No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

50 OLMERT MAKES AN OFFER

I RETURNED FROM ASIA and headed almost immediately to the Middle East. The prospects for a framework agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis were brightening as the spring approached. During the President’s trip in January, we’d both been impressed by Olmert’s desire to get a deal. After the Annapolis Conference, he’d placed Tzipi Livni in charge of the Israeli side of the negotiations, and President Abbas had tapped Abu Alaa. There was something of an asymmetry since the Palestinian team was experienced, having negotiated the issues for more than fifteen years. Like the back of their hands, the team members knew the ins and outs of the maps, the nuances of the phrases, and the history of the conflict. Tzipi admitted that she didn’t know the issues as well but she came up to speed very quickly. I traveled to the region even more frequently, holding meetings with each side separately and several times jointly. The progress was slow but steady. At one point, to better understand the Palestinian concerns about the Israeli settlement of Ariel, Tzipi even suggested a joint field trip to see it. I was convinced that the parties were trying very hard.

In March I made two trips to the region, and I made another in April. With those trips, I had fallen into a pattern, meeting with the Arabs through the GCC and covering everything from Iraq to Afghanistan to Annapolis. I’d then go on to meet with the Palestinians and the Israelis, starting in Jerusalem with dinner at Olmert’s house. At first, I’d take Elliott Abrams, who traveled with me from the White House, David Welch, and the ambassador. Shalom Turgeman and Yoram Turbowitz, Olmert’s close advisors, usually accompanied the prime minister. After dinner, Olmert and I would go into his study. He’d smoke a cigar, I’d drink tea, and we would go deeper into the issues that had come up at dinner.

But when I arrived in Jerusalem in May, I got word that Olmert wanted me to come to dinner alone. I was a little surprised, but we’d met one-on-one at least once before. When I got to the residence of the prime minister, he didn’t waste much time on pleasantries.

“Tzipi is a hard worker, and she has my complete confidence,” he began. Why is he telling me that? I wondered. Then he made himself clear. “The problem is that the process with Abu Alaa isn’t going to get it done in time. Israel needs to get an agreement with the Palestinians before you leave office,” he said. He continued without waiting for me to respond. “I want to do it directly with Abu Mazen,” he said, referring to Mahmoud Abbas by his nom de guerre. “You are going to see him tomorrow. Tell him that I want to appoint one person. I have someone in mind. He is a retired judge that I trust. I want Abu Mazen to appoint a trusted agent too. We can write down the agreement in a few pages and then give it to the negotiators to finalize,” he said. I started to ask about the relationship between what he was proposing and what Tzipi was doing. I felt kind of awkward because it was pretty clear he hadn’t told her what he was telling me. But as I opened my mouth, Olmert started talking again.

“I know what he needs. He needs something on refugees and on Jerusalem. I’ll give him enough land, maybe something like 94 percent with swaps. I have an idea about Jerusalem. There will be two capitals, one for us in West Jerusalem and one for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The mayor of the joint city council will be selected by population percentage. That means an Israeli mayor, so the deputy should be a Palestinian. We will continue to provide security for the Holy sites because we can assure access to them.” That’s probably a nonstarter, I thought. But concentrate, concentrate. This is unbelievable. He continued, “I’ll accept some Palestinians into Israel, maybe five thousand. I don’t want it to be called family reunification because they have too many cousins; we won’t be able to control it. I’ve been thinking about how to administer the Old City. There should be a committee of people—not officials but wise people—from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians, the United States, and Israel. They will oversee the city but not in a political role.” Am I really hearing this? I wondered. Is the Israeli prime minister saying that he’ll divide Jerusalem and put an international body in charge of the Holy sites? Concentrate. Write this down. No, don’t write it down. What if it leaks? It can’t leak; it’s just the two of us.

Olmert was on a roll. “I will need your help on security. The IDF has a list of demands—some of them probably are okay, but the Palestinians won’t accept all of them. I need the United States to work this out to the satisfaction of the military. Barak will work with you. I can sell this deal, but not if the IDF says it will undermine Israel’s security. That’s the one thing no prime minister can survive. And one other thing, I need to know that you won’t surprise me by offering other ideas before we’ve had a chance to talk about them. I’m taking an enormous risk here, and I can’t be blindsided by the United States.” Olmert had been leaning forward; neither of us had touched our dinner, and when the server had come in, he’d shooed her away. Now he sat back in his chair, exhausted by the recitation of the extraordinary details of the deal as he saw it.

