Chapter 164: Kurdish Aftermath

I called a meeting of the National Security Council for Monday morning the 8^th. For the first time in months, we had an abundance of smiles around the table, and I possessed one of them. I wanted this damn mess over and done with, before it defined my Presidency like it had once defined George Bush’s.

We started with a quick briefing on whatever was new from Richard Clarke. Nothing much had come up overnight. Saddam and Qusay were now confirmed dead, and Uday was on the run, though he was spouting defiance. The Revolutionary Council was proclaiming power and at the moment had a lock on what was happening. There were some elements arguing with them, but they needed a focus point to coalesce around, and Uday Hussein was simply too much of a mad dog for them to tolerate. Without a central figure to rally around, they would be rounded up and either be put down or forced to join in.

Otherwise, it was a matter of winding this sucker down, and quickly. The Pentagon went along with my order to send the 1^st Armored back to Texas. As was pointed out by several people, it would take just as long to load them up and send them home as it took to get them there, so if the Iraqis decided to get stupid in the next few weeks, we would still have overwhelming force available. I gave a wry grimace at that. It was true, though. If the Iraqi Revolutionary Council fell apart, we would be able to turn things around for a few weeks at least.

Condi Rice got the biggest jobs, and she had standing orders to draft the rest of us as needed, no questions asked! Job Number One was to conclude some form of peace treaty with the Iraqis. Technically it would be between the Iraqis and the Kurds, with an acknowledgement of the new borders, and with the rest of the Coalition signing on as Kurdish defenders. That was a big enough job right there, But Job Number Two was to formally create the Republic of Kurdistan as a new nation and get them into the United Nations and generate a few peace treaties with some neighbors.

As part of the diplomatic offensive, I was heading to the Middle East, with stops in Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kurdistan. I needed to talk to the various leaders involved and make plans. The critical countries were Turkey, Israel, and Kurdistan. The other three were more formalities - thank you for your recent support and what can we do to promote peace in the Middle East.

Israel was still unhappy about what happened with the Scuds. Everybody’s best guess was that they wanted Iraq’s WMD plans dead and buried, and any Scuds still around to be destroyed. Oh, and would we be so kind as to maintain a weapons embargo on them, along with all the other sanctions? That wasn’t going to happen. Since most of the sanctions had been against Saddam Hussein, and he wasn’t around anymore, we had about zero reason to keep the sanctions in place. I told Condi not to even try to make the argument. The country had been almost leveled and would take decades to rebuild. We wouldn’t pay for the rebuilding (I was not about to institute an Arab Marshall Plan!) but if they could get some money from the Saudis, they were welcome to try. It would be a few years before anybody knew who was going to rise to the top of the pile in the Council, and even longer before they would be strong enough to act frisky again.

Turkey was expected to be easier to deal with by a wide margin. After all, the good guys had won, and Turkey was on the side that wore the white hats. I could fly to Ankara, meet with Erdogan, visit Incirlik and Adana, make a donation to rebuild a hospital, thank their Air Force, and so forth. There was no reason we couldn’t get a nice treaty going between them and the Kurds.

Kurdistan was likely to be just as good. After all, we had just pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, and they were aware of it. Sign a peace treaty, visit the battle sites, condemn chemical warfare, and get the Kurds and the Turks to sign a formal peace treaty. Meanwhile, maybe I could introduce the Kurdish President to the President of ExxonMobil while I was at it. They had all that lovely oil that was just waiting for a Turkish pipeline to be built. The Brits would probably do the same thing with BP. Fair’s fair. The Kurds had a lot of oil, and now it was going to be legally theirs to play with.

I told Condi to get her track shoes on, because there was a lot on her plate. She needed to line up a trip for me in a few weeks, but some of the other stuff would take as long as it took. If she needed to play shuttle diplomat, she could use whichever plane in the fleet she needed. This could be her golden moment to shine, and I would let her have as much credit as she wanted. Privately, I told her to try and show John McCain helping, since it made for good politics in the 2008 campaign. It showed his ‘foreign policy credentials’, which is something I had lacked when running for Vice President. (Somehow, being airdropped into Nicaragua and escaping back to Honduras while shooting up a drug airstrip didn’t count as foreign policy experience with the chattering classes and owning a multimillion-dollar estate in the Bahamas was not the signal we wanted to send, either.)

