing that it came to print with Cornell University press. Our interloper on this panel of historians is dr. Corey shockey here who is technically a political scientist and protege of the great Nobel Prize Winning economistist. Frankly, corey is a long time dear friend and former friend from the Bush Administration as well. Has had many Important Roles and academia and think tanks and runs the International Institute for strategic studies in london and a better historian than a lot of card carrying historians. Finally, professor Andrew Preston who is a canadian by birth in citizenship. Did much education and studies in the United States and is now a professor in the uk at cambridge university. Also a dear friend and also contributor to the book. So with that, were going to turn oifit over to our panel. Each one is reading his or her comments from up here and then well have q a time. So please join me in welcoming our panel. Goods that podium is set up like it s otherwise, im sure that, you know, will would have moved mike up to his level. We would have been jumping up and down to reach it. So let me begin by saying how thrilled i was to join this project to accept jeffs invitation. Because of the drama implications and on going implications, that attended the Bush Administrations decision to surge in iraq, for any historian of u. S. Foreign relations, and ill underscore the word historian, the subject is really irresistible. Making it that much more attractive with the chance to contribute to what really is a first cut at history. As we discussed this morning and actually both sessions, the archival evidence is still classified, most of it. And will remain so for a decade and probably more. In fact, if i have one thing to all of who you participated, do everything can you to get this material released. I spent a lot of time with the archives and its becoming increasingly difficult to get any material released in any president ial administration. And thats going to be awe problem for the future. But in lieu of that, we do have access to the oral testimony of a remarkable number of pivotal contributors of all Different Levels which really is virtually unprecedented for this tup of project. I also had a more personal interest. I have been studying National Security Decision Making and policy making for some four decades. It began back in the 1970s when i began to explore the foreign policies of the eisenhower administration. Ill come back to that in a moment. You can understand why a xbroprt aimed down into a complicated decision held such great appeal for someone like myself. Can you also therefore understand why that appeal grew even greater as i poured through the interviews. A consensus quickly emerged, really surfaced among the contractors, regardless of their position or perspective that the process was outstanding. And i think thats been reendivorcr reinforced to day. Textbook to model to highly effective and, in fact, the worst that could be really said of them was that they were good. Indeed, except for a few that lamented the process took longer and even then there was an upside to the length that it took, again, that has been discussed today, there was only one dissent. And that was described the process as strange. But even in that case, it worked in the sense that it enabled president bush to make a courageous decision. I think there is ample evidence that that was the case. And though courageous doesnt necessarily mean wise or right, its certainly perhaps better than the alternative. Now granted in a number of respects this consensus was predictable. Given the nature and to some extent the conception of the project. You know, there is the famous old adage that history is written by the victors, attributed to Winston Churchill although historians dont know if, in fact, he really did say it. One could make sense that applies to oral histories. And most oral histories. The judgements in this case of those who were interviewed and i think again this was reinforced to day and not in any way suggesting signature wrong, the decision to surge is a good one. Largely because and i think as Megan Osullivan said, the outcome was good, was the right one. This seemed true even to those who were not onboard at least early on and those like Condoleezza Rice and she said she was proud how the whole process unfolded. Conversely, those who might be called the losers, donald rumsfeld, for example, in terms of this context, cannot through the fault of prthe project, but they were silent, they were not interviewed or didnt agree to interview. Actually repeatedly didnt aagree agree to be interviewed and same the case with george casey and manufacture the the other military leaders. Now dont get me wrong in any way. What we learned from the oral histories is originally informative and fascinating. Its terrific for any student of National Security Decision Making. It provides us with a history of the surge beyond anything that we were privy to before and thus in my opinion the book should be used in every course that anyone teaches on u. S. Foreign policy or International Relations. But as i said originally, ut it the first cut and we have to keep that in mind. And in many ways it whets our appetite for more of the story. More of the analysis and more documents. And i do hope and this came up briefly that among those, there will be more that pertain to what scholars often call the missing dimension of the history of International Relations which is intelligence. That is mentioned there. I have a personal interest in this. I would very much like to know not only the correlation between the intelligence and decisions, what kind of an input it was, but really what i think is a fascinating question is whether the reforms that took place in the Intelligence Community between 2004 and 2005 made any effect in terms of how the consumers of that intelligence did so. And ways particularly interested in peters comment in which he said in terms of 2007 and maliki and that intelligence can guarantee. Of course, intelligence can never guarantee. All it can do is inform and uncertainty. But one of the reforms which is near and dear to my heart was that the intelligence would have different types of scenarios. Which wasnt always easy for the intelligence for the consumer but nevertheless that was sort of pivotal and it was required. To me, thats a whole other sort of story, parallel story which id love to be explored. But again, i dont know how and when and when it might be. Anyway, let me circle back to the process itself. It was my study of eisenhowers policies and the architecture that generated them that was the initial part for my interest in National Security Decision Making. And, you know, in many ways and while im reluctant to use eisenhower as a model and i sort of did and when will read my essay, he blasted me for doing it and the same thing happened at the work shop. So im ready to sort of get it again. But, you know, im not suggesting in any way that all administrations should mimic that architecture. Or would i suggest that administrations dont have to adapt the processes to the demands of the contemporary environment. What today we conventionally refer to as the interagency process is much broader and much more complex than it was back in the 1950s and for that matter through the end of the cold war. For example, todays National Security council dwarfs in size and scope and authority anything that eisenhower put together and institutionalized in the 1950s. Conversely, i would argue and this might be something that would be interesting to explore in the second volume or the third volume or the fourth volume, the power of the state department which under eisenhower remained the core of the Foreign Policy process. And who secretary of state was the unparalleled leader in spokesman of the Foreign Policy community and god forbid anyone try to cross him back in the 1950s. That authority and power has receded steadily. Even as that of the pentagon has increased. And i got to stop pointing. Anyway. Tlaen is the situation which is also important and the personalities have come up in several different different contexts in terms of the conversation that no president since eisenhower with the possible exception of george h. W. Bush, i have to say mention that because jeff is here, none of the have any close to his reputation, stature, or, therefore, experience or Political Capital and, you know, because of his military authority, i think there was no one class. So that is very important. I think the fundamental pillars are applicable today as they were then. And ill just mention very quickly a couple of them. Including which would include the right people at the right level at the right time providing an environment conducive to evoking constructive debate that cuts across agencies line and to which the president is an eyewitness. Ensuring that debate surface all options and scenarios. The success for which requires a custodial manager, National Security adviser who is who sort of walks a fine line between honest broker and policy entrepreneur. And finally, some sort of mechanism that ensures that once a decision is made and implementation begun monitors the progress to decide whether or not some sort of change is necessary. To repeat, im not claiming that that process or architecture are models. I am a historian and not a political scientist. And every president must be able to devise an architecture that he or she is comfortable with. But i will argue that all of those elements should be present. In one form or another. And now ill quickly go over my criticism