State of Denial is Bob Woodward’s third book on the Bush administration. In it, Woodward tells the story of an administration in which no internal accountability exists and in which intellectual laziness rules the day. It is a history of weak military leadership, an incredibly dominant and undefined US Secretary of Defense and political leaders who conveniently ignore all bad news. In short, it’s the history of an utterly incompetent administration or at least when talking about the Iraq war and postwar Iraq. The sad reality is – of course – that it’s not just a history. Nothing indicates that the Bush administration is willing to change its ways.
State of Denial is fascinating but also – perhaps more so – infuriating. It is infuriating to read that the administration had all the information it needed to realize that the initial approach was not working, that more money was needed (in the short run) but that – first and foremost – security should have been the primary target and that there were not enough troops in Iraq from the get-go.
Woodward did extensive research. His description of meetings in which Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush (among others) were present and in which, mostly, military officers held presentations about the situation in Iraq form the most – as far as I am concerned – infuriating parts of the book. Those meetings were / are, quite simply, useless. Especially Bush does not ask any real, critical questions. Even the military officers holding the presentations are surprised by the – seemingly – lack of interest. They expect an audience critical of the information and views it receives. Not so. The audience – the most powerful people of the most powerful country in the world – remains silent. A nod here, a nod there and that’s about it. It gave Bush the image of intellectual laziness. He is not stupid, every now and then he seems to have a good day and suddenly starts asking more critical questions or demands of someone to do something. But those days are rare. Too rare for a President of the United States of America.
The most incompetent person however, is not George W. Bush. It’s Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is – generally – hated by the military. He is obsessive, a control-freak: a micromanager of the worst kind. He seems to live for the ‘chain of command’ but, when things go wrong, he refuses to take responsibility for it. Bob Woodward interviewed Rumsfeld on several occasions for State of Denial. Those interviews are not just interesting, they are fascinating. For a change, a journalist seemed to be willing to ask the tough questions.
Andrew Card realized, early on, that Rumsfeld was messing up tremendously and tried to persuade U.S. President George W. Bush to get rid of him. Same goes for Condoleezza Rice whose views clashed with those of Rumsfeld, especially since she became US Secretary of State. Rumsfeld believed that the US should liberate the Iraqi people and withdraw ASAP: no re-building the country, that’s something the Iraqis have to do themselves. Rice has a different view: sure they have to re-build their own country, determine the future of their own country but she also realizes that the US and allied forces have a great responsibility: it cannot be expected of the Iraqi people to re-build their entire country after being ruled by a ruthless dictator for 30 years and after the country has been destroyed during OIF. That is quite simply impossible.
One might think that the administration would debate about this and come up with a unanimously-supported approach. Not so. Rice (and others) are lobbying for and trying to put into practice the latter approach, Rumsfeld carefully ignores it and does as he think is best.
There is so much information in the book, so much new to me at least that a short summary is insufficient. One truly has to read State of Denial oneself. It’s the best possible source for understanding how the Bush administration dealt with Iraq and how it continues to deal with it. If one wants to understand why Iraq is the mess it is right now, State of Denial provides all the answers. Miscommunication, intellectual laziness, no real plan, weak military leadership, keeping up appearances, micromanagement, no management at all… it’s all there.
On a scale from 1-10, State of Denial gets a 9: very well researched (great sources), good structure, the only point of criticism is one of personal flavor: he – obviously – writes like a journalist and less like a professional author (which is of course logical): it’s a matter of style and thus, a matter of taste.
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