Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (53 page)

We worked on it for several weeks over the course of June and July 2010. Allawi and Iraqiyya seemed interested. Maliki agreed to consider it, although I suspected he was only being cooperative from being certain in the knowledge that Allawi would not take it as long as the prime minister remained the key position (as the constitution intended). There was no getting around that situation. I increasingly believed that Maliki would eventually prevail as the next prime minister, but it was a conclusion not so much based on any groundswell of support for him, as it was on the complete lack of viable alternatives. Outside of his own State of Law coalition, he seemed to have little support among the Shia, the Kurds, and of course the Sunni for a second term. But as I told the president and the secretary in a June note, no one else seemed to have any better prospects. A few names were being floated: Adel Abd al-Mahdi (every Washington visitor’s favorite Shia leader because he spoke perfect English and
for the good reason that he was educated and practical); Oil Minister Shahristani, because he seemed to have clerical support as well as being an English-speaking technocrat; Ali al-Adeeb, because he was a powerful parliamentarian; and/or Ibrahim al-Jaafari, because he had been prime minister before.

Yet none of these putative candidates seemed to have a remote chance of competing with Maliki for the position. For the United States in the summer of 2010 to be seen blackballing a leading candidate, the sitting prime minister at that, in favor of putting forward one of our dark-horse favorites, would have been completely out of step with Iraq’s growing sense of sovereignty. And yet that kind of paternalism was what a few Iraqi watchers, for whom time had frozen sometime early in the occupation, were suggesting in Washington, D.C., and at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

• • •

As the summer wore on, Maliki, who unlike Allawi rarely left the country or even, it seemed, his office, started making progress with the other Shia and some small Sunni parties. While no one was overtly committing to him, it was clear that he was building the momentum to expand well beyond the 89 seats he already controlled. Allawi, still stuck at 91 seats, at one point met with the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Damascus, a bizarre meeting evidently arranged for Allawi by Syrian president Bashar Assad, who (probably) had tired of Maliki and his public allegations against the Syrians for terrorist attacks in Iraq. Allawi’s meeting with Sadr didn’t lead to anything.

In the meantime, Barzani began to soften his line with Maliki, and to say that Maliki might be an acceptable choice after all. Barzani had no interest in a Kurdish-Shia alliance that would isolate the Sunnis, but he had realized, just as I had, that there were no good alternatives to Maliki.

In early August Barzani invited me to his hometown of Barzan, up in Kurdistan, but this time instead of hiking, the outdoor activity would be to go swimming and jet-skiing in the ice-cold Zab River. Barzani had
done this once before with Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-American who had served as U.S. ambassador before Ambassador Crocker. Never having been on a jet-ski before, I listened to Barzani’s instructions carefully as I got on behind him and held on for dear life. We raced up river for ten minutes, dodging menacing rocks in the water, before disembarking to float leisurely wearing our life preservers back to the starting point. The mountain water was cold and refreshing, a contrast to the summer air mercilessly heated in the midday sun.

After four round trips, we had a feast by the side of the river. We talked nonstop about the political deadlock and about Barzani’s welcome decision to invite Maliki to his palace in Sulehaddin, above the Kurdish capital of Erbil the next day. By prearrangement, at 4
P.M.
my cell phone rang and a voice, identified as “Joe,” was on the other end of the line, as in Vice President Biden. I gave the phone to Barzani, who sat down on a folding chair cupping his other ear to reduce the roar of the river. He and “Joe” had a good discussion about the importance of the next day. We knew that the upcoming meeting with Maliki would make or break the government formation.

I said farewell to Barzani that evening outside the guesthouse. I knew it was my last visit to Kurdistan, and given that I was leaving Iraq a few days later, and my career in the Foreign Service a few days after that, I knew it was my last chance at diplomatic deal making. The odds are often stacked against these deals working out, and when they do they are sometimes short-lived, but the sense that one has done everything possible is a very good one. And better yet was the appreciation for someone like Barzani, who, unlike a visiting diplomat, has to live with the consequences that any political deal would involve. We performed our awkward hugs and kisses before I headed to the helicopter for the trip back to Baghdad.

