Attack of the Neocons

Four years. Two wars. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the first term of George W. Bush as president of the United States. Bush has used...

Four years. Two wars. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the first term of George W. Bush as president of the United States. Bush has used the power of the US war machine to a level no other president has in the post-Cold War world. And the ominous signs are already there, that he is prepared and determined to continue to do so, despite all domestic and foreign opposition, if he is rewarded with a second term.

Bob Woodward, who has tracked Washington politics for 30 odd years as the ultimate outsider looking in, without being sucked into power games, takes up from where he left off in Bush At War. There, he showed us how a dysfunctional policy-making apparatus put together a response to the September 11 attacks, by taking out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and forcing Osama bin Laden into hiding.

Throughout that book ran the tantalising thread of Iraq, the unfinished agenda of President George H. Bush. Plan of Attack tracks how George W. reached the decision to eliminate Saddam Hussein. The main outline, of course, we already know. Woodward, however, uses his breathtaking access to the powers that be, including Bush, to show how the Iraq question exercised the administration in its infancy. Just 17 days after Bush took his oath of office, we see Secretary of Defence Don Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell sparring over the best way to tackle the issue, through war or diplomacy.

While Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are depicted as the best technocrats and paranoiacs money can buy, it is Powell and Bush himself who stand out. Powell emerges as a Hamlet-like figure 8212; the warrior who tries to stave off war, again and again insisting that the ultimate goal be crystal clear, and all-too-aware of the danger of failure and its consequences for human lives. And then finally, when war cannot be avoided, and despite his misgivings, lining up behind the commander-in-chief. And Bush? Oddly enough, a more nuanced, intelligent and focused man appears, fully aware that the judgement of history on his wars could go either way.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction did not exist 8212; as even Bush concedes to Woodward. So, how did they become the defining point of policy making for war? A tragic combination of a mindset that was determined to see WMDs where they were not, to misunderstand and manipulate intelligence, and the resolve of Bush that any threat to the US, even a perceived one, must be pre-empted.

Unlike in Bush At War, where Woodward was content to let the actors play out their roles, without any commentary, judgemental or otherwise, this time around, he actually comments. He makes it clear that he does not believe he has found all the key decision-making moments, but this does not deter him from arriving at two conclusions 8212; that a war against Iraq, despite all diplomatic shadow-boxing, was not the last, but the preferred option; and it was taken without fully working out the possible consequences. One has a terrible feeling that not too far in the future Woodward will present us with his next opus, and it will be called Bush8217;s Quagmire.