Bush at War

Rating:
Summary: From a Political Theory Perspective, the Book Dissapoints
Review: By way of disclaimer, I must say that I am an ardent supporter of President Bush, his administration, and most (though, not all) of his policies.

With that said, this book provides a clear glimpse of the intricate political decissions President Bush had to make in response to the September 11 terrorists attacks. It showcases some off-the-cuff comments by the commander and chief, Rumsfield, and Powell. The typical view that Rumsfield and Cheney are "hawks" while Powell is the "moderate" prevails in the book. Ms. Rice, the president's National Security Advisor, is brought up in many instances of the book, but rarely does one get any information on what she thinks about the issues at hand. I did not get a chance to understand how Ms. Rice felt under the difficult time of responsing to our nation's highest challenges.

Another problem with the book is that, while it does provide a great deal of information on what was done, and how information was coordinated, it rarely said anything relating to why administration officials felt the way they did. That is, there was not much discussion on the origins of their political philosophies, which guided their actions and policies. It would be wise to learn more about what books, magazines, think tanks, and other intellectual might helped bring this talented group of people into making concrete, and difficult, decisions.

But, then again, the format of this book was the same as you would find in your national newspaper. And so with it came the limitations...

Michael

Rating:
Summary: nothing spectacular or insightful
Review: I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to books by journalists. Newspaper style is just fine when digesting the morning news, but four hundred pages of it? On this score, I must say that Woodward's multipart series for The Post back in January 2002, "Ten Days in September," is a much more enjoyable and worthwhile read; it does in a few pages what this book takes hundreds to do--not to mention the fact that, written just after 9-11, it has a greater sense of immediacy. The book doesn't have the emotion, the urgency, the poignancy of that series; all that was lost in the passage of months or spread thinly throughout this book. I should not, probably, be too harsh on journalists as book writers, despite my unfavorable impressions of Woodward's book and Frank Bruni's. After all, David Maraniss wrote a superb and highly readable biography of Vince Lombardi. But back to Bush at War...

What comes through here is the same old story we heard for months: Rumsfeld is the hawk, Powell is the dove with claws (to use Johnny Cash's Vietnam-era phrase), Rice brokers between the two, and Bush makes the final decisions. Woodward's account is one-sided. Evidently and not too surprisingly, Powell was more open about granting interviews (perhaps it was one of his tactics in the power game), and Rumsfeld was not. This is a glaring flaw throughout the entire book, especially when Woodward starts paraphrasing what Rumsfeld might have said or is reported to have said (signalled by abandoning the quotation marks). For whatever it's worth, given these imbalance, Powell comes across as the hero, the torn moderate who eventually prevails in the end (that is, in getting Bush to give the UN a chance in fall 2002). Rumsfeld is painted variously as demanding boss, evil taskmaster, and uncooperative interviewer, despite Woodward's concluding efforts to give some credit to the Defense Secretary.

Some reviewers have written that this book is evidence of Bush's inability to be self-critical or to think for himself. Quite the opposite seems to be true, if this book is any guide. That Bush surrounds himself with talented people and lets them debate the tough questions is not a sign of weakness. Constantly, Bush asks the difficult questions, sets the deadlines, demands results. Yes, he sits back sometimes and allows his principals to wade through thorny issues, but the final decision is his--firmly. And he does have a vision, one that Woodward had difficulty seeing until the end. At the root of that vision, informed by Bush's faith, is to advance the cause of human rights and freedom, to eliminate, so far as possible, needless human suffering. With Bush still in office, the final verdict on his leadership is some years away. But I could not help thinking that he would make for interesting study in Eliot Cohen's Supreme Command framework. Time will tell.

If you read Woodward's 2002 Post series, or even if you just watch TV or read the morning news, this book will probably offer nothing new. Perspectives on the several issues above could easily be obtained from other sources over the past two years. Like most other journalists, Woodward's writing does not easily translate into book-length studies. This is not to deprecate him; it's simply to acknowledge the fact that he's a journalist (a highly respected and talented one at that). Perhaps in ten years, when more documents are available, someone will write the history of 9-11 and the war on terror in the way it deserves to be written and analyzed. I wait for that day.

Rating:
Summary: Blah
Review: Pretty sure this was a 'Hey Bob, doesn't your contract say you owe us a book this month?' book. I'm going to put it down to contractual obligation because I'd hate to think someone with Woodward's reputation has started to grind out titles for checks.

