ALL OUT THERE
By coincidence, on this seventh anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, I'm finishing Bob Woodward's fourth tome on the Bush Presidency and the Iraq war, appropriately titled "The War Within".
As this very readable LA Times review from a few days ago explains, it's the last in a series that's taken an in-depth look in how we entered and executed the Iraq War after 9/11:
"The question of what sort of wartime president George W. Bush has been runs like a thread through Bob Woodward's brilliantly reported "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008," the fourth volume in his running, insider's account of the Bush administration's conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The series began with a generally positive assessment of the president in "Bush at War" and has moved down through deepening levels of disenchantment in "Plan of Attack" and "State of Denial." In this latest volume, the weight of evidence finally produces a verdict -- and it isn't a happy one."
Happy is the last word that comes to mind finishing this volume. As the review goes on to explain:
"Bush, in Woodward's view, is the worst kind of wartime president: controlling and disengaged, all at once. Worse, he frequently is not only detached from unpleasant or inconvenient facts but is also positively hostile to those who recite them.
As Woodward reconstructs the last two years -- in a stunning series of on-the-record interviews with participants -- this willful blindness has spilled out of the White House and into the departments of Defense and State in a perfect maelstrom of dysfunction."
Here's the bit the struck home most in the later on in the review, discussing the administration's ultimate focus on the "Surge":
"Even Petraeus, who emerges from Woodward's account as a formidable and honorable warrior, agreed on that point...
the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq met privately with Bush immediately after his Senate confirmation. The president called his decision to order the surge "a double down."
"Mr. President, this is not double down," Petraeus responded. "This is all in."
No matter who wins in November, "all in" is precisely where the next president and the American people will find themselves when George W. Bush leaves office in January."
It's been a season of "All in" for the U.S. on so many other fronts, ranging from the unprecedented actions the Treasury and the Fed have had to take on "back-stopping" of so many financial institutions, to the intense, down to the wire juggling we're now having to do to draw down some troops in Iraq, so we can shore up the deteriorating fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Maybe it's all finally enough to get us all out of the "blank check" mode we've been in since that fateful day on 9/11/2001.
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