Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib – Seymour Hersh

Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib – Seymour Hersh, Harper Collins (2004) 394pp. (S) ****

Seymour Hersh’s reputation as an outstanding investigative journalist with a long standing history (most notably as the lone reporter who courageously broke the Mai Lai massacre story) is certainly formidable, and thus makes reviewing the work of such a giant no small task. That said, one of the greatest frustrations in reading Hersh is his over-reliance on anonymous, un-named sources in the intelligence and military community, along with the absence of any notation that might help bolster his reporting. Yes, he is delving into highly sensitive areas, and on occasion will name a name – usually already generally known, though in some instances, more obscure ones as well, but sometimes one gets the impression that Hersh has been at the game for so long, that the rigorous standards held to many journalists simply no longer apply to him. Hersh’s writing also often suffers from a sometimes over-dramatic emphasis on the contemporary, by which the historical context of a given foreign policy becomes lost. To the less informed reader, this lack of context may prove to be a frustration. Be that as it may, what Hersh does he does exceedingly well – if the game is digging up insider, alternative analysis, then he is its master. Time and again, Hersh has been at the forefront, breaking stories the mainstream media either refuse to touch altogether, or only get around to covering months, sometimes even years, later. Without him, we all would be much the worse off for trying to better understand what makes this much maligned administration tick. (Nay, if more people of influence had been reading Hersh prior to the Iraq invasion when he was calling the WMD bluff, we could’ve spared ourselves of all this mess altogether.

Basically, Chain of Command is a collection of Hersh’s New Yorker pieces with updated edits where he has added additional information and analysis. Hersh makes disturbing revelations aplenty, among them the politicization of the Special Forces: “ . . . the various Special Forces units on the scene [in Afghanistan in 2001-2002] – including Navy Seal teams and Delta Force – had been routinely going around the military chain of command and placing calls directly to the White House office of Wayne Dunning, a retired general who ran Special Forces during the Gulf War and became a presidential adviser on combating terrorism after September 11^th.”(p.138) Later in Chapter Six, Hersh describes Rumsfeld’s drive to politicize the Special Forces.

Most striking is how Hersh describes the genesis of the Iraq invasion policy. “In late 2001, [Richard] Perle and [James] Woolsey inspired a surge of articles and columns calling for the extension of the Afghan war into Iraq.”(p.169) Going deeper, Hersh gives a clearer picture of the ideological underpinnings that got us into Iraq. Hence we are introduced to Leo Strauss, the “noble lie,” and the neo-con following. Here are some excerpts: “The person who whispers in the ear of the king is more important than the king.”(p.220) “ . . . philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians.”(p.221) “They [the Straussian neo-cons] see themselves as outsiders – there’s a high degree of paranoia, they’ve convinced themselves that they’re on the side of angels, and everybody else in the government is a fool.”(p.222) Hubris, thy name is neo-con, indeed!

With regards to cooked intelligence there is this: “if it became known that Rummy wanted them to link the government of Tonga to 9/11, within a few months they’d come up with sources who’d do it.”(p.224) “It’s bait and switch . . . bait them into Iraq with WMD and, when they aren’t found, there’s the whole bullshit about the weapons being in Syria.”(p.241) Indeed, chapter five, “Who Lied to Whom” reflects some of Hersh’s most solid work on the cooking of intelligence and the dissemination of propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Hersh also provides an excellent description of how through the tactics of evasion and procrastination, Rumsfeld’s pentagon has been able to get away with as much as they have – constantly changing the debate and moving the goal posts in policy objectives.

And as to the tremendous cultural divide between U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians, Hersh leaves us with this image; U.S. troops chucking turkeys into the homes of Iraqis on Thanksgiving. Only under such gross mismanagement at the most senior levels does policy at the private level reach such an astounding state of absurdity. Perhaps this image of offensive profligacy and brazen, arrogant ignorance is the most telling for a policy ill conceived, weakly led, and executed on the ground in the most haphazard and careless of ways. This can’t bode well for the future.