On the plus side, John had acquired plenty of foreign policy experience by now. During the Kurdish War, I had used him as a roving emissary to several countries in the region, and he had visited several other countries over the years as well. Foreign policy was one of the few areas where a President had a chance to put his own spin on things, for right or for wrong. Domestically, Presidents were often hemmed in by any number of special interests which limited their actions. Monetary policy was controlled by the semi-independent Federal Reserve, and fiscal and budgetary policy were dominated by a Congress which was all too often bought and sold on K Street.

Only in foreign policy does a President have any room to maneuver. He can launch the country into war or run away from one. He can meet foreign dignitaries, negotiate treaties, make state visits, and impersonate somebody much more important than he really is. The Congress back home might not go along with him, but that is always the case. We do have checks and balances, so they can defund his wars, refuse to ratify his treaties, demand hearings and cooperation, and otherwise make his life miserable. Still, a lot of what he does overseas can be summed up under the general saying, ‘It is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.’

If it works, you can look, well, Presidential! You are a leader striding the world stage! You can look solid and decisive and bring pride to the country. You screw up and you look like a fucking moron, and the rest of the world knows it. Not all our Presidents have been able to pull this off. It was an awful thing to say of the man, but it was the primary reason I had maneuvered him into the World Trade Center on 9-11. George W. Bush was clueless on foreign policy. He allowed himself to be led around by people with an agenda and blundered his way into a pair of disastrous wars. Equally awful, and in some ways even more dangerous, his domestic and fiscal policies involved borrowing staggering sums from the Chinese and other foreign lenders, who suddenly felt that they had a lot more to say about the world than they otherwise deserved.

We had managed to avoid a long-term war in Afghanistan, and the Kurdish War was probably going to cost around $120 billion. That’s a lot of money, I will grant you, but it was basically a one-time event. On my first go, fighting two wars simultaneously had cost about $300 billion a year for over ten years in a row. Further, he had lowered taxes drastically, and had been in a deficit situation almost from the beginning. I had kept taxes at the point where he had left them after his first budget, five percent lower than the Clinton years. We had suffered a deficit in 2002 (9-11), 2006 (Hurricane Katrina), and would do so again in 2007 (Kurdish War). On the other hand, we had shown significant surpluses in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005, more than sufficient to pay for the deficits and continue to pay down the national debt.

Congress hated me for this. The Republicans wanted to lower taxes and damn the deficit, and the Democrats wanted to raise spending and damn the deficit. This was completely understandable, but only in the most self-aggrandizing sense possible. By either raising spending or lowering taxes, they were heroes to their constituents, and would get re-elected. Mind you, by constituents I wasn’t referring to the voters. The average Washington politician couldn’t care less about the voters. They were generally considered clueless sheep. No, the important people they had to impress were the lobbyists who represented their core interests. Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big You-Name-It - they were the ones who coughed up the campaign contributions necessary to pay for the television ads aimed at the sheep.

It was an unbelievably corrupt system. It had been bad enough in 1990 when I had first gotten into politics. Only the fact that I had enough cash that I could ignore the lobbyists allowed me to stay reasonably true to the voters. Since then, it had gotten exponentially worse. Mind you, the lobbyists, the guys with the cash, thought the system was working just fine, and for them it was. Even I was complicit in this. I had about $25 million a year of my own money flowing into the American Renaissance Initiative that allowed me to buy enough politicians to get some stuff passed. I had managed to become one of the largest lobbyists in Washington!

The morality of all of this was questionable at best. The legality was considerably less of an issue. If it was illegal, I could always spend enough lobbying money to make it legal. It was enough to give a Jesuit logician a headache.

