Duty

Throughout my four and a half years as secretary of defense, I was treated by Presidents Bush and Obama with consistent generosity, trust, and confidence. They both gave me the opportunity and honor of a lifetime in serving as secretary. With only a few exceptions, members of Congress—both Republicans and Democrats—were respectful and gracious toward me, both privately and publicly. Overall, the press coverage of me and my actions was substantive, thoughtful, and by Washington standards, positive and even gentle. In both administrations, I liked—and enjoyed—nearly everyone I worked with at the White House, the National Security Council, other departments and agencies, and above all, the Department of Defense. Treated better for longer than almost anyone in a senior position I could remember during the eight presidencies in which I served, why did I feel I was constantly at war with everybody, as I have detailed in these pages? Why was I so often so angry? Why did I so dislike being back in government and in Washington?

It was because, despite everyone being “nice,” getting anything of consequence done was so damnably difficult even in the midst of two wars. From the bureaucratic inertia and complexity of the Pentagon to internal conflicts within the executive branch, the partisan abyss in Congress on every issue from budgets to the wars, the single-minded parochial self-interest of so many individual members of Congress, and the magnetic pull exercised by the White House and the NSS, especially in the Obama administration, to bring everything under their control and micromanagement, all made every issue a source of conflict and stress—far more so than when I had been in government before, including as director of central intelligence. I was more than happy to fight these fights, especially on behalf of the troops and the success of their mission; at times, I relished the prospect. But over time, the broad dysfunction in Washington wore me down, especially as I tried to maintain a public posture of nonpartisan calm, reason, and conciliation.

I have described many of these conflicts in these pages. I have tried to be honest about where I think I fell short, and I have tried to be fair in describing the actions and motivations of others. I am confident some, if not many, will feel that I have further fallen short in both respects, especially to the degree I have been critical. So in concluding this very personal memoir, I want to rise above specific issues and reflect on the broader drama under two presidents in which I was a leading member of the cast.

THE WARS

I was brought in to help salvage the war in Iraq and, as it turned out, to do the same in Afghanistan—in short, I was asked to wage two wars, both of them going badly when I reported for duty. When I arrived in Washington, we had already been at war in Afghanistan longer than the United States had been in World War II, and at war in Iraq longer than our participation in the Korean War. Afghanistan would become the nation’s longest foreign war, Iraq the second longest. By the end of 2006, America was sick of war. And so was Congress.

In an earlier time, people would speak of winning or losing wars. The nearly seventy years since World War II have demonstrated vividly that while wars can still be lost (Vietnam, nearly so in Iraq), “winning” has proved difficult (from Korea to the present). In December 2006, my goals in our wars were straightforward and I think relatively modest, but they still seemed nearly unattainable. As I believe I have already made clear, in Iraq, I hoped we could stabilize the country in such a way that when U.S. forces departed, the war there would not be viewed as a strategic defeat for the United States, or as a failure with global consequences; in Afghanistan, I sought only an Afghan government and army that were strong enough to prevent the Taliban from returning to power and al Qaeda from returning to use the country again as a launching pad for terror. These goals were more modest than President Bush’s, especially since I thought establishing democratic rule and effective governance in both countries would take far more time than we had. I believe my minimalist goals were achieved in Iraq and remain within reach in Afghanistan as of this writing.

Had I been secretary of defense during the winter of 2002–3, I don’t know whether I would have recommended that President Bush invade Iraq. Because I am widely characterized as being a “realist” in foreign policy—like my mentors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both of whom opposed the invasion—many people assume I opposed the war or somehow would have prevented the debacle that followed had I been in a position of influence. But it would be disingenuous to say with ten years’ hindsight that I would have been opposed, especially since I publicly supported the decision at the time. With my CIA analyst’s background, I might have questioned the intelligence reporting on weapons of mass destruction more aggressively. Perhaps I would have made the same arguments against attempting regime change and occupying Iraq that I made before the Gulf War in 1990–91. I certainly hope that, following the initially successful invasion, I would have been able to prevent or mitigate some of the disastrous decisions that followed. But this is all speculation on my part.

What is clear ten years later, though, are the huge costs of the Iraq War. It lasted eight years, more than 4,000 American lives were lost, 35,000 troops were wounded (the number of Iraqis in both categories many times that), and it easily cost over $1 trillion. The overthrow of Saddam and the chaos that followed in Iraq eliminated Iran’s worst enemy and resulted in a significant strengthening of Tehran’s position in the region—and within Iraq itself. I cannot honestly claim I would have foreseen any or all of that.

As I often said while in office, only time will tell whether the invasion of Iraq was worth its monumental cost. The historical verdict, I suspect, will depend on how Iraq evolves and whether the overthrow of Saddam comes to be accepted as the first crack in decades-long Arab authoritarianism that will eventually bring significantly greater freedom and stability to the entire Middle East. However the question is ultimately answered, the war will always be tainted by the harsh reality that the public premise for invasion—Iraqi possession of chemical and biological weapons as well as an active nuclear program—was wrong.

As much as President Bush detested the notion, our later challenges in Afghanistan, especially the return of the Taliban in force by the time I became defense secretary, were, I believe, significantly compounded by the invasion of Iraq. Resources and senior-level attention were diverted from Afghanistan. U.S. goals in Afghanistan—a properly sized, competent Afghan national army and police, a working democracy with at least a minimally effective central government—were embarrassingly ambitious (and historically naïve) when compared to the meager human and financial resources committed to the task, especially before 2009. We were not effective early on in building the Afghan security forces. The number of Afghan troops we envisioned initially was far too low. We allowed rotating commanders to change training plans and approaches midstream, and too often we tried to build the Afghan forces in our own image, not based on a more sustainable indigenous design. The training effort did not really take off and begin to yield success until 2008. We remained woefully ignorant about the relationships and history among key tribes, clans, villages and provinces, individuals, families, and power brokers.

President Obama simply wanted the “bad” war in Iraq to be ended and, once in office, the U.S. role in Afghanistan—the so-called good war—to be limited in scope and duration. His fundamental problem in Afghanistan was that his political and philosophical preferences (not surprisingly shared by his White House advisers) conflicted with his own pro-war public rhetoric (especially during the presidential campaign and even in papers prepared during his presidential transition), the nearly unanimous recommendations of his senior civilian and military advisers at State and Defense, and the realities on the ground in Afghanistan.

One positive result of the continuing fight over Afghan strategy in the Obama administration was that the debate and resulting presidential decisions led to a steady narrowing of our objectives—our ambitions—there. I had believed this necessary as early as my job interview with Bush in November 2006.

