t he p erils of o ptimism 313In the face of the epic tide of violence in Iraq, unease spread among
senior Bush administration offi cials. Although some contended that the
insurgency had been contained until the mosque bombing, Iraq policy
had stalled much earlier. Th e bombing and its aftermath served instead
as a much-needed wake-up call—much like the Tet Offensive in
Vietnam in 1968 —that forced a long-overdue reconsideration of the
American approach. Not everyone saw it that way: Rumsfeld continued
to insist on the need to take the hand off the bicycle seat. But increas-
ingly he sounded as though he had washed his hands of responsibility
for the war he had once been so determined to control. An American
departure now seemed likely to leave in its wake chaos and perhaps the
fragmentation of Iraq into separate and warring Shiite, Sunni, and
Kurdish entities.
General Casey, though still wedded to drawing down the American
force level, conceded that the withdrawal ought to be delayed. By this
point, however, the president fi nally had lost confi dence in his com-
manders, Casey in Iraq and Abizaid at CENTCOM. Sensing an
opening in which new ideas might be considered, some of the presi-
dent’s key advisors (including Secretary of State Rice and Stephen J.
Hadley, her successor as national security advisor) began a quiet search
for alternatives.
Within the ranks of current and former military offi cers, too, the
worsening situation in Iraq provoked criticism of the American
approach. Rumsfeld had been the target of unusually public attacks by
several former generals, whom he dismissed as a handful of malcon-
tents. As it became evident that conditions in Iraq were deteriorating,
the questions mounted. At issue was whether the Abizaid-Casey project
to transfer responsibility to the Iraqis as quickly as feasible made sense.
Th e eff ort to frame a new counterinsurgency doctrine, pushed by Lieu-
tenant General David Petraeus and others, recognized that an external
power such as the United States needed to cede control over military
operations to the local government at some point. But the precondition
for political success in a counterinsurgency campaign was population
security. Absent that, the government could not meet other needs or
promote economic development, and its authority would erode.
Achieving security in turn required that troops live among the people,
use minimal force to safeguard civilians, and earn their trust—“winning