If
there is one thing to read about the
Bush Administration, this is it!
"Blind
Into Baghdad:The
U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning
but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people
in charge. The inside story of a historic failure.. The
Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2004)
by James Fallows.
More insightful, informative,
eye-opening, illustrative and devastating than the first or second Woodward
books, the Clarke book, the Oneil Book or any other book or article that I am
aware of (in my humble opinion). From one of the truly top American journalists,
comes a fabulous and disturbing article, presented in Fallows' typically
well-written and professional way. Fallows demonstrates how little we know
and how much we should know. It sheds light on the administration, it's
foreign policy process, it's general approach and attitude, and why post-war
Iraq is turning into a quagmire. To give you a little preview, as
Fallows states: "The Administration will be admired in retrospect for how
much knowledge it created about the challenge it was taking on. . . . But the
Administration will be condemned for what it did with what was known. The
problems the United States has encountered are precisely the ones its own expert
agencies warned against. . . . What David Halberstam said of Robert McNamara in
The Best and the Brightest is true of those at OSD (the Office of Secretary
of Defense, such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitze, and including others civilians such as
Cheney) as well: they were brilliant, and they were fools." The article
also has some links to some interesting relevant articles and cartoons.
See also
"Bluebrint for a Mess,"
New York Times Magazine (November 2, 2003), by David Rieff. An excellent earlier
overview of the policymaking process that contributed to the postwar
reconstruction mess. Similar to Fallows but has some additional
information.
If
there is one thing to read about the
rise of Osama Ben Ladin, Al Quida, and Arab/Muslim-
terrorists, this is it!
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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA,
Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to
September 10, 2001, by Steve Coll (Penguin,
2004). It is the single best book on the topic; well-documented;
incredibly comprehensive; readable--deserves a Pulitzer.
Book review:
"The Rise of bin Laden," By Ahmed
Rashid New York Review of Books (May 27, 2004).
"Coll's book is deeply satisfying because it is much more
than a treatise on the CIA's performance. It covers the
entire region from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan; shows where
al-Qaeda and bin Laden were getting support, discussing in
detail bin Laden's complicated relationship with the Saudis,
who had expelled him in 1991 but remained ambivalent about
bringing him to justice; and it clarifies the battles over
policy among the CIA, the White House, and the US's
principal allies. It's an inside account written by an
outsider, the most objective history I have read of the many
failures of the CIA and the US government in the region."
Click link for full review. |
If
you really want to understand
the U.S.'s and, in particular,
Bush Adm's war on terrorism and Iraq,
I
suggest the following.
To read just one or two makes
it too incomplete and lacks context.
Woodward (2002) gets the inside
account of post-Sept 11 and the war on Afghanistan.
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Rise
of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet by
James Mann (2004. Excellent and very readable history of the rise of the thought and power
of the conservative and neo-conservative foreign
policy principals within the Bush Administration.
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Woodward
(2004) gets the inside account of how the Bush Adm went to war against Iraq.
(there are excerpts under recommended books below)
"The Vanishing Case for War,"
New
York Review of Books (December 4, 2003), by Thomas Powers.
One of the most prominent and respected experts on intelligence makes it
clear that the case for war with Iraq was based on politicized and
selective intelligence at the highest levels of government. As
Powers states, "The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States
last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case
of the misreading of secret intelligence in American history."
Powers explains what happened and why.
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"THE GRAY ZONE: How a secret Pentagon
program came to Abu Ghraib,"
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH The New Yorker (May 24, 2004).
Beginning paragraph: "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army
reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation,
which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the
interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision
embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the
effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s
prospects in the war on terror." |
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