The Secretary (52 page)

CONCLUSION

One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America
that is too weak.

—Michael Mandelbaum,
Frugal Superpower

When I came to this job in 2008 and when I decided to write this book, I never imagined
how intense and emotional the journey would be. Up to that point, I had rarely, if
ever, spoken, let alone written, about living through war in Lebanon, but it was a
necessary journey back in time as I explored American power, looking for the answers
to the questions that troubled me as a teenager and a young adult in Lebanon, while
observing the exercise of American power today. Over the last few years, I have struggled
often with my thoughts, questioned my conclusions, even my convictions, about what
the United States represented or stood for, what I believed in, and what kind of world
I wanted to live in.

I did not always settle on definitive answers because the world consists of shades
of gray. But there was one event in my life that I could still only see in black and
white. What had really happened on that October day in 1990, when Syrian troops invaded
Lebanon? Was it true, as many Lebanese believed, that in exchange for contributing
thousands of troops to the coalition to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s troops,
Syria had been given the green light to occupy Lebanon?

Access to information was limited at the time; we relied mostly on local newspapers
and local television and though Lebanon’s media were the most open in the region,
fear of the Syrian occupation prevented in-depth reporting of what had happened. I
had also accepted the narrative of America selling us out for cheap to Syria and moving
on. I found it hard to look back to a day that had been the scariest of my young life,
even after years of war. But, mostly, it is often difficult to look at a painful event
other than through the very narrow prism of personal experience. So for years I had
neatly tucked away my memories, my pain and my anger, and hung on to the tidy explanation
of a deal between Washington and Damascus.

But I had now looked as deeply as possible inside the American foreign policy machine
and had not found the plot; the closest thing was the Book, but its contents were
wonky and benign. Now, for every fantastical scenario, for every irrational fear,
I had an explanation to give to people who asked me what America was up to and why
it acted this or that way. The time had come to unpack my own version of the plot.

I looked up old articles and found that most of the focus around that time was on
Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, with very little written about my country.
In fact, the narrative of a deal at the expense of Lebanon dominated most of the literature
that I found. Many of the newspaper reports focused on efforts by then Secretary of
State James Baker to get President Hafez al-Assad to sign up to the anti-Saddam coalition.
Syria was designated as a state sponsor of terror by the United States, so Baker was
heavily criticized when he decided to visit Damascus in September 1990 to discuss
the coalition. As I prodded further, the outlines of what had happened emerged.

The administration of George H. W. Bush had been working for some time to engage Assad,
a cunning adversary. During his visit to Damascus, Baker was also hoping for a breakthrough
in the hostage crisis in Lebanon, in which thirteen Western hostages were being held,
including six Americans. President Assad had been a close ally of Iran since the Islamic
revolution of 1979. Iran and Syria, thanks to the radical militant groups they promoted,
such as Hezbollah and some Palestinian organizations, held the fate of the hostages
in their hands. I was also reminded that Michel Aoun had asked the United States to
recognize him as the legitimate government in Lebanon, but Washington had refused.
A rival president, Elias Hrawi, had been elected in West Beirut, backed by the Syrians,
and Lebanon’s already complex politics had become even more incomprehensible. Crucially,
Aoun was receiving arms from Saddam Hussein, America’s new enemy number one. Saddam
was hoping to build his own front against the United States with the quixotic Aoun
in Beirut and President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen.

I went to see Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security advisor for George H.
W. Bush at the time. I asked him how and why the United States had given away Lebanon
to Syria. Scowcroft, now in his eighties but still as sharp as ever, looked at me
in silence. I explained why I was asking and wondered whether he was perhaps feeling
remorse at a decision made all these years ago or whether he just didn’t want to tell
me. But Scowcroft couldn’t instantly remember the exact series of events that had
led to the Syrian invasion. All his memories from that period were dominated by the
efforts to oust Saddam from Kuwait and the White House’s desire to build a broad,
U.S.-led coalition that would signal a new kind of international cooperation in the
post–Cold War world.