which will limit how much i can be criticized for. But ill be happy to discuss anything further during the question and answer. So to begin with, there was not a mechanism to trigger a review or a monitor. And to trigger eisenhower had an appendage of the National Security council. Many of you know that called the operation coordinating board. It never worked as well as it was intended to work. But it did assure that an execution of a policy could not continue undefinitely without some kind of appraisal of that policy. Periodically. Not continually as bret mcgirk said, but it would be at various intervals. In this case, there was no mechanism to trigger that review. Sort of automatically. And even though from late 2005 through 2006, many National Security officials and entities at Different Levels expressed profound concern with u. S. Policy and direction that there wasnt a review. There were meetings, many, many had meetings, referred to in interviews as stylized. But they didnt necessarily get them to where it needed to go. Finally, the nsc itself, or the elements of the nsc really forced a review. And, yet, it took place covertly, clandestinely. I dont know what word you want to include in which basically cut out the secretary of defense and many of the service chiefs, the uniformed military. Again, that really could not have happened. And then that leads to which is mentioned and what i consider one of the strangest episodes in Decision Making history which is that which surrounded the camp david meeting that june in which it was teed up and the meeting never really got off the ground again for a variety of different reasons. Im just going to quickly summarize. My general point is that even though well, let me just add one more thing to go. There was the issue which comes out very clearly that the nsc does conduct basically its own informal review. You have other ones going on. But then its the nsc that really develops a preference if that is the word, or at least puts on the table the notion of having a double down type of strategy which ultimately becomes the surge. It is not generated by one of the agencies. So it is difficult, again that, would be thats in violation of sort of the eisenhower model in which it would have been put up. It would have had to have been mentioned unless no one thought about it at all. Early in the process to the credit of the nsc and the staff and particularly the credit of steve hadley and so many of those who were here, attesting to the other eisenhower principle that the organization no matter how good it is really is only as good as the individuals who are part of it. Th in this case it is the individuals that negate everything i said because it compensates for flaws in the structure, relying on sort of extra governmental inputs, officials outside the formal chain of command, concealing some of the deliberations from others, whatever. The nsc did ultimately arrive at a recommendation that enabled president bush to make this courageous decision. A decision that the nsc wanted it to make and clearly president bush wanted to make. It surely was a courageous decision. Although ill leave it to history as to whether or not it was the wisest decision or the right decision. The question is that it is whether the system worked. Maybe it d if the barometer is that the policy ended up where they want to be. But i dont think that is the right question. If they were writing a textbook on Decision Making process is whether this is the path way they would recommend to get from point a to point b. And i think not. I hope not. Thanks very much. So first of all, i want to begin by thanking the organizers for asking me to attend today. I think that it was really inspiring this morning and earlier this afternoon, inspiring both as a scholar and even more importantly inspiring simply as an american citizen to listen to the thoughtful reassessment of the Decision Making that went into the surge. I think its incredibly impressive for us as americans to think that we have had such people, whether we agree with the decisionors disagree with their decisions, making policy in the highest echelons of the white house, state department and the pentagon and elsewhere. And i think it behooves us, all of us as americans to think how Different Things are today. And how consequential it is that we do not have serious, thoughtsf thoughtful minded people engaged in the process comparable to the ones we heard today. I also want to preface my remarks by saying that i dont have a stake in this volume. I have no i was not interviewed for it. I have not written an essay for it. I wasnt outside referee. But i also hope that peter fever will take my comments thoughtfully as an objective scholar because i did not sign the letter as an academic in 2002 opposing the war. And id like to think that ive come to whatever views ive had which are pretty complex and textured about the decision to go to war and about the aftermath and that just because im an academic i dont necessarily have vested opinions politically inspired. Im on probation, i know. Ten minutes from now, i dont think ill get your probation. At least im on pro bbation rig now. I was asked to make some comments, overall comments about the book and the surge. I think its a wonderful book. The interviews really illuminating. The volume is seamlessly edited. The interviews are brought together in a very, very effective way so that they provide an excellent, really excellent chronological overview of the decision to surge troops in iraq. I also very much admired the essays. I admired them because they offer such different perspectives. Of theres an essay by three of the key policymakers steve hadley and Megan Osullivan and peter. One essay by them and then six or seven other essays by very renowned scholars, three of them who appear on this stage. And whats significant about all the essays is that they make you think really deeply about process, strategy, and president bushs overall Decision Making. And what i want to do in the ten minutes or so that i have is to talk a little bit about the three matters, process, strategy, and overall Decision Making. So first of all, in terms of process, richard, who you just heard, is very critical of the process. But actually so are some of the former policymakers like philip selico. Nonetheless in, my judgement, steve hadley and peter fever and megan offer a compelling defense of the process in their essay. They say they make two really important points. They say that the process gave the president most of all the option that he wanted. And secondly, the big point they make is that even more importantly, the process enabled the president to forge a consensus among top officials which was no mean accomplishment. Of course, as you heard, richard is not convinced. And what he does in the volume in a very symptomatic way is compare bushs National Security council to ikes National Security council process. And richard claims that president bush was not sufficiently involved from the inception of the process, that the process was belated, that it was stove piped or silohed until nearly the very end. And that the outcome was predetermined. Whats interesting, i think, is that steve hadley and peter fever and Megan Osullivan do not really directly rebutt those criticisms. And they dont say that their process is a model, that its a textbook model. They clearly dont make the claim that they were trying to emulate eisenhowers process, the process that president eisenhower employed so effectively. Thats not what was on their minds. But they make the larger point throughout their interviews and throughout the volume, they make the larger point that we heard this morning that the process worked. Thats what counted. The process worked. And that word is used over and over again. And i would say that this assertion that the process worked invites examination of strategy, not simply process, but strategy. What does it really mean to say that it worked . In the volume, bob jervis notes that theres much dispute among experts about whether the surge actually made a lasting difference or whether it was even decisive in the short run. In part, doug loot underscored that today and said there were many other ingredients that made the surge work rather than simply the deployment of american troops. Condition current developmentsays bob jervis like the sunni awakening, may well have contributed more to the outcome, more to making the surge work than the deployment of additional troops itself. I personally believe that jervis is far too skeptical of the Short Term Impact of the surge. In my opinion, the surge did work in the following way. The surge worked in that it significantly mitigated sectarian killings and insurgent attacks. According to the newly published history, the official history of the army in the iraq war, a volume that just came out a few months ago, 1300 pages long, it points out that not only did civilian casualties and deaths significantly decline after the surge, during the surge and afterwards, but that insurgent attacks attac attacks declined from 140 per day in early 2007 to virtually none on a routine day in 2009. That to me suggests that it worked at least tactically. But along with bob jervis and richard and josh and other scholars of the volume, im inclined to question whether the surge,al be surge, a tactic and Operational Success, wha success was a strategic success n supporting the surge, steve hadley and peter and megan o osullivan do a great job in the essay explaining how changing assumptions that they explain the changing assumptions that