Obama’s decision to dramatically increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in late 2009 was, as we have seen, based on a number of assumptions agreed upon by his top advisers: that the Pakistanis could be induced to change their hedging strategy, Karzai could be coached to become a more effective president, Afghan corruption could be reduced, and the Afghan central government’s reputation among the people and its capabilities could be improved. The challenges to achieving those goals were fully debated leading up to the president’s major troop escalation in the fall of 2009. Still, I think there was a good deal of wishful thinking in the Obama administration that we might see some improvements with enough dialogue (with Pakistan) and civilian assistance to the Afghan government and people. When real improvements in those nonmilitary areas failed to materialize, too many—especially in the White House and the NSS—concluded the president’s entire strategy, including the military component, was a failure and were eager to reverse course.

On the other hand, I pushed hard for the troops requested by McChrystal because I became convinced that my own minimalist objectives could be achieved without significant improvements in those other, nonmilitary arenas. If our troops, combined with larger and more capable Afghan forces, could provide security for much of the population, then the other improvements could follow over time. If there was one useful lesson from Iraq, I thought, it was that security for much of the population could, indeed must, precede other progress. This was why I could not sign on to Biden’s counterterrorism strategy: “whack-a-mole” hits on Taliban leaders were not a long-term strategy. By the same token, the blended counterterrorism-counterinsurgency strategy to provide security for population centers like Kandahar probably should have been implemented with a tighter focus geographically, paying less attention to sparsely populated areas, such as parts of Helmand.

Many argue today that the strategy shift and associated troop increase that Obama approved in late 2009 was a big mistake. I continue to believe it was the right decision. By 2008, the Taliban had regained the momentum in Afghanistan as the United States applied what was essentially a “counterterrorism-plus” strategy that allowed large swaths of the country (particularly in the south and east), including some key population and economic centers, to fall under Taliban domination if not outright control. Despite a near-doubling of the international troop presence in Afghanistan during the Bush administration after I became defense secretary, we were not winning. Our approach was a formula for stalemate, or worse.

The deployment of 21,000 more U.S. troops in February–March 2009 was in response to a request toward the end of the Bush administration from commanders and was intended to blunt the Taliban 2009 offensive and, secondarily, as I’ve said, to help provide some protection for the elections later that year. It was a request Bush was prepared to approve, but he held off at the request of the incoming Obama team. That force was not sized by the military to accomplish the strategy—the mission—Obama decided upon in February. In February and March, the president, I, and virtually all the senior leaders in Washington, including in the Pentagon, thought we were finished adding forces in Afghanistan. But McChrystal’s summer assessment for the first time put a true military price tag on achieving the broad objectives Obama had decided upon.

What was clear by fall was that the alternative paths forward in Afghanistan were either a significant increase in forces or a dramatic scaling back of our presence and our mission, the alternatives I proposed to Obama in my October 2009 memo. Despite all the arguments I heard then and all the commentary I have read since, I have not seen critics of Obama’s decision spell out precisely what would have been the consequences of standing pat in a losing posture, or the consequences of turning to a quite different strategy with a significantly smaller U.S. military presence. In the latter case, no one has spelled out how that approach would have been able to prevent a Taliban return to power throughout much, if not all, of Afghanistan and the reestablishment of al Qaeda there. The December 2009 decisions and related troop surge provided sufficient military forces to break the stalemate by rooting the Taliban out of their strongholds and keeping them out while training a much larger and more capable Afghan army.

Obama was much criticized by conservatives and hawkish commentators for announcing that the troop surge in Afghanistan would begin to be drawn down in July 2011, and that all U.S. combat troops would be withdrawn and all responsibility for security transferred to the Afghans by the end of 2014. Inside the military, there was also much grumbling about the numerical limits he placed on troops. I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.

After eight years of war in Afghanistan, Congress, the American people, and the troops could not abide the idea of a conflict there stretching into the indefinite future. The “war of necessity” to punish and root out those responsible for 9/11 had become an albatross around the nation’s neck, just as the war in Iraq had, and by 2009 public and congressional patience was nearly gone. By adopting Karzai’s deadline of full transfer of security responsibility from foreign forces to Afghans by the end of 2014, the president made clear to Americans—and to our troops—that this was not an endless war. Just as I had bought more time for the surge in Iraq by foreshadowing troop withdrawals, with the deadlines Obama politically bought our military—and civilians—five more years to achieve our mission in Afghanistan.

The timelines also finally forced a narrowing of our objectives to those attainable in that time frame. I was convinced that we could dramatically weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan army during that period—and if not, then we probably never could. The deadline put the Afghan government and security forces on notice that they had to step up their game, for their own survival if nothing else. To the argument that the 2014 deadline signaled to the Taliban how long they had to wait before taking over, I said at the time that they had at least five years of hard fighting ahead of them, including against advanced Western armies, and that every day the Taliban chose to “wait us out,” they would grow weaker as the Afghan forces grew stronger.

In deciding to begin drawing down the surge in July 2011, the president transformed our commanders’ estimate that they could transfer places they had seized from the Taliban to Afghan security within two years into a mandate. I had hoped that the drawdowns in the last six months of 2011 would have been smaller than the president decided. Still, overall U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan did not fall below pre-surge levels until September 2012, more than three years after the first Marine surge arrived in Helmand. The surge was sustained in Afghanistan twice as long as in Iraq.

Inside the Pentagon, the U.S. troop cap in Afghanistan of 101,000 was highly unpopular, viewed as a seemingly arbitrary political restriction on forces available to the field commander. It grated badly especially on the Army and Marine Corps. I think that Obama and his ever-suspicious staff welcomed the numbers approach—and a cap—because it gave them a mechanism to prevent the military from sneaking in more troops under the guise of “enablers.”

For me, managing the troop cap was just one more challenge in trying to achieve military success in Afghanistan. Every week after the Afghan surge began, I met with the chairman and Joint Staff to ensure that we would not exceed the number of troops the president had approved. This accounting process became a huge chore, consuming countless man-hours, and commanders felt their hands were tied by a political decision on troop levels. I was convinced, however, that without these controls, the number of deployed troops would steadily inch upward, not as part of some military ruse to get more troops but because of the inexorable pressures from commanders as other assets were required. (I remembered vividly how Bush’s surge went from 21,500 to 30,000.) Virtually every military commander in history has wanted more troops to enhance the prospect for victory—and to reduce his forces’ casualties through overwhelming power (as happened in the Gulf War). Given this reality, and the level of mistrust of the military at the White House, including by Obama, I believe the cap was the only way to avoid having the president wake up one morning and discover there were 130,000 troops in Afghanistan rather than the 101,000 he had approved. Of course, this added to hard feelings in the Pentagon about Obama and the White House.

