Bob Woodward's "The War Within"

After finishing this important and timely book this morning at 5:30am, I sit here at my IMac and wonder to myself, "How did the country get here?" Yesterday, the stock market fell almost 7%. Some of the other mindblowing issues of the day: the war in Iraq and Afghanistan seems unending, Iran is getting stronger and stronger, there is the unsettling question of exactly who is in charge in North Korea, etc etc.

Man, the country is in rough shape.

And I, for one, put an enormous amount of blame on President Bush and all his sycophantic advisors and appointees. Never has a man so self confident had such a terrible track record.

His legacy will include enormous deficit spending, tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war, 9/11 occurring on his watch, No Child Left Behind (in my view a completely failed policy that will hurt the nation's educational system, and children, for decades), a military stretched thin by the failed war in Iraq. On and on it goes. Has the President done anything RIGHT in his eight years in office?

Not that I can see.

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Reading this book made me very very angry.

Angry that the President is always so sure of himself. People who cannot admit mistakes and errors are very dangerous. For the entire length of the five years old invasion and occupation of Iraq, President Bush has never been able to tell the American people the truth about how poorly things were, and are, going.

Angry that our nation's military, far and away the best equipped, best manned, and best led in the world, was put into an impossible situation: occupying a nation of 25 million people that is riven with ethnic and religious strife, and most likely ALWAYS WILL BE. The Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds simply HATE EACH OTHER, for a variety of reasons. They kill each other off left and right, and what are we to do about it?

Angry that the nation I love so much has gotten in way over its head. We need to withdraw from Iraq responsibly, leave a military presence there but one that does not get involved in the day to day running of the nation, and let the Iraqi people figure things out for themselves.

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The book itself has been described as a great "first draft of history." With that assessment, I agree. But Woodward is maddingly inconclusive in his non-judgment of the Bush White House. Reading "The War Within" is like reading a reporter's story of a car crash the day after it occurred, "Driver A ran into Driver B at the intersection of Main Street and Turnpike Road."

We have a need to know that, but please, Mr. Woodward, tell us what you think! It is only in the Epilogue that the country's most famous reporter describes his dissatisfaction with how President Bush has conducted himself. Some reviewers feel that Woodward took his best shots the POTUS only after he no longer needed access. That may be true.

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I would highly recommend this book to every American interested in how our nation is run and how decisions are made in the White House. But please continue reading the other books written on the subject.

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Here's the NY Times generally positive review of "The War Within."