The Commanders was a better read, if you want to pick up a Woodward book worth reading. If you want to hear about Bush At War, turn on your TV...

Rating:
Summary: A Well Written Work of Poltical Science
Review: Bob Woodward has done it again. His Watergate-era journalistic investigative style has given us another fly-on-the-wall look at contemporary American politics. Bush At War takes you on a 3 month trip through the Bush Whitehouse (focusing on the Principals--Bush, Chaney, Rice, Powell, Tenet, and Rumsfield), and allows the reader intellectual access to the thoughts and minds of those that orchistrated the post-9/11 response and Afghanistan Conflict. The book is EXTREMELY well researched (he had access to all of the major players and the transcripts of meetings at which he was not present), and EXTREMELY well written. It's one big class act.

For those that are wondering, this is not a tell-all of what went wrong on 9/11; no are figers pointed here. There is no blame game to be played in Bush At War. Instead, the reader learns about the people involved and the discussions that transpired--good for those interested in political science, boring for those looking for juicy tidbits of what went wrong and when.

Why not five stars then? It's hard to say exactly, suffice it to say that it's a four star book only for two reasons:
1) The Detail gets to you after a while. It's line by line coverage for 300 pages. It's fascinating, but it can be slightly oppressive.
2) If this is possible, the book doesn't have enough of an agenda. There is a somewhat subtle agenda towards the end, but there lacks an answer of so what. Why 3 months? What, besides for an understanding of what happened, am I supposed to take away? What general overarching conclusions should I draw? There are extremely interesting conclusions about President Bush in the Epilogue, and perhaps those embody Woodward's point, but I guess that I'm not sure enough about the answer to these questions to give it a 5 Star rating.

Rating:
Summary: Bob Woodward has given up.
Review: Bush at War is not what you're looking for. If you want to know about how much Bush claims to bench-press, or, you're interested in Bush eating a hamburger, then read this book. If
you're interested in 9-11, avoid it.

Using only White House sources, Bob Woodward depends on 'deep' access to government officials, and as a result, cannot either fact-check, or scrutinize the story told to him - something all journalists must do.

Woodward's reporting, when not uselessly asinine, fails to scratch the surface of 9-11. He makes sure to note that George Tenent and Richard Armitage met head Pakistani intelligence officials before and after 9-11, but does not note that the same official, Gen. Ahmad, who was visiting the White House from Sept 4th to 13th , sent Mohammed Atta ..... - a story reported in The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001, and confirmed by the FBI. The same guy who paid for 9-11, through his Inter Service Intelligence, is being supported by the White House ( The US government has always supported the ISI, and by extension, the Taliban, during the Soviet/Afghani war of the 80s; and a Los Angeles Times article from May 22, 2001, titled: "Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban", has Colin Powell sending the Taliban $43million.) Woodward doesn't think that's interesting enough to note in his book.

Bob notes that Donald Rumsfeld debated about sending fighter-jets to escort Air Force One on Sept 13th; but does not mention that on 9-11, violating standard operating procedure, fighter-jets from Andrews Air Force Base (the home of Air Force One, and ten miles from the Pentagon) were not scrambled (sent to assess the hijacked plane) for over 30 minutes! Fighter-jets are scambled routinely, and have been since 1976, every time a plane deviates 15degrees from flight path, loses transponder contact, or loses radio contact, according to FAA manuals. On 9-11, a pizza delivery driver is faster than combat-ready fighter-jets, and Woodward doesn't even mention it?

Bob claims that the US Military was unprepared to attack Afghanistan, but does not note that operations "Bright Star" and "Swift Sword" had placed troops in the area, and had been
planned 4 years prior -- many of those details were printed in the UK paper, the Guardian, but I'm running out of room, so just check out the last paragraph for more info.

Bob missed all over those facts, in the FIRST FOUR CHAPTERS. The rest doesn't get any better.

This book is garbage. Bob Woodward should be ashamed. If you're seriously interested pursuing this topic, start by viewing "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 9-11", 3/5 of which can be viewed online. Type the title of the film into Google.com. After viewing the film, either pick up a copy of the DVD (featuring 90minutes of extras), or/and research the people
featured in the documentary.

Rating:
Summary: Complete look at half the story
Review: There's no Deep Throat in "Bush at War". Bob Woodward no longer has to plug after back-channel sources in order to write his fly-on-the-wall exposes. Now all he has to do is visit George W. Bush in the Crawford, Texas ranch, and take a romantic walk with the President, at the end of which, both men throw pebbles at an ornate limestone formation thousands of years old.