The outcome in Afghanistan remains to be determined. By most accounts, the training of the Afghan military is going well, and security responsibility is steadily being transferred to them. But how the endgame plays out after more than a decade of war will determine whether there is a good prospect of success in achieving our now-limited objectives, or whether the entire effort and all the sacrifice will have been for nothing. Contrary to popular belief, the Afghan government and army held together pretty well for nearly two years after the Soviets withdrew, but civil war began when Russian aid ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For us, the chance of success will be significantly enhanced with a modest continuing NATO military presence after 2014 for training, logistics, intelligence, air support, and counterterrorism—along with financial support for the Afghan security forces. If we signal early that we will support such a role, it will inform friends, foes, and those on the fence that we will not repeat our strategic mistake in the early 1990s of abandoning Afghanistan. We know all too well the consequences of that mistake.

THE CIVILIAN-MILITARY RELATIONSHIP

The relationship between senior military leaders and the civilian commander in chief—the president—is often a tense one. This was true of my experience under both Bush and Obama (as it has been true pretty much throughout American history). A major task of the secretary of defense is to help manage that relationship and to ensure that the president listens to professional military advice that he may not want to hear, and that the senior officers offer their best and most candid advice and obey loyally, especially when they are overruled.

In wartime, disagreement is inevitable because the president is ultimately accountable for success or failure and must sustain at least some level of public and congressional support. At the end of 2006, Bush overruled the field commander, the chairman and all the Joint Chiefs, and the Middle East and Central Asia regional (Centcom) commander in ordering the surge. He replaced the secretary of defense, the Centcom commander, and the field commander essentially at the same time. The war in Iraq was going badly, and he acted courageously and boldly to change course. Obama similarly acted courageously and boldly at the end of 2009 when he ordered the Afghan surge, the impetus for which came from the military. In so doing, Obama overruled the policy and domestic political concerns of his vice president and virtually all the senior White House staff. Then, contrary to the advice of his generals, he imposed timelines to avoid the impression (and potential reality) of endless war and to sustain political support in Congress and among the public. Both presidents were willing (at least on my watch) to replace commanders they thought were not succeeding.

During my tenure as secretary, Bush was willing to disagree with his senior military advisers on the wars, including the important divergence between the chiefs’ concern to reduce stress on the force and the president’s higher priority of success in Iraq. However, Bush never (at least to my knowledge) questioned their motives or mistrusted them personally. Obama was respectful of senior officers and always heard them out, but he often disagreed with them and was deeply suspicious of their actions and recommendations. Bush seemed to enjoy the company of the senior military; I think Obama considered time spent with generals and admirals an obligation.

While I was secretary, senior officers greatly added to the inherent tension with both Bush and Obama by all too frequent public statements that were seen by the two presidents as unnecessary and inappropriate, creating unwanted (and sometimes unnecessary) political problems at home, limiting options abroad, and narrowing the commander in chief’s freedom of decision. Bush was repeatedly angered by public statements from Mullen (on Iraq and Afghanistan), Fallon (Iran), and others, as Obama was repeatedly critical of Mullen, Petraeus, McChrystal, and others. Congress demands that senior officers provide their “personal and professional military opinion” on issues when requested during testimony. Although sometimes what they said aggravated Bush and Obama, it was only rarely that I heard either criticize an officer testifying under those circumstances. It was when those opinions were offered to the press or in public speeches that the presidential blowtorch came out.

Generals and admirals speaking out and angering a president is nothing new. (George Patton and Douglas MacArthur come to mind.) I believe the country and public support for the military and its missions are well served by hearing firsthand from our senior military leaders. But I think the frequency and number of officers speaking out has been steadily increasing, and unwise decisions about content, timing, and specific forums have unnecessarily aggravated their always-delicate relationship with the president.

For some reason, more and more senior officers seem compelled to seek a high public profile and to speak out, often on politically sensitive issues or even on matters beyond their area of responsibility (not to mention expertise). Some in the military establishment appear to have embraced the notion that modern military leaders should also be “strategic communicators.” This trend accelerated when Petraeus achieved superstar status during the Iraq War. The increasingly accepted theory is that “getting the message out”—in television profiles, op-eds, speaking tours, think-tank speeches—is part of the duties of high command. Interestingly, when Petraeus arrived to take command in Baghdad, he corrected a member of his staff who complained of a “strategic communications problem.” No, we have a “results problem,” Petraeus said, and when the violence in Iraq declined dramatically under his leadership, the strategic communications problem took care of itself.

Enabled by the ample availability of war funding, a strategic communications/public relations cottage industry cropped up around the Pentagon and the combatant commands, a bonanza for consultants who produced questionable results for those in the military paying for their services. The Esquire (Fallon) and Rolling Stone (McChrystal) episodes represented the most damaging end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, I never understood why top admirals and generals felt compelled to go on Facebook, to tweet and blog, usually about their daily schedule and activities, typically a mundane chronology of meetings, travel, and generic pronouncements. To me, that diminishes their aura of rank and authority. It is par for the course now for politicians, university administrators, and corporate executives. But I think the military is different, or at least should be.

When it comes to civil-military tensions, politicians and policy makers are equally culpable. Because the military is held in such high regard, political leaders and civilian appointees all too often succumb to the temptation to “put a uniform out there” to sell their decisions to the public, knowing that a military officer is far less likely to be criticized and questioned skeptically. Politicians, even in the White House, can’t have it both ways.

I was quite comfortable in my relationships with senior officers. They were, individually and collectively, the finest, brightest, most selfless and dedicated people of great integrity with whom I have ever been privileged to work. I hope to count many among them as friends for the rest of my life (even after this book). As is obvious, I shared the view that too many talked too much publicly, and I cautioned some and personally reprimanded a few. Still, I felt that service chiefs and other senior generals and admirals were candid with me, willing to disagree and argue their case forcefully, and yet quite disciplined in falling into line once I made a decision. Based on everything I know, senior military leaders rarely tried to “end-run” me with the press or Congress.

The challenge for any secretary, especially in wartime, is to strike the right balance between building team spirit and maintaining an open, close working relationship with the senior military while not getting too “buddy-buddy.” He must instill a culture of accountability. An effective secretary is not a congenial chairman of the board but rather a demanding, tough chief executive whose daily life is often filled with life-and-death decisions.