I was crestfallen. I could not fathom that a day that had left such an indelible mark
on me and had been such a turning point for Lebanon was not a vivid memory for one
of the men who had been at the heart of the decision making in the White House at
the time. As a reporter in Beirut, I knew that Lebanon was not on the minds of all
officials in Washington at all times. Since arriving in the United States I had written
about countries being just a page in the Book and sat in the briefing room listening
to a spokesperson answer questions about country after country, like a pop quiz. And
yet I felt hurt. I knocked on more doors, asking former officials from the Bush administration,
but no one remembered much.

I looked up old transcripts of the State Department’s daily press briefing. Margaret
Tutwiler, the State Department spokesperson at the time, was asked to comment on October
15, 1990. On the day of the invasion, a Saturday, the Bush administration had only
issued a short statement. Tutwiler had nothing to add, so she just read out the statement.

“The United States government hopes that all the Lebanese people will support President
Hrawi, the legitimate government, and the reunited army.… The United States regrets
the loss of life in the October 13 event. We hope that this ends a sad chapter of
Lebanon’s history, and that the Lebanese people can now move toward reconciliation
and the rebirth of a united, sovereign and independent Lebanon.”

We really had been a blip on the radar. The ferocious assault by Syrian troops, the
looting, raping, ransacking, and summary executions of soldiers and men of fighting
age had all just been an “event.” The United States had moved on while we found ourselves
under the boots of our masters in Damascus. Baker, Tutwiler, and other American officials
were questioned in public about why they had agreed to Syria’s invasion. They insisted
there hadn’t been a green light.

I continued my search for answers and finally found someone with a vivid memory of
that day. Edward Djerian, the U.S. ambassador to Syria at the time, explained in detail
how and why the United States had been trying to engage Assad. There was the coalition
against Saddam and the American hostages in Beirut, who were freed within a few years.
Djerjian was also negotiating with Assad to allow Syria’s four thousand Jews to travel
out of the country. They faced severe restrictions and were often described as hostages.
They were finally granted permission to leave in 1992. But the real prize was a Middle
East peace conference. In 1991 in Madrid, Israeli and Arab leaders met for the first
time in more than forty years of open conflict. Assad was there too, and his presence
was key, because Israel occupied Syria’s Golan Heights and the two countries were
still at war. For the Bush administration, engaging Assad had been a success, Djerjian
explained, and progress had been made on many fronts. The fighting had also ended
in Lebanon, which, after fifteen years of strife, was a positive development. Reluctantly,
I nodded that I understood. I could see Washington’s rationale.

But had there been a green light? No, Djerjian said adamantly. Even when Baker had
met Assad in September 1990, there had been no nods or winks to any invasion. But
there had not been a red light either. Assad and Saddam were longtime foes, and Washington
knew that the Syrian president would not tolerate the flow of weapons from Iraq to
Aoun’s Christian statelet for long. And because Aoun was Saddam’s ally, no one in
Washington felt the need to protect the rebel general. There were no attempts to preempt
any move by Assad or inquire about exactly what he might do and when.

On October 13, 1990, Djerjian was woken around six in the morning in Damascus by two
low-flying Syrian fighter jets, a very unusual occurrence. Startled, he turned to
his wife and said, “He’s going after Aoun.” Moments later, the same jets woke me in
Lebanon as they flew by our house and started their bombing campaign. Eight hours
later, it was all over—and I was left feeling betrayed by the United States.

*   *   *

Two decades later, I found myself on the inside of the American foreign policy machine,
or as close as an outsider can get. After traveling more than 300,000 miles with Clinton
around the world and interviewing her more than fifteen times, I had a new understanding
of the United States and of the woman who had given me a ride home on her plane in
the spring of 2009. By now, America and Hillary Clinton had blended into one for me.
No longer a politician, but the face—and the heart—of American power.