In the meantime, we arranged a Middle Eastern visit for the end of May. I couldn’t do it any sooner than that for the simple reason that Holly was graduating on the 21^st of May. Our little girls were growing up and moving on with their lives. Holly was graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. Molly was doing equally well but was just finishing the fourth year of the five-year combined Bachelor/Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering. For once I refused to speak at a graduation. I simply wanted to be Dad and watch my baby graduate. Holly had already been accepted into the graduate program at Princeton, probably one of the best physics programs in the nation, and the rest of us were simply going to be the average family, assuming average families were surrounded by Secret Service agents.

The following weekend was to be the beginning of the Middle Eastern trip, but we weren’t leaving until Sunday the 28^th. Saturday the 27 ^th I was scheduled to speak to the graduating class at West Point. It had been four years since the first time I had spoken there. That had been the first class after 9-11, and the class that Roscoe Buckminster had graduated in. How many of those boys that had graduated that day had I killed since then? Now I was going back, to spout more patriotic bullshit to the boys and girls after our latest war.

It was a supremely depressing take on the whole affair, but I knew it wasn’t accurate. I had been a captain, a battery commander. If I had managed to stay in and stay healthy, I had been already scheduled to do a tour as a battery commander at Sill, and then to attend Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth. Following CGS I would have done a staff tour somewhere, and then taken command of a battalion as a lieutenant colonel. (This all assumed I managed to avoid stepping on my crank in the process, questionable at best. At every rank there is a Darwinian selection process at work, and the higher you go, the tougher it gets.) The important thing to remember was that by the time I made it to battalion command, I would have to accept the loss of subordinates as a cost of doing business, or I would never have been able to maintain my sanity.

Now was simply the same thing on a larger scale. By any measure, the Kurdish War was far and away the most lopsided war in history, even including the initial losses following the Iraqi attack. Kurdish Dragon had been the stuff of legend, a performance worthy of the history books. The Army had proven that the Gulf War was not a onetime event. The Republican Guard hadn’t been beaten; it had been annihilated. The ratio of forces involved, and the ratio of losses inflicted was one for the records! The Battle of the Azwya Valley and the Destruction of the 1^st Hammurabi would be studied on the sand tables for a generation. By any objective measure, the numbers of losses had been very low, but that didn’t mean much to those dead boys’ parents.

I mentioned some of this to Marilyn, both sides of it. She understood and had a simple response. Shut up, smile, and fake it! Marilyn is nothing if not practical. I just smiled and agreed with her and started writing. I ended with the following.

“Four years ago, I spoke here, and I sent that class out into a world changed by the events of 9-11. I told them then that this was a damn dirty business we are in. Those young men and women are most likely first lieutenants right now, with maybe a few captains thrown in. Their pay isn’t the world’s greatest and there is never enough leave to do the things they want. They have missed holidays and birthday parties while standing watches and doing duty. Some have had children born while they were deployed. Others have spent time in hospitals, recovering from wounds and injuries received on duty. Regrettably, some have paid the ultimate price for serving their country.

I also told that class that this was a job worth doing, and it was probably the best job in the world. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Every word I said that day was true, and I have had several of them write me and tell me just how right I was. Now our world has changed again. A few months ago, I had to use those young men and women, and in some cases I had to use them up. The one promise I can make to you is that while I will use you, I will never waste you. What you bring to the Army, and what you bring to your nation, is far too valuable to be thrown away. So, I tell you, like I told them, this is still the best job in the world.

Now we send you to the Army. You have taken the King’s Shilling, and now go to fight the King’s battles. As generations before you have done, stand by your troops, stand by your comrades, and stand by your honor. In your time here you have heard the motto ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ many times. Now you get to find out what that really means. Those who came before you faced this challenge. Now it is your turn. I look forward to seeing how those who follow you look upon your time when it comes time for them to face their challenge. Thank you, and God keep you safe.”