“Prime Minister, this is remarkable, and I will try to help. I will talk to Abu Mazen tomorrow,” I promised. “Be careful where you speak to him because people may be listening,” he said.

After dinner, I hurried back to the hotel and related the details to David and Elliott only—minus the proposal on an international committee to oversee the Holy sites. I trusted my advisors, but a slip of the tongue on that one would have been devastating to Olmert. “You must not tell anyone,” I said sternly, knowing that they wouldn’t. Then I called Steve Hadley and told him that I had some extraordinary news but didn’t feel comfortable—even on a secure phone—repeating what I’d heard from Olmert. After all, I was in an Israeli hotel; one never knew who might be listening. “Tell the President he was right about Olmert. He wants a deal. And frankly, he might die trying to get one,” I said, recalling that Yitzhak Rabin had been killed for offering far less. I hung up the phone and looked out my window at the Holy City. Maybe, just maybe, we could get this done.

The next day I went to see Abbas and asked to see him in the little dining room adjacent to his office. I sketched out the details of Olmert’s proposal and told him how the prime minister wanted to proceed. Abbas started negotiating immediately. “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only five thousand of them can go home,” he said.

I demurred, saying that he should make his concerns known to the prime minister. “Are you ready to talk with him alone?” I asked. Abbas said that he would but could not appoint a trusted agent—he wanted to do this himself. I sensed that the internal politics of the Fatah party were such that he could not sidestep Abu Alaa, a power in his own right and sometimes a rival within the party. This is going to be a problem, I realized. But just get them together, and see what happens—one step at a time.

I called the prime minister before I left and said that Abbas was ready to talk but wanted to do it himself. The prime minister said that he’d arrange a meeting. “What language will you use?” I asked.

“English,” Olmert replied.

“Remember that you speak it better than he does. He’ll be at a disadvantage,” I countered.

“It isn’t my intention to put him at a disadvantage,” he replied. I think he really means that, I thought. “I’ll be in touch, Prime Minister,” I said. “And I’ll tell the President about our discussions.”

Olmert ended by saying, “Remind him of our first meeting when I said that I wanted a deal.”

When I returned to Washington, I had a very good idea of what we, the United States, needed to do. General Will Fraser had taken the task of Roadmap coordination. I would ask him to accelerate his efforts. General Jim Jones had assumed the role of special envoy, and I asked him to think about how to approach the IDF on security arrangements for the new Palestinian state. It occurred to me that some of the Israeli demands—for instance, for a permanent IDF presence inside the new Palestinian state to guard the Jordan Valley—might be accommodated by a “regional solution.” In other words, I could possibly try to convince the Jordanian king to place his troops alongside others, even NATO forces, on that border. I raised the idea of a NATO role with the Alliance’s Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, saying that he should do nothing and tell no one for the time being. The Israelis might be convinced to accept Jordan’s forces because they trusted them, and the Jordanians would certainly accept U.S. help. I was not at all confident that the Pentagon or NATO would want to play such a role, but if we were that close to a deal, it might be possible. Other concerns, such as control of air space or border security, might have technical solutions. Perhaps the United States could accelerate sharing of early-warning radar data with Israel—and help with the Iranian threat at the same time. I talked to Bob Gates and asked if the Joint Staff could help Jim Jones. Gates readily agreed, though there was some resistance in the Joint Staff to becoming deeply involved in what was seen as the “peace process.” My view was that without reliable security arrangements for Israel there would be no agreement. The new Palestinian state had to come into being in a way that enhanced rather than detracted from regional—and Israeli—security. The State Department couldn’t deliver those conditions, but the Pentagon could.

I wanted to make sure that the key Arabs knew what was going on too, though I was pretty sure Abbas was briefing them. The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, was the king’s most trusted advisor. Adel’s grandfather had worked for the king’s grandfather; he was as close as possible to being a member of the royal family without actually being in the al-Saud bloodline. I told Adel what I’d heard from Olmert, presenting the ideas about Jerusalem as my own so as to shield the Israeli. He promised to share the information with the king only. I assumed he’d also tell Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister. That was fine. One good thing about the Saudis was that they didn’t leak.

