Bob Woodward depicts elite decision-making on Iraq

Bob Woodward
The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-8
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008, 487pp. hb

September 16 2008

Billed as revealing as the Pentagon Papers, this book may have been hyped a bit too much. The War Within is the beginnings of an idealist history of the Iraq War, by which MIM would mean history as through the eyes of a few elite leaders. In bourgeois idealist history as described by Marx, we obtain not the probabilities of producing various types of thought, but a picture of a few persynalities at the top and how those persynalities supposedly decisively shape history.

The opening pages listing the names in the book reveal that Bush changed the top military hands at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007. It was not just Rumsfeld who left.

We also learn that top administration officials did consider various options and only did not undertake a policy review in 2006, because of fears it would leak to the public via the media. For example, Rumsfeld left a record of considering a "'firm withdrawal date.'"(p. 205) So Woodward corrects public impressions, because what we heard at the time was "stay the course" as if Bush were obtusely stubborn. Today a bumpersticker makes the rounds saying "Bush/Cheney 2008: Stay the Course." It's a joke referring to the argument over the Iraq War in which Bush seemed oblivious to reality.

Informal network origins of the "surge"

Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff Leon Panetta said he could not identify who in the Bush White House was in charge of politics in Iraq.(p. 123) When there is such lack of accountability we say there is someone or a whole structure hiding and the result is an informal network.

Regarding internal regime politics, Woodward points to something that MIM is able to verify for itself-- namely that the united $tates demands "transparancy" from its Third World puppets, but has a serious problem itself stemming from at least three sources. First, the administration fears bugging and media leaks, and so surprisingly, even though Bush chose his staff, he cannot trust his staff to keep quiet or handle the media correctly. Hence, he cannot have forthright conversations. This is something he also complains about as the effect of Congressional subpoenas, that it's just another reason that people in the executive branch cannot really talk at ease. Secondly, there is a traditional tension between civilian leaders and the military. History of the Vietnam War suggests that the military brass was afraid to tell the politicians just how bad the situation was. The civilian is supposed to command the military leaders, but information may fail to flow in both directions, with the result of accountability and transparancy problems. Thirdly, Woodward shows that Bush circumvented the Pentagon and top brass to "support the commanders in the field," namely Petraeus.

Bush undertook the whole "surge" strategy through Jack Keane, a retired general.(e.g., pp. 331, 371) Keane, Petraeus and Senate leader Bill Frist have a persynal connection in that they were all involved in a near-fatal shooting accident for Petraeus.

Going to a retired general made sense politically but is a no-no as far as formal structure goes. It means that Bush himself though president feels a need to be unaccountable. When pushed by the brass, Cheney and Bush did formally back Petraeus and Keane against higher-ranking military officials. So there was a successful struggle to return Bush to formal channels. Bush circumvented the top ranks, but he had to go on record to do so.(p. 401) Ironically, Bush may have undercut his legacy by leaving an example of informal control. His successor need only cherry-pick his favorite general or ex-general to go through for Iraq.

The use of Keane, the secret spying domestically and even the popularity of the recent "Batman" movie all point to a growth of para-military thinking in the united $tates. In the Reagan administration, we had Oliver North, a colonel involved in actions off Congress's radar.

In individualist terms, the "surge" is a success story involving the stalwart character of Keane and his protege Petraeus, backed by strong leaders Bush & Cheney and aided from below in the lower military ranks by Odierno. At the White House it was really just Bush, Cheney and Hadley. Politically on the outside, it was McCain and Chuck Robb covering for Bush.

McCain appears a few times in the book calling for more troops. Even he privately said the war looked lost.(p. 344)

To varying degrees, others in the Bush administration were outside the loop. Keane and Rumsfeld thought little of the CIA (p. 136) and sought to blame the State Department for Iraq failures. Under Rice, the National Security Council was not allowed to brief Powell at State for example.(p. 155) When Gates called for a cut in troops to 100,000 or 50% in 2008, the president was not behind him.(p. 359) The effect is that the administration can have things both ways in the midst of intra-bureaucratic struggle.

Informal networks create the space for racism and other ills to breed. The reason is that hit-and-run oppressors retreat to informal networks so that they will not have their biases called into question. Obama did better in caucuses than secret ballots, because the same liberal voters did one thing in front of others and another thing when they could hit-and-run, as in a secret ballot.(1) MIM has emphasized that pseudo-feminism justifying hit-and-run tactics against the male has become an especially noxious guise for racism. It's what Mao meant when he spoke of having to choose a "principal contradiction." One has to see when one struggle is getting in the way of the other.

Most Liberals are incapable of understanding structural racism or chauvinism, what it means that a whole petri dish has been created to spawn various kinds of social illness. If the liberals do not see a minority individual directly confronting a Euro-Amerikan, who is using specific words from a college-educated disapproval list of political correctness such as "nigger," most liberals are not able to discern racism.

A step toward understanding racism structurally may be certain examples how racism hurts white people. Bush Jr. and McCain are both white, and so stupid individualists are at a loss how racism could be involved, but McCain suffered from racism in the 2000 campaign when Bush's campaign objected to McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh by telling a story of "miscegenation" in South Carolina.(2) McCain lost South Carolina and his whole campaign for 2000 from racism. Meanwhile, his daughter is still a well-off millionaire's child. The racism was not even really aimed at the daughter but another white.

