State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III – Bob Woodward
State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III – Bob Woodward, Simon and Schuster (2006) 558pp. (S) **
Truth be known, I was very hesitant to cover this book. Woodward’s two previous efforts, Bush At War and Plan of Attack, are two outstanding specimens of the hagiographic stenography that when it really mattered, unquestioningly allowed the Bush II administration to get away with as much as it has, both in the past and continuing to do so to date. In this sense, Woodward really performed a grave public disservice, the results of which we are very much dealing with to this day.
So perhaps feeling a whiff of civic responsibility and remorse, Woodward has made this latest attempt to perhaps redeem his public image and clear his conscience. (And now that George W. Bush’s approval ratings are down into the thirties, clearly Woodward has sensed the changing national winds, making criticism of the administration now the safe, don’t stick your neck out, play.) State of Denial is far from the scathing indictment of an administration gone badly wrong, that it could be. For instance, the reader will observe that there is no discussion of war crimes and international courts, mechanisms designed to best reckon with wayward, renegade rogue nations and the leaders that guide them. Also ominously omitted, is the “Downing Street memo,” the nail in the proverbial coffin that closes the case solid that Bush and Co. were dreaming of war in Iraq as early as mid-2002 (and according to some sources, even earlier than this). Instead, we read of things like “arrogance” and “incompetence,” descriptions designed in their own way to leave war aggressors off the hook.
There are plenty of instances of neo-con zealotry, like when “corrections” were made to the transcript of a candid public statement to the press made by interim Iraq leader, General Jay Garner, to include praise for the INC (Iraqi National Congress) and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi. Garner also objected to en masse “debaathification” (extrication of personnel that were members of Saddam’s ruling Baath party) of the armed services and police, but neo-cons in the Pentagon like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith held firm on this point, thus giving pink slips to hundreds of thousands of men with guns with plenty of time to stew over the unpleasant conditions they believed to be caused by the occupation. To this, Bush’s response was, “We need to play on a sense of nationalism that will motivate Iraqis to cooperate with us to exclude the foreigners. The irony of the commander-in-chief of an occupation force of approximately 130,000 heavily armed foreign troops saying they should play on Iraqi nationalism and convince the people of Iraq to ‘exclude the foreigners’ seemed to go unnoticed.”(p.247)
Even in his criticisms of Bush, Woodward still manages to get his jabs in on the vanquished John Kerry: “Kerry, swimming in the past, defending his Vietnam and Senate service, never explained how he would use the power of the presidency. Bush had made it clear. He had used the power to go to war, and he was not going to back down.”(p.332) – and – “Overall, Kerry appeared uncertain and indecisive, while Bush succeeded in presenting himself in the campaign as tough and consistent.”(p.339) For the informed public, we can attribute these “appearances” to boatloads of campaign cash that financed the shameless tactics as practiced by none other than “boy wonder” Karl Rove. How else to explain the former cheerleader cum chickenhawk/deserter-in-chief, coming across as “tough and consistent” in opposition to a two-tour, decorated Vietnam veteran? Bush Jr. and his public persona is one of the biggest shams of the modern era. The fact that Woodward unquestioningly plays into the Rovian ruse does not speak well to his judgment nor to his intelligence.
In one poignant instance, Woodward describes the process of consideration of speechwriter Michael Gerson as to what should be included in a speech. Woodward writes, “So trumpeting democracy in the State of the Union might appeal to Iraqis”(p.373); a suspiciously, quasi-treasonous statement, whether he is conscious of making it or not since the State of the Union address is expressly designed to inform a domestic constituency of the state of the nation, and by all means, not as a mechanism through which to appease foreign interests.
At one point, in response to seeing a severely injured soldier, Bush is modestly self-referential as he calls himself “the most powerful man in the world.”(p.437) In another instance, Bush laments that there are no leaders in Iraq: “Where’s George Washington? Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”(p.447) The sheer idiocy of applying historical western figures to a contemporary situation in an eastern nation almost surpasses in ridiculousness the hubris-soaked statement aforementioned. Woodward also describes Bush as keeping a “terror scorecard” as well as having an appetite for enemy body counts, despite the reluctance of his generals to satiate a hunger that for them is far too uncomfortably reminiscent of the Vietnam era.
In the final pages, Woodward describes a restless White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, eager to get off the Bush/Cheney train. “Card was enough of a realist to see that there were two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona that had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance.”(p.456) As Woodward spreads plenty of ink on the idiosyncrasies of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it would seem that no one in the administration better embodied this duality than him. But while this may be true, Woodward leaves the reader hanging, never bothering to elaborate on the highly destructive consequences of said “incompetence and arrogance.”