Before leaving the region, I had talked to the king of Jordan. I didn’t ask him for any specific commitments, but I knew that he would come along if and when a deal was imminent. In fact, no Arab was going to fully commit until we were on the cusp of an agreement; my job was to get Olmert and Abbas to that place and then ask the Arabs for help.

The Egyptians were somewhat more complicated interlocutors because they do leak. Nonetheless, I took the foreign minister into my confidence, as well as Omar Suleiman, the chief of internal security and the closest person to Mubarak. The Egyptian president apparently told his advisors that we’d never succeed and I’d crash down in a heap. But of course he didn’t say that to my face. The truth was that Mubarak had never really forgiven me for my Cairo speech of June 2005, in which I’d used unprecedented language to call for political reform in Egypt and the region. I understood that, but I needed Egypt in order to conclude a deal.

The President, Steve, and I sat in the Oval and reviewed the bidding. “It sounds like he’s serious—really serious,” the President said.

“Yes, he is,” I replied, “and he knows he’s running out of time.” The rumor mill was churning away about Olmert. An investigation was under way into a variety of corruption allegations, including charges that he had diverted political contributions for personal use. The word “indictment” was being thrown around with some regularity. We agreed that we’d ignore the storm clouds and work with the prime minister until it was no longer possible to do so. And I would intensify my work with Abu Alaa and Tzipi to see if we could sync the two negotiating tracks—or at least get them closer. It was not the process that we’d envisioned at Annapolis, but it was the one we had—and it had a chance of succeeding.

When we returned to Israel later in May for the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, the President addressed the Knesset. It was clear that Israelis believed they had no better friend than George W. Bush. His speech was emotional and showed great empathy for Israel’s continued sense of vulnerability.

I had reviewed and approved the speech. Now, listening to it, I thought it should have done more. Somehow the President should have used the moment to challenge the Israelis to make tough decisions—the peace process wasn’t even mentioned. How did I let that happen? I wondered. I’m certain that there would have been no objection to language about Annapolis—but somehow it didn’t get done. It was a missed opportunity for diplomacy but a triumph for U.S.-Israeli friendship.

Publicly challenging the Israelis to make a bold move might not have been the right call, though, given the need to bolster Olmert against the growing storm clouds of legal and political trouble. The President said later that watching the members of the Knesset sitting next to the prime minister reminded him of sharks circling their prey as they suspiciously eyed both him and one another. That was precisely the state of affairs. The prime minister’s days were numbered.

THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN issue was starting to take a lot of time. After years of criticism that we hadn’t been active enough, there were suddenly those—both in the press and in the expert community—who implied that we were wasting our time. My trips to the region were increasingly mocked as useless talking sessions with no discernible progress. Arshad Mohammed of Reuters and others pressed me endlessly on what we were trying to achieve. After meeting with Abu Alaa and Tzipi, I could only point obliquely to the “seriousness” of the parties. Indeed they were methodically going through the issues and coming to agreement on a few—some of consequence, including the need to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 line with agreed swaps (and, as Tzipi always added, taking into account the population realities on the ground, meaning the settlements). I could, of course, say even less about what Olmert and Abbas were doing. I swallowed my pride as pundits held forth about the empty Annapolis process. Keep your head in the game and your ego in check, I told myself. They don’t know what they are talking about.

IN MY LAST YEAR, I was finding it hard to deliver on all of the promises that I’d made to make “one last visit” to other parts of the world. In all honesty, my focus was on the Middle East peace process where I thought we might get a breakthrough; solidification of the progress in Iraq; and finding ways to reverse the growing negative trends in Afghanistan. I felt too that we had to make one last push in the Six-Party Talks and the P5+1 to stop the forward progress of the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. I managed a quick stop in Iceland on May 30, a visit that I promised in exchange for the leadership’s agreement to our redeployment of four F-15 fighters and 1,200 servicemen and -women from the base at Keflavík to areas around the world where they were needed more. Don Rumsfeld had first raised the issue in 2001, noting correctly that there was no Soviet threat to confront in Icelandic airspace. The Icelanders had gone crazy, claiming that we were reneging on the 1951 U.S.–Republic of Iceland bilateral defense agreement. It took five years, but we finally worked out a deal that signaled our continuing commitment to our ally and permitted the sensible redeployment. My brief visit to the country, which is built on volcanic rock, was short but not without controversy. As I arrived, I learned that the Icelandic Parliament had passed a resolution condemning Guantánamo. At the press conference, I simply suggested that the Parliament do its homework and referred it to the assessment by the Belgian official who had called it a “model prison.” I was tired of nonsense like this and was perhaps less diplomatic as my time wound down.

