"We Can't Assume What We Don't Believe"

During a White House meeting last week, a group of governors asked President Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about their backup plan for Iraq. What would the administration do if its new strategy didn't work?

The conclusion they took away, the governors later said, was that there is no Plan B. "I'm a Marine," Pace told them, "and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."

Pace had a simple way of summarizing the administration's position, Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) recalled. "Plan B was to make Plan A work."

Pressed to specify U.S. limits, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there would be ample opportunity "to see whether or not in fact the Iraqis are living up to the assurances they gave us."

"And what if they don't?" Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) asked.

"I don't think you go to Plan B," Rice replied. "You work with Plan A."

Washington Post 3/5/07


Mac Bundy and the others had all been partner to so precious little failure in their lives that there was always a sense that no matter what, it could be avoided, deflected, and this as much as anything else was the bane of George Ball's existence in those weeks. In the debate Ball kept concentrating on the fact that they had no real contingency plans for failure; he warned them how large the price might be, and he kept suggesting that they stop and think, and then, rather than flirt with the enormity of greater input and greater failure, they cut their losses. Ball sensed that if they reached a higher plateau of violence with no tangible benefits, they would be forced to go even higher. Nor was Ball the only one frightened by the way they were plunging ahead, and in early March of 1965, Emmett John Hughes, a former White House aide under Eisenhower, a man who had always been at loggerheads with Dulles and who was now terrified that the Johnson Administration was taking a course in Southeast Asia that Dulles had wanted and Ike had avoided, went to see Bundy, an old friend. Hughes, who like Bundy was a member of the insiders' club, was worried about how much control there was, and he would find little reassurance at the White House. He talked for some time with Bundy, and his questions clearly reflected the enormity of his doubts. "We're just not as pessimistic as you are," Bundy told him. But what, Hughes asked, if the North Vietnamese retaliate by matching the American air escalation with their own ground escalation? Hughes would long remember the answer and the cool smile: "We just don't think that's going to happen." Just suppose it happens, Hughes persisted, just make an assumption of the worst that could happen. "We can't assume what we don't believe," Bundy answered, chilling Hughes so much that five years later he could recall every word of the conversation.

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, pp. 527-528