It seemed to be a hit and was quoted on most of the networks that evening, even as I wondered to myself how many of those earnest young faces would be cursing me before their time was up. Then we flew back to Washington for the night, in preparation for our overseas trip.

It was going to take a couple of weeks to see everything and meet everyone. I was taking Marilyn, and for senior staff would have Frank Stouffer and Eric Shinseki. John McCain would stay in Washington, and the traveling party would link up with Condi Rice when we landed in the Middle East. We were figuring one day apiece in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait, two days in Israel, and at least three days in both Turkey and Kurdistan. The Kurdish portion of the trip was questionable for Marilyn, simply because for all practical purposes the place was still a war zone. I wasn’t expecting to find any five-star hotels in Erbil, and some of the places I planned to visit would be very rough battlefields. I would have to give that one some thought.

Our first visit was to Israel. The Israelis were not amused that they had been attacked by the Iraqis and were rather upset by the possibility of poison gas. Condi and I met with Ehud Olmert and several of his top people and reiterated America’s support for the State of Israel. In general, I had taken a hands-off approach to the country. Intellectually I knew that many of their actions regarding new settlements were not helpful to the peace process. That couldn’t be helped, however. There was not a single blessed thing I could do to get them to change their actions. Worse, there was a rabid pro-Israel lobby in America, and if I tried pressuring them, it was going to fail and screw me over back home.

To make matters worse, I informed them that I would be meeting with a representative of the Revolutionary Council at some point and trying to make nice. As part of that, almost all of the economic sanctions that had been in place under Saddam’s rule would be lifted. Some had been international, some had been American, and some had been more local, but they would be ending. They had only been put in place to force him to behave; now that he was gone, they were superfluous. I expected the Iraqis to be going hat in hand to the Saudis for assistance rebuilding, and I was going to talk to the Saudis about that very thing. On the plus side, the Iraqi economy was well and truly trashed. The entire country was going to take a generation to rebuild. They were not a threat to anyone and wouldn’t be for years to come.

The Israelis wanted all the sanctions kept in place to prevent the Iraqis from rearming. Their argument was that any money that got to the new generals in Baghdad would immediately be used to buy new weapons to replace all that we had just destroyed. That was what all generals wanted to do. Olmert and his people were right. That was what would happen, and there was nothing we could do to prevent that. The political reality, however, was that the sanctions would be lifted, and the money would be spent. If Hussein had been able to evade the sanctions and use oil-for-food money to buy stuff from the Russians, we couldn’t stop it now that there was peace. The best I could do was say that we would argue for keeping the sanctions in place at least until Uday was caught and killed. He was still on the loose, but the noose was getting tighter, and we expected him to be either caught or to seek asylum outside of the country.

In total honesty, the Israelis couldn’t claim that I was being anti-Israeli. During the war at least a third of the fighter-bomber sorties by the Air Forces of the various countries had been on Scud hunt missions. They managed to get one, this time, when the Iraqis managed to launch a Scud in plain sight of a drone. The drone had tracked the launcher back to the barn, and while we couldn’t stop the missile, we could plaster the barn the launcher was hiding in, and there were several reported secondary explosions, large ones that indicated a missile storage facility. Likewise, they couldn’t claim I was giving them grief over their internal policies, since I had never said anything about them. I had also promised them a large amount of foreign aid (for instance, ‘reconstruction from war damages’ - total bullshit, since most of the damage was in Palestinian areas that wouldn’t be touched) and a free hand with some future arms purchases.

We spent two days and two nights there, and then flew to Saudi Arabia. That lasted longer than I had expected. I wanted to talk to their Foreign Office about the Iraqi sanctions, and ended up speaking to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to the U.S. who I had kicked out of the country. Awkward! The surprise was when he introduced me to Colonel Rafiq Tawaziq of the Iraqi Revolutionary Council. Tawaziq was their new Foreign Minister and was in Saudi Arabia to make nice. He said the days of Saddam Hussein were behind them and that Iraq wished to rebuild and join in the family of nations and be friends again. Uh, huh! I could believe as much of that as I wanted. Again, we talked about the sanctions and the importance of rebuilding the nation and not the armed forces. I got a definite vibe from the Saudis that they were planning on loaning money to the Iraqis. I wasn’t quite sure where that would all lead, but it would be out of our hands in any case. On the plus side, when the war had started the price of oil had skyrocketed. Now that the war was over, the price had dropped, and the Saudis were pumping extra to make up for the loss of Iraqi production. I wondered how the future increases in Kurdish oil production would be appreciated.

