Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

The Fallujah episode underscored the uncertain way Bush was managing the war from Washington. One minute he wanted to be tough; the next he was convinced the whole enterprise would unravel. His instinct was to defer to the people on the ground, but when the people on the ground disagreed among themselves, he was reluctant to mediate or insert himself. In his head were images of Lyndon Johnson picking out bombing targets during the Vietnam War, an object lesson, he felt, in what presidents should not do. “You fight the war, and I’ll provide you with political cover,” he told the generals more than once. But in this instance, his equivocation had a cost. Conway concluded, “We certainly increased the level of animosity that existed.” Along with stirring the Sadr hornet’s nest without capturing him, the Fallujah debacle led Sanchez to call those days in March and April “a strategic disaster for America’s mission in Iraq.” Taken together, he said, “our actions had undeniably ignited a civil war in Iraq.”