I always treated senior officers respectfully. I had ways of making my displeasure known—usually a deepening silence and grim expression—but I never shouted. I never belittled. I never intentionally embarrassed anyone. I always listened and often adjusted my opinions and decisions in response to the advice and counsel of senior officers. I valued the opinions and experience of the chiefs and the combatant commanders. Both Pete Pace and Mike Mullen were true partners in that I don’t think I ever made a consequential decision without consulting them first. But I fired enough senior officers that everyone in the Defense Department knew there was a line not to be crossed.

I saw firsthand the age-old reality that the qualities important for military leadership and success in war are not the same as those required in peacetime. In war, boldness, adaptability, creativity, sometimes ignoring the rules, risk taking, and ruthlessness are essential for success. These are not characteristics that will get an officer very far in peacetime. Over the ten years of the Iraq and Afghan wars, too many officers were assigned to command positions because the stateside personnel system identified them as “next in line” rather than because they were selected as best qualified for the combat mission. And too many talented officers who achieved real battlefield success were rotated out of command in Iraq and Afghanistan too soon simply to keep the personnel system running smoothly. When we are in a fight, field commanders and the combatant commanders should be given the authority to relieve under-performers or keep good officers in command. In wartime, I believe the routine peacetime officer-assignment process should be set aside and senior field commanders should be empowered to choose their subordinate commanders. The failure to do this was, in my view, consistent with the peacetime mentality that pervaded the entire Defense Department, business-as-usual the order of the day among senior civilians and even among most generals and admirals, even as the troops were fighting and dying. I should not have allowed it.

RUNNING THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Defense is the largest, most complex organization on the planet: three million people, civilian and military, with a budget, the last year I was there, of over $700 billion. Nearly everyone there is a career professional, with considerable job security. Every major part of the organization—budget, acquisition programs, and policy—has a constituency both inside and outside the Pentagon. Local and state officials, members of Congress, lobbyists, industry, retired senior officers—everyone has an oar in the water, many of them pulling in different directions. So how does a secretary gain control, then establish and implement an agenda for change?

Above all, if a secretary actually intends to run the Pentagon—and make real changes—as opposed to presiding over it, he must be selective in identifying his agenda, and both realistic and single-minded in developing strategies for achieving each specific goal. Exhortations to be more efficient or to achieve some broad goal are akin to shouting down a well. Very specific objectives, with tight deadlines and regular inperson reports to the secretary himself, provide the only way to get people focused and to ensure they are performing. The organization must understand that the secretary is personally invested in these issues and determined to drive the process to specific outcomes. This was what I did during the first two years with regard to MRAPs, ISR, medevac, wounded warrior care, and other changes to help those fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As noted repeatedly, I also held regular videoconferences with our commanders in Baghdad and Kabul to closely monitor progress in the two wars, to ensure that their needs were being met by the Pentagon, and to keep them informed about the Washington battlespace. It was the same approach I took to the big cuts and caps I implemented in programs in the spring of 2009, and then in the efficiencies effort in 2010.

In implementing an agenda for change, the secretary cannot delegate the hard work to the deputy secretary, who simply doesn’t have the clout in the building, at the White House, or in Congress to push through changes on big issues. The secretary has to master the details and fully understand the issues and problems. The challenge is to maintain a high-level, broad perspective, understand enough details to make sensible and executable decisions, and then delegate responsibility for implementation. “Microknowledge” must not become micromanagement, but it sure helps keep people on their toes when they know that the secretary knows what the hell he’s talking about. If the secretary of defense doesn’t do all of this, he becomes a “kept” man at the Pentagon, enjoying all the accouterments of position and authority—the big plane, massive entourages, lots of ceremonies and speeches—but held hostage by the military services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and his own staff, without the knowledge or influence to effectively lead the department in new directions, much less put the place on a war footing.

In every aspect of running the department, the senior civilians and political appointees are critically important. I have not given due credit in these pages to those civilians who played a key role in everything I did—and accomplished—as secretary. Career professionals and political appointees, men and women, worked countless hours to prepare me for meetings and helped shape decisions, then saw to their implementation. I depended on these civilians to help me frame the agenda for change, to help me come up with specific strategies for accomplishing each initiative. Their insights, dedication, and skills are critical assets that any secretary of defense and the American public must always value. Because while the military trains and equips our forces, provides professional military advice to the civilian leadership, and, when necessary, fights our wars, it is the Defense civilians who make the entire giant enterprise work—or not. First on the list for pay and hiring freezes, furloughs, and firings when the budget is being cut, they are the enduring backbone of the department. I have often criticized the Pentagon bureaucracy in these pages, but given the right leadership and clear direction, these public servants can move mountains. Anyone who wants to reform the Pentagon had better remember that these civilians are essential to success. They were for mine.

CONGRESS

I was always schizophrenic about Congress. In the abstract, I saw it as a critical check on the executive branch and guarantor of our freedom. For that reason, I had long been a strong advocate of effective congressional oversight. As secretary, I consistently tried to be respectful of the role of Congress and responsive to its requests and views. I urged my civilian and military subordinates to behave similarly. Early in my tenure as secretary, I told cadets and midshipmen at the military academies that as officers, they would need to remind their subordinates that Congress was one of two pillars of our freedom (the other being the press), a coequal branch of government that under the Constitution “raises armies and provides for navies.” Many senators and congressmen were longtime supporters of men and women in uniform, and we had an obligation to be “honest and true” in reporting to them. In my first senior staff meeting as secretary, I said I wanted a strong, respectful, and positive relationship with Congress. I also knew that the Founding Fathers had created a system of government designed primarily for the preservation of liberty, not for efficient or agile government.

On a day-to-day basis, I believe, in that last regard, that the Founders succeeded beyond their wildest aspirations. Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close it is truly ugly. And nearly every day I was secretary, I was dealing with Congress up close.

As I wrote earlier, I have less reason to complain about Congress than just about anyone who has served in the executive branch. Over four and a half years, the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees—as well as the congressional leadership and others—almost always treated me with respect and civility. The exceptions I can count on the fingers of one hand. But it seemed like every day, in nearly every way, we were in conflict that went well beyond the expected, healthy friction between two coequal branches of government.

In the Bush administration, the fights with Congress were mostly over Iraq troop levels, timetables and deadlines, and war budgets. As I turned my focus to budget and program matters under President Obama, I was more or less continuously outraged by the parochial self-interest of all but a very few members of Congress. Any defense facility or contract in their district or state, no matter how superfluous or wasteful, was sacrosanct.

