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India Press Store - War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
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Manufacturer: Harper
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
EAN: 9780060899738
ISBN: 0060899735
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 688
Publication Date: 2008-03-01
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: 2008-04-08
Studio: Harper
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: what we thought we knew is all wrong, BUT...
Comment: The title, subtitle, and tag line "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terror, Douglas J. Feith - Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy" describe the contents of this book pretty well. It's an exhaustive memoir (from diaries and notes and presentations and papers, without over-reliance on memory) of Mr. Feith's involvement in this series of momentous decisions and actions (conversely it doesn't cover anything he wasn't personally involved in). This book is indispensable to any serious inquiry into what happened and why. And Mr. Feith isn't just yet another person cashing in on their experience by making money with a book; he's given all his book revenues to the benefit of veterans and their families via a charitable organization.
Fortunately it's organized into thematic chepters, rather than just presenting a chronological listing of meetings and conversations. This makes the book quite readable (although readers are unlikely to find it a "page-turner"). Some though will point out the disadvantage that this organization pretty much forces many events to be covered two or three times. The book is actually not as long as it seems: 530 pages are devoted to the text itself; the remaining 144 pages are devoted to many appendices, voluminous endnotes, and the index. All the appendices and notes, together with even more information on the accompanying website, make it possible to almost instantaneously reference every statement to its supporting material. Opinions that this book sets a new high standard for rigorous documentation aren't just hyperbole.
Even though it's presented as a series of positive memories, in the end it tries to refute many of the narratives common in other books. Those other books are seldom mentioned or addressed directly, but it's clear the author could feel their presence just offstage in the wings. Inconsistencies with other common books are to be expected -- after all that's much of what this book is about. But inconsistencies with less common books are more disturbing. For example, a mention in Robert Baer's "The Devil We Know" of a conversation with Doug Feith shortly after the first election of President Bush doesn't fit into either the timeline or the personal portrait presented in this book.
The great emphasis on rationality, the lack of personal rancor (even to the point of an almost complete lack of passion), and the heavy documentation most often lead to calling this book distinctly objective. But I wonder if something else is going on: Is this just the way "wonks" think all the time? Or is this perhaps the only way the author knows to counter allegations? Although the book doesn't read like a legal brief, all too often its very careful parsing of words seems to me to shade into "hair-splitting". At the end I was left with the decidedly disturbing overall impression that the book sounds like a grown-up version of a college student arguing to a professor that his exam book should be accorded special handling because the student was *not* part of the cheating ring.
It's conclusively shown that much of the conventional wisdom is incorrect, both details and overall narratives. Many things turn out to be impossible to understand without having a pretty good grasp of the federal bureaucracy, very carefully noting the difference between offices and programs with almost identical names (quick, what's the difference between FIF and FIFF?), separating the different offices that reported to Mr. Feith rather than lumping them all together, having a facility with acronyms, and being fluent in "bureaucratese". Even a careful, fair-minded journalist couldn't help but make some serious mistakes. "Policy discussion by leaks" gave an awful lot of journalists an awful lot of off the record information, some of it misleading or downright inaccurate, and often arising from less than immaculate motivations. And the vaunted Bush "message" machine had no way to deal with inaccuracies or leaks!
The presentation focuses almost totally on ideas. There's no mention of the bureaucratic infighting that must have been necessary to get these ideas accepted. It seems that Mr. Feith expected ideas to stand on their own. In fact, I sometimes wondered if Mr. Feith was even aware that even good ideas wouldn't necessarily have much impact without a fight. (My personal opinion is I *dislike* both bureaucratic infighting and the need for it. My personal opinion is ideas *should* stand on their own merit. But I wonder if this whole situation is just evidence that both Mr. Feith and myself are on the losing side.) In the end reading left me with a little too much of the flavor of Mr. Spock.
Almost all of Mr. Feith's disagreements with the conventional wisdom are explicitly stated. This book avoids the technique of presenting bits of information then expecting the reader to "connect the dots". One exception however is the interaction between the Pentagon civilians (Rumsfeld, Mr. Feith, etc.) and General Tommy Franks. Mr Feith presents suggestive details --but never explicitly says-- that the looting (and other immediate postwar problems) were a direct result of Mr. Franks failure to give adequate attention to his non-military responsibilities. (Of course given the obvious mutual dislike between General Franks and Mr. Feith, it's hard to know how credible this implication might be.) Mr. Feith's details could even be further interpreted to imply that disagreements with Franks were so strong that he would have been relieved of the command, except that Rumsfeld had already antagonized so many uniformed military officers that he had to prove (to someone?) that he could get along with *some* officers, and Mr. Franks just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be the one Rumsfeld would bend over backward not to disagree with.
