War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
Harper - Harper
Release date: 2008-04-08
Hardcover
Author: Douglas J. Feith
Biography: general, Political Terrorism, U.S. Departments, Biography & Autobiography, Biography / Autobiography, Biography/Autobiography, USA, Personal Memoirs, Political, Political Freedom & Security - Terrorism, Biography & Autobiography / Political, Government policy, Iraq War, 2003-, Political aspects, Terrorism, United States, War on Terrorism, 2001-
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War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
Date undefinedThis 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.
War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
Date undefinedThis 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.
War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
Date undefinedAlthough 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 statesmen 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 State 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.
