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The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush's Decision to Surge in Iraq
This is the real story of how George W. Bush came to double-down on Iraq in the highest stakes gamble of his entire presidency. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly thirty senior officials, including President Bush himself, The Last Card offers an unprecedented look into the process by which Bush overruled much of the military leadership and many of his trusted advisors, and authorized the deployment of roughly 30,000 additional troops to the warzone in a bid to save Iraq from collapse in 2007. The adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy and surge of new troops into Iraq altered the American posture in the Middle East for a decade to come. In The Last Card we have access to the deliberations among the decision-makers on Bush's national security team as they embarked on that course. In their own words, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others, recount the debates and disputes that informed the process as President Bush weighed the historical lessons of Vietnam against the perceived strategic imperatives in the Middle East. For a president who had earlier vowed never to dictate military strategy to generals, the deliberations in the Oval Office and Situation Room in 2006 constituted a trying and fateful moment. Even a president at war is bound by rules of consensus and limited by the risk of constitutional crisis. What is to be achieved in the warzone must also be possible in Washington, D.C. Bush risked losing public esteem and courted political ruin by refusing to disengage from the costly war in Iraq. The Last Card is a portrait of leadership—firm and daring if flawed—in the Bush White House. The personal perspectives from men and women who served at the White House, Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and in Baghdad, are complemented by critical assessments written by leading scholars in the field of international security. Taken together, the candid interviews and probing essays are a first draft of the history of the surge and new chapter in the history of the American presidency.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
416 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2019
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February 28, 2020
The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush's Decision to Surge in Iraq
by
Timothy Andrews Sayle (Editor), Jeffrey A Engel (Editor), Hal Brands (Editor), William Inboden (Editor)
4 Stars
The Last Card is an excellent, scholarly review of the Bush Administration’s decision to surge in Iraq in late 2006 – early 2007. It is not a review of the surge itself, but rather of the decision-making process that led up to the surge. Drawing on oral histories from most of the major participants as well as analysis from both critics and admirers, it presents a remarkably non-politicized review of the workings of the Bush Administration in making this critical decision.
by
Timothy Andrews Sayle (Editor), Jeffrey A Engel (Editor), Hal Brands (Editor), William Inboden (Editor)
4 Stars
The Last Card is an excellent, scholarly review of the Bush Administration’s decision to surge in Iraq in late 2006 – early 2007. It is not a review of the surge itself, but rather of the decision-making process that led up to the surge. Drawing on oral histories from most of the major participants as well as analysis from both critics and admirers, it presents a remarkably non-politicized review of the workings of the Bush Administration in making this critical decision.
November 4, 2020
When President George W. Bush began his address to the American people from the White House on the evening of January 10, 2007, few people outside of the executive branch—or within it for that matter—knew the full extent of the update he was about to provide and the plan he was prepared to pursue. They knew the nearly four-year-old conflict in Iraq was going poorly, that the country was devolving into chaos, and that the United States seem ill-equipped to stop it. Judging by the public outrage about the war’s progress and the enormous losses inflicted by the Republican party in the 2006 midterm elections, many assumed what President Bush was going to announce. But they were wrong. Rather than announce a strategy of steady withdrawal, of forces fixated on training the Iraqi security forces, and of maximal force protection, President Bush announced the deployment of five additional brigades to Baghdad to expand the coalition’s footprint, quell the sectarian violence, and actively protect all Iraqi citizens within their areas of responsibility. The reaction from the foreign policy establishment, Capitol Hill, the news media, and even fellow Republicans was harsh. But it was a momentous decision, perhaps the most important of President Bush’s second term. Getting to that decision required institutional work that took precious time, was convoluted, probably not ideal, but in the end was led by the president with the support of his diplomats, military commanders, and advisers.
Questions about the future of America’s presence in Iraq began the moment coalition forces overran Baghdad in April 2003, but a serious introspective examination of ends and means did not begin until the spring of 2006. In the previous three years, control of Iraq had slowly been ceded by the coalition authority to local democratically-elected leadership, but even as political boxes were being checked, violence did not stop. The insurgency that began in the wake of invasion was morphing into sectarian cleansing and reprisals. The al-Qaeda in Iraq bombing of a revered Shia Islam shrine in February 2006 was the tipping point. From that point on National Security Council staffers within the White House began the hard task of critically appraising every aspect of the war in Iraq, from the nature of the threat to the scope and tactics of the coalition response. What they found was not promising, regardless of what the “country team” of diplomats and military commanders reported. Gradually over the course of the summer, fall, and early winter of 2006, this NSC review, at times operating without the cooperation of the State Department and Department of Defense, settled on a series of conclusions that would eventually become the president’s announcement in January. They made many primary, secondary, and tertiary conclusions, but fundamentally they decided that the current strategy of “teach the security forces and eventually withdraw” was not adequate to stop sectarian violence, that any political progress would not survive in the face of that violence, that American troops would serve as stabilizing forces for good rather than instigators of violence, and that subsequently more troops were necessary. Every single one of those tenets had to be defended from interagency attacks, but the White House’s success in driving toward the eventual “surge” speaks to their validity. Before any of these points could be contested, however, convincing the interagency that a review was even necessary was the first fight.