I suppose I should have known better going in, but I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those who most stridently attacked the Defense Department for being inefficient and wasteful but would fight tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities in their home state or district no matter how inefficient or wasteful. However, behavior that was simply frustrating to me in 2009–10 will seriously impair our national security in the years ahead as the defense budget shrinks: failure to cut or close unneeded programs and facilities will drain precious dollars from the troops and our war-fighting capabilities.

A second source of frustration, as you might suspect, was the failure of Congress to do its most basic job: appropriate money. I prepared five budgets for Congress from 2007 to 2011, and not once was a defense appropriations bill enacted before the start of the new fiscal year. The impact of this, and the associated “continuing resolutions”—which kept the funding level at the previous year’s appropriations and did not allow for starting any new program—was dramatically disruptive of sensible and efficient management of the department. This was an outrageous dereliction of duty.

I was exceptionally offended by the constant adversarial, inquisitionlike treatment of executive branch officials by too many members of Congress across the political spectrum—a kangaroo-court environment in hearings, especially when the press and television cameras were present. Sharp questioning of witnesses should be expected and is entirely appropriate. But rude, insulting, belittling, bullying, and all too often highly personal attacks by members of Congress violated nearly every norm of civil behavior as they postured and acted as judge, jury, and executioner. It was as though most members were in a permanent state of outrage or suffered from some sort of mental duress that warranted confinement or at least treatment for anger management. I had to put up with less of this Queeg-like behavior than almost anyone, but I was infuriated by the harsh treatment of my subordinates, both civilian and military. The temptation to stand up, slam the briefing book shut, and quit on the spot recurred often. All too frequently, sitting at that witness table, the exit lines were on the tip of my tongue: I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody else. It was, I am confident, a widely shared fantasy throughout the executive branch. And it was always enjoyable to listen to three former senators—Obama, Biden, and Clinton—trash-talking Congress.

Uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, often putting self (and reelection) before country—this was my view of the majority of the United States Congress.

It required an extraordinary effort on the part of Robert Rangel to keep me from erupting in a hearing but also to do the necessary courtesy calls, outreach, and day-to-day schmoozing with members. Robert had been a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee for years, including serving as its staff director, and so he had a longer and different perspective than I did—fortunately. He was better able to set aside (or ignore) members’ behavior—he was used to it—and kept focused on our fundamental dependence on members’ goodwill and legislative actions. With his wise and restraining hand, the clenched teeth behind my smile when on the Hill remained well hidden. It was just another battlefield in my wars.

What Rangel knew, and persuaded me to heed, was that a secretary of defense faces a steep uphill battle to be successful if he or she does not have a strong, nonpartisan relationship with Congress and respect among the members. From slow-rolling (or opposing) confirmation of Defense nominees, to conducting intrusive and time-consuming investigations, imposing legislative restrictions, opposing budget proposals, holding protracted hearings, and much more, Congress can truly make a secretary’s life miserable. And so for four and a half years, I dutifully marched to the Hill to meet with the leadership, the party caucuses, committee leaders, and individual members. I behaved myself in hearings, letting my respectful demeanor implicitly draw the contrast with the boorishness of the members. Future secretaries would do well to remember Rangel’s guidance, despite the outrageousness of their situation.

While American politics has always been a shrill, partisan, and ugly business going back to the Founding Fathers, we have rarely been so polarized and so unable to execute even the basic functions of government, much less tackle the most difficult and divisive problems facing the country. I believe that is due to the incessant scorched-earth battling between Congress and the president (I saw it under both Bush and Obama) but even more so to the weakening of the moderate center of both parties in Congress. Progress in America historically has come from thinkers and ideologues on both the left and the right, but the best of those ideas have been enacted into law through compromise. Now moderation is equated with lacking principles, and compromise with “selling out.” This problem goes deeper than personalities, and I have seen it intensify greatly since first arriving in Washington in 1966. As secretary, I greatly missed the “bridge builders,” most of whom left Congress because of their own frustrations in the House and Senate.

The paralytic polarization we face today is the result of changes—some structural, some historical, some outside the control of government—that have taken root over several decades, and it will not be undone simply by changing the cast of characters. It is due, first, to a highly partisan congressional redistricting process, through which more and more seats—all but perhaps 50 or 60 out of 435—are safe for either the Republican or Democratic party. As a result, the really consequential campaigns are the party primaries, where candidates must cater to the most hardcore ideological elements of their base.

Addressing the country’s most intractable and complex problems requires consistent strategies and their implementation across multiple presidencies and congresses, and that requires bipartisanship. The best historical example of this was the Cold War, when, despite great differences in tactics and approaches, the basic contours of the strategy to contain the Soviet Union remained in place through nine successive presidential administrations of both political parties. Now the party that wins typically seeks to impose its agenda on the other side by brute political force. Compromise is the victim, as are the bipartisan strategies and policies that can—and must—be sustained over a number of years to deal successfully with the country’s most serious challenges.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the decline of congressional power brokers is to be mourned, particularly the committee chairs, who might have been tough partisans but were also people who could make deals and enforce those agreements on their committees and their party caucuses. The so-called reform of going from appointing committee chairmen based solely on seniority to electing them in the caucuses has proved worse than the disease, weakening the role of Congress in governing.

Another congressional change for the worse has been the shift to a three-day workweek—Tuesday through Thursday. Gone are the days when members shared group houses, played poker or golf together, and often ate dinner together. The families of members got to know one another and made friendships across the political spectrum. Now, with barely three days in town each week, they barely know members of their own party, let alone others from across the aisle. It’s hard to build trust and the relationships necessary to get things done under these circumstances.

There have been vast changes in the composition and role of the news media over the decades, and that is a cause for concern as well. When I first entered government nearly forty-eight years ago, three television networks and a handful of newspapers dominated coverage and, to a considerable degree, filtered the most extreme or vitriolic points of view. Today, with hundreds of cable channels, blogs, and other electronic media, too often the professional integrity and long-established standards and practices of journalists are diluted or ignored. Every point of view—including the most extreme—has a ready vehicle for rapid dissemination. And it seems the more vitriolic the opinion, the more attention it gets. This system is clearly more democratic and open, but I believe it has also fueled the coarsening and dumbing down of our national political dialogue.

These discouraging elements of our democracy and civil society are well entrenched. But presidents and members of Congress are not helpless in confronting either the polarization or paralysis. They could start by restoring civility and mutual respect; by listening to and learning from one another; by curbing the purposeful distortion of facts; and by not pretending to have all the answers and demonizing those who differ. And by putting country before self and before party.