On the other hand, Latin America was not just a stop to fulfill a promise. I had really wanted to go back to the region and found the time in March for a two-day trip. My brief stop in Chile felt rushed, and I was sorry for that. The foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, had been a terrific colleague, and I was glad that we found time to launch a program of educational exchanges between our countries in 2007, as well as a Chile-California partnership during my 2008 trip. Not long after becoming foreign minister, Alejandro had mentioned the desire to improve the English-language skills of Chileans so that they could pursue graduate education in the United States. We showed that bureaucracies could get things done rather quickly.

I’m a firm believer in the importance of educational exchanges. That comes in part from my own experience at Stanford with foreign students who are exposed to the United States and our values. In fact, when I was provost at Stanford, we started a program called the New Democracy Fellows for students from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I have encountered some of them now working at high levels of government and business, including Alexei Sitnikov, my PhD student, who regularly advises the Russian presidency. Clearly, not all experiences are positive. But overwhelmingly, foreign students come to appreciate Americans as people even if they don’t like our policies. And many of those young people go on to become leaders in their countries.

Unfortunately, after September 11, 2001, we experienced a precipitous decline in the number of foreigners studying in the United States. The necessary tightening of our visa programs produced unintended consequences. Often the visa application process was so lengthy that a student missed the start of the school year. It became difficult for students to take up their studies, go home for vacation, and return in time for the new semester due to the need to apply for a visa each time. Those were real constraints. But there were problems of perception too, a feeling that the United States did not want foreign students and indeed feared them.

The issue would come up in almost every conversation between the President and foreign leaders—and not just in the Middle East. I remember sitting with the prime minister of Singapore, who introduced his Cabinet members, each of whom had studied in the United States. “You are jeopardizing one of your greatest strengths,” he had said. “Our young people think you don’t want them in the United States, and they’re going to other places like England now.” The President was appalled to learn how dramatically student exchanges had been curtailed, and when I became secretary it was one of the issues he asked about most frequently: “How are we doing at getting students into the United States?” By 2007 I was able to tell him that we’d recovered from the post-9/11 slump and students again were studying in the United States in increasing numbers.

Still, I felt that exchanges shouldn’t be a one-way street. Americans are notoriously monolingual and, frankly, a bit provincial. I’ve long been an advocate of study-abroad programs. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and I teamed up to spotlight the importance of student exchanges, holding the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education in 2006. One great strength of the American higher education system is its diversity, so we invited leaders from community colleges, liberal arts schools, and private and public research universities. Margaret would visit countries in South America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia with several university presidents to further emphasize the importance of the issue.

If the stop in Chile underscored our commitment to educational exchange, my trip to Brazil was a chance to showcase the administration’s—and particularly my—advocacy of minority rights in Latin America. It was very difficult to get the press to pay attention to issues beyond the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. I was determined to structure my trip to Brazil in a way that brought focus to the breadth of our efforts in Latin America. Our ambassador, Cliff Sobel, had the perfect idea: why not go to Salvador da Bahia, the cultural home of Afro-Brazilians?

I’d visited Brazil for the first time in 1993 as a Chevron director. The company named oil tankers after members of the board of directors, and when my turn came, the christening ceremony was in Rio. In a grand ceremony, accompanied by five days of parties, I launched the Condoleezza Rice, a 136,000-ton supertanker. Anna Perez, who worked for Chevron (and would later work for me at the White House), had thoughtfully suggested renaming the ship when I became national security advisor, rightfully fearing that it might draw the attention of an enterprising terrorist. So the Condoleezza Rice is no more, but it was fun to have a supertanker bear my name for a while.

During the trip, I was somewhat taken aback by the racial divide in Brazil. Brazilians had always protested that they had no race problem. Yet it seemed to me that the field hands were Africans (dark-skinned), the service personnel were mulatto (biracial), and the government officials were European/Portuguese. Brazil was the country most similar to the United States in its ethnic makeup, but it seemed to have experienced little of the civil rights revolution that had changed the face of American politics and society.