President Bush proved to be the critical element in these deliberations. Interviewee after interviewee attests that by the middle of 2006 George Bush was more assertive, more willing to question his military leadership, and more willing to direct the NSC staff to unilaterally examine issues that in a perfect world would’ve been scrutinized in a more collaborative process. At no point did Bush dictate that the process had to lead to a certain point, but as the interagency deliberated he eventually became convinced that victory was the only outcome that mattered and that the current strategy could not achieve it. He became supportive of the idea that a new strategy predicated on civilian security through a more muscular military presence was the way to win. Knowing this, Bush's National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, made sure that the eventual comprehensive review included this option—fulfilling his role as honest broker, and not as a leading witness. Once Bush became convinced that a surge was needed, could attain the outcomes he was looking for, and could be supported by the services affected—primary the Army and Marine Corps—he brought the Joint Chiefs and diplomats along with him by making concessions and offering olive branches. Without his leadership and determination, the alternative outcome is highly uncertain. The final decision to surge was the last in a logical flow of them, including changing his secretary of defense, ambassador to Iraq, regional commander, and theater commander. While not their aim, what stands out the most from this book is that for his flaws, including the rationale and strategy for engaging in an invasion of Iraq in the first place, George Bush’s leadership and working of the executive system at the end of 2006 resulted in a brave, odds-defying decision that had an enormously positive impact on the conflict, our position in the region, and—at the time—the future of a free Iraq.
There is much I could’ve said about the complicated process that resulted in the surge, but for the sake of brevity it is necessary to focus on the White House aspect of this. For good reason! While reviews within academia, on Capitol Hill, at Foggy Bottom, and inside the Pentagon contributed to the eventual consensus and laid the groundwork for the surge’s implementation, for six months the NSC staff was the driver behind the reviews, conceptualizations, and convincing. It really started and ended with them. This is clear throughout ‘The Last Card.’ Half of this book is oral history, the other being analytical essays of those testimonies. The first half has the important characters—with a few exceptions. Bush, Cheney, Secretary Rice, Hadley, DNSA for Iraq and Afghanistan Meghan O’Sullivan (perhaps the book’s central narrator, along with Hadley), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace, incoming SECDEF Robert Gates, CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, and about two dozen other valuable individuals from across Washington sat down for interviews. More Bush and Cheney (‘Decision Points’ and James Rosen’s published interviews with the VP would make good companion volumes) would’ve been appreciated, and the tempo was a bit uneven, but it was a fascinating 200 pages nonetheless. Two notable people were invited but chose not to participate: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and theater commander General George Casey. Their absence is missed, but it does not contribute to the harshly negative appraisal the majority of the interviewees and analysts have of them. Casey’s position was a challenging one, and his struggles were understandable. Rumsfeld, however, refused to be a positive contributor in the review process, protested wherever possible, and made it clear he would brook no meddling in this department. The surge, the decisions that culminated in it, and its success took place in spite of him.
The latter half of this book is comprised of 8 essays from practitioners and academics that seek to place the recorded testimony about the surge decision within larger contexts or to appraise them against competing models of bureaucratic decision making. As such we seek comparisons to the Eisenhower administration, LBJ’s Vietnam decisions in 1965 and 1968, the context of the surge against both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2014 victories of the Islamic State, and the role of the President, the NSC, and the civil authorities in promulgating foreign policy. They are somewhat of a mixed bag but each brings a unique insight. If choosing highlights I would recommend the narrative essay by Hadley, O’Sullivan, and Peter Feaver, the examination of the surge’s usefulness versus sunk costs by Richard Betts, the appraisal of how well the civil-military relationship functioned by Kori Schake, Richard Immerman's negative critique of the lengthy, convoluted nature of the review and decision-making process, and Colin Dueck’s positive review of Bush’s role in the process.