While I found most of Mr. Feith's prima facie case reasonable, one thing immediately raised my hackles: perhaps it's just bad timing, or perhaps it's the tip of the iceberg of real disagreements about how to see reality. That thing is the status of the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan. Mr. Feith paints Afghanistan as a complete success, and crows about the way Mr. Karzai was installed and continues to function well with minimal support from the U.S.A. But recently there have been serious questions about the pervasive corruption and the mediocre quality of government. There have been suggestions of direct negotiations with the Taliban, of a considerable increase in troop levels, and even of dissociation from Mr. Karzai. I wish I could remember accurately whether or not these questions were already floating around in April when this book came out.
This book presents the clearest explanation I've ever seen of what the rationale was for how the 9/11 attacks led to the decision to enter Iraq. (I still don't agree with it, but at least I finally understand it.) In fact, I often found myself yelling at the book "Why didn't you say so?" Some of the recommendations Mr. Feith makes are also very clear and reasonable: for example a civilian reserve corp, something like the military reserves (that for example has an "institutional memory"), but with expertise in government, water, sewer, electricity, medical care, bureacracy management, and so on.
The mountain of detail was convincing at first, but eventually I came to feel there must have been something else going on. At various points Mr. Feith relates a comment from the State department about the crazy right wing nut cases crawling back, tells of one meeting where a participant was so angry he stood up and walked out, and tells how General Franks once told him he didn't have time for this f---ing bull----. Each time my reaction was huh? Did I skip a page without realizing it? The slur doesn't seem to have anything to do with what the book was covering. It felt to me like Mr. Feith was unaware of some strong subtext, one that actually sometimes drove decisions. Mr. Feith apparently never asks the questions I asked: What caused this pervasive preconception? Did it reduce the effectiveness of DoD (or of Mr. Feith in particular)? My final feeling was the suspicion of somebody "not seeing the forest for the trees."
Even though he's mentioned quite a bit, Rumsfeld remains something of a cipher. Much of the time he's presented as thinking very much like Mr. Feith, with important decisions being delegated to Mr. Feith for review, Mr. Feith representing DoD in meetings when Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were unavailable, and Rumsfeld accepting many of Mr. Feith's positions. But every so often Rumsfeld would take some contrary action that was never explained. Mr. Feith tells us both that when necessary Rumsfeld could spend several hours in serious discussion with someone without ever revealing his real views, and that Rumsfeld could compartmentalize concerns and inputs so that some of his deputies were completely unaware of what concerned others. Did Rumsfeld sometimes hold Mr. Feith's opinions at the same arms length without Mr. Feith ever realizing it?
According to Mr. Feith, DoD both was in favor of a quick "liberation not occupation" like in Afghanistan, and selected Mr. Paul "Jerry" Bremer and helped promote him to the uncontested singled head of the CPA. But ultimately DoD both lost control of Mr. Bremer and lost the (non)fight to avoid a prolonged occupation. I found the level of detail in the sketches of these events unsatisfactory; clearly Mr. Feith wasn't deeply involved in some of the decisions. I'd like to know more about this subject.
The book shows that even though President Bush may not have "cooked the books" ("lied"), his decisions, predelictions, appointments, and style of management led directly to Iraq. Iraq wasn't just a manifestation of "a rogue DoD" or "a neocon takeover," but rather was integral to the person who claimed to have won the election. Lapses of attention, overly rosy desires of departments working together as a team, and poor communication with the citizenry directly enabled the mess. (Sure "internal propaganda" isn't allowed, but that's no excuse for leaving citizens wondering "what the heck is going on?")
Mr. Feith tells near the end of the book of a comprehensive review started by one of Rumsfeld's "snowflakes" that lasted more than four months and resulted in the first deep and true understanding of the terrorist threat throughout the government. It's obvious from the book that the initial opinions of the federal bureacracy about the terrorist threat had been all over the map, badly outdated, and unreasoned - definitely not a basis for effective action. This raises in my mind the question --which this book is most definitely not about-- of how our government could react so strongly to the terrorist threat that it even went to war withOUT such a basic understanding of the terrorist threat.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A worthy defense of the Bush Administration
Comment: Doug Feith's book is a welcome respite from much of the self-serving memoirs written by former Bush Administration officials. Although he has harsh criticism for the CIA and State (particularly Powell and Armitage), his enunciation of the reasons for going to war in Iraq is lucid and cogent. He may not convince his critics (of which there are many), but Feith's arguments should be taken seriously. He uses documents and notes from high-level meetings to try to correct a number of myths that have arisen over the decision to invade Iraq; he will not dispel those myths in the broad public conscience, but future historians will find his book a useful counterpoint to many of the anti-Bush Administration works.