motivated the surge. They illuminate how they interrogated previous how they interrogated assumptions and configured them. What is interesting in the essay and in the interviews is that they actually say rather little about overall strategic goals. They often allude to, quote, the mission. But they dont specify the missions goals. Now in 2002 and 2003 when the administration invaded iraq, the goals were to rid iraq of weapons of mass destruction and bring about regime change. The goal was to make sure that the Iraqi Government would not hand off weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups with global ambitions. The goal in 2003 was to make certain that iraq would not be a threat to its neighbors. Those were the goals. And those goals, however ineptly, actually had been achieved by the end of 2003. Mostly by confirmation that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and that iraq was far weaker than anyone in the administration had imagined. Building democracy and undertaking nation building were embraced as goals, mostly after it became clear that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Now by 2006 and early 2007, when the surge took place, it seems that the new goal was to bring about a democratic iraq that could, quote, governor itself, defend itself and sustain itself, end quote. Yet, in the interviews quoted in this book and in the essays there is little discussion really of how democratization and nation building related to overall u. S. Capabilities and Strategic Interests both regionally and globally. At one point Megan Osullivan said to steve hadley in the decisionmaking process, i cant write a paper about an emerging consensus because, quote, actually nobody agrees with anybody about even foundational issues, end quote. I do not see the foundational issues ill loose inated in a way. Perhaps they were addressed. Im not saying they werent addressed. Perhaps they were addressed in the actual memos and in the position papers written for the nsc deputies and principals but those documents have not been declassified and thats a real, real shame. And it constitutes a real obstacle to any final conclusion about the strategy and the process behind the surge. But the absence of such documents does not deter some scholars and some policymakers from calling for a more favorable overall assessment of president bush as a decisionmaker. Indeed, the interviews and several essays suggest that the surge was a occcourageous choic for president bush. He went against Public Opinion. He went against his secretary of defense. He went against his secretary of state. He went against his joint chiefs of staff. Against condi rice, rumsfeld, pace, all of them were against the surge. And with the talented assistance of steve hadley and his nsc staff, president bush orchestrated a decision that everyone eventually agreed upon and over the next 18 to 24 months the surge did reduce violence and it did reduce sectarian killings. My question, should these generalizations then inspire a reinterpretation of president bush and the iraq war . I dont think so. By mid 2006, the prevailing policy was failing. The choice was double down with the surge, reposition, and or carefully withdraw. Nobody around president bush, even the opponents of the surge, could face a pullout and acknowledge defeat, whatever that might mean. So the only option, actually, was the last card. The surge. Bob jarvis explains this in terms of what political scientists call prospect theory. Prospect theory says that people, all people, not just policymakers, all people are most inclined to be big risktakers when they face defeat. In my opinion, you dont need prospect theory to explain this decision. You only need to know the personality and character of george w. Bush. He was a proud, confident, intelligent, stubborn man who believed that his credibility and reputation as president would be forever blemished if he, quote, lost the war in iraq. He believed that the credibility and reputation of the United States would be forever blemished if the country, quote, lost the war. What i want to hear from you, bush allegedly said to the joint chiefs, what i want to hear from you is how were going to win, not how were going to leave, end quote. President bush received some evidence that the surge could work. He found out that five grades could be made available. He was informed that the brigades could be used in an effective manner in and around baghdad. He learned about the socalled sunni awakening. He met with maliki and he felt that he could work with the iraqi leader. The odds, however, were still low. Everyone seems to have thought it was still a real gamble, really gutsy. That is why the book is called the last card. So a key question is when odds are low, when odds are low, does it make sense to take such a risk . I think this is a really significant issue all of the time. Not just in this decision. How do you know that you should take such a risk. In retrospect, it seems like of course it worked out. But the odds go into it were perceived as rather low. Did it make sense to take such a risk . President bush thought so. He felt that the disastrous outcome stemming from withdrawal or defeat was far more consequential than the chips he was about invest. The surge might not work but if it failed, his reputation and record would not be much worse than it already was. The surge might not work but if it failed the reputation and record of the United States would not be so much worse than it already was as a result of the embroilment in iraq. So then does the decision revealed, does the decision reveal a skilled policymaker rather than a lucky one . I dont think so. For the following reasons. President bushs actions were terribly belated. Since the fall of 2003, if not in may 2003, observe is grasped that the security situation in iraq was perilous. There were 12,000 civilian deaths in 2003. Almost the same number in 2004. Over 16,000 civilian deaths in 2005. And about 29,000 in 2006. And from the onset local commanders like general sanchez and civilian officials like paul bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional authority, as well as pentagon leaders like the army vice chief of staff general keen, they all warned that there were inadequate forces. President bush was slow to deliver those forces. Now, president bush was hamstrung by donald rumsfeld, his secretary of defense. Rumsfelds staunch commitment to a lean force stifled an early reexamination of policy. President bush left his secretary of defense in office far too long. The secretary of defense was hated by many inside the pentagon as well as inside the state department. Rumsfeld was a visual and condescending to rice and sometimes to nsc staffers. His lines of communication with the Coalition Provisional authority had been terrible. Rums felt belatedly assumed responsibility for the torture at abu brief and he offered to resign but president bush refused to accept his resignation. President said no again in 2006 because of the socalled revolt of the generals would have made bush look weak. But rumsfeld was critiqued. Because his performance was deplorable. And the president should have fired him. Failure to do so was a grave error. Third, bush was slow to augment overall forces. Lots of generals and admirals in the pentagon opposes the surge because it would supposedly, quote, break the force. Finally, president bush skillfully garnered their assent by promising to enlarge troop numbers overall in late 2006 in exchange for jsc support of the surge. If this was good policy then, and its emphasized that it was very good policy, why was it so belated. Why did it not take place earlier . When president bush went to war, and in my view that decision actually was understandable, when he went to war, president bush never gave enough thought to the postwar situation in iraq. The president ascented to consequential symptoms like and the expanding of the iraqi army without deliberative processes in the spring of 2003. Those decisions had terrible longterm ramifications. Finally, president bushs definition of interests and strategic goals like democratization were illusive, grandiose, and ultimately unachievable. As some of the commentators said in the previous session, americans have to understand the limits of their power and that was not understood. And consequently i would say that the tactical success of 2006 and 07 is dwarfed by the strategic miscalculations and bureaucratic disfunctionality that had bee leagued the bush presidency since its inception. The just published official history of the army in iraq and its about 1,300 pages long filled with citations to real documents and extensive interviews, the just published history of the army was commissioned by general oderno himself, and approved by the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff before he took that position. The official history concludes on the last page in the following manner. Quote, the failure of the United States to achieve its strategic objectives in iraq was not inevitable. It came as a by product of a long series of decisions, acts of comission and omission made by welltrained and intelligent leaders making what seemed to be reasonable discussions. At one point in the waning days of the surge, the change of strategy and the sacrifices of many thousands of americans and iraqis had finally tipped the scales enough to put the military campaign on a path towards a measure of success. However, it was not to be. As the compounding effect of earlier mistakes combined with a series of decisions focused on war termination