A final point. The editors of ‘The Last Card’ clearly sought to not include opinions about the invasion of Iraq or the Islamic State’s rapid victories over Iraq’s security forces in their book, and for good reason. Likewise, this book is not an appraisal of the surge itself. More may yet be coming on the surge’s implementation, but at its core this book is one about presidential leadership, decision-making, and crisis management. As such, I think it will have salience long into the future as later presidencies conduct their own foreign affairs.
Questions about the future of America’s presence in Iraq began the moment coalition forces overran Baghdad in April 2003, but a serious introspective examination of ends and means did not begin until the spring of 2006. In the previous three years, control of Iraq had slowly been ceded by the coalition authority to local democratically-elected leadership, but even as political boxes were being checked, violence did not stop. The insurgency that began in the wake of invasion was morphing into sectarian cleansing and reprisals. The al-Qaeda in Iraq bombing of a revered Shia Islam shrine in February 2006 was the tipping point. From that point on National Security Council staffers within the White House began the hard task of critically appraising every aspect of the war in Iraq, from the nature of the threat to the scope and tactics of the coalition response. What they found was not promising, regardless of what the “country team” of diplomats and military commanders reported. Gradually over the course of the summer, fall, and early winter of 2006, this NSC review, at times operating without the cooperation of the State Department and Department of Defense, settled on a series of conclusions that would eventually become the president’s announcement in January. They made many primary, secondary, and tertiary conclusions, but fundamentally they decided that the current strategy of “teach the security forces and eventually withdraw” was not adequate to stop sectarian violence, that any political progress would not survive in the face of that violence, that American troops would serve as stabilizing forces for good rather than instigators of violence, and that subsequently more troops were necessary. Every single one of those tenets had to be defended from interagency attacks, but the White House’s success in driving toward the eventual “surge” speaks to their validity. Before any of these points could be contested, however, convincing the interagency that a review was even necessary was the first fight.
President Bush proved to be the critical element in these deliberations. Interviewee after interviewee attests that by the middle of 2006 George Bush was more assertive, more willing to question his military leadership, and more willing to direct the NSC staff to unilaterally examine issues that in a perfect world would’ve been scrutinized in a more collaborative process. At no point did Bush dictate that the process had to lead to a certain point, but as the interagency deliberated he eventually became convinced that victory was the only outcome that mattered and that the current strategy could not achieve it. He became supportive of the idea that a new strategy predicated on civilian security through a more muscular military presence was the way to win. Knowing this, Bush's National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, made sure that the eventual comprehensive review included this option—fulfilling his role as honest broker, and not as a leading witness. Once Bush became convinced that a surge was needed, could attain the outcomes he was looking for, and could be supported by the services affected—primary the Army and Marine Corps—he brought the Joint Chiefs and diplomats along with him by making concessions and offering olive branches. Without his leadership and determination, the alternative outcome is highly uncertain. The final decision to surge was the last in a logical flow of them, including changing his secretary of defense, ambassador to Iraq, regional commander, and theater commander. While not their aim, what stands out the most from this book is that for his flaws, including the rationale and strategy for engaging in an invasion of Iraq in the first place, George Bush’s leadership and working of the executive system at the end of 2006 resulted in a brave, odds-defying decision that had an enormously positive impact on the conflict, our position in the region, and—at the time—the future of a free Iraq.
There is much I could’ve said about the complicated process that resulted in the surge, but for the sake of brevity it is necessary to focus on the White House aspect of this. For good reason! While reviews within academia, on Capitol Hill, at Foggy Bottom, and inside the Pentagon contributed to the eventual consensus and laid the groundwork for the surge’s implementation, for six months the NSC staff was the driver behind the reviews, conceptualizations, and convincing. It really started and ended with them. This is clear throughout ‘The Last Card.’ Half of this book is oral history, the other being analytical essays of those testimonies. The first half has the important characters—with a few exceptions. Bush, Cheney, Secretary Rice, Hadley, DNSA for Iraq and Afghanistan Meghan O’Sullivan (perhaps the book’s central narrator, along with Hadley), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace, incoming SECDEF Robert Gates, CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, and about two dozen other valuable individuals from across Washington sat down for interviews. More Bush and Cheney (‘Decision Points’ and James Rosen’s published interviews with the VP would make good companion volumes) would’ve been appreciated, and the tempo was a bit uneven, but it was a fascinating 200 pages nonetheless. Two notable people were invited but chose not to participate: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and theater commander General George Casey. Their absence is missed, but it does not contribute to the harshly negative appraisal the majority of the interviewees and analysts have of them. Casey’s position was a challenging one, and his struggles were understandable. Rumsfeld, however, refused to be a positive contributor in the review process, protested wherever possible, and made it clear he would brook no meddling in this department. The surge, the decisions that culminated in it, and its success took place in spite of him.