Clinton’s willingness to answer any question, to explain what she was thinking and
why the United States was doing what it was doing, whether on the record in front
of the cameras or off the record in private, helped me as I matured and refined my
analysis of the world and my views about America. Whether or not I disagreed with
positions taken by Clinton or the administration, I was no longer mystified by the
reasoning. Knowledge in this case truly was power.

I was also very much aware that my access to someone at the heart of American power
put me in a unique position. On a quiet Friday morning in the summer of 2012, while
I sat in the secretary’s outer office on the seventh floor, I prodded her some about
what she thought the United States stood for. Why should I believe in the United States
as a benevolent force when it had also done much harm around the world, I asked.

“I see America as predominantly a force for good over the course of our history,”
she said without a hesitation. “But I’m also well aware of our flaws and shortcomings,
of bad decisions, of misjudgments. We started off as a country that inspired more
love of freedom and more opportunity for more people than any other human enterprise
in the history of the world, but we still had slaves and we didn’t let women vote.
So in our own history, there is a continuing striving for that more perfect union.”

I pressed further. How could the United States be a force for good when I had been
shelled by a U.S. battleship, when the United States had been responsible for bloody
coups in Latin America, for the debacle in Iraq? I expected her to say what she often
said when confronted with the past: that instead of looking back at all the mistakes
the United States had made, I should be willing to look forward and do my part, however
small, in making sure it didn’t happen again. But Clinton’s answer startled me.

“Look at the way we rounded up Japanese Americans and put them in camps. It made sense
to decision makers at the time, including one of our greatest presidents, but in retrospect
it’s something we are not proud of; in fact, we are ashamed of.… But we also make
mistakes. And so I would ask that people look at us the way I look at us, which is
that name any other society or nation that has done more to help lead the world toward
the pursuit of happiness for every individual, for human freedom and dignity, but
which, like all human enterprises, is flawed.”

I had never looked at domestic U.S. history to put in context American excesses of
power abroad. Knowing that American leaders looked back in horror at some of the decisions
of their countrymen, as well as knowing that misguided, ill-advised decisions had
caused harm to Americans at home, contributed further to dispelling my old belief
that the United States was somehow intent on causing harm abroad to serve its wider
goals. This did not, of course, absolve the United States of its mistakes, but it
cast American power in a more benign light.

This White House did not flinch from using the darker tools of American power: the
cold and calculated warfare of drone attacks with its chilling kill lists, unilateral
military operations to catch America’s most wanted on foreign soil, Internet worms
that ate away at the computers at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program. But it
did not pursue obscure objectives or a singular goal, or try to fix the facts around
an ideology. Despite failures and unfinished business, the Obama foreign policy was
seen by many as flexible and pragmatic and allowed the United States to reposition
itself in a changing global landscape. And, of course, the United States will continue
to weigh values and interests at every turn—but in a more transparent way, if only
because of the spotlight of the media.

*   *   *

On the evening of April 25, 2012, Jake was halfway through dinner at his sister’s
house when his phone rang. Kurt Campbell, the Building’s Asia hand, was on the other
end, warning Jake he was going to speak in code—this was big, it was urgent, it couldn’t
wait until they were on a secure line or face-to-face. A very important man from the
world’s second biggest economy was seeking to come in, Kurt said. Jake tried to visualize
the situation—come in to where? The United States? Kurt alluded to an incident two
weeks prior when the vice mayor of Chongqing, in Sichuan Province, had sought refuge
briefly in a local U.S. consulate. But that was an internal political scandal that
the Obama administration had wanted nothing to do with and the official left the consulate
after a day. So the man was seeking to get into a diplomatic mission. Jake prodded
further. Was the mission in the same city? The capital, came the reply. He has won
a prize, Kurt added. Jake was stunned. “THE prize?” He was thinking of the Nobel Prize
winner Liu Xiaobo. Kurt suggested the image of Ray Charles.