PLAN OF ATTACK
Few days ago I finished reading Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward, and I would say that is a "good" book. And please notice that I put good between quotes because I have mix feelings about it. I do enjoy reading non-fiction a lot, and even though I enjoyed reading this one, the truth is that I also putted it down several times thinking "what a piece of shit".
First of all I would say that the book is very well written. Even for me, a foreigner whose english is a second language, all the vocabulary and the way the book is developed is certainly very easy to read and comprehend. And as the topic is so fresh and still in everybody's mind, it is a pleasure to read a historical book where you can actually remember what was going on throughout the book; you can even say "oh, I was doing laundry when that happen!", so that's really cool.
The way this book works is that the author uses three sources: speeches and presentations done by the "war cabinet"; news, events, reactions and so on around the world as they were happening; and interviews with the "war cabinet" about the connection between speeches, actions and reactions. The author tries to give a hint of how policy making works, and also deeps his toes into some of the discussions and arguments that took place inside the White House since pretty much August 2002, until the Mission Accomplish speech.
But the book fails miserably in really explaining simple questions as Why, When, and How. For example, the author never mentions Kuwait and when and how the US got permission to use it as a beach head in the attack. He doesn't mention either when, how and why Saudi Arabia opted not to participate in the war, even though the Saudi ambassador appears in the oval office every other page.
I would say this is the official story of the war, and as every official version, it doesn't say much. And what it says is rhetoric. The interviews with George W. Bush are filled with cliches and speech phrases like "I wanted America to be secure", and "Iraq is a threat to the world", without going much into details and of course, without answering direct questions.
What I wanted to know when reading the book, was basically when and how and who took the decision to go to war. Not the actual green light to start dropping bombs, but at the very early stages, like when they decided that they were going to go to war. According to the book it all started in late 2001 when Bush asked Rumsfeld to update the war plan for Iraq, and from there on it all went downhill. The preparation of a plan, moved on to the physical expansion of air fields in the region, building of facilities, insertion of CIA operatives and troops movement even before an actual decision was made. My impression is that one day they realized that the buildup of forces was too advanced to back down and the military preparations went faster than the diplomatic actions. By the time the US went to the UN, the military was already frothing at their mouth with preparations to use all their weaponry. Diplomacy just got few weeks while the military had almost year and a half to prepare.
Then is the question of why did we go to Iraq? What was the reason or reasons to wage a full scale war. From the very beginning everybody wanted to get rid of Saddam because he was a bad guy, period. When 9/11 happen, the White House took all that fear that something like that could happen again, and used it to go to war. From there onwards, reasons and explanations of links with terrorist groups, with threats to America, to allies, etc. just kept piling up. I'm not going to go further in this topic, just to add that they were victims of their own "collective thinking" and their own propaganda efforts concerning the real risks that America faces.
It surprised me the little or almost no planning for the post war period. Only when the military buildup was peaking, the White House started asking what were they going to do once the dust had settle, and they had to start running a whole country. Even at that point, their "collective thinking", was like once they're "free", every thing will just fall in place and we will spread democracy throughout the world. Planning, planning, planning gentleman, that's the difference between success and a quagmire. There was a lot of planning for the "war", that took few weeks, but no planning at all for the occupation, which is in its second year.
At the end the military noise was just too loud for the diplomatic effort to be able to work. Powell was isolated little by little by a group of people that wanted, at all costs, to use the military no matter what. A group of people that were surfing on a wave of invencibility and mental clarity of what was good for the world that brought to my mind a resemblance to extremists. And by labeling things based on good and evil, mental clarity becomes an utopia. It's scary that people make decisions based on circumstantial evidence that put lives at risk; even more so that they just got one more term in their pocket to bomb the hell out of whoever seems to be "evil".
As the book was written while some of this stories were developing, it falls short of getting some insight and specially on getting the perspective of history. Is just the official story of what happened.
As I said at the beginning, the book is very well written in its form; the content however is skin deep.
First of all I would say that the book is very well written. Even for me, a foreigner whose english is a second language, all the vocabulary and the way the book is developed is certainly very easy to read and comprehend. And as the topic is so fresh and still in everybody's mind, it is a pleasure to read a historical book where you can actually remember what was going on throughout the book; you can even say "oh, I was doing laundry when that happen!", so that's really cool.The way this book works is that the author uses three sources: speeches and presentations done by the "war cabinet"; news, events, reactions and so on around the world as they were happening; and interviews with the "war cabinet" about the connection between speeches, actions and reactions. The author tries to give a hint of how policy making works, and also deeps his toes into some of the discussions and arguments that took place inside the White House since pretty much August 2002, until the Mission Accomplish speech.
But the book fails miserably in really explaining simple questions as Why, When, and How. For example, the author never mentions Kuwait and when and how the US got permission to use it as a beach head in the attack. He doesn't mention either when, how and why Saudi Arabia opted not to participate in the war, even though the Saudi ambassador appears in the oval office every other page.
I would say this is the official story of the war, and as every official version, it doesn't say much. And what it says is rhetoric. The interviews with George W. Bush are filled with cliches and speech phrases like "I wanted America to be secure", and "Iraq is a threat to the world", without going much into details and of course, without answering direct questions.
What I wanted to know when reading the book, was basically when and how and who took the decision to go to war. Not the actual green light to start dropping bombs, but at the very early stages, like when they decided that they were going to go to war. According to the book it all started in late 2001 when Bush asked Rumsfeld to update the war plan for Iraq, and from there on it all went downhill. The preparation of a plan, moved on to the physical expansion of air fields in the region, building of facilities, insertion of CIA operatives and troops movement even before an actual decision was made. My impression is that one day they realized that the buildup of forces was too advanced to back down and the military preparations went faster than the diplomatic actions. By the time the US went to the UN, the military was already frothing at their mouth with preparations to use all their weaponry. Diplomacy just got few weeks while the military had almost year and a half to prepare.
Then is the question of why did we go to Iraq? What was the reason or reasons to wage a full scale war. From the very beginning everybody wanted to get rid of Saddam because he was a bad guy, period. When 9/11 happen, the White House took all that fear that something like that could happen again, and used it to go to war. From there onwards, reasons and explanations of links with terrorist groups, with threats to America, to allies, etc. just kept piling up. I'm not going to go further in this topic, just to add that they were victims of their own "collective thinking" and their own propaganda efforts concerning the real risks that America faces.
It surprised me the little or almost no planning for the post war period. Only when the military buildup was peaking, the White House started asking what were they going to do once the dust had settle, and they had to start running a whole country. Even at that point, their "collective thinking", was like once they're "free", every thing will just fall in place and we will spread democracy throughout the world. Planning, planning, planning gentleman, that's the difference between success and a quagmire. There was a lot of planning for the "war", that took few weeks, but no planning at all for the occupation, which is in its second year.
At the end the military noise was just too loud for the diplomatic effort to be able to work. Powell was isolated little by little by a group of people that wanted, at all costs, to use the military no matter what. A group of people that were surfing on a wave of invencibility and mental clarity of what was good for the world that brought to my mind a resemblance to extremists. And by labeling things based on good and evil, mental clarity becomes an utopia. It's scary that people make decisions based on circumstantial evidence that put lives at risk; even more so that they just got one more term in their pocket to bomb the hell out of whoever seems to be "evil".
As the book was written while some of this stories were developing, it falls short of getting some insight and specially on getting the perspective of history. Is just the official story of what happened.
As I said at the beginning, the book is very well written in its form; the content however is skin deep.
Jean-Francois was drunk at 4:55 PM
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