The latter half of this book is comprised of 8 essays from practitioners and academics that seek to place the recorded testimony about the surge decision within larger contexts or to appraise them against competing models of bureaucratic decision making. As such we seek comparisons to the Eisenhower administration, LBJ’s Vietnam decisions in 1965 and 1968, the context of the surge against both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2014 victories of the Islamic State, and the role of the President, the NSC, and the civil authorities in promulgating foreign policy. They are somewhat of a mixed bag but each brings a unique insight. If choosing highlights I would recommend the narrative essay by Hadley, O’Sullivan, and Peter Feaver, the examination of the surge’s usefulness versus sunk costs by Richard Betts, the appraisal of how well the civil-military relationship functioned by Kori Schake, Richard Immerman's negative critique of the lengthy, convoluted nature of the review and decision-making process, and Colin Dueck’s positive review of Bush’s role in the process.
A final point. The editors of ‘The Last Card’ clearly sought to not include opinions about the invasion of Iraq or the Islamic State’s rapid victories over Iraq’s security forces in their book, and for good reason. Likewise, this book is not an appraisal of the surge itself. More may yet be coming on the surge’s implementation, but at its core this book is one about presidential leadership, decision-making, and crisis management. As such, I think it will have salience long into the future as later presidencies conduct their own foreign affairs.
March 25, 2023
Definitely a must if you are an Iraq War scholar or student in some capacity. This is a really interesting and valuable approach to recent history: it's a massive oral history of top mil and political decision-makers in the Bush admin followed by essays by scholars. I enjoyed the first part more; the essays were good but got a little repetitive, as each was analyzing the same decision. However, the oral history excerpts give a really useful portrait of the process and motives for the decisions.
One thing I was surprised by was how little an extent the top policymakers spelled out the national interests in Iraq that motivated the surge. Obviously, the situation in IRaq was going downhill, and the US was in part responsible for that situation. Letting Iraq descend into full-on civil war would obviously disgrace and discredit the US, lead to even more suffering, and make Iraqi the new hub of global jihadist terrorism. However, the Bush seemed to rely more on notions of honor and personal responsibility than a cold calculation of the national interest. There was more than a little bit of the sunk costs fallacy at work in the surge.
Moreover, while I'd say Bush made the right decision ultimately, the delay in the decision to change strategy was truly shameful. Bush sat on a strategy that wasn't working, and an incompetent and pig-headed SecDef, for years as Americans and Iraqis suffered and died. He let the "Revolt of the Generals," which was really just retired Generals calling out Rumsfeld for incompetence, delay the decision to change strategy and fire RUmsfeld because he didn't want to make it look like he was being pushed around by retired officers. That's a terrible reason to keep a failing strategy, and it reflects on Bush's stubborn and sensitive character.
Anyways, while there are better narratives of the Surge, this book is exceptionally useful for looking into the decision-making process, civ-mil relations, and the decision itself because of its access to top policy-makers.
One thing I was surprised by was how little an extent the top policymakers spelled out the national interests in Iraq that motivated the surge. Obviously, the situation in IRaq was going downhill, and the US was in part responsible for that situation. Letting Iraq descend into full-on civil war would obviously disgrace and discredit the US, lead to even more suffering, and make Iraqi the new hub of global jihadist terrorism. However, the Bush seemed to rely more on notions of honor and personal responsibility than a cold calculation of the national interest. There was more than a little bit of the sunk costs fallacy at work in the surge.
Moreover, while I'd say Bush made the right decision ultimately, the delay in the decision to change strategy was truly shameful. Bush sat on a strategy that wasn't working, and an incompetent and pig-headed SecDef, for years as Americans and Iraqis suffered and died. He let the "Revolt of the Generals," which was really just retired Generals calling out Rumsfeld for incompetence, delay the decision to change strategy and fire RUmsfeld because he didn't want to make it look like he was being pushed around by retired officers. That's a terrible reason to keep a failing strategy, and it reflects on Bush's stubborn and sensitive character.
Anyways, while there are better narratives of the Surge, this book is exceptionally useful for looking into the decision-making process, civ-mil relations, and the decision itself because of its access to top policy-makers.
October 12, 2025
Five stars for the oral history. The essays were interesting, but not what really mattered.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews