Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Evaluating The Iraq Su

Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Evaluating The Iraq Surge 20240713

Thank you, jeff. Im honored to moderate this panel with four dear friends and valued colleagues. There is a concern afoot that as a moderator i might let it go to my head and try to interject myself too much in the discussion. So i will sit down there while they make their presentations and will come back up here during the actual q a time. You have the detailed bios of the speakers in your program so i will not repeat those first is professor richard emerman. His bio says he recent retired from temple university. I know richard well. Richard does not know the meaning of the word retirement. We are Close Friends and collaborators and the state Department Historical Advisory Council and he continues to be active as a scholar and mentor and is an active citizen in the guild of National Security scholars and historians. Next to him is a professor mel leffler of the university of virginia. Again, another titan in the field of diplomatic history. I started reading his books as an undergrad and continued reading more as a graduate student and 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. Without giving up too much in the peer review process, lets say he played an Important Role in improving all the products they came to print. Our interloper on the panel of historians is dr. Cory shockey, technically a political scientist and protege of tom schilling. He is a long dear friend and former colleague from the Bush Administration. He said many Important Roles in academia, think tanks, and is friendly a better historian than a lot of cardcarrying historians. So we are honored to be here. And finally professor andrew preston. He is a canadian by birth and citizenship, did much of his and studies in the United States and is now professor in the u. K. At cambridge. Also a dear friend and a contributor to the book. With that we are going to turn it over to our panel. Each will be reading his or her comments from and then we will have have a q a time. Please join me in welcoming the panel. [applause] it is good that the podium is set up like it is. Otherwise i am sure will would have moved the mic to his level and i wouldve had to be jumping up and down to reach it. Let me begin by saying how thrilled i was to join this project, to accept jeffs invitation. Because of the drama controversy and implications, ongoing implications that attended the Bush Administrations decision to surge in iraq, for any historian of u. S. Foreign relations and i will underscore the word historian, the subject is really irresistible. Making it that much more attractive with the trans chance to contribute to it as a first cut at history. As we discussed this morning in both sessions, the archival evidence is still classified. Most of it. And it will remain so for a decade and probably more. In fact if i have one thing to , all of you who participated, do everything you can to get this material released. I spent a lot of time with the archives and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any material released in any president ial administration and that is going to be a 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 type of project. I also had a more personal interest. I have been studying National Security decisionmaking and policymaking for some four decades. It began back in the 1970s when i began to export foreign policies of the eisenhower administration, which has come up several times largely because those processes have become legendary even though the assessments of them can often be diametrically opposed. I will come back to that but you can understand why a project aimed at drilling down into such a momentous yet complicated decision held such appeal for someone like myself. You can therefore also understand easily why that appeal grew greater greater as i poured through the interviews a. A consensus quickly emerged, really surfaced among the contributors, regardless of their position or perspective, that the process was outstanding. I think that has been reinforced today. The adjectives ran from textbook , to model, to highly effective. In fact the worst that could be , said of them was they were good. Indeed except for a few who lamented that the prospect took longer and even then there was an upside to the length that took and that has been dashed to the length it took, the length. One dissent describe the process estranged. Strange. But in that sense it worked and that it enabled president bush to make a courageous decision. I think there is ample evidence that was the case. And though courageous does not necessarily mean wise or right, it was perhaps better than the alternative. Now granted, in a number of respects, this consensus was predicable given the nature and to some extent the conception of the project. Theres the famous adage that history is written by the victors. Attribute it to winston churchill, although historians do not know if he really did say it. One could make sense that applies to oral histories. And most oral histories. The judgment in this case of those who were interviewed and i , think this was reinforced today and im not suggesting it was wrong, is that the decision to surge was a good one largely because the outcome was good. Was the right one. This seemed to true even to those who were not on board. At least early on. And those like Condoleezza Rice would be an example of that. She did not come on board until the end. But she said she was very proud of how they 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 the project, they were silent, and not to the fault of the project, but they were silent. They were not interviewed. Or do not agree to be interviewed. It was the same case for george casey and many of the other military leaders. Now dont get me wrong. What we learned from the oral histories is original, highly informative and fascinating. It is terrific grist for a student of National Security decisionmaking and provides us with a history of the surge beyond anything, of the surge beyond anything we were privy to before. It should be used in any course anyone teaches on u. S. Foreign policy or International Relations. But as i said, original. It is a first cut. We have to keep that in mind. In many ways it wets our appetite for more of the story. For more analysis and word more documents. This came up briefly. Among those there will be more that pertain to what scholars often called the missing dimension of International Relations which is intelligence. That was mentioned there. I have a personal interest in this. I would like to know not only the correlation between the intelligence and decisions, what kind of input it was. But what i think is a fascinating question, is whether that took place in the intelligence community, whether the reforms that took place in the Intelligence Committee between and had any effect in terms of how the consumers of intelligence did so. I was interested in peters comment which he said in that intelligence could not guarantee. Of course intelligence can never guarantee. All it can do is inform and reduce uncertainty. One of the reforms, which is near and dear to my heart, was that the intelligence would have different types of scenarios. Which was not always easy for the intelligence, for the consumer, but nevertheless that was pivotal and it was required. To me that as a whole other sort of story or parallel story which i would loved to be explored. Again, i do not know how and when it might be. Anyway let me circle back to the , process itself. And to reiterate that it was my study of eisenhowers foreign and National Security policies in the and the architecture that 1950s, generated them, that was the initial spark for my interest in National Security decisionmaking. And, you know, in many ways, and while i am reluctant to use eisenhower as a model, and i sort of did, and when will read my essay he laughed at me for doing it, and the same thing happened at the workshop. So im