THE PRESIDENTS

It is difficult to imagine two more different men than George W. Bush and Barack Obama. We have a long tradition in America of electing a president, celebrating him for a few days, and then spending four or eight years demonizing him, reviling him, or blindly defending him. From George Washington on, there has scarcely been a president of any consequence—including those we consider our greatest—who has not faced the most scurrilous attacks on his policies, patriotism, morals, character, and conduct in office. So it has been with both Bush and Obama.

Clearly, I had fewer issues with Bush. Partly, that is because I worked for him in the last two years of his presidency, when, with the exception of the Iraq surge, at least in national security affairs nearly all the big decisions had been made. He had already made his historical bed and would have to lie in it. (He always seemed comfortable with that.) He would never again run for political office, and neither would his vice president. I don’t recall Bush ever discussing domestic politics—apart from congressional opposition—as a consideration in decisions he made during my time with him, though it should be said that his sharp-elbowed political gurus were nearly all gone by the time I arrived. I encountered an experienced, wiser president beginning the last lap of his political race. By early 2007, Vice President Cheney was the outlier on the team, with Bush, Rice, Hadley, and me in broad agreement on virtually all important issues.

With Obama, however, I joined a new, inexperienced president facing multiple crises and determined to change America’s approach to the world—and the wars we were in—and equally determined from day one to win reelection. Domestic political considerations therefore would be a factor, though I believe never a decisive one, in virtually every major national security problem we tackled. The White House staff—including the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley; Valerie Jarrett; David Axelrod; Robert Gibbs; and others—would have a presence and a role in national security decision making that I had not previously experienced (but which, I’m sure, had precedents). Under these circumstances, the surprise was how little disagreement on national security policy there was among the most senior members of the team, except over Afghanistan—at least until early 2011. On issue after issue—Iraq, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, the Middle East—the president, vice president, Clinton, Jones, Donilon, and I were usually on the same page. And where there were differences, including dealing with the Arab Spring, there was none of the emotion or rancor associated with Afghanistan.

President Obama and I did cross swords. Our disagreements on the defense budget in 2010 and 2011 were explicit, and often discussed face-to-face. I could understand the pressures on him as a result of the nation’s deep economic problems, but I was frustrated that what I regarded as the agreement with him on future budget levels made in late 2009 was so quickly abandoned a year later, and then a subsequent agreement was abandoned just a few months after that. Our “negotiations”—if one can so describe discussions between a president and a cabinet officer—over budget levels, in fact, marked a fundamental difference between us: I wanted to restructure defense spending to make it more efficient and disciplined, reducing bureaucratic overhead and waste and canceling weak programs in order to preserve and enhance military capability. I did not want to cut the overall budget itself. As I have made clear, I believed that an increasingly complex, turbulent, and unstable world required sustaining the U.S. military at a high level of capability and readiness; we just needed to be a lot smarter in how we spent our money to achieve that purpose. The president felt that defense could and should be cut on its merits, but also to give him political space with his own party and constituents to cut domestic spending and entitlements. (At least that’s what he told me.) I believed Defense was not a major factor in the size of either the national debt or the annual deficits, and that developments in the rest of the world provided ample reason to sustain and enhance our military capabilities; if we had to reduce our budget, we should be allowed to do so slowly and with a wary eye on the global security environment.

I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Clinton, Panetta, and others) saw as the president’s determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations. His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost. I had no problem with the White House and the NSS driving policy. As I had witnessed time and again, the big bureaucracies rarely come up with significant new ideas, and almost any meaningful departures from the status quo must be driven by the president and his national security adviser—whether it was Nixon and Kissinger and the openings to the Soviet Union and China, Carter and the Camp David accords, Reagan and his outreach to Gorbachev, or Bush 41 and the liberation of eastern Europe, reunification of Germany, and collapse of the Soviet Union.

Just as Bush 43 had driven the Iraq surge decision in late 2006, I had no issue with the White House and the NSS driving the policy reevaluation early in 2009 on Afghanistan. But I believe the major reason the protracted, frustrating Afghan review that fall created so much ill will was due to the fact it was forced on an otherwise controlling White House by the theater commander’s unexpected request for a large escalation of American involvement. It was a request that surprised the White House (and me) and provoked a debate that the White House neither sought nor wanted, especially when it became public. I think Obama and his advisers were incensed that the Department of Defense—specifically the military—had taken control of the policy process from them and threatened to run away with it. That partly accounts for the increased suspicion of the military at the White House and the NSS. The Pentagon and the military did not consciously intend to snatch the initiative and control of war policy from the president, but in retrospect, I can now see how easily it could have been perceived that way. The White House saw it as a calculated move. The leak of McChrystal’s assessment and subsequent public commentary by Mullen, Petraeus, and McChrystal only reinforced that view. I was never able to persuade the president and others that it was not a plot.

I had served in the White House on the National Security Staff under four presidents and had strong views as to its proper role. I had come to learn that White House/NSS involvement in operations or operational details is usually counterproductive (LBJ picking bombing targets in Vietnam) and sometimes dangerous (Iran-Contra). The root of my unhappiness in the Obama administration was therefore not NSS policy initiatives but rather its micromanagement—on Haitian relief, on the Libyan no-fly zone, above all on Afghanistan—and I routinely resisted it. For an NSC staff member to call a four-star combatant commander or field commander would have been unthinkable when I worked at the White House and probably cause for dismissal. It became routine under Obama. I directed the commanders to refer such calls to my office. The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the people in the cabinet departments—in the trenches—who had actually done the work, offended Hillary Clinton as much as it did me.

These issues did not begin under Obama. There has been a steady trend toward more centralized White House control over the national security apparatus ever since Harry Truman considered his principal national security advisers to be the secretaries of state and defense. (That they were Dean Acheson and George Marshall certainly helped.) But even Truman initially had opposed legislation creating the National Security Council, convinced that Congress was trying to impose “cabinet government” on him. Since then the presidential staff assigned to national security has increased many times over. As recently as the Scowcroft-led NSC staff in the early 1990s, professional staff numbered about fifty. Today the NSS numbers more than 350.

The controlling nature of the Obama White House and the NSS staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level. Partly, I think, it was due to the backgrounds and résumés of the people involved. For most of my professional life, top NSC positions went to people who may have aligned with one party or the other, but they had reputations in the foreign policy and national security arenas that predated their association with the president—either from academia (such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Condi Rice) or longtime service in the military, intelligence, or foreign policy arenas (such as Frank Carlucci, Jim Jones, Colin Powell, Steve Hadley, Brent Scowcroft, and me). Inevitably there were some politically or personally connected handlers as well, but they were the exceptions. Obama’s top tier of NSS people, though, was heavily populated with very smart, politically savvy, and hardworking “super staffers”—typically from Capitol Hill—who focused on national-security-related issues only as their careers progressed. This changed profile may explain, in part, their apparent lack of understanding of or concern for observing the traditional institutional roles among the White House, the Pentagon, and the operational military.