ultimately doomed the fragile venture, end quote. When i think about the surge, that is the conclusion with which i would concur. Thank you. [ applause ] so my i had the Civil Military chapter in the book. And as i was reading through the interviews, the thing that struck me so strongly was how desperately i wish i could have worked in this administration. Because the process was elegant, i disagree with much of mals criticism of the 2006. It seemed to me an incredibly difficult decision for the president to have had to make and that the process worked in a way that helped the president get to where he wants. So i say i wish i worked in that administration. I actually did work in the Bush Administration from 2002 to 2005. And i have such envy reading these interview because so much had changed. And thats where i disagree with mel. Because hes acting as though there is a continuum, particularly in the president s own behavior. So i have three points i want to make. The first is that there werent serious Civil Military difficulties in the runup to the 2006 surge. There were very serious civil civil difficulties, mostly in the form of secretary of defense. And i want to talk about that. The second thing i want to talk about is a misconception i think that the process labored under about Civil Military affairs and in particular the way that the principal actors except for the president conflated how they dealt with active duty military and how they dealt with veterans, retired senior military people speaking out in criticism of the administration. And the third thing i want to talk about is what i call hadleys dictum. And steve hadley gave what i think is the fundamental insight about government processes which is they have to actually suit ow the president takes on information and how they make decisions. And thats what is so beautiful and what i envy so much in listening to the interviews from all of the people. Because the nsc found a way to make it possible for the president to make a very difficult, very politically fraught decision. So let me talk a little bit about these. First the civilcivil problem. Which is the secretary of defense. I think it came up in several peoples comments. I dont agree that the process was clandestine. Secretary rumsfeld knew that the review was going on. He declined to participate because he didnt agree with revisiting the strategy. In fact, one of the things that was most shocking to me was in the aftermath of the the attack on the sommara mosque, that is the moment for everybody in the administration, that the strategy is failing, if we proceed on this course it will be pointless. For everybody except the secretary of defense, whose reaction to is is that it is a affirmation of the nature of the struggle, not that the strategy is failing. And i think that is a window into why secretary rumsfeld was such an impediment to getting the strategy for the war right. Which is that the secretary of defense fundamental job is translating the president s political objectives into military plans and resources their execution. And in my judgment, much of the failure between 2003 and 2006 actually sits at secretary rumsfelds feed. Condi rice said in the interviews that the plan for the invasion of iraq was inadequately resourced and the secretary of defense was evasive when she and other members of the cabinet tried to press him on things like the stability, if you have a war plan that is rapid and city skipping, how do you create the president s objective of stable of a stable iraq after regime change. Vice president cheney acknowledges in his interview there is a disconnect between stability and secretary rumsfelds desire to draw down forces. But to reinforce one point mel says, which is secretary rice in the interview said ive not really done the kind of red teaming that perhaps we should have done. And thats the difference between 2003 and 2006, i think. And the difference in the outcomes. After the sommara shock, the joint chiefs of staff start reviews in theater, in the cent com headquarters and the pentagon. The process begins to move. Again, i wish i worked in that administration. It was an elegance of orchestration to produce a reconsideration. But as late as october of 2006, secretary rumsfeld was saying that the strategy that the war in iraq wasnt going as badly as people said and that more troops wouldnt make any difference and his recommendation into the process was to accelerate the drawdown of troops in iraq. Secretary rice said in her interviews excuse me at that point National Security adviser rice said in her interviews the reason they didnt discuss the reviews underway in the cabinet was because they didnt want to provoke the secretary of defense. That is such a colossal failure in the secretary of defenses part that it claws at my heart the cost that had. So the second point i want to make about the supposed generals revolt. Civil military relations in the United States are structured the way they are with the unquestionable subordination of the military to the elected civilian leadership and it is structured that way in order to prevent and arm a Standing Army from becoming a threat to democracy in america. Thats why Civil Military relations are such a big subject and why the american model gives our military such wide latitude in the making of policy. But that is contingent on the unquestioned acceptance that they will do what the elected Political Leadership decides. I saw nothing anywhere in any of the interviews that suggested there was any difficulty of that. The white house staff understandably was nervous about the possibility of the military not supporting the strategy. And the decision about where are we going to get the troops is a difficult one. But i didnt see any signs that there was an actual reason to be concerned about subordination of the military. And thats a beautiful thing, my friends. Be very grateful for it. Where i am critical of the decisions is the conflation on the part of many in the white house with the exception of the president himself that these retired military officers like greg new bold speaking out calling for rumsfeld to be fired, that rumsfeld couldnt be fired for six months because that would look that would be a violation of Civil Military norms. And that is actually just not true. And i love that the person who had it right was the president himself who said im not going to do anything different based on what these guys say and he also made the distinction of treat them like just another political actor which is the right way to treat retired to treat veterans when they engage in the political process. They are just another political actor and the president had that exactly right. So treating it as a Civil Military judgment may make it complicate what needs to be in that. And the third point, hadleys diktum. What is different between 2003 and 2006 and comes through so beautifully and poignantly in the interviews is that the president took ownership of the process and the president took ownership of the outcome. Right. Josh bolton, the white house chief of staff, said the president i saw at those war meetings was to me noticeably different from the one i saw in every other context. This is before the surge. The white house chief of staff said that the president was differenten shall to the military views and didnt have the confidence and the rigor that he had in other circumstances. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said the same thing. The president was not directive. He was solicitous of the process set in motion. And agree with the white house chief of staff josh bolton that steve hadley actually deserves the credit for making a process amenable to the president to get him wider information and megan and peter deserve a lot of credit in this as well. But i struggle to think that a different National Security adviser, one with affection, steve hadley, one that lacks your grace, would have been able to align the pieces such that all of these things happened. And when the challenge came from the chief of staff of the army, that we dont have the forces, it will break the army, i thought it was really striking. This is not recounted by the president but recounted by several other people in the interviews, that the president , when won fronted with the chief of staff saying i fear this will break the army, the president s rebuttal to that was losing a war is what will break the army. Which is exactly commanderinchief stature. And as condi rice said, george w. Bush was a different president in 2006 than he was in 2003 and that comes through powerfully for me in the interviews. And let me close with something president bush did say in the interviews which sums up why this worked as well as it did. Which is that the militarys job is to figure out how to win. The president s job is so decide if we want to win. And that is what works in 2006. [ applause ] good afternoon. It has come up a couple of times now, but peter fever talked about whether academics can or cant admit they got something wrong. And in my case, there is no way around that because my students always, always remind me when i got something wrong because im always making predictions or saying this will probably can happen and this cant happen and i get it wrong as often as i get it right and i thank my students for constantly reminding me of that. I just want to thank the organizers, all of the organizers, all of the people who have gone to putting on this wonderful event, this stimulating day not just the oral histories which is a huge effort and not just in terms of editi