Feith does not white-wash history, nor is this book an apology. He attempts to explain the reasons he and others made the decisions they made. At one point I recall him wishing to write a "gentlemanly book" (full disclosure -- I worked for Doug Feith, though as a career civil servant, not a political appointee). In these partisan times he may have come as close as any one can to having done just that.
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Summary: Timeline facts on the war on terrorism
Comment: This book is not an attempt to revise history, but rather to set the record straight. It was written by an author who was in a unique position to observe the Pentagon decision making process leading to the war in Iraq. Feith's attention to a detailed timeline and the facts as then known at the time in question, and his extensive documentation references are most impressive. I predict this will become recognized as a historically important work. Those who believe in "Cowboy Bush" and "Bush Lied" will not like this book. Many strategic and tactical mistakes are documented, and should be lessons learned. The war on terrorism seems destined to go on for a long time, and knowledge about it's beginnings is important.
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Summary: One hopes for more books of this type about the Iraq war.
Comment: This is an essential fact book for every person curious about the U.S. government's decision making that led to the Afghan and Iraq wars and their pursuit in the early years.
Douglas Feith's memoir includes the period in which he served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He covers discussions in which he was personally involved and clearly identifies information that he did not personally observe. As such, important pieces of the puzzle are left to the observations of the actual participants. One hopes that more books will provide additional first-hand information about the Iraq war and avoid the imaginative judgments of the uninformed. Michael Yon does well on the ground in Iraq, but all too many have built a big scaffold on which to hang President Bush and ignored their own limited perspective.
Feith provides appendices in which he outlines the Washington decision apparatus, shows the memos that provided outlines of decision options, a series of charts used to brief the President on the Iraq transition, the implementation outline for the President's March 2003 policy for an Iraq Interim Authority, and a policy briefing on training the Iraqi opposition. All told good evidence for the decision process used.
Feith explains that the chain of command goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the regional commander (Centcom's Tommy Franks handled the invasion of Iraq). The Centcom commander can (and regularly did) react negatively to any suggestions for change that did not come directly from the President or the Secretary of Defense.
The Pentagon staff and the Joint Chiefs provide support and advice only, and are not in the chain of command. Thus Wolfowitz (the Deputy Secretary of Defense), Feith and General Myers (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) in the Pentagon made suggestions to Rumsfeld and the President. These advisors supported the President's vision of the terrorist threat as a world-wide phenomena. They noted many separate organizations, but recognized their common goal of injuring America and their deadly danger to Americans. They shared the President's view and designed policies to reduce that threat, deter terrorism around the world, and did not narrow their vision to only Afghanistan, as many recommended.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld appears as a very demanding boss who was trying to refocus this largest of American bureaucracies into a leaner more flexible force. When the secretary's vision collided with officials who disagreed with him, he met a great deal of foot dragging. Never-the-less, he did move the army's divisional structure farther along the path toward brigade organization.
Mixed into the debate were multiple opinions about the force levels necessary in Iraq. In retrospect it is very clear that the force levels in Iraq were too small to permit a traditional occupation. Feith suggests the President's selected occupation policy might have made a large force less necessary, but it never had a chance. Head of the Coalition Provisional Authority Paul Bremer III caused shock across the administration when, without consultation, he published an article in the 08 September 2003 Washington Post headlined "Iraq's Path to Sovereignty." The seven steps Bremer outlined effectively aborted the President's plan for early and piecewise transfer of sovereignty to Iraq. The planned Iraq Interim Authority was not to be.
In retrospect it is easy to fault the President and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for not immediately replacing Bremer. They must have felt "the man on the ground" had better information and in any event the shockwave from replacement would have been too high.
Bremer's dismantling of the Iraq Interim Authority had serious repercussions. Feith quotes Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in his chapter title "from liberation to occupation;" a very brief summation. Our support in Iraq dwindled. Our casualty figures soared to new records in November 2003, April 2004, and November 2004 before easing back and then running up again to May 2007.
On the other hand Rumsfeld's continual insistence on careful written arguments for and against many policies should help produce a wonderful historic record of his thinking as Secretary of Defense. Would that the Secretary of State would create such a record. Many government departments try to impose their policies with leaks and innuendo. Right or wrong Rumsfeld was clearly working very hard to produce a policy that was in the country's best interest and not necessarily just his turf. He regularly suggested that State be given more budget to handle some to the work that had fallen to Defense by default.
