My Share of the Task(107)
In truth, our need to increase forces required no special insight. It was almost mathematical. The much more difficult—and far more crucial—challenge came after I made that calculation. Alongside the other leaders of TF 714, I needed to get the force to believe, as I did, that this push would be decisive—and thus worth the costs.
I convened the top commanders of TF 714 and TF 16 in Iraq to explain why the surge was necessary. Kurt Fuller, a bulky, fox-sharp Oklahoman and the newly arrived TF 714 operations officer, was there, as were Mike Flynn, Jody Nacy, and the top leaders of TF 16, at that time led by Colonel John Christian. The meeting wasn’t easy. As I explained the campaign plan I proposed, the Green leaders sat with still faces. Only their eyes moved, alternating between me and the whiteboard where I wrote and drew a map of Iraq. Until this point, TF 714 had drawn up targeting decks, not maps: We executed missions; we did not wage campaigns.
“Listen,” I said, turning from the whiteboard to the still faces. “The western Euphrates is damn near occupied. Look around. I don’t see anyone else who can do what we can do out there.” I told them about my conversations with General Casey, and I explained why I thought it would work.
I sat down at the table and asked for their thoughts. They expressed sentiments held within the unit that were apparent over the next few months. Many felt other Coalition forces were not pulling their weight in Anbar and that the campaign would be increasingly conventional and therefore not our kind of fight. They had concerns this emergency setup—two squadrons forward and one back—would become permanent once the surge dislodged those squadrons from their traditional cycle, ultimately depleting the force. As I had to John Abizaid, they expressed concerns that in the further reaches of the desert, they were dangerously far from medevacs and quick reaction forces. They were professional but candid—as I needed them to be.
As I often did, I watched Green’s command sergeant major, Chris Faris, to gauge his reaction. By position and personal credibility, he was the unit’s elder, both bellwether and opinion maker. At the time, I perceived he was worried about my decision, but felt he was less opposed to the concept of a surge than seriously concerned this one just wouldn’t work. But despite misgivings, the Green leaders seemed to recognize that we could not win in Baghdad without clamping down on these ratlines that funneled violence into the capital city. And without Baghdad, we could not win the war.
In truth, during the months leading up to this discussion with the leaders of Green, I believed that failure in Iraq was tangibly close. My force’s ability to target kept improving through the fall of 2004 and into early 2005, but no matter how good we got tactically—and we were energetically tearing away at the network—the situation was getting worse. We had been alarmed a year earlier, when Al Qaeda held large parts of Fallujah. Now, by the early months of the summer of 2005, Al Qaeda essentially controlled stretches of the western Euphrates River valley. It needed to be stopped.
The biggest leadership challenge fell to Chris Faris and to Scott Miller, who was then replacing Bennet in command of Green. Just as he was taking over, I asked Scott to order Green to do something unprecedented in its nearly thirty-year history. He believed in the operation, but he would be weakened if his unit perceived that he supported the surge just to curry favor with me. He handled it masterfully. Through calm, firm, but not unsympathetic pressure, Scott and Chris broke through some initial intransigence and continued to develop momentum and support for what remained a highly controversial decision. It increased the already high regard in which both their unit and I held them.
Ultimately, it fell to John Christian, as the head of TF 16, to name the operation. Typically, these code names had little rhyme or reason. But this time John chose one that reflected the gnawing fear in Green that sending two squadrons was a roll of the dice: Snake Eyes.
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As I had confided to John Abizaid, I knew my decision could result in losing men. Even before our surge forces began to arrive en masse in July 2005, three heavy losses reminded everyone how dangerous the summer would be.