ready to sort of get it again. [laughter] but i am not suggesting in any way that all the administrations should mimic that architecture. Or would i suggest that administrations do not have to adapt their processes to the demand of the contemporary and 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 are the third and the power, the second volume or the third volume or the 4th volume. And the power of the state department under eisenhower remained the core of the policy process, and the secretary of state who was the unparalleled spokesman of the Foreign Policy communicate. That power has receded even as the power of the pentagon hat is increased. I have to stop pointing. Anyway, and theres a situation and that is also important and personalities have come up in several 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 has possessed any close to his reputation, stature, or therefore experience or Political Capital and, you know, because of his military authority, i think it was no one class. So that was sort of very important. Nevertheless, i think the fundamental pillars of his process are as applicable today as they were, his process are as applicable today as they were then. I will mention a couple of them, including, which would engaging 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 the debate surfaced all options and scenarios, the success for which requires a custodial manager, National Security advisor, who sort of walks a fine line between honest broker and policy entrepreneur. And finally, some sort of mechanism that ensures once a decision is made and implementation begun, monitors the progress to decide whether or not some sort of change is necessary. To repeat, i am not claiming that process or architecture or models, i am a historian and not a political scientist, and that every president must be able to devise and 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 i will quickly go over my criticism, which will limit how much i can be criticized for it. But i will 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 this, called the operation coordinating board. It never worked as well as was as well as it was intended that it did as sure that secretion of a policy could not continue indefinitely without some kind of appraisal of that policy periodically. Be continually, but it would at various intervals. In this case there was no mechanism to trigger that review. Sort of automatically. 2006,he from late 2005 to many National Security officials and entities at Different Levels expressed profound concern with u. S. Policy and direction, that there was not a review. There were meetings. Many, many meetings. Referred to in interviews as stylized. They did not necessarily get them to where it needed to go. Itself orhe nsc elements of the nse forced a review. Sc forced a review. Yet it took place covertly. Clandestinely. I do not know what word you want to include, in which basically it cut out the secretary of defense at many of the Services Chiefs or the uniformed military. Again, that really could not have happened and then that leads to what was mentioned and what i consider one of the strangest episodes in decisionmaking history, which is that which surrounded the camp david meeting that june, in which it was teed up andd that the meeting never really got off the ground again for a variety of different reasons. Im just going to quickly summarize, but my general point is that even though let me add one more thing. Then there is the issue that comes out clearly that the nsc does conduct basically its own informal review. You have other ones going on. But then it is the nsc that really develops a preference if that would be the word or at least puts on the table the notion of having a doubled 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 that is in violation of the sort of the eisenhower model in which it would have been put up, it would 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 are here, attesting to the other eisenhower principal, that the organization, no matter how good it is, really is only as good as the individuals who are part of it. So in this case, it really was the individuals that sort of, sort of negate everything i said, because it compensated for what i consider really flaws in the structure, relying on sort of extragovernmental inputs, officials outside the formal chain of command, concealing some of the deliberations from others, or 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, at least for the second half of 2006. It surely was a courageous decision. Although i will leave it to history as to whether or not it was the wisest decision or the right one. The question is whether the system works. Maybe it did, if the fact that the barometer is that the policy ended up where they wanted to be. But i do not think that is the right question. So i mean, i would like to ask those who are involved in it if they were writing a textbook on decisionmaking process, is whether this is the path wait pathway they would recommend to get from point a to point b. And i think not. And i hope not. Thank you very much. [applause] so first of all i want to begin by thanking the organizers. I think it was really inspiring this morning and earlier this afternoon, inspiring as a scholar and even more importantly, inspiring simile as inspiring inspiring simply as an american citizen, to listen to the thoughtful reassessment of the decisionmaking that went into this surge. I think it is incredibly impressive for us as americans to think that we have had such people, whether we agree with their decisions or disagree with their decisions, making policy and the highest echelons of the white house, the state department, and the pentagon and elsewhere. It behooves all of us as americans to think how Different Things are today, and how consequential it is that we do not have serious, thoughtful minded people engaged in the process comparable to the ones we have heard today. I also want to preface my remarks by saying that i do not have a stake on this volume. I was not interviewed for it. I have not written an essay for it. I was an outside referee. 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 and, opposing the war. And id like to think that have come to whatever views i have had, which are pretty complex and textured, about the decision to go to war and about the aftermath. And just because im an academic, i do not necessarily have vested opinions, politically inspired. Youre on probation. I am on probation, i know, but 10 minutes from now i will probably will not get your approbation. But at least im on probation now. I was asked make some overall comments about the book and the surge. I think it is a wonderful book. The interviews are really illuminating. The volume is seamlessly edited. The interviews are brought together in a very effective way. They provide an excellent chronological overview of the decision to surge troops in iraq. I also admired the essays because they offer such different perspectives. There is 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 whom appear on this stage. What is significant about all the essays, is that they make you think really deeply about process, strategy, and president bushs overall decisionmaking. What i want to do in the minutes or so that i have is to talk about these three patters. Process. Strategy. Overall decisionmaking. First, in terms of process, richard, whom you have just heard, is very critical of the process. Actually so are some of the former policymakers, like philip cellico. Nonetheless, in my judgment, steve hadley and peter fever and megan offer a compelling defense of the process in their essay. They make two really important points. They say that the process get gave the president most of all the option he wanted. 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 a compliment. Accomplishment as you have heard, richard was not convinced. What he does in the volume in a very systematic way is to compare bushs National Security council to

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