"Bush at War" is indispensable reading, as it takes you right inside the White House for the planning of every jot and tittle of the late 2001 combat in Afghanistan. From weekends at Camp David, to heated National Security Council debates, to the CIA's point man inside the Northern Alliance, to an evening with Derek Jeter at Yankee Stadium, this book probably uncovers conversations, the existence of which most other books could only guess at.

However, gauge for yourself just how much of the "real" story you're getting. Yes, the transcripts are probably authentic. However, in spite of the promises of "deep background", the book is still told primarily from the point of Bush's war cabinet. Apart from a few snide digs from one principal to another, there's not much here to satisfy the most brazen conspiracy theorists about Bush in Iraq, or Cheney and the oil junta.

Another point is that the Afghan story is basically without controversy, a war scorned by only the hardest of the hard-core left-wingers and an Islamic regime or two. The conflict in Iraq has taken over the controversy in terms of international consideration, and "Bush at War" by fault of publication date can only take you through the early Iraq planning stages, and only in broad strokes at that. Perhaps another Woodward volume will be in the offing once the dust settles over Mosul and Tikrit.

Bush comes off as a decent President in "Bush at War". Based solely on the information given, the most obvious flaw is that he's a President without vision. Or rather, his sole vision is that he wants to have a big vision. He speaks in broad terms about "redefining the office" and "creating world peace", but never really seems to know how to accomplish that. Even the narrative on the war in Afghanistan is structured so that the U.S.'s ultimate victory comes as a surprise twist.

30 years ago, maybe Bob Woodward could have told us the things we *didn't* know about Stage One of the war on terrorism, but this book remains an absorbing official look at the hidden story.

Rating:
Summary: Feel-good but shallow
Review: After September 11, 2001 the nation as a whole put aside their political differences for a while, and emotionally rallied around a President who had had a tremendous crisis thrust upon him. Criticisms were put on hold as America geared itself for the coming war: that was not the time for divisions, it was a time to pride ourselves in everything American and to give support to the most powerful American in a time of crisis. George Bush was the president, and Americans wanted to hear nothing that would affect the perception that we were safe, that those in charge would respond swiftly, effectively, and with great and just violence.

This book captures that sprit excellently. The President is shown to be a decisive leader, original in thought, a man very much on top of the situation. It reports what happened in various meetings, the thought processes that went into decisions, and some Clancy-esque insights into the ground level operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Woodward had interviewed Bush for this book, and was also given access to many classified documents, and he puts them to good use in constructing a timeline of events and decisions.

He shows that many members of the administration (especially Paul Wolfowitz) were pushing for an attack on Iraq shortly after 9/11, but such plans were put on hold until Afghanistan was taken care of. There were many internecine battles, not surpringly primarily between State and Defense.

Unfortunatly this book has not survived well into the current time. It is uncritical of the administration in a way that doesn't suit an author who once took down a president. Woodward seems to have agreed to go easy on the president, in exchange for access to a wealth of information that would guarantee him success. No administration is without fault, but if you go by Woodward's work then this one certainly is.

Because of this it is finally difficult to trust the accuracy of this book, despite its detail. You come away with the feeling that it has left significant information out.

Rating:
Summary: and.....?
Review: Maybe one of the other reviewers put it clearer in stating that the book felt incomplete. I was hoping for a more in depth type of investigation like his Watergate book. A lot of what he reported we already knew just from watching the news. We did get a look at how the key figures interacted with each other and their different personalities. If the people he interviewed were mainly those of the Bush 'Camp' then it's basically a one-sided viewpoint because they aren't going to give any incriminating or negative comments that would hurt their position. So what I'm saying, I guess, is that it would have been a better book if hadn't been quite as biased. It was an easily read book because he did a good job of writing so that the average person could understand it. I'd liked to have had more information on why they attacked, how come it was so easily accomplished, what had they done to prevent something like this from happening as there had already been an attempt previously, etc.

Rating:
Summary: Ruffles no feathers
Review: This is not a "fly on the wall" sort of report. It is a reconstruction of meetings, conversations and thoughts focused on President Bush as he orchestrated the military response to 9/11. Bob Woodward, the celebrated Washington Post journalist who with Carl Bernstein wrote All the President's Men about the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration, demonstrates here that he has entree (and will keep it) at the highest levels of the Bush administration including lengthy interviews with the president himself. Much of the material in the book comes from these interviews, where the participants recall their thoughts, motivations, and reconstruct their words. Woodward weaves into his text both direct quotes and reconstructed quotes, the former with quotation marks, the latter without.