editing the book but thanks to all of you for sticking around for, what, six hours now of really intense and detailed discussions of something that at times is really complicated and i also thank you for sticking around for me, the very last speaker before the sort of signature key note event of tonight. I was expecting the room to kind of empty out by the time you get to the last speaker. I also want to thank the organizers for inviting me to be part of this amazing project where we got advanced access to incredible oral histories. Though i do have some issues with the oral history and the project in itself which ill come to later but the end product is this incredible resource that historians will come back to again and again and again in the coming years. Not just historians of american Foreign Policy making and u. S. Policy in the middle east but the politics of National Security as well. Reading the book, reading the product of the analysis and after reading all of the oral histories themselves has been an illuminating and enthralling experience and ill try to touch on some of the chapters as i explain my own chapter. And my own chapter, if you havent had a chance to see the book, looks at the parallels between vietnam war especially and iraq. Because those parallels are striking and many. And i have been invited to the project as a historian to think about this historically and my first book and ive written a book and several articles on american policy making toward vietnam especially in the 1961, 1966 period. And that is an obvious way that i would approach these oral histories. And initially i thought i thought that is what i have to do because that is what i know. But then i had a little bit of skepticism as to whether that would hold. I knew that there are a lot of parallels between vietnam and iraq. But i wasnt sure what i would find in the oral histories and the more i read the oral histories not only were there a lot of unspoken parallels or links between vietnam and iraq but the policymakers and military personnel spoke about vietnam constantly. It pops up again and again and again in the oral histories and i didnt i quoted from the oral histories when they referred to vietnam a lot but not nearly as much, excuse me, as i could have. The point in my chapter isnt that was another vietnam. That is both true and untrue. But that examining the surge through the lens of vietnam could help us understand the dynamics of policy making in iraq. And im particularly interested and intrigued by the notion of victory. Specifically the surge in 2007 which was by all accounted successful meant that the United States had won the war and that comes up constantly in the oral history. This refrain of were going to win. Not only are we not going to lose, but were going to win and once the surge is implemented, this helps the United States achieve victory. Before i get to that, i just why a chapter on vietnam. I would like to say more on that other the uncanny similarities and the refrains in the oral histories. In vietnam, Lyndon Johnson faced two critical moments when he was asked to surge troops. The first time came in july of 1965, a product of decisionmaking that began in 1964 but it kicked off in february 19 in january 1965 when his National Security adviser and his secretary of defense went to the president johnson and said the current policy is unsustainable. We either have to get out and here are the reasons why we shouldnt or we have to go in and go in much bigger. And johnson initiated a review process and a discussion process that culminated on july 28th, 1965, when johnson americanized the war by announcing a surge. He didnt use the word surge but announcing a surge of tens of thousands of more u. S. Troops. And then johnson was faced with another decision over whether to surge troops in vietnam. And that was in february, march 1968 in the wake of the tete offensive and to a lot of people around the world the South Vietnamese and the United States had suffered a calamityset back if not an overwhelming defeat but the military on the ground in South Vietnam said this is an opportunity and we have the vietcong on the run and were pushing them back. Theyre not making any gains and we need tens of thousands of more u. S. Troops to consolidate those gains. And in this case, unlike in 1965, johnson he again initiated a review process but this time he decided not to surge troops. And in fact, he did the opposite. He decided to begin a drawdown of u. S. Troops and he halted operation rolling thunder, the Bombing Campaign against North Vietnam and he also announced very famously on march 31, 68, he would not accept the party the Democratic Party nomination and he wouldnt run for reelection. There were also so what i wanted to do with iraq with the decision in 2006, 2007 to surge troops in iraq is to examine bushs decision in light of johnsons decision. But there are all sorts of other ways i could have approached the analogy or the parallels between vietnam and iraq. There is the obvious issue of nation building which occurred in both countries and ran into problems in both countries. There is the other side of the pun intended, the other side of the coin in Counter Insurgency and we have vietnamization and spoke have spoken about the process what was for a time very briefly called iraqification and that was dropped for obvious reasons. But this notion as they stand up, we stand down and were going to support the vietnamese military and build them up and train them and provide them with the hardware they need and the same thing was going on in iraq. And then ambassador aidelman referred to what we might call the spector or shadow of no dam zem and whether to get rid of maliki. He was overthrown in a u. S. Sponsored coup by South Vietnamese generals in november 1963. And the policymakers, almost two a person as well as historians and journalists, whether they were hawks or doves or somewhere in the middle, pretty much everybody agrees that was the critical error that the United States made was the sponsor the overthrow and not have a plan to follow in his wake and the instability that did follow that was predictable and that was what drew the United States into the war and if youre a hawk it is a mistake it drew the United States into the war but on really shaky ground and on terms that made the u. S. Occupation of South Vietnam look profoundly illegitimate. There is ways to explore because of the project thinking about how johnson went about deciding whether to surge troops or not in 1965, 1968. And i just want to touch on three conclusions that i draw from this examination that i flush out in greater detail in the book. And one is about process. Which when i started my chapter, when i was invited to to examine the oral histories and to write my chapter, my first book was on george bundy who was National Security adviser to kennedy and johnson. Bundy invented the position of security adviser. He didnt invest the position itself. That was under Harry Trueman but he made the National Security advise earp the National Security adviser and people referred to the position a little bit after that in those terms rather than as a special assistant to the president for National Security affairs. So that was my original work. I looked at bundy and their nsc staff and their role in the escalation of the vietnam war. So im already a process nerd in a historical sense so i knew i would look at preocess but how often the process comes up again and again from the practitioners and from the scholars. And while i take richard immermans point and i dont disagree with him on eisenhower, to me the process for the surge in iraq worked despite itsiddio sinkies that you might not draw it up exactly like that on the drawing board. A genuine consensus was reached even when initial opponents were brought into the process and then they were brought in in a way that allowed them to buy into the final decision. So you reach a consensus when consensus didnt exist beforehand and i think steve hadley deserved the praise hes been getting today. And this process had a lot of idiosyncrasies and it was designed as we heard to neutralize the bitter enders like don rumsfeld who disagreed with the policy and wanted to do something else. And did that successfully and it was a Better Process even if it wasnt perfect as what happened in 2002 and 2003. And we discussed that quite a bit so i dont want to belabor that point. And thinking about vietnam, good process doesnt always produce good policy. And vietnam in 196465 is a classic example. Unlike conventional wisdom that still exists, still is very powerful today, there was no consensus for war in elite circles in washington in 1963, 64, 65 and because we were fighting communists in vietnam and we had a long standing commitment in vietnam, that therefore we would go to war. There were all sorts of people advocating, not only arguing against sending trooms as the secretary of state dean ross did but there were a lot of people saying we should get out. And the one person who always held up is the undersect george ball but those in the congress, in the state department and in the cia and in the joint chiefs of staff. So there was no group, think there were no sleep walkers. Instead if there was a consensus it had to be forged and who did that was george bundy, the National Security adviser. And when you read the oral histories from the johnson era and read the memoirs and a lot of the accounts, almost nobody complains, even those that lost out, nobody complains about george bundy. They all in similar ways that people have praised steve