The meeting with the Kuwaitis was all sweetness and light. The Iraqis hadn’t managed to do anything to them but blow up a few sand dunes. They nodded in understanding about the future of sanctions and oil pricing and Kurdish independence. As long as the Iraqis didn’t head south looking for the ‘19^th Province’ again they were relatively content. I toured the air bases where American Air Force fighters had flown from and met with a few Kuwaiti pilots who had flown CAP and interdiction missions.

Jordan was another short visit. They had stayed out of the fighting completely, but that didn’t mean they got off scot-free. Jordan shared a border with Iraq, and during the fighting well over 100,000 Iraqis had fled Iraq and were now in refugee camps inside Jordan. Jordan was a basket case of an economy, and politically unstable due to the presence of so many Palestinians and refugees. There wasn’t much we could do for them, other than cough up some money for aid.

Finally, it was off to Turkey. That was going to be a big trip, three days, in several locations. First, we flew into Ankara, and met with Prime Minister Erdogan. This was considered a big deal, and we met with him and his Ministers, and had a formal state dinner. After two days in Ankara, we then flew to Incirlik, with the Prime Minister joining us for the short flight. In Incirlik I reviewed the troops and met a bunch of generals. I also managed to meet up with a representative of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, one of his nephews. He would travel with us to the Republic of Kurdistan. He had also been one of the individuals who had been involved pre-war with the Kurdistan-Turkey pipeline project. Smart fellow, he spoke fluent Turkish and English.

Also, in Incirlik, we drove into nearby Adana and surveyed the damage from the Scud attacks. The hit on the apartment house was bad enough, but the damage there had been to one side and had been contained. The hit on the hospital had been dead center, and what hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion had burned to the ground. There were hundreds of dead, and a pile of rubble reminiscent of 9-11. I symbolically helped shovel some debris for the cameras, and then presented the director of the hospital a check for $1 million from the Buckman Foundation, along with a promise that America would also be helping. Then I looked straight at the cameras and told everyone listening to send money directly to the Buckman Foundation, along with a note saying it was for the hospital, and I would match the contributions. That got me kissed on the cheeks by every damn Turk in the country!

From Turkey, I was flying to Kurdistan, and that is where things got interesting. For one thing, Erbil was the only place we could fly into. Kirkuk had an airport but had been totally trashed by the Iraqis. Erbil was the place to go anyway since it had served as our airhead in the region and was the Army’s forward operating base. Unfortunately, Erbil was somewhat backward as to facilities. There was no way we were flying the white whale of Air Force One, a Boeing 747, into Erbil! Instead, they cleaned up a C-130 and rigged it for people transport, with a shitload of web seats. I had long experience with that in the old days; they weren’t all that comfortable, but the flight was only about an hour long. Neither of the regular Air Force One pilots was current on his C-130 rating, so I would be chauffeured around by the wing commander, a full colonel, with a major as the co-pilot, and my regular pilot kibitzing from the navigator’s seat.

The only argument Marilyn and I had on the entire trip had been when I told her that she needed to stay in Turkey while I traveled on to Kurdistan. “I’ll be back in a few days. Try not to get in any trouble while I’m away.” I figured we could get her a few photo ops doing something humanitarian.

“Excuse me? Since when do you go and I don’t?” she asked. “I’m going, too!”

Now it was my turn to look horrified. “No, you aren’t! It’s a war zone!”

“There’s a cease fire, remember? The war’s over. I’m going!”