Latin American leaders were comfortable talking to me about their struggles with racial equality and efforts at affirmative action. Indeed President Uribe of Colombia had called me the day that he announced the appointment of his first Afro-Colombian to a cabinet post. Perhaps leaders such as Uribe were comfortable because I was honest with them about America’s own struggles. In fact, as I often said, the U.S. State Department was no model of racial diversity. “I can go all day and not see another person who looks like me,” I told the director general in advocating for more aggressive minority hiring. There were of course legendary black Foreign Service officers—among them Ambassadors Ruth Davis, Edward Perkins, and Horace Dawson—but they were few and far between. I appointed the department’s first chief diversity officer, Barry L. Wells, and championed programs like the Pickering Fellows and the Rangel Fellows to interest minorities in Foreign Service careers. Still, even after the terms of consecutive black secretaries of state, the racial makeup of the diplomatic corps hardly “looks like America.” This is a tragedy for a country that is the model of multiethnic democracy. I know that Colin felt the same way.

But as disappointing as the U.S. record is on this score, the rest of the world is still light-years behind. Thus, I took note when President Lula criticized his own country’s record on race relations, condemning discrimination in unambiguous terms in a November 2007 statement. Before departing Brasilia, I signed the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial Discrimination with the Afro-Brazilian minister Édson Santos and my counterpart, foreign minister Celso Amorim.

Then I headed for Bahia, the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture and life. I loved it. We went to a church that had been built by African slaves. It had taken one hundred years because the men had constructed it on their one day off, Sunday. Simple yet elegant, the small sanctuary was as spiritual as any I had ever seen. Then we emerged into the square, lined by the citizens of Bahia. Yes, there were a few protesters who made the evening news. But my memories will always be of the black faces and outstretched hands—citizens happy to see a fellow daughter of the African diaspora.

The night before, the governor had thrown a dinner for me quite unlike the stuffy, formal affairs to which I was accustomed. The food was great—a bit like my Louisiana grandmother’s Creole cooking—and the dancing, even better. Gilberto Gil, the best-known Afro-Brazilian jazz musician, entertained and then we all got up and danced, first in the room and then on the patio in the warm Brazilian night. I love Brazil and the Brazilians. I told myself, You’ll come back here when you can really have fun!

TO BE HONEST, there just wasn’t much time for experiences like Bahia, even though I thought them important to my work as secretary. The core tasks of the administration’s last year were pretty clear and most involved the Middle East. Nothing, of course, was more critical than to stabilize Iraq before the end of the President’s tenure. And fortunately, there was finally something to work with. There was almost universal acknowledgment that we’d turned a corner, and the chorus of voices decrying our involvement in a “civil war” had largely fallen silent.

The security situation in Iraq had definitely improved, but it was more than that. The government was beginning to function, unevenly but more effectively, and Prime Minister Maliki and the other leaders were showing maturity in their leadership of the country. As we approached the third neighbor’s meeting, scheduled for April 22, the Iraqis, as David Welch put it, were back. When we convened in Kuwait that morning, the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different than in Sharm el-Sheik about a year before. Then there had been a mournful recounting of the troubles of Iraq.

Now country after country stood to congratulate the Iraqis on their progress and pledge cooperation with them. “This is so different,” I said to David and Ryan Crocker. “They almost seem deferential.”

“Oh, they are,” my expert Arabists said. “The Arabs don’t like the Iraqis, but they do respect them. They’re hoping not to have to fear them again.” I suddenly got it. But the Iranian representative seemed to have pulled the wrong script from his briefcase. He was still talking about the collapse of Iraq and blaming the chaos on the United States. Most of the delegates just rolled their eyes.

The night before the conference when I arrived in Kuwait City, Ryan Crocker rode with me to see Maliki. “You need to get him to be a little more gracious in his comments tomorrow,” Ryan told me.

“Okay, but what is he planning to say?”

“He’ll tell you,” the ambassador said, chuckling.

Maliki and I talked about the upcoming meeting and what we wanted to achieve. He said he didn’t want much from the other countries and would simply report on Iraq’s progress. Then he told me how he’d open his remarks, and I understood Ryan’s concern. “I’m going to say thank you to all of you who stayed with us through tough times—especially those who helped us early. That will mean the United States and some of the Europeans,” he said. “Then I’m going to turn to my ‘brothers’ [meaning the Arabs] and say, ‘And to the rest of you, the hell with you,’” he declared with a twinkle in his eye.