Truth be known, I was very hesitant to cover this book. Woodward’s two previous efforts, Bush At War and Plan of Attack, are two outstanding specimens of the hagiographic stenography that when it really mattered, unquestioningly allowed the Bush II administration to get away with as much as it has, both in the past and continuing to do so to date. In this sense, Woodward really performed a grave public disservice, the results of which we are very much dealing with to this day.
So perhaps feeling a whiff of civic responsibility and remorse, Woodward has made this latest attempt to perhaps redeem his public image and clear his conscience. (And now that George W. Bush’s approval ratings are down into the thirties, clearly Woodward has sensed the changing national winds, making criticism of the administration now the safe, don’t stick your neck out, play.) State of Denial is far from the scathing indictment of an administration gone badly wrong, that it could be. For instance, the reader will observe that there is no discussion of war crimes and international courts, mechanisms designed to best reckon with wayward, renegade rogue nations and the leaders that guide them. Also ominously omitted, is the “Downing Street memo,” the nail in the proverbial coffin that closes the case solid that Bush and Co. were dreaming of war in Iraq as early as mid-2002 (and according to some sources, even earlier than this). Instead, we read of things like “arrogance” and “incompetence,” descriptions designed in their own way to leave war aggressors off the hook.
There are plenty of instances of neo-con zealotry, like when “corrections” were made to the transcript of a candid public statement to the press made by interim Iraq leader, General Jay Garner, to include praise for the INC (Iraqi National Congress) and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi. Garner also objected to en masse “debaathification” (extrication of personnel that were members of Saddam’s ruling Baath party) of the armed services and police, but neo-cons in the Pentagon like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith held firm on this point, thus giving pink slips to hundreds of thousands of men with guns with plenty of time to stew over the unpleasant conditions they believed to be caused by the occupation. To this, Bush’s response was, “We need to play on a sense of nationalism that will motivate Iraqis to cooperate with us to exclude the foreigners. The irony of the commander-in-chief of an occupation force of approximately 130,000 heavily armed foreign troops saying they should play on Iraqi nationalism and convince the people of Iraq to ‘exclude the foreigners’ seemed to go unnoticed.”(p.247)
Even in his criticisms of Bush, Woodward still manages to get his jabs in on the vanquished John Kerry: “Kerry, swimming in the past, defending his Vietnam and Senate service, never explained how he would use the power of the presidency. Bush had made it clear. He had used the power to go to war, and he was not going to back down.”(p.332) – and – “Overall, Kerry appeared uncertain and indecisive, while Bush succeeded in presenting himself in the campaign as tough and consistent.”(p.339) For the informed public, we can attribute these “appearances” to boatloads of campaign cash that financed the shameless tactics as practiced by none other than “boy wonder” Karl Rove. How else to explain the former cheerleader cum chickenhawk/deserter-in-chief, coming across as “tough and consistent” in opposition to a two-tour, decorated Vietnam veteran? Bush Jr. and his public persona is one of the biggest shams of the modern era. The fact that Woodward unquestioningly plays into the Rovian ruse does not speak well to his judgment nor to his intelligence.
In one poignant instance, Woodward describes the process of consideration of speechwriter Michael Gerson as to what should be included in a speech. Woodward writes, “So trumpeting democracy in the State of the Union might appeal to Iraqis”(p.373); a suspiciously, quasi-treasonous statement, whether he is conscious of making it or not since the State of the Union address is expressly designed to inform a domestic constituency of the state of the nation, and by all means, not as a mechanism through which to appease foreign interests.
At one point, in response to seeing a severely injured soldier, Bush is modestly self-referential as he calls himself “the most powerful man in the world.”(p.437) In another instance, Bush laments that there are no leaders in Iraq: “Where’s George Washington? Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”(p.447) The sheer idiocy of applying historical western figures to a contemporary situation in an eastern nation almost surpasses in ridiculousness the hubris-soaked statement aforementioned. Woodward also describes Bush as keeping a “terror scorecard” as well as having an appetite for enemy body counts, despite the reluctance of his generals to satiate a hunger that for them is far too uncomfortably reminiscent of the Vietnam era.
In the final pages, Woodward describes a restless White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, eager to get off the Bush/Cheney train. “Card was enough of a realist to see that there were two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona that had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance.”(p.456) As Woodward spreads plenty of ink on the idiosyncrasies of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it would seem that no one in the administration better embodied this duality than him. But while this may be true, Woodward leaves the reader hanging, never bothering to elaborate on the highly destructive consequences of said “incompetence and arrogance.”
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