Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted?
Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
Do we have a clear, attainable objective?
Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
The answers were all compelling and affirmative. The big-picture questions
made clear the threats to national and global security. Iraq had broken
international law and was sowing instability in a region that provided much of
the world’s oil and access to some of its most important shipping lanes. Public
support appeared solid, with the U.S. Congress voting for military force and
three in four of Americans supporting it, according to a Gallup survey at the
time. The international community was on board, too. UN Resolution 678
authorized all necessary means to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Several countries in
the region, even some that were normally hostile to Washington, signed on as
active coalition partners.
Powell’s challenge questions drew definitive responses as well. Intelligence
from U.S. sources, as well as from Iraq’s neighbors and America’s closest allies,
painted a consistent picture of Saddam’s intentions and capabilities. The option
of diplomacy had been tried through intermediaries, the United Nations, and

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direct talks with the Iraqi foreign minister. America had consulted every country
in the region, along with more than two dozen coalition partners. Military and
political leaders had considered every contingency they could think of, down to
the frightening scenario that Iraq might sabotage its oil fields, which ultimately,
it did.
Finally, Powell’s questions intended to define success produced clear
answers and finite, achievable goals with a realistic exit strategy. The result was
a mission—Operation Desert Storm—designed to push Saddam out of Kuwait
and force him to comply with international law and UN resolutions. This would
not be an open-ended occupation or an exercise in nation building.
The war began with a punishing barrage from the air. American and coalition
bombing pounded Iraq’s air defenses, military installations, and government
headquarters, which were quickly destroyed. By the time U.S. and coalition
forces rolled into Kuwait on the ground, Iraqi forces were on the run. Though
Saddam hung on to power, the mission had been a success.
The ground war lasted just 100 hours. Colin Powell’s star was never higher.
Failure Is an Option
When a leader fails to know where he is going, refuses to listen to what he
doesn’t want to hear, or relies on faulty information, bad things happen. If
nobody asks or answers challenging questions, flawed thinking may go
unnoticed or unaddressed. Colin Powell experienced the dark side of decision-
making when he and others didn’t ask enough tough questions leading up to the
second Iraq war.
In the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Powell, then
Secretary of State, was surrounded by hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick
Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several influential senior
policy makers. Cheney and the others argued for a muscular American military
response. After Afghanistan, home to Al Qaeda, they viewed Iraq as a logical
target. They accused Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction, in direct
violation of commitments to destroy them made after the first Gulf War.
Still reeling from the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Towers and
the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the public strongly supported this
administration’s plans for military action against Iraq. The administration
assured the world that the intelligence was credible and the Iraqi threat with
respect to weapons of mass destruction was real. But behind the scenes, the

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really tough strategic questions that should have been asked were unwelcome.
Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
Do we have a clear and attainable objective?
The questions Powell posed before the first Iraq war, more relevant than
ever, were glossed over or not pursued. Powell himself contributed to the
drumbeat to war in a dramatic 2003 appearance before the United Nations.
“Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for
a few more months or years is not an option,” Powell declared. “Not in a post–
September 11 world.”
As experience would later show, however, Saddam didn’t have weapons of
mass destruction. The intelligence was wrong. The administration hadn’t asked
the right questions of the right people. I asked Powell about the price he and
America paid for that failure. For the first time in our otherwise friendly
conversation, he bristled. The information he got was bad, he said. It had gone to
Congress four months before he went to the UN. Congress had seen the formal
National Intelligence Estimate, the comprehensive report prepared by the CIA,
and reached the same conclusions. Influential senators on both sides of the aisle
including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Jay Rockefeller, the
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, all lined up behind the report.
The president cited it in his State of the Union speech. Vice President Dick
Cheney went on national television with it. Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser, referred to it when she told CNN that Saddam was closer to a
nuclear device than anybody thought. “We know that he has the infrastructure,
nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon,” Rice had said, adding ominously,
“but we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
“They all said this is solid stuff and believed it,” Powell told me.
They were all wrong.