hadley. They talk about how fair minded he was and he was his own broker and he had his own policy yeses and yes, he was slightly tipping the scales not in an unfair way but making his views known to the president and this is what we should do in vietnam and almost nobody there were a couple of people but almost nobody felt they were cut out of the process or that their views werent heard and so on and so forth. And yet this good process that produced consensus produced what i think almost everybody would agree was a disastrous policy result. So good process doesnt always lead to good policy. And Richard Betts who contributed to this book, wrote a book called with leslie guild, the irony of vietnam, the process worked. And sometimes that does lead to a good policy outcome. Here i think of the decision in the 1968 when johnson decided not to surge troops. That was a terrible process. You had a new secretary of state Clark Clifford who came in and sidelined the existing secretary of state and the National Security adviser who have been there i mean russ served all eight years. Kennedy and johnson for all eight years. By that time ross dow had been National Security adviser for over two years. So they are experienced. So clifford comes in and he side lines the secretary of state and the National Security adviser but he also sidelined the president and that is the really remarkable thing about the decision about johnsons decision not to surge troops in the wake of the tete offensive is that he wanted to surge troops and grant general west morelands request to send more troops and the process worked out in a way that he felt it was impossible to do so and he famously said who poisoned the well. And yet there are people who make an argument that johnson should have surged troops, that westmoreland was right and maybe that is right but not many people do agree with and i certainly dont. I think the good policy outcome was to begin disengagement. So sometimes bad process can provide good policy. Wild the surge in iraq the surge process about iraq produced a good operational outcome with bush showing really skillful leadership in this instance, it still didnt solve the wars larger strategic problems. So again a very good process doesnt necessarily address all of the concerns. And here i want to draw another analogy to vietnam which i find instructive for iraq. The oral histories highlight the argument that in a volatile Environment Security must come before sociopolitical reform. So you could try political reform and social reform but at the end of the day if the security situation is so volatile, you need to provide security. And that insight provided much of the basis for the surge. Ambassador loot today referred to, which is a great phrase, i think that captured this very idea, you need to reach a security threshold to go on and do more, more reform. And i think there is a lot of logic to that. I think it isir refute anl logic but that led theorists in government like walt rost yao who sent their careers arguing for social and economic and political reform in societies like South Vietnam and providing models as ho to y models as to how were going to go about doing that reform. And they argued for the americanization of war for surging troops in vietnam and stabilize matters in the shortterm to provide a basis for reform. And in vietnam between 1965 and 68, between the two johnson decisions over whether to surge, all that did was conceal the greater strategic problems that loomed over everything. So johnsons decision so surge troops in july 65 stopped the free fall, the ever downward spiral of security and stability in South Vietnam and so you had that security threshold. But then what. And after that, nothing could really happen. There certainly wasnt a modernization of South Vietnamese society. And even after reading the oral histories and the discussions today, i find it difficult to believe that iraq could have escaped that fate too. The second thing i would like to discuss is the problem with the concept of collective memory. Not the method. Although there are problems with oral histories endemic to the genre. Every historian knows that. And i dont mean the every day human errors that cloud ones memory. Im talking about the very nature of collective memory itself. And behind the oral histories and the title of the project, there is an assumption that collective history is something that is there and something to be discovered and that is neutral and once you have the collective memory therefore you could get at the truth of something and i think that is highly problematic. Collective memory isnt usually organic. Those memories of the past that grow up and emerge, that is not really collective memory. Sometimes it is but that is something closer to nostalgia. Collective memory does occur but not naturally. It has to be made. It has to be forged. It is a social process, it is a political construction and it doesnt just happen out of nothing. And that is what the oral history participants for this project were doing. They were creating a collective memory to give a particular policy an air or veneer of legitimacy, a seal of approval. And the collective memory forged here is that the surge was not only successful, which i think is not really contested. I certainly dont contest it. It clearly was successful in reducing violence. But the collective memory forged here was not that the surge was successful because that is not contested but the surge achieved victory for america in iraq that people later on threw away. That may or may not be true but the collective memory oral history do not prove that and i think there is an assumption of people who gave the oral history that that is selfevident. That victory was attained. And that brings me to my third and final point which is that the sur the surm cant be considered a victory because it was a means to an end. It was never an end. It was a battle in the war and it wasnt the war itself. And i agree with what mel leffler just sedaid said on that note. And yet the surge may have created submissions for victory and that too is up for debate. Here im in agreement with Richard Betts on whether the time the surge bought in iraq was valuable and he wrotes, quote, how long is long enough to count in the end. Was it enough time and would any amount of time be enough to mold iraq into something that would allow u. S. Withdrawal in good order. And policymakers in vietnam faced exactly that question again and again. And with vietnam, we know or pretty sure we know because the counter arguments rely on counter factuals there was never enough time. There was no amount of time sufficient to achieve in vietnam and what americans wanted to achieve abds suspect the same is true in iraq. And lbj helps for by the same logic that the surge was a total victory, not a means to an end but the end itself, would have allowed lbj in 1966 or 1967 to say, look, ive won the vietnam war. I surged troops in july of 1965 and i stopped the freefall and weve won and therefore the job is over and the job wasnt over and lbj ended up losing. I would say, especially after reading the oral history, the surge got the United States back to square one, to a position it faces, say, in the spring of 2003. It didnt win anything in and of itself it just brought the war back to the previous four years of violence and turmoil and damage to american credibility hadnt happened. But of course they had happened. The situation lbj would have recognized all too well. So there is tremendous value in the oral history and i encourage you to read and my editors would say to buy the book. S in a incredible primary source of use for future generations. Ill come back to the oral histories again and again. But they are only part of the story. Theyre not the whole story. Thank you. [ applause ] all right, i in my temporary chair have lots of questions and little time. And i think there may be a number of questions from the audience, including perhaps from some of the previous panelists. So im going to dispense with the four pages of potential questions and comments ive written out here and im just going to put one question to the other panelists here which you could take any number of directions because this may or may not tease out or elaborate on the number of themes that came up and after this well turn over to the audience so please be preparing your questions. Two historical episodes were mentioned and focused on a couple of you in the chapters, Richard Eisenhower and andrew vietnam especially in the lbj administration. And for the three historians and the defact or fourth history an kori, if there is anything we could learn by the surge decision makes in 2006, 2007, any other relatively recent american and nsc history. The first might be nixonkissinger and her decision on vietnam when, mel, you implied that president bush didnt have any other options but there was one, that you request leave the war and lose it. May or may not have been the right one. But it was chosen. What is there from that episode. The second might be more focused one. The Carter Administration and desert one. The third might be the Reagan Administration in beirut in 83, 84, is there anything in that process and alexefons written an article that some of you are familiar with on cutting losses and the fourth might be george h. W. Bush and the fall of 1990 and deciding to go to war in the first gulf war which in hindsight is often seen as a Great Success and in some ways it is and in judging from the Public Opinion it was not on their side and initially he had resistance from his