I laughed with him and replied, “Prime Minister, let’s work on that a little bit.” His speech was, of course, fine—but it did have a little edge, reminding the gathering that some had doubted the Iraqi people. It was a very good moment for him. I had come to like and respect Nouri al-Maliki.

I wouldn’t have expected that scene several months before. In late 2007 Maliki had experienced a near revolt in the leadership circle. The prime minister was making no friends with his high-handed leadership style and inability to get anything done. He apparently held secret meetings to which he didn’t invite other stakeholders and sometimes called meetings of the leadership and then refused to show up. The Iraqis were making minimal progress on the checklist the U.S. Congress had demanded on everything from passing budgets to transferring funds to the provinces to passing an oil law and new de-Baathification standards.

Bob Gates had taken a trip to Baghdad and returned to tell the President that Talabani, Hashimi, and First Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi were plotting to overthrow the prime minister—constitutionally, of course. Their idea was to force a vote of confidence in the Parliament, which they were sure Maliki would lose if the United States made clear that it had lost faith in the prime minister. Or, even better from their point of view, maybe we could just get Maliki to resign. Bob told the President that he was worried; perhaps he hadn’t shot the idea down as forcefully as he should have. “They might think this is what we want,” he said. “They know we’re not happy with him either.”

I’d scheduled a trip to Baghdad the following week, on the heels of a trip to the Middle East to talk about the Annapolis Conference. “You need to make sure they understand we’re not for overthrowing Maliki,” the President told me. I said I would deliver the message.

Arriving in Baghdad, I went first to see the prime minister. We met alone (along with my trusted interpreter Mustafa Sayid). I didn’t wait long to broach the subject. “Mr. Prime Minister, you have real trouble with the other leaders. But I am here to tell you that the United States does not want to see your government dismissed. We are not in favor of a change of prime minister,” I said. Maliki was visibly relieved. Then I continued a little beyond my guidance from Washington. “But you’re doing a terrible job. You’re failing. And we aren’t for that either,” I said sternly.

I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not what he said. “I’ve been waiting to have this talk for weeks. I’m so happy you came. Thank you.” As Sayid translated, I couldn’t believe my ears. Did he hear me tell him that he’s doing a terrible job? I wondered. I asked Sayid to repeat what I’d said. “Yes, yes. I am so glad to talk about this,” he repeated, smiling broadly. I was floored but decided to go with it.

“Let’s work on a program to get you out of this mess.” I then suggested a series of steps including regular meetings with the other leaders.

“Okay, that’s a good idea,” he replied. I asked him to repeat the steps three times. He dutifully did.

“Now, Prime Minister, I have one more request,” I said, pushing my luck a bit. “I have a meeting with President Talabani and the others; come and go with me.”

That was a bridge too far. “No, I’ll meet with them later,” he countered.

“No, we have to go now,” I said. So we did. I got into my car, and he followed me to Talabani’s house, where the surprised president of Iraq welcomed his “brother” the prime minister with a big bear hug. I went through the details of what we’d agreed to do, and Maliki left. Talabani could tell right away that there would be no U.S.-sanctioned constitutional coup. Over lunch the others complained about Maliki, but the plotting was over.

The choice to back Maliki had been a wise one, a fact that became clear in March 2008 when the prime minister took a chance to demonstrate his leadership. Iraqi security forces had finally begun to take on the Shia extremists beholden to Muqtada al-Sadr in the south of the country, particularly in Basra, Iraq’s third-largest city. Dave Petraeus had worked out a careful plan with the Defense Ministry, one that put the Iraqis in the lead but relied on significant U.S. support. Everything was going well and proceeding deliberately.

Then the Iraqis suddenly accelerated the timetable without Dave’s knowledge. Providing just a few days’ notice, the Iraqi army rushed south on March 24, accompanied by Maliki himself, who personally oversaw the operation from the field.

There was a National Security Council meeting that day with, as usual, Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker attending by videoconference. The two of them were ashen. “He’s gone and done it now. This could fail. Then what will we do?” The general and the ambassador took turns excoriating Maliki for his incompetence and recklessness. Then each of us took turns doing the same. No one had anything good to say about him. We were all trying to figure out how to stop him.

The President hadn’t said anything. Then he did. “I think he’s showing leadership,” he said. “Maybe it’s not the way I would have done it. But he’s the prime minister of his country. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.” George W. Bush was right. His politician’s instinct told him that Maliki needed to demonstrate courage and control and that he was doing precisely that.