Stylistically, the two presidents had much more in common than I expected. Both were most comfortable around a coterie of close aides and friends (like most presidents) and largely shunned the Washington social scene. Both, I believe, detested Congress and resented having to deal with it, including members of their own party. And so, unfortunately, neither devoted much effort to wooing or even reaching out to individual members or trying to establish a network of allies, supporters—or friends. They both had the worst of both worlds on the Hill: they were neither particularly liked nor feared. Accordingly, neither had many allies in Congress who were willing to go beyond party loyalty, self-interest, or policy agreement in supporting them. In this, they had more in common with Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon than with LBJ, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41. Nor did either work much at establishing close personal relationships with other world leaders. Bush did somewhat more of this than Obama, but neither had anything like the number of friendships cultivated by Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41. (I don’t know about Clinton; I wasn’t there.) Both presidents, in short, seemed to me to be very aloof with respect to two constituencies important to their success in foreign affairs.

Both were generous, kind, and caring when it came to men and women in uniform and their families. Both presidents—and their wives—devoted significant time and energy to helping the wounded and all military families. Helping those families was particularly important to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. Both presidents regularly, privately, visited our wounded at hospitals and met with families of the fallen. No one could have asked either to do more or to care more. As was fitting.

Their relationship with me was friendly and relaxed but businesslike. President Obama had much more occasion than Bush to be angry with me, but by the standards of Johnson and Nixon—whose wrath could be semiterrifying even to the most senior officials—Obama was civil in his impatience, never nasty, cutting, or personal. And the squall always passed quickly. At times, I’m sure he treated me better than I deserved.

I witnessed both of those presidents make decisions they believed to be in the best interest of the country regardless of the domestic political consequences, both thereby earning my highest possible respect and praise. Although, as I’ve said, political considerations were far more a part of national security debates under Obama, time and again I saw him make a decision that was opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats and supportive interest groups. I liked and respected both men.

ON WAR

Until becoming secretary of defense, my exposure to war and those who were fighting wars had been at a distance, from antiseptic offices at the White House and at CIA. But I had read much history about war and its glories, follies, and horrors. Serving as secretary of defense made the abstract real, the antiseptic bloody and horrible. I saw up close the cost in lives ruined and lives lost.

Several lessons, none new to me, were hammered home during my four and a half years as defense secretary. Above all, the unpredictability of war—that once the first shots are fired or first bombs fall, as Churchill said, the political leader loses control. Events are in the saddle. It seems that every war is begun with the assumption it will be short. In nearly every instance, going back far into history, that assumption has been wrong. And so it happened again in Iraq and Afghanistan, as swift and successful regime changes gave way to long and bloody conflicts. In light of history, how could anyone have been surprised that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took unanticipated turns?

I was reminded, too, that nearly always, we begin military engagements—wars—profoundly ignorant about our adversaries and about the situation on the ground. We had no idea how broken Iraq was when we invaded and took control of the country. We did not grasp that after eight years of war with Iran, the Gulf War with us, and twelve years of harsh sanctions, the Iraqi economy, society, and infrastructure were shattered. The facade of Saddam’s regime misled us with regard to what we were letting ourselves in for, just as his facade with respect to possessing weapons of mass destruction misled us. We had no idea of the complexity of Afghanistan—tribes, ethnic groups, power brokers, village and provincial rivalries. So our prospects in both countries were grimmer than perceived, and our initial objectives were unrealistic. And we didn’t know that either. Our knowledge and our intelligence were woefully inadequate. We entered both countries oblivious to how little we knew.

I was also reminded that no country is fully prepared for the next war. Secretary Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have. But the Defense Department was unconscionably slow in identifying and providing the equipment to make the Army and Marine Corps into the force we needed in Afghanistan and Iraq. That slowness, that business-as-usual peacetime mentality, cost lives.

Usually we don’t get to choose and almost never accurately predict the kind of war we will fight next. I am always amused when I hear a senior military officer or a politician declare that we will never fight certain kinds of wars again. After Vietnam, our defense “experts” avowed we would never again try to fight an insurgency, yet we have done so in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We are hearing the same claim now. Those who assert we will fight only certain kinds of wars in the future forget history and the reality that our enemies, as I’ve said, always have a vote, as do future presidents. In the forty years since Vietnam, our record in predicting where we will be militarily engaged next, even six months out, is perfect: we have never once gotten it right, not in Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Libya (twice), Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, the Balkans, or Somalia. When it comes to predicting future conflicts, what kind of fights they will be, and what will be needed, we need a lot more humility.

Wars are a lot easier to get into than out of, a point I hope I have made clear. Those who ask about exit strategies or what happens if assumptions prove wrong are rarely welcome at the conference table when the fire-breathers argue we must act militarily—as they did when advocating an invasion of Iraq, intervening in Libya and Syria, or bombing Iranian nuclear sites. The argument against military action is almost never about capabilities but whether it is wise. As Petraeus said early on in Iraq, “Tell me how this ends.” Too often the question is not even asked, much less answered.

My time as secretary of defense reinforced my belief that in recent decades, American presidents, confronted with a tough problem abroad, have too often been too quick to reach for a gun—to use military force, despite all the realities I have been describing. They could have done worse than to follow the example of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his presidency, the Soviet Union became a thermonuclear power, China became a nuclear power, and there were calls for preventive nuclear war against both; the Joint Chiefs unanimously recommended that he use nuclear weapons to help the French in Vietnam; there were several crises with China related to Taiwan; a war in the Middle East; a revolution in Cuba; and uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary. And yet after Eisenhower agreed to the armistice in Korea in the summer of 1953, not one American soldier was killed in action during his presidency.

Too many ideologues call for the use of the American military as the first option rather than a last resort to address problems. On the left, we hear about the “responsibility to protect” as a justification for military intervention in Libya, Syria, the Sudan, and elsewhere. On the right, the failure to use military force in Libya, Syria, or Iran is deemed an abdication of American leadership and a symptom of a “soft” foreign policy. Obama’s “pivot” to Asia was framed almost entirely in military terms as opposed to economic and political priorities. And so the rest of the world sees America, above all else, as a militaristic country too quick to launch planes, cruise missiles, and armed drones deep into sovereign countries or ungoverned spaces.