The story itself is rather bland and unrevealing. Most of the action is clearly off camera, the deviling details left to those lower on the change of command. The various secretaries report to the president and get his views and his orders and then they meet again. Some of the progress in the war is reported on. Spin is discussed. Bush prepares for and gives speeches. Scenarios and long-term consequences of various actions are bandied about. The high level players posture and engage in dialogue. We do feel some of the tension between Rumsfeld and Powell and there is an occasional bit of peek and undertone displayed but overall the language is what one would expect to find in official documents.

Nonetheless Bush-watchers will find this book very interesting in that a clear picture of George W.'s leadership style and substance emerges. I think that was Woodward's goal, and I think he did a good job of achieving it. Here are two quick examples of Bush revealing himself:

Taking a kind of Harry Trumanesque "the buck stops here" stance, Bush says, "...I don't need to explain...why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president...I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." (p.146)

Or, when advised by Rumsfeld that the bombers leaving Missouri for the 15-hour flight to Afghanistan might tip off "the start of operations," Bush responded, "Let them go. Try some disinformation." (p. 204)

Clearly, President Bush's presidency is a practical presidency. We see this today with the emphasis on "nation building" in Iraq, a 180-degree turn from his stance both during the 2000 election campaign and during the bombing of Afghanistan when he reiterated again and again that he did not believe in using the US military for nation building. (See especially page 192.)

But more than anything we see Bush and Company preoccupied with visualizing how their actions will appear to the public via the media. This is nothing new. John F. Kennedy worked tirelessly to manage the press, with varying degrees of success, as has every president since. We have to go back to JFK's immediate predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower to find a president that felt comfortable putting substance before spin. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Ike was the last president to be elected before the majority of American homes had television.

Revealing how commonplace spin has become, Woodward writes, "The president, focused as always on the public relations component, asked Defense to work with Hughes [White House counselor Karen Hughes] on the themes that were going to be used in the announcement of military action." (p. 189) Notice the "as always" and the use of the word "themes." The postmodern president has no choice but to be a master of spin since in today's world perception of what has happened and why is often at least as important as what really happened.

Rumsfeld's style on public relations is contrasted somewhat in that he comes across as believing that the best way to handle the media is to give them no more information than is absolutely necessary. For example, he is quoted on page 176 as saying, "I think the precedent is bad of having to go out and make your case publically...because we may not have enough information to make our case next time..."

The role that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice plays in the Bush administration was what most surprised me about the information I got from this book. She is not just a token black woman in the White House. It is clear that Bush relies on her to both coordinate the input of the other participants at the highest level and to advise and guide the president himself. Rice comes across as someone who thinks clearly, rises above petty squabbles, works hard, and has the ear of the president.

Powell's famous patience and level-headedness and cautious style also come through vividly. Rumsfeld's preoccupation with guarding his rear and protecting his turf and its prerogative powers is also well-illustrated.

Bottom line: this is the sort of book that serious politicos must read, but will probably speed-read.

Rating:
Summary: Woodward is probably the best at access to the principals
Review: This book is about the beginning of the counterattack against terrorism in the aftermath of the attacks of 9-11. Therefore, the primary coverage is of the war in Afghanistan and it describes only the initial, internal discussions of the war with Iraq. As usual, Woodward demonstrates his ability to access authoritative sources within the U. S. government, so we learn much about the deliberations concerning how to respond. He also writes well, the prose is easy to follow and extremely informative.
The principles of Bush's war cabinet fall within the expected camps, Colin Powell as Secretary of State is wary of extending the war too far, leading to unintended and possibly dangerous consequences. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are hawks, pushing for the war to be extended beyond Afghanistan and ultimately to Iraq. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is often also a hawk, but at times leans more towards the Powell position. As is always the case in Washington, there are shifting positions, as people consider their careers, their position in history, how they appear to the public and what is in the best interests of the country.
Without question, this book could be only the first volume in what should be a two-volume work. Victory in Afghanistan was easy, but the country still remains ungovernable. Iraq was invaded and the regime of Saddam Hussein easily overthrown. However, at the time this review was written, U. S. troops were still being killed in Iraq and there was no viable exit strategy in sight. Therefore, this book tells a tale of success, but it is only a preliminary one. The final chapters are yet to be written and most likely will not tell as happy a tale. I hope that Woodward also writes that book and I eagerly await the opportunity to read it.