The Basra adventure was a resounding success. The Iraqi army rode triumphantly into the city, taking back the key port of Umm Qasr as the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army abandoned its posts. For better or worse, Iraqis were going to do things their way—not ours.

UNFORTUNATELY, EVEN as Iraq and the Palestinian situation were improving, Lebanon was worsening. The pro-Western March 14 government of Fouad Siniora had survived crisis after crisis. In the early part of the year, the March 14 ministers had actually slept in their offices, refusing to bend to the Hezbollah-inspired mobs in the streets or the assassins who were trying to systematically eliminate their majority in the Parliament by quite literally eliminating (killing, in other words) the parliamentarians. It was a crazy place.

Tensions had been high since Siniora’s government had made clear that it would support the UN commission of inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Though the investigation’s preliminary findings pointed to the involvement of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence, by late 2007 the inquiry had a new lead. A break in the case involving the alleged hit team’s cell phone records would lead to a new and even more controversial conclusion: it would directly implicate Hezbollah. And it would raise already simmering sectarian tensions to a boil, leading to skirmishes between extremist and democratic forces, with neither side able to gain the upper hand.

In May the usually careful Siniora made a mistake. He fired a security official with ties to Hezbollah and tried to assert state control over the group’s telecommunications network. Hezbollah reacted in rage, sending its militia out into the streets and pursuing government supporters. The group’s gunmen took over parts of Beirut and some surrounding towns and villages, including Druze enclaves under the protection of March 14 supporter Walid Jumblatt.

Hezbollah had demonstrated what it could do by force. Meanwhile, the Lebanese army stood by, fearful that its entry could spark a civil war. The Qatari ruler eventually worked out a power-sharing arrangement that ended the eighteen-month stalemate over who would become the country’s next president. The head of the national army, Michel Suleiman, was elected as a compromise candidate, and the Parliament finally reconvened. There was no doubt that Hezbollah and its allies, whose walkout had started the standoff, had won something of a victory. The March 14 forces felt despondent and defeated.

The government had clearly sustained a blow, but Hezbollah had paid a price too. In cafés and on street corners throughout Beirut there was dismay at Hezbollah’s turning its arms on Lebanese. Hezbollah was supposed to be a resistance army against Israel, but it had showed itself to be just another violent faction, willing to kill Lebanese and throw the country into turmoil. For the time being, though, the extremists had regained their footing, exerting a power that was based on fear.

I decided to go to Lebanon in June after the Qatari deal to show support for the March 14 politicians. It was the least I could do. I told Steve Hadley that I felt we’d been unable to do enough to help our friends in Lebanon—or to punish our enemies. But that was Lebanon: a country in a perpetual state of instability and deadlock.

I had a trip planned to Jerusalem and decided to stop in Beirut on the way home. We didn’t announce the visit but almost everyone assumed I’d go to Lebanon while in the region. My security detail didn’t want me to fly the “blue and white” into the airport, which was known to be “owned” by Hezbollah, particularly since there had been some threats on extremist websites. “We can fly to Cyprus and chopper onto the embassy grounds and then drive to the meetings,” Marty Kraus, the head of my security detail, said. But I had a different vision. “No. We’re landing the blue and white at the airport. I am going to get off the plane and be received by the foreign minister in front of the cameras and then we’ll drive to the meetings. The secretary of state isn’t going into Lebanon under cover as if we think it’s a war zone.” It was the only time I overruled Marty. It was so crucial in this circumstance that the United States be seen as having a presence. Everything we’d achieved since Syrian forces left was on the line. We were going to signal support for the sovereign government—and show no fear. And, as I told Marty, Hezbollah wasn’t suicidal. Did it really want to kill the U.S. secretary of state and bring the force of the United States down on itself?

It was my last trip to Lebanon. There had been so many ups and downs. But at least there was a legitimate democratic government—even if the extremists had to be tolerated within it. And though it would take a year to do so, the Lebanese people would punish Hezbollah for the use of the militia against their countrymen. In the 2009 elections, the “Party of God” lost badly. Hassan Nasrallah was reduced to complaining that the electoral districts had been poorly drawn. That was at least a step forward, even if one could be sure that there would be steps backward as well. A completely free and democratic Lebanon was still a long way off. But thanks to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the southern border, it was closer than when we began.