It appears that both the President and the Secretary of Defense over-reacted to the disastrous experience of a President and Secretary of Defense micromanaging the Vietnam War. Possibly because of this unfortunate history they were extremely reluctant to reverse decisions made at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Regional Command (Centcom) level. They can be faulted for failing to push the Army to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy at an earlier date.
Early mistakes in a war are a foregone conclusion since your enemy has studied your previous tactics and made adjustments to counter them. We usually bumble along, adjust and eventually get tactics that work inside the enemy's decision-response envelope.
Adjusting strategy must be done more slowly, with much greater care, and requires careful communication to all levels. This takes time and can be seriously impeded by unclear or unrealistic goals. Rumsfeld did his best to generate clarity but some subordinates in Iraq were not able to operate at his level.
Feith is to be commended for producing a very readable book that contains a great deal of important history of the Washington decision making for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was indeed refreshing to read an account of the Washington decision making by an actual participant that is not clouded by wild suppositions or accusations.
Our present success in Iraq has built on the best efforts of a large number of men including the main characters of Feith's book. This success may not have been possible several years ago even if the troop surge had occurred then and General Petraeus had been the boss.
This reviewer considers it unfortunate that the President's many critics do not share his vision of the war's scope, but it is a point on which reasonable men can fail to agree. To me the debate closely parallels the European debate in the mid 1930's, but this time Churchill was in power.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Feith is a typically brilliant Bush appointee
Comment: Although General Tommy Franks famously referred to Feith as "the f****ng stupidest guy on the face of the earth.", this book demonstrates that he is in fact one of the most brilliant defense strategeists who ever walked the face of the earth. Feith has openly admitted that he had no desire to serve in Viet Nam because he was afraid of getting killed or having his beloved hair mussed up. But as undersecratary of something-or-other at the Defense Department, Feith was one of the fiercest proponents of going to war with Iraq for no good reason. In this great great book, Feith chronicles the monumental efforts he undertook to fabricate evidence of WMD in Iraq and of Saddam's connection to 9/11. Feith's detailed recounting of how the White House and the State Department were determined to go to war with Iraq for no other reason that to demonstrate U.S. military might to the world, is simultaneously chilling and comforting.
Although Doug Feith and John Bolton and George Bush and Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and the many others who took this country to war have never had any desire to fight for their country when they had the opportunity, nobody can deny the patriotism and courage that these brave men have demonstrated in taking this great nation to war for no good reason against a country with a weak military but lots and lots of those Arab looking people who hate our freedoms.
Feith may be the f*****g stupidest guy on the face of the earth, but he's our f*****g stupidest guy on the face of the earth and thank god for that.
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, journalists, commentators, and others have published accounts of the Bush Administration's war on terrorism. But no senior Pentagon official has offered an inside view of those years, or has challenged the prevailing narrative of that war—until now. Douglas J. Feith, the head of the Pentagon's Policy organization, was a key member of Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle as the Administration weighed how to protect the nation from another 9/11. In War and Decision, he puts readers in the room with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, General Tommy Franks, and other key players as the Administration devised its strategy and war plans. Drawing on thousands of previously undisclosed documents, notes, and other written sources, Feith details how the Administration launched a global effort to attack and disrupt terrorist networks; how it decided to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime; how it came to impose an occupation on Iraq even though it had avoided one in Afghanistan; how some officials postponed or impeded important early steps that could have averted major problems in Iraq's post-Saddam period; and how the Administration's errors in war-related communications undermined the nation's credibility and put U.S. war efforts at risk. Even close followers of reporting on the Iraq war will be surprised at the new information Feith provides—presented here with balance and rigorous attention to detail. Among other revelations, War and Decision demonstrates that the most far-reaching warning of danger in Iraq was produced not by State or by the CIA, but by the Pentagon. It reveals the actual story behind the allegations that the Pentagon wanted to "anoint" Ahmad Chalabi as ruler of Iraq, and what really happened when the Pentagon challenged the CIA's work on the Iraqal Qaida relationship. It offers the first accurate account of Iraq postwar planning—a topic widely misreported to date. And it presents surprising new portraits of Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Richard Armitage, L. Paul Bremer, and others—revealing how differences among them shaped U.S. policy. With its blend of vivid narrative, frank analysis, and elegant writing, War and Decision is like no other book on the Iraq war. It will interest those who have been troubled by conflicting accounts of the planning of the war, frustrated by the lack of firsthand insight into the decision-making process, or skeptical of conventional wisdom about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the global war on terrorism—efforts the author continues to support.
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