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State of denial
Monday, January 01, 2007
In 1983, PBS presented a 13 part documentary series entitled VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY. The documentary chronicled the complete story of the Vietnam War starting with its origins as a colonial war with France ending with the 1975 abandonment under the fall of Saigon. The final episode poignantly asked the question "What were the lessons of Vietnam?"
In other words, did the United States realize its tragic mistakes during the war so as to avoid the same disaster again? Or, more importantly, will these same questions be asked when all is said and done and finished in Iraq?
While there is no multi part documentary series examining the war in existence today, there are many books on the subject of the collapse of the Iraq campaign, many of which are of dubious, partisan quality. In Bob Woodward’s new book STATE OF DENIAL, the celebrated author presents an examination of all the mistakes made after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime and how those mistakes led to the current out of control chaos that permeates the war in the Middle East, a war that may forever threaten the stability of the oil rich Middle East for decades to come; perhaps even to the point of leading to perpetual wars and a possible nuclear arms race.
State of Denial remains one of the more interesting political books to come down the pike in many years. There is much misunderstood about the book because many have assumed that Woodward decided to cash in on the anti Iraq War sentiment by releasing an anti war book. In reality, what Woodward has published in an interesting examination of how the mismanagement of the war campaign led to the Iraq War turned into a complete disaster and lead to significant division among the United States domestically as well as internationally.
What led to the disaster? According to this book, the disaster was the result of the administration being in a proverbial state of denial as to how bad things in Iraq were descending into in the era following the collapse of Saddam and his regime. Things were bad. Real bad. Nothing was done about it because there was the proverbial state of denial that existed in terms of how bad things actually were.
While many books have been written placed the blame exclusively on George Bush, Bush becomes takes a backseat to a certain degree as the villain of STATE OF DENIAL is presented as being Donald Rumsfeld because of his micromanagement and stubbornness that primarily centered on allowing the dissolution of the entire infrastructure of Iraq allowing the nation to descend into anarchy and, those who know their history will tell you, anarchy is the period of time that exists prior to revolution. For too long of a period of time, there was no government in Iraq and all the people who relied on the government for their safety net (Hussein designed is system very close to a variant on fascism which is, itself, a variant on socialism) Without the government providing an infrastructure, the populace quickly descended into factions. Al Quaida terrorists quickly took advantage of the situation and instituted a series of agent provocations designed to get the Shiite and Sunni Muslims to fight amongst one another in a protracted campaign of violent sectarian violence that has left tens of thousands dead. STATE OF DENIAL asks the question, "Could all this been avoided?"
Woodward presents some intriguing evidence and documentation to build a very detailed picture of what went on behind the scenes. It is easily the most interesting presentation of possible scenarios that occurred among the White House, NSA, State Department and Defense Department. The key word here is "possible." While the book is highly detailed and interesting, it is not the actual events and the reader was not privy to the actual events. In fairness, what exists in Woodward’s book is a possibility of what happened and may not be 100% accurate. We simply do not know as we were not there. What we do have, however, is a book that creates a compelling and credible argument that provides a very nonpartisan and unbiased look at the failures in Iraq. This is a book that will be in print for decades. Highly recommended.
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