I met Maliki in the morning and told him I thought the road was open to a rapprochement with Barzani, provided he was willing to address Kurdish concerns about their oil contracts and previous understandings about disputed territory with Arab Iraq. Much later that day, word
came from Erbil that the meeting between Maliki and Barzani had gone well. They had met over a late lunch and then gone out in front of the cameras. They pledged to work together for “inclusive” government—i.e., there would be a Sunni component as well. Now a new government seemed only a matter of time, a comforting thought, as I got ready for my departure.

Three days later, I climbed in my last Black Hawk helicopter, strapped myself into the seat next to the window, and rose up from the embassy landing pad. We crossed out over Baghdad, its bright city lights shining in the gathering dusk. At the airport I said farewell to my security detail, now led by Ian Pavis, who had replaced Derek Dela-Cruz a couple of months before, and got onto a small plane en route to Kuwait. I slept the entire distance.

In Washington a day later, Secretary Hillary Clinton asked to see me in between appointments. She was busy that day, and even though it was my last day in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer, I knew she had other things going. I quickly briefed her on the embassy operations, and said how pleased I was that a very good successor, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Jim Jeffrey, had been named to follow me and would be arriving in another day. I told her about my next career as dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and thanked her for her support in allowing me to leave Baghdad and visit there in May to interview for the position. She warmly said good-bye and thanked me for my thirty-three years of service, a long time, I acknowledged. And then she asked me a question as I started walking through the outer door of her office.

“Who could have ever thought Maliki should have a second term?”

“Beats me,” I answered.

• • •

A couple of months later I was in Washington again, and this time would have the opportunity to see Dick Holbrooke, who had always seemed to be on the road when I occasionally visited Washington from Iraq. I
realized I hadn’t actually seen him since early 2009, though we had talked occasionally on the phone when I was in Baghdad. I called him from a cab at the airport.

“You’re not going to a hotel, Chris. Forget it. You’re staying with me. Kati and I have a little place in Georgetown. We can have dinner at La Chaumière—you remember, my favorite French restaurant—and walk to our townhouse from there.”

“Okay, okay, that’s what we’ll do. See you at the restaurant when, seven, seven thirty?”

“Would eight forty-five or nine work for you?”

“Um, eight forty-five? Sure, Dick, whatever. See you then.”

He walked into the restaurant at nine fifteen, smiling and claiming that he had been waiting at the bar for ten minutes.

“I thought we were going to meet at the bar.”

“No, Dick, we never said anything about the bar. Besides, you hardly drink.”

“I’m going to have a glass of white wine,” he announced, changing the subject.

“Dick, where have you been today? You look a little tired.”

“I got in from Pakistan this morning at around four thirty
A.M.
It was a long trip. Then I had lots of meetings at the White House. I just came from a speech at Brookings. Strobe says “hi.” (Strobe Talbott had by this time taken the helm of the Brookings Institution.)

He did look exhausted, perhaps from his travels that day, but he also looked a lot older than when I had last seen him before heading out to Iraq. He had clearly thrown himself into his work as the coordinator for Afghanistan-Pakistan, but the toll on him seemed enormous, albeit magnified by the fact he had just flown in from Pakistan that day and obviously needed some sleep.

We caught up in no time, and soon realized it was midnight; Dick had actually had almost two glasses of white wine before switching to his usual green tea. I had heard that he had some health problems, including
a fainting episode, but he brushed off the subject when I asked and went back to comparing notes on Iraq and Afghanistan, and on dealing with the military, his favorite subject that evening.

“What was that weird little story about you and Odierno not getting along?” he asked. I told him it was a nasty place. Press leaks, even outright press fabrications, were the least of it. In these places, I riffed on, foreigners sometimes take on the habits of the war zone. These places often seem to bring out the worst in everybody, I explained. As for the specific story, I had no idea; I was always proud of my relationship with Odierno, and told Holbrooke about the good times Ray and I had smoking cigars, hitting golf balls into the lake, and talking sports, and of course discussing the mission—the 24/7 experience of Iraq.

