Woodward and Bush (Part 3)

It is clear that to me that Bob Woodward gets incredible access to the top officials in DC for two reasons. The first is that he's a good reporter with a solid reputation for fairness and accuracy. The second, and probably most important, is that senior officials in DC know that he is going to get other senior officials to talk...so they damn sure better get their side of the story in.

We see some of that at work in today's installment of the WaPost serialization of Woodward's next book. General Jack Keane was a former Army Vice Chief of Staff. Very well respected guy, and along with a fellow named Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, basically cooked up the surge strategy. Reading the article, it is clear that Keane shared freely with Woodward, just as it appears that General Casey (the Army Chief of Staff mentioned in the installment who had been General Petreaus' predecessor in Iraq) also freely shared. I can't imagine that Casey was the source for the meeting at Walter Reed (where Casey is said to have abruptly turned from Keane as if not recognizing him....doesn't exactly put Casey in a good light, does it?). And I can't can't imagine Mike Mullen (Chairman, JCS) was the source of the quotes from the meeting with Keane. In this kind of atmosphere, you get your story in, or you get painted by the others in the scenario in a way that makes you look bad. This is ultimately the secret to Woodward's reporting.

I've been a supporter of the War in Iraq from the beginning. I thought we were right to go in, I thought the President (and President Clinton) had been criticized after 9-11 for "not connecting the dots", and they weren't going to wait for the Iraq dot to connect with the Osama dot. Yes, I understand that there were all sorts of impediments to this liaison...but there were enough intelligence reports about contacts between AQ and Iraq to give a country recently scarred by terrorism all the justification it needed.

I also thought we went in dumb and undermanned. I was (like everyone else) awed by the land force's stunning victory...the tactics were superb, and our magnificent Army and Marine Corps could not have performed better. It was the planners who screwed up by not thinking about what comes next. General Shinseki (former Army Chief of Staff) had been pilloried for suggesting before Congress that some 300,000 troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq. Guess what...add our troop numbers and the Iraqi troops we've trained and what do we have today?

That said, once we went in, we had to win. I am so grateful to President Bush for the support he gave General Petreaus in this. I wish he had done so more publicly, but that was a political calculation that I understand. I'm sorry that Jack Keane had to put up with the kind of protests that he got from General Casey and Admiral Mullen, but like Keane said, this is Washington. Suck it up. Mullen and Casey had jobs to do and Keane was undercutting them. Don't get me wrong...I like what Keane was doing, I just think he knew what he was getting into when he went against the Joint Chiefs.

A bit about Admiral Mullen. I worked very closely with him in the Maritime Strategy effort. He called for its development, he provided the broad executive guidance, and he kept his nose in it all along the way. The man is a proven strategic thinker, a gentleman, and a fierce Washington player. It doesn't surprise me that he brought Keane in for a come-around. Keane was weakening the office of the Chairman and the other Chiefs (again...I agree with what Keane was doing). But I also agree with Mullen. There were other issues out there...North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Chavez in Venezuela...his job was to think about all of those and to make sure the military was prepared. But the decision to put it all on the line in Iraq was George Bush's decision, and he made it. Doesn't mean the Chiefs liked it, but they implemented it. Now, I don't think the President said to the Chiefs, "Boys, forget about the rest of the world and win Iraq". But he did promise Petreaus all he needed. So there was an inevitable tension between the mandate to win in Iraq and the mandate to stay watchful around the rest of the world. George Bush didn't need to openly confront the Chiefs...even the most powerful man in the world understands that they need to have their spheres of influence too...his private notes got the job done.

Another word about the American Enterprise Institute. I conducted a little "Maritime Strategy" road show in DC last Fall, hitting all the major think tanks in town. In every case but one, I had incredibly enlightening and intellectually stimulating discussions with folks who genuinely wanted to understand what we were advocating. When I went over to AEI, Fred Kagan (father of the surge) was in the room. He started out our session by proclaiming that he hadn't read the strategy, then he proceeded to rip it apart. Why? Because it wasn't completely devoted to winning the war in Iraq. He maintained that the Sea Services were in danger of becoming irrelevant because their strategy had not completely commited themselves to eradicating terrorism and winning the war in Iraq. When I asked about some of the other things Navies do (you know, providing stability in the Far East as a balance to a rising China, the force of choice for keeping Iran in the box, you know, little things like that) he had no time for it. Our exchange actually became heated...and at one point, he said, "Look, you're hear obviously looking for my support as you roll out this strategy, and you're not going to obtain it" to which I answered, "sir, I don't think your support was obtainable. You are so completely and personally invested in the success of the surge strategy in Iraq that you are unable to support anything that does not similarly devote itself to that effort." End of meeting.

Was he right? Hell no. But then again, he might have known that if he had read the strategy. (Side note: there was a DJ team here in DC called Don and Mike. They used to do "Movie reviews of movies we haven't seen yet. I accused Kagan of that, and got a laugh from the whole room). While we weren't in a mind to raise counterterrorism to the top of the heap (as in, we should build our Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard around counterterror and the war in Iraq), we thoroughly discussed how to change those services and how to capitalize on their strengths as methods of attacking root causes of terrorism. But Navies have a lot of other big jobs to do too.

Sorry bout this long winded post, but I thought I had something to offer.