I strongly believe America must continue to fulfill its global responsibilities. We are the “indispensable nation,” and few international problems can be addressed successfully without our leadership. But we also need to better appreciate that there are limits to what the United States—still by far the strongest and greatest nation on earth—can do in an often cruel and challenging world. The power of our military’s global reach has been an indispensable contributor to peace and stability in many regions and must remain so. But not every outrage, every act of aggression, every oppression, or every crisis can or should elicit an American military response.

I wrote in my first book in 1996 that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the biggest doves in Washington wear uniforms. This is because our military leaders have seen the cost of war and its unpredictability, and they have too often sent their troops in harm’s way to execute ill-defined or unrealistic presidential objectives, with thin political support that evaporated when the going got tough or the fight became prolonged. Just as it did in “the necessary war” in Afghanistan.

There is one final lesson about war that we too often forget. We are enamored of technology and what it can do because of advances in precision, sensors, information, and satellite technology. A button is pushed in Nevada, and seconds later a pickup truck explodes in Mosul. A bomb destroys the targeted house on the right, leaving intact the one on the left. War has become for too many—among them defense “experts,” members of Congress, executive branch officials, and the American public as well—a kind of arcade video game or action movie, bloodless, painless, and odorless. But as I told a military audience at the National Defense University in September 2008, war is “inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain.” I warned them to be skeptical of systems analysis, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise. “Look askance,” I said, “at idealized, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war, where the enemy is killed, but our troops and innocent civilians are spared; where adversaries can be cowed, shocked, or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.” I quoted General William T. Sherman that “every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” And I concluded with General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell’s warning that “no matter how a war starts, it ends in mud. It has to be slugged out—there are no trick solutions or cheap shortcuts.”

We must always be prepared and willing to use our military forces when our security, our vital interests, or those of our allies are threatened or attacked. But I believe the use of military force should always be a last resort and our objectives clearly and realistically defined (as in the Gulf War). And presidents need to be more willing and skillful in using tools in the national security kit other than hammers. Our foreign and national security policy has become too militarized, the use of force too easy for presidents.

THE TROOPS

Most of the public attention with regard to men and women in uniform seems to fall to one end of the spectrum or the other—the heroes are extolled for their valor and sacrifice, and those who have disgraced the uniform in some way are condemned. The latter, fortunately, are small in number. The former, the heroes, to me are countless. I know that if everyone is a hero, then no one truly is. I concede the term is thrown around far too casually. Most troops signed up in a time of war and did their job ably and honorably, without fanfare or much recognition. There is no doubt that those who fought bravely, those who saved the lives of their comrades often at the risk of their own, those who were wounded, and those who fell are all heroes. But how, then, to describe the hundreds of thousands who went to Iraq and Afghanistan, did their duty, then returned to their families and must live with the nightmare of war for the rest of their lives? What about the medics, doctors, and nurses who have had to deal with so many shattered bodies and minds? Or the aircrews who have been at war since 1991? Or the logistics experts for whom performing miracles became a routine day’s work? Or the Special Forces among whom seven or eight or ten tours of duty were common? Or all those troops who had to endure fifteen-month tours? Wherever I went in the world, these men and women were standing watch for all of us. For some, it is a career; for all, it is a calling.

There will always be a special place in my heart for all those who served on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, most in their twenties, some in their teens. I never imagined that I would be responsible for overseeing two wars and for seeing to the well-being of those fighting them. On each visit to the war zones, as I would go to joint security stations in Baghdad or even forward operating bases and combat outposts in Afghanistan, I knew I wasn’t being exposed to the true grim reality of our troops’ lives, and so I could not fully appreciate what those in the fight endured daily. But I saw enough. My imagination—and all those lunches with young troops—filled in the blanks. And I could only contrast their selfless service and sacrifice with so many self-serving elected and nonelected officials back home.

When I was asked in October 2006 if I would be willing to serve as secretary, I said that because all of those kids out there were doing their duty, I had no choice but to do mine. The troops were the reason I took the job, and they became the reason I stayed. Being called “the soldiers’ secretary” because I cared so much about them was the highest compliment imaginable. I never, for one moment, forgot that tearful mother’s plea in the hotel restaurant before my confirmation hearings: “For God’s sake, bring them back alive.” That plea drove me, just as the troops inspired me. When I was at my lowest, they lifted me up.

I came to believe that no one who had actually been in combat could walk away without scars, some measure of post-traumatic stress. And while those I visited in the hospitals put on a brave front for me, in my mind’s eye I could see them lying awake, alone, in the hours before dawn, confronting their pain and their broken dreams and shattered lives. I would wake in the night, think back to a wounded soldier or Marine I had seen at Landstuhl, Bethesda, or Walter Reed, and in my imagination, I would put myself in his hospital room and I would hold him to my chest, to comfort him. Silently, in the night at home, I would weep for him. And so my answer to the young soldier’s question in Afghanistan about what kept me awake at night: he did.

I always assumed that my predecessors during wartime felt every bit as deeply as I did about the men and women on the front lines, the wounded, the fallen, and their families. But ironically, the scale of earlier wars—World War II, Korea, and Vietnam in the last eight decades—and the number of wounded and killed in those conflicts precluded my wartime predecessors from establishing the kind of personal connection to the troops or to their families that became so important to me. When 1,000 young Americans were being killed every month in Vietnam, reading hometown news coverage of each casualty and handwriting condolence letters were impossible. And so, perhaps because our losses were comparatively so much smaller than in previous wars, I could and did become emotionally bound to the troops.

During World War II, General George Marshall once told his wife, “I cannot afford the luxury of sentiment, mine must be cold logic. Sentiment is for others.” Icy detachment was never an option for me. Because of the nature of the two wars I oversaw, I could afford the luxury of sentiment, and at times, it overwhelmed me. Signing the deployment orders, visiting hospitals, writing the condolence letters, and attending the funerals at Arlington all were taking a growing emotional toll on me. Even thinking about the troops, I would lose my composure with increasing frequency. I realized I was beginning to regard protecting them—avoiding their sacrifice—as my highest priority. And I knew that this loss of objectivity meant it was time to leave.

The day before I stepped down as secretary, I sent a message to every man and woman wearing the American military uniform because I knew I could not speak to or about them at my farewell ceremony without breaking down. I repeated my now-familiar words: “Your countrymen owe you their freedom and their security. They sleep safely at night and pursue their dreams during the day because you stand the watch and protect them…. You are the best America has to offer. My admiration and affection for you is without limit, and I will think about you and your families and pray for you every day for the rest of my life. God bless you.”

I am eligible to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. I have asked to be buried in Section 60, where so many of the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan have been laid to rest. The greatest honor possible would be to rest among my heroes for all eternity.