cabinet too. So any of you want to take up any of those ep seeds and see if they might illustrate more of what were looking at here. And i have the mic and im going to pass it on down. Well, ill just Say Something about the comparison to nixon and kissinger. You seem to be saying that they decided to withdraw. And im not sure if i would characterize their actions that way. They made certain, i believe, that nixon and kissinger in 1969 operated in some ways in a similar manner. They were looking for tactical initiatives that would enable them still to achieve what they regarded as victory. And the victory was independent South Vietnam. And the way they thought they could do it, most effectively, was by pally ating the American Publics describe for a drawdown but at the same time escalating. So i think it is wrong to see nixonkissinger in 1969 as withdrawal when they, in many ways, were intensifying the bombing and expanding the war significantly into cambodia and laos and the bombing of North Vietnam with the same illusive goal of victory as they perceived it. So in a sense there are tactical similarities but the preoccupation, and i think its a legitimate preoccupation with incredible within nations credibility and reputation and their personal credibility and reputation, those things remained, were at stake. And these are very agonizing decisions. But i wouldnt say that there is a significant discrepancy there. So i want to add one to your list. Which is the Reagan Administrations decision to pull out of lebanon offer the bombing of the u. N. Headquarters. That was one. Oh, was it. I was panic stricken cycling through them. So i missed it. What i think both with the Carter Administrations decision after desert one and with the decision about lebanon is that they cast a very long shadow about the capability of the American Military to manage the wars in which they were fighting and one of the enormously beneficial consequences of the 2006 decision was a reminder that if you give the American Military time to figure out what theyre doing, they could figure out what theyre doing. The adaptability of the American Military proven the criticism that i think is incredibly damning and legitimate of the American Military in 2003 is how come nobody anticipated that a weeker adversary would pick an asymmetric strategy and drive the costs up to you. That is classic. Weaker adversary position. But what you see as a consequence of the surge is an incredible flourishing of creativity, adaptability and a generation of military leaders that come out of that, that think in much more limber ways about the nature and use of military force to achieve objectives. So of those four examples, one doesnt belong and that one was successful, that last one with president h. W. Bush and the first three are failures. And i dont think it is a were contesting whether [ inaudible ]. Right. I dont contest the surge was i think it was a success, but the with those four examples, the first three were failures, the fourth one was a success, i dont think it is a coincidence in this case there is a really strong correlation between process and outcome. So the first three you have the most dysfunctional National Security nsc systems if you want to call them that, under nixon and then carter and then reagan. And that failure of process leads directly to the failures of policy. And of course in the george h. W. Bush years, the process is where it is i think textbook and you get a good policy outcome. The larger strategic questions are still there. We could still ask those questions but i think there is a strong correlation there. Just a little bit of defense for nixon and kissinger and these are smart people and the National Security Council Staff and advisers and certainly in the nixon and Carter Administration, really smart people. But it is very just really dysfunctional. But under nixon and kissinger, it is dysfunctional but that disfunctionality is i think necessary for the brilliance of the opening to china which im not sure could have happened with a big sort of inner Agency Review in bringing everybody in and that sort of thing. I think that a key when we discuss this is how do we find how do we define success and failure. How do we define what worked or not worked. Cory thought i was saying that the surge was a failure. I dont think the surge was a failure. I thought i made that clear. The surge was an al success. A tactical success. It absolutely reduced iraqi civilian deaths and it absolutely almost eliminated for a while attacks insurgent attacks attacks insurge enter attacks on american soldiers. The key question to my mind. I think andrew and i were on the same line of thinking. Whether that operational, tactical success means that there was and overall strategic success. I want to litigate this. Fine. We should litigate it. The key issue here, right, is that many people this is relates to the comments about collective history of an administration or collective memory that we should highlight the surge and think that president bush was not the decisionmaker in 2006 and 2007 that he was in 2003 and, therefore, we should have a more favorable thinking of the administration of george h. W. Bush. In the long run are people going to remember the surge or are they going to remember the initial decision to invade iraq that turned out to be so flawed . Thats not because im i april not sam not saying it was misconceived. I think it turned out to be flawed partly because the National Security Decision Making process worked so badly and i do think, by the way you keep saying, president bush was different in 2006 and 2007 than he was in 2003. He took control in 2006 with the decision and the outcome. Well, i do think president bush was different in 2006 and 2007 because of the experiences he had gone through. But in 2003, he also took responsibility for the decision and the outcome. He was very pleased initially to do so. And he was a guy who thought that he was in control and that this would work. And it turned out that many of the decisions that he made, i would say right after the invasion, turned out to be incredibly flawed. And thats why in the official history when they say when it concludes with a focus on decisions that were made that were never sufficiently overcome. I think that pulsates m s throu the administration. Much of what you say is enormously persuasive and i think especially the point that with a long view, the decision in 2003 is the decision that frames the Bush Administration. Why i think the surge in 2006 was more than a tactical or Operational Success is that as the security situation stabilizes in 2007, iraqis start to practice normal politics. You start to get cross sectarian voting. You get voting without violence. You start to get cross sectarian voting. You start to get political compromise that was not a feature of iraqi politic fs before. That i think is a strategic success. I just want to make two very quick points. First of all, im not going to enter into the debate as to whether it was a strategic success or not because im not ready to reach that conclusion yet. I think, again, thats a problem or a benefit of being a historian. Usually, me with a microphone is a dangerous thing. Because i tend to scream anyway. I just want to leave that for a verdict. But the other thing i want to say in terms of these Different Cases that perhaps we havent discussed as much is the time frame in which the policy process is being played out. A number of the cases that you mentioned, it was really telescoped compared to this issue and here i think there was an advantage to how long it took for the process to unfold. In many cases, particularly in kissingernixon, whether you talk about china, its a great example of a process that unfolded over years. Despite dysfunctionalty in many ways of the process, i think it ended up im not sure it was a strategic success. Sfunctional ways of the process, i think it ended up im not sure it was a strategic success. Isfunctiona ways of the process, i think it ended up im not sure it was a strategic success. I think the policy unfolded in a way that served the president very well. Time for questions from the audience. I spent 2 1 2 years in combat in vietnam. First time, as you were talking about, was with surge, february of 68, with the 82nd airborne division. We went over there, and i would like to know if anybody is aware of a single major battle in vietnam that the u. S. Military lost. I would venture to say zero. We lost that war not because of the military but because of political decisions that were made in the u. S. My second tour was with studies and observations group. I dont know if you know anything about them, because it was very top secret organization that did crossborder reconnaissance into laos, cambodia and even North Vietnam. Its no longer classified. Thats why i can talk about it. What happened in 70 and 71, nixon started using protocols on us that significantly reduced our ability to defend ourselves when we were in those countries. And he did that because he was preparing to go into china and open it up. And he didnt want to threaten china. So if you have any comments on that, i would appreciate it. So i take your point about winning the battles and losing the war. And thats because the military strategy required a level of resources, including and a period of time that was beyond what was politically doable for the president. One of the things thats so impressive about the decision to initiate the surge is that they managed to beat the clock. That is, that the American Public was growing ready to stop