Bush at War

For all the conservatives who give this book one star because it's "filled with lies," I feel compelled to point out that I am a moderate liberal who enjoys reading these Woodward books because they help me empathize with the Bush administration more, not because I want to demonize them or make fun of them.

This book, like his most recent one, is one that will have you forgetting your other responsibilities. As busy as I am, I found myself finishing this near-400-page book at just under five days. It's just really interesting, really good reading; and it covers material that, like I said about the other book, every American really should know about.

I suppose you can draw whatever conclusions you want from Mr. Woodward's "Bush At War" depending on your political slant. For those considering the book, I ask you to look at it impartially - it is a fascinating study into presidential decision making, and can be considered a primary source for research purposes. The decision making portrayed here are those of President Bush, and despite attacks from either end of the spectrum directed at Mr. Woodward, he has, as always, turned a reporter's eye to the sequence of events that led to the decision to go to war in Afghanistan.

I read this book twice - once when I first bought it when it was published, and recently. The hindsight history provides us made it read like two different books. What we see is a president not at all aloof, detached, or non-informed about the affaris of his government, but a resolute wartime leader setting the course for the future of the war on terror. From there you can draw your own conclusions - we have the "with us or against us" policy in the days after 9/11, which at the time seemed an approporiate, passionate, and emotional response to the tragedy. That policy in microcosm was exactly the correct policy as it pertianed to Pakistan in the days after 9/11, for example, but its broad application to other world events (Iraq, as we were soon to find out) was to prove much more difficult. We also see the inner workings of Bush's inner circle, the War Cabinet.

Mr. Woodward's book does not read like a novel - sometimes you feel that he is reprinting a transcript of the meetings right after they happened. This, while at times difficult to maintian attention to, is exactly the service he has provided - a first-hand account of events and decisions as they were made, without filter. The conclusions he reaches are based on those accounts, and are not partisan. He calls it like he sees it. His thorough research and interviews, many with the president himself, have to be seen as more authoritative than the views of any pundit.

I'm looking forward to Mr. Woodward's other books in the "Bush At War" series. My challenge to myself and to the rest of you is to stop seeing this topic through partisan lenses and begin to take Mr. Woodward's contributions here as the narrative of history as it was made. We will all be more informed and better citizens as a result.

For those who give any credibility to Bush and his Neo-Conservative Administration, this will be an enjoyable dosage of literary pornography-you will be informed on nothing you are not already aware of, but may be provided with a warm feeling of admiration for those you consider to be decisive heroes.

For the rest of us, who are now only too aware that the war in Afghanistan was a pitiful necessity for the Bush Administration, and who understand that the primary focus was constantly on Iraq, this will be a rather odious insight into the credulity that passes for journalism.

Beginning with the collapse of the Twin Towers, the book traces, in an exceedingly obtuse manner, the proceedings of Bush's War Cabinet in planning of Afghanistan, the `war on terror', and ultimately Iraq. Despite the notion of journalistic impartiality, these events are recounted in a manner extremely sympathetic to the Bush Administration, attempting to portray this racket of truth-fiddlers as courageous and altruistic. Constructed as a novel, the reader is invited to read the discussions and debates between members of the War Cabinet, eventually leading to their decision. Considering the information was gathered by Woodward from interviews with members of the War Cabinet, one is hardly going to receive unbiased depiction of these meeting.

If one wishes to learn about how the members of a truly deceitful organization perceive themselves, then look no further than this. For those wishing to read an account of the path to war, from a realistic perspective, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

This book is not an opinion piece--it's nearly a minute-by-minute matter-of-fact transcript of what transpired in the Bush administration in the first 100 days after 9/11, up to the capture of Kabul.

There are no sweeping judgments here, just the facts, in an accessible and readable style. If you're after a wholesale condemnation of the Bush administration, this book won't satisfy you. But if you want a kind of step-by-step chronology of what happened and when, with explanations along the way, I don't know of a better source.

The book recounts the basic events that we've all read in the newspapers at greater detail and while adding some original information based on meeting transcripts and interviews. The main thing we get is some sense of the personalities and their struggles amongst themselves and to deal with events. But we still don't get a GOOD look at them, that really gives deep insights.

The reportorial style does a disservice to the story. We get neither insightful analysis NOR detailed sourced history. Also, it seems that Woodward used co-authors but did not give them a byline. In addition, it seems that Woodward had different access from different people and in different areas and it's hard not to think that this has affected his slant and his ability to capture what really happened of interest.

It's not that this thing is a complete mess. It's readable. It's about something important. But I kept wishing that I had gotten a better book.