I looked at the others for some assistance, but everybody in the room had decided to look somewhere else. Cowards all! “Marilyn!” I replied, in exasperation.

“Get over it!” she told me.

“Aaaaggh! So be it! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” I threw my hands up in disgusted surrender. We cancelled the photo op plans and Marilyn would travel with me.

The day we were to fly out of Incirlik, the dress code was what I called ‘combat safari casual.’ For me that meant khakis, a denim shirt, a Desert Camouflage Uniform jacket with the proper patches sewn on, and some jump boots. It was comfortable and practical; there has never been a neat and clean C-130, and a suit and wingtips would get messed up. Marilyn wore a long denim skirt and a linen blouse, and a khaki jacket, though with average hiking shoes. She was also wearing a head scarf, which she had worn in all the Muslim countries we had visited. No use pissing off the locals. I simply wore an old and comfortable slouch brim fedora.

The reporters were all wearing safari jackets with tons of pockets and epaulets, most of which looked brand new and still had the pockets starched shut. All they were missing were the pith helmets and riding crops.

Marilyn’s head scarves made for nice gifts from the locals to us. The President is always getting loads of gifts from foreign leaders, and I was no different. The important thing to remember is that they belong to the Office of the President, not to whoever holds the title. As a rule I was not allowed to keep them. I couldn’t turn them down, however, since that would be an insult to whoever gave them to me, so almost everything goes to the National Archives. However, I am allowed to keep a few small odds and ends, generally for no more than a few hundred dollars in value, though they need to be itemized and are considered income for tax purposes, and I must pay income tax on them.

So, if I visit Uganda, and receive a tribal chieftain’s mask and spears, they have to figure the value. Under $350, I can keep them (but I won’t since I have zero use for a mask and spears.) More than that, they go to the National Archives, unless I want to pay for them out of my own pocket. The scarves she received were generally quite lovely, hand woven and dyed, in silk, and in several cases, Marilyn would take the gift and wear it to dinner that evening with our hosts. That certainly earned some personal good will.

We ended up in a waiting room with everybody who was traveling to Erbil. A Hercules could carry about ninety passengers, and I wondered if a single C-130 would be sufficient. About half the plane would be filled with my staff and traveling party, and the rest would be reporters. I was assured that quite a few were already on the ground in Erbil and would be set up to film my arrival. Every one of those waiting was praying that my plane would be shot down by the Iraqis on final approach, so they could get a good picture of it. In the meantime, I simply chatted with a few of the reporters - off camera and off the record! - while we waited. I mentioned to somebody that it had been over twenty years since I had ridden a Herky-Bird, and I wondered if they were any more comfortable than before.

At that point, somebody asked, “Mrs. Buckman, have you ever parachuted, like your husband?”

I snorted out a laugh, and Marilyn answered, “No, I’m not that crazy! That would be my husband. That’s too dangerous for me!” I laughed again at that.

Fletcher Donaldson, who was along for the trip, then asked, “Mister President, is it that dangerous? Has anything ever happened when you were parachuting?”

It was a perfect opportunity to set up Fletcher. I nodded slowly, and answered, “Well, we don’t really talk about that sort of thing, but yes, it’s happened, I had a really bad jump once, in fact.”

He was scribbling furiously on a pad. “What happened?”

“Well, first, after I jumped, my static line tore, so my chute wouldn’t deploy. We were only a few thousand feet up, and the static line pulls the chute from the pack, so I had to pull the chute out by hand! Only that didn’t work; the chute got all tangled up and wouldn’t open properly, so I had to cut it loose. By now, I was barely a thousand feet off the ground, so I had to pull my reserve chute, and that deployed, but as I looked up, I saw that it had torn apart, right down the middle! I was only about five hundred feet up now, and it was really looking bad.”

I waited long enough until he asked, “So? What’d you do next?”

I smiled and gave him a funny look. “That’s easy, Fletcher. I died! What do you think happens when you jump out of a plane without a working parachute?”