“You’d like him. He’s a Yankee fan,” I said, recalling the time Holbrooke had called me up at 4:30
A.M.
in Warsaw in 2003 to tell me the Yankees had just beaten the Red Sox and were going on to the World Series.

“You did the same the next year,” he noted.

We walked up to the townhouse, stopping at a drugstore to buy replacement razor blades. He had no idea what he needed and I found myself holding various packages of blades in my hand. “Do you remember the name? Maybe Gillette? Schick? Track II, or perhaps Track III?”

We entered the darkened house. Apart from his suitcase, which had been put inside the front door at some point during the day, the place hardly looked like anyone lived there. “Sorry, I don’t have anything in the refrigerator; no coffee, either. There might be some tea somewhere.” Looking around the townhouse, I could see he had no life in that house apart from what he did at the State Department, no reading material, no apparent favorite chair. We walked up the narrow wooden staircase, where he showed me the guest room just opposite his. He couldn’t sleep and I stood at the door to his room while he lay on his bed in his clothes, talking and talking about what he was trying to do in Afghanistan. He steered clear of any Washington politics, and I didn’t want to probe about
stories I had heard that he was having problems with people in the White House. After about forty-five minutes I told him I had to get some sleep, because I had to get myself off to the airport for a 7
A.M.
flight. I saw a blanket over on the chair and asked if he’d like me to put it over him. “No, I’m okay,” he said,

I got up at 4:30
A.M.
and tried to slip out of my room down the stairs without waking him.

“Chris, you leaving now?” he called out from his room. “When are you back in D.C.? We need to have a good talk. Let me know.”

“Of course. We’ll talk. We’ll talk not just about Afghanistan and Iraq, but let’s talk about other stuff, too. I miss that. How are the Knicks going to do this year? And by the way, you need to start taking better care of yourself. Get some sleep now.”

I walked out of the townhouse, descending the half dozen steps to the brick sidewalk, streetlights still on in the pre-dawn. The walk was covered with soggy leaves from the overnight rain. It was a chilly late October morning, and I pulled my light coat up against a cold breeze. As I waited momentarily for the taxi, I reflected on how I should have been in closer contact with him while I was in Iraq. He needed me, I realized now, and I needed him, I had to admit to myself. I was determined this time to stay in better touch. Maybe we could work on something. Or maybe just go to a baseball game together.

He died in December, before I could ever see him again.

A
week before Richard Holbrooke died in December 2010, Steve Solarz, the congressman I worked with after my first Korean assignment, passed away as well. Steve was an energetic representative from Brooklyn who never saw a problem in the world he didn’t want to jump on and solve. A few months later in 2011, Larry Eagleburger, my first mentor, died. At his memorial service I listened to the eulogy by his mentor, Henry Kissinger. In this grim harvest of my own mentors, it was not to say that diplomacy died, but replacements for these pragmatic problem solvers were slow in coming.

I spent thirty-three years in America’s foreign service. My dad spent three decades in it as he and my mother took their five children around the world. In all these years, what has not changed is that the world still looks to the United States to lead by example; what has changed is how we are responding to these expectations. We live in a time when ideology is hotly debated and where there is a diminished consensus, and a collapsing middle ground about who we are and what our values are and
how we pursue them. One of the casualties is our willingness to talk to all sides. One might think that the logic of the old adage that one does not need to make peace with one’s friends would be enough. But having had to defend my role in talking with Milosevic in the midst of the Yugoslav wars, or in negotiating with the North Koreans, that seems not so.

Finding practical answers to tough problems seems to take a backseat to ideology. Nowhere is this issue more pronounced than in weighing the rapid imposition of democracy against more evolving change. We must always be clear about human rights. These rights are a set of international values embraced by the United Nations Charter and many of the founding documents of our era. But human rights are not identical with democracy, which is a system of governance, certainly the best to protect those values. Our diplomats must be clear about human rights, but in a country’s choice of governance, we would do well to lower our voices and offer our help when asked. Pragmatism offers no refuge for those in need of instant gratification, but its track record in implementing those values is better than armed intervention. Diplomacy is more complex than three-dimensional chess in that time, the fourth dimension, is also a crucial factor.