Carrying on from his volumes on the Bush administration, Woodward
knits together the recollections of various officials and seeks to guide the
reader through the corridors of power.
As always, Woodward
pays close attention to detail, and seemingly delights in cramming in as much
information as possible. The only problem, however, is that often this
information is reported, not ordered or sorted coherently; which makes it
difficult for the reader to differentiate between what is crucial and what is
not.
Woodward, furthermore, as is his prerogative, has based his
account chiefly on several, confidential meetings with administration
officials. This means that the reader is asked to put his/her faith not just in
Woodward, but in the memories of those he consulted. As any good researcher
will attest, memories are fragile and often rather unreliable sources, and yet
Woodward describes conversations with such authority that occasionally I had to
remind myself that he was not in the room.
Changing tact, there are significant technical flaws with Woodward’s
writing. Particularly grating is his habit of drifting towards bad fiction. To
illustrate my point consider this passage:
“While
Holbrooke and Haqqani lunched, about ten miles across the Potomac River a tall,
academic 56-year-old [Bruce Riedel] sat reading in his Alexandria, Virginia, town house. Sprawled in his
lap was his King Charles spaniel, Nelson, named after the celebrated British
admiral.”
Such sentences pepper Woodward’s pages. They are
unnecessary, they add nothing, and they invite mockery.
Indeed, several reviewers have gladly accepted the
invitation. In an unkind review published in the Wall Street Journal, Max Boot, dismisses ‘Obama’s Wars’ as a piece
of ‘insiderdom’. Adding snottily, ‘[that] what Mr. Woodward does is fill in
details of who said what at which meeting’.
This led to the following thought: are journalists who lack
Woodward’s access; academics without his contact book, jealous of his writing,
and envious of his status? After all, Woodward (I presume) profits handsomely
from these books, and no one, not even Woodward himself would argue that he
possesses any great literary flair.
If I am right, then envy explains why so many of Woodward’s
critics are consistently wide of the mark. For instance, Boot complains that
Woodward is too removed from the war; that he only visited Afghanistan once and
that when there he spent his time ensconced at Camp Leatherneck.
But this, I’m afraid, is to misunderstand the purpose of
‘Obama’s Wars’. Woodward sets out to document not the progress of the war, nor
the conditions on the ground, but the decision making process behind the announcement
of 30 000 additional troops.
This is a crucial distinction. In effect the book describes
how a policy came into being. Thus, the ‘wars’ in question are not those of Afghanistan
and Iraq, but those of Afghanistan and Washington; or more specifically, those
between NATO and the Taliban, and between the Whitehouse and the Pentagon.
Once this is grasped, many of Boot’s criticisms—and those of
Richard Adams in the Guardian—melt
away. Readers may tire of the stream of briefings, and the long,
indistinguishable discussion sessions, but it is outrageous to suggest that for
the sake of parsimony Woodward should have omitted them.
Indeed, I found the drawn-out deliberations instructive;
they conveyed the difficulty of the situation, and the gap between the army
(which advocated a counter-insurgency mission, and the associated 40 000 troops),
and elements of the political class (such as Vice President Biden, who fought
for a targeted counter-terrorism approach involving fewer front-line
personnel).
Most importantly, the decision making process—protracted as
it was—revealed much about the man who occupies the Oval Office. President Obama,
for much of the book, lurks in the shadows, contemplating, assessing the
available options. This image of the cool pragmatist has surfaced before, and it
flatters. Unlike the scheming military advisors, the verbose Vice President,
the hyperactive Whitehouse staff, and the fixated Generals, Obama comes across
as poised, deliberate, and, when required, decisive.
A few concluding comments:
- As a Briton, I was surprised and disappointed by how little thought was given to the views of the various ISAF commanders from outwith of the United States. Obviously, the deployment was a domestic decision, but it does appear as if very little time was spent discussing how Washington’s coalition partners would respond.
- I was amazed by the difficulty officials had in defining the mission’s goals. The debate regarding whether the US should pledge to ‘defeat’ or to ‘degrade’ the Taliban makes for remarkable reading.
- I found the Army’s obstinacy to be both predictable and depressing. The Pentagon appeared to take little interest in budgetary matters, and Woodward at least suggests that several figures attempted to back the President into a corner so that he would end up endorsing the preferred policy of the Generals.
In summary, ‘Obama’s Wars’ contains no major revelations,
and few pieces of juicy gossip. While this is frustrating for the reader, it
reflects kindly on the professionalism of the administration. Speaking of
which, Obama comes across as a rational, pragmatic Commander and Chief, and his
decision making process is deliberately described as Kennedyesque.
Stepping back, Woodward can be criticised stylistically, and
some will no doubt be disappointed by number of meetings he forces the reader
to sit through. Yet, I found this focus instructive (if not riveting).
Woodward’s strength is his forensic reporting, and while the Afghan ‘surge’
might not go down as the most important decision of the Obama presidency, this
is not Woodward’s concern, and nor should it be.
What can be said, however, is that the debate regarding
Afghanistan probably didn’t contain enough drama to sustain a book of over 400
pages. Nevertheless, Woodward illuminates an important and underappreciated
aspect of Government, of interest to those both inside and outside of the
Beltway.