doing this, and they managed to correct course in a way that the civilian leadership had not managed to correct course in time to stay ahead of public disgruntlement in vietnam. Thanks for those comments and those insights. I would only add to it that i agree with you that the war was lost for reasons of politics. But i would say the more important place to look was in indochina rather than the politics. You were literally there. I wasnt. Im just a scholar who looks at it. From everything i know from what happened with the rest of the South Vietnamese military is that they were built up to this incredibly large force and were trained really well by 1975. South vietnam had the forth Largest Air Force in the world. One of the largest armies, just South Vietnam. Theyre not a good fighting force. They have by that point very little legitimacy in South Vietnam. The political process in South Vietnam has almost no legitimacy. When they are tested in cambodia and in 1971 laos and in 1972, its a route. The North Vietnamese just beats the hell out of them. If it wasnt for the u. S. Military, that war would have ended much, much earlier. Vietnam would have been reunified in 1969, 1970, 1971, Something Like that. So that leads me to believe that if you are in that kind of situation where you are dealing with political and cultural and social issues that are beyond the capability of the u. S. Military, no matter how effective it is as a phii ifigh force, if you are to say, we will do whatever it takes to win, the u. S. Military would still be there and refereeing a civil war in which the United States doesnt have the answer to vietnamese questions. So i agree the reasons for the failure in vietnam were political. But in vietnam. I just want to add one thing to that, which also relates to what andrew said in his presentation, that when William Westmoreland requested 205,000 more troops in february 1968, he fully expected to get them. Earl weaver fully expected him to get there. Interestingly, Clark Clifford was brought in as secretary of defense because unlike mcnamara, johnson expected he would approve it. His reason for not approving it he did staff it out. He was very explicit. Is that congress was not going to support this at this point. So, in fact, there are really a remarkable parallel between what was going on in congress at the same time. I think cory is absolutely right in terms of beating the clock. In vietnam, basically the horse had left the stable as far as kissinger did. That was what was poisoning the well and why johnson was so surprised. It was political. Westmoreland, weve got them on the ropes. Lets knock them out now. There was the gold crisis and other things going on. It was considered by the most political of secretary of defenses, Clark Clifford, that this was politically unviable at that point. [ inaudible ] its interesting. We could go on. It happened to have been what we have learned over the last several years. I really enjoyed your talk. You talked about rumsfeld. We saw movies about cheney. How do you feel he was involved in this . Actually, thats a good question for the policymakers themselves who were involved and observed it. I dont presume to really be able to answer your question with any degree of authority. But i do my sense that vicepresident cheney was not a decisive player in the events leading up to the surge. He was obviously a participant. Im also of the i also feel, contrary to most people, that vicepresident cheney was not the determining factor in 2003 and 2002 as well. Theres a lot of belief, especially amongst critics of the war, that cheney was manipulating the process. Everything i have learned about Decision Making in the United States suggests to me that the president always makes the decision. Almost everything suggests to me that the president knows and everyone around him knows that he is the person who is going to make the decision, and there is an institutionalized, enormous deference, as i think there should be, to the president. So i think i may be wrong, but when i read the interviews, especially integrated in this volume, one of the things that simply strikes me as a reader of the narrative steve will probably talk about this this evening and peter have their own views, i think to me when i read literally the interviews, what is striking is that they knew what president bush really wanted. They knew that president bush did, quote, not want to lose, whatever that might mean. He wanted to win whatever that might mean. And steve illuminates in the essay but in the interview as well how incredibly skillful he was. Im incredibly appreciative of the process that he was able to insert this option into a process in which all the key players didnt really want to consider it. That took, you know, enormous skill. But the point is that i think that the people who were closest to bush knew what he wanted. In this case, probably vicepresident cheney also knew what the president wanted and probably also agreed with it. But i absolutely have the feeling that cheney vicepresident cheney is not the determining factor in 200607 nor in 2002 and 2003. Just to add one quick point to that. It comes through very clearly in the interviews that vicepresident cheney is bringing in alternative people for the president to talk to, retired general jack keen, some of the people from the American Enterprise Institute Like fred kagan who were doing some thinking about that. He was not marginal to the process. But i agree with mels judgement that he is not this looming, dangerous figure as characterized in a lot of movies. The movie about it is just a ridiculous movie. We have time for one final question. It is going to go to professor engel, one of our hosts, who i cannot turn down. First, i would like to say that no matter what you think of the moral movie, its a very entertaining movie. I would like to ask a question to this panel, these historians. I would like you not to question the question. Because you could. That would lead us down a far more interesting rabbit not interesting, far deeper rabbit hole than whether 65 or 66 or 67 is the year for iraq. The question is, when the history of the surge is written, with a do you think people will draw at the principal lesson . Remember, you cant question the question. Who wants to go first . I would just reiterate my basic theme. Tactical success, Operational Success does not dwarf overall strategic failure. The reasons why there was strategic failure are very complex and relate back to earlier decisions as well as deeper understanding of the complexities of Iraqi Society that had not been appreciated and could not be overcome. I think people will say what i think is striking in the book, that it was, in fact, a tactical success shaped by incredibly good process that worked in a very narrow way. And maybe thats all that one could have been anticipated. Its hard really to know, because the administration leaves. Just as the surge is really tactically most successful. What would have happened subsequently if the Bush Administration were there . Its really hard to say, especially in the context that no one should ever forget is that theres a catastrophic financial crisis thats going on simultaneously. I also think that it would be extraordinarily interesting to compare president bush, the decisionmaker in iraq, 2007 and 2008 with president bush the decisionmaker in the financial crisis. And i wonder what i have no idea what conclusions would come from that. But i think it would be extraordinarily interesting and would help people sort of come to some larger generalizations about the president as a decisionmaker. I will be somewhat more narrower since im not willing to make a decision about the strategic decision. As someone who still wont accept that this was such a good process, what i will say, that the takeaway for me is that the individuals who populate the process are more important than the process itself. You will notice richards refusal to take a stand. It reminds me just of the little vignette when kissinger was talking to chow. Kissinger said, what do you think of the french revolution and he says, its still too early to tell. I think the lesson will be a reaffirmation of what edmund burke said, the use of force is temporary, it does not remove the necessity to subdue again and society is not to be governed that must perpetually be concurred. I cant believe i have to follow that. I dont know about lessons. But i think what people will when they read this book, when they do the history of the surge, they will think what might have been if this process had been in place in 2002 and 2003. If the people had been there in 2002 and 2003. Thats what i kept thinking reading the oral histories, reading this book, thinking, it would have been different and it would have been different in a better way. I believe our time is up. At least for this session. Before you join me in a round of applause for our panelists you will do that let me remind you that this panel may be up but our edification is not. We will be resuming at 7 30, i believe, in this room, correct . A lot of hard questions have been raised today. A lot of controversial things said. However, to hear steve, i highly recommend you go to hughs trig auditorium, which is where it will be held. There will be a reception beforehand. I cannot thank everyone here enough for not only putting in a long day but putting in a productive day and to everyone here who made this project possible whether you were a person involved or a person who studied. Thank you very much. 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