Structural racism is what makes Amerikkkans so uncanny in their ability to take the slightest possibility of racism and make it the guaranteed sure thing. MIM pointed to a conservative wedding of two whites as another example. When she bailed on the wedding, she blamed it on a supposed minority assailant--a total invention. So the point is that merely by looking at two individuals in Anglo-Saxon isolation one is not necessarily going to find the cause or implementation of racism. We have to go to the connections to society at large before we understand racism and national chauvinism.

It turns out that one reason stated right in the book for why Bush went outside the chain of command was his unease with previous brass. Bush's most frequent question was about kill ratios--how many Iraqis died. He did not like how the media covered U.$. casualties without casualty figures for alleged insurgents. Bush's commanders recognized that from the Vietnam situation, Bush's concerns would cause troops to inflate insurgent numbers by including civilians to kill for the purposes of press boasting. In other words, the brass had a greater concern about genocide than Bush did. That's one apparent reason that Bush went to an informal network; even though, Bush and the top brass were all white. Bush felt that his domestic audience would appreciate genocide in the form of false stories about large numbers of Al Qaeda killed. We are fortunate Bush did not push hard enough to get his way on this question. As it turns out, the military already kills dozens of Iraqis for every Amerikan who dies (p. 370); yet, Bush felt more reassured among the generals who wanted even more troops on the ground, more colonialism and more killing.

The Iraq War surge is another example why MIM says international Jim Crow would be an advance for the authentic Third World. Jim Crow was a formal structure taking open blame for racism. It was easier to discuss and target than shifty informal network racism and national chauvinism.

Theories about violence in Iraq

Regarding a decline in violence during the 2007-8 surge, Woodward offers two pages with three theories. (pp. 380-1) These theories arose, because the united $tates had tried raising troop levels 20,000 or 30,000 before. So some questioned whether deploying those troops to Baghdad could really reduce violence.

One of the new theories is that an assassination program aimed at Al Qaeda was successful. This explanation leaves out that most of the attacks did not come from Al Qaeda, and some had it listed as low as fifth on the list of organized threats. The second explanation was the Anbar awakening created by supposed excess violence of the insurgents and liberal use of money by the CIA putting people on payroll. Thirdly, in August 2007, Moqtada al-Sadr offered a truce. The book was not so much about these two pages of theories about the surge, but more how handling the Iraq War looked to elites, blow-by-blow. Not less than General Casey himself concluded that the surge was really about politics. (p. 326) Woodward seemed to confirm Casey by quoting regional commander Fallon: "'There is no plan.'"(p. 327)

Up through 2006, the brass struggled to hand off to Iraqis. Woodward reveals that it was Rumsfeld for that strategy of gradually increasing sovereignty. With the surge came an increase of U.$. orders to the Iraqi regime and an increase in U.$. people occupying Iraqi government slots--2500 Amerikans with Iraqi government jobs.(p. 426) In colonialist terms, the departure of Rumsfeld came with a slide to the right with increased U.$. control over Iraq. In the news today, we learn that how the government depicts this surge is that it started out with less Iraqi control and has already moved to handing off various regions to Iraqi sovereignty.

Yet, "while in mid-October [2006] the secretary of defense was advocating a plan that would accelerate America's departure from Iraq, a lone NSC staffer was proposing a surge that would recommit the country to the war."(p. 170)

In addition to conflicts over whether the war was working, Woodward shows that the military brass itself knew some of the political factors costing it on the battlefield.

"'U.S. policy is naturally biased toward Israel,' Pace said. "Admiral Mullen said that the United States needed more active, visible diplomacy on the issue. 'Poll after poll cites this as the central problem unifying the world against America.' "'Almost anything would be better than what we have now,' Mosely said, then summed up his sentiments about the Israelis and Palestinians. 'Pack of assholes on both sides!' he declared." (p. 174)

Another theory was that U.$. colonialism caused terrorism. The Shia leader Abdul Aziz-al-Hakim said U.$. actions increased violence in Iraq.(p. 121)

Within Iraq, the U.$. leadership saw itself as offering neutral ground between Sunnis and Shias. Bush said that national reconciliation was the goal to the point where "'U.S. forces will come home if we can't achieve it.'"(p. 246) In other words, the goal all along was to divide the Iraqis, because "mission accomplished" would be if troops cannot stem sectarian violence.

Regionally, the same is true, with Uncle $am presenting itself as a buffer for the Sunnis against Shia expansionism. Rice reports that some Arab foreign ministers were afraid Uncle $am was going to leave the Mideast.(p. 258) MIM will call into question the U.$. self-image regarding Mideast divisions in a separate article.

In any case, there was not an exhaustive treatment of the causes of violence in Iraq in The War Within, which is aptly titled.

Conclusion

Bush presents the overall picture:

"'Is it hegemonistic to have troops in Korea?' the president said. 'I don't think so. Is it hegemonistic to have them in Japan? Was it hegemonistic to have them in Germany? No."(p. 425)

In Bush's mind, economic success in Korea, Japan and Germany justify U.$. invasions elsewhere. That is why MIM has conducted the battle over economic development questions from the beginning as more than an academic question. We have our FAQ and also MIM Theory #4 for the real sources of economic development. The invasion of Korea did not produce economic growth. Had the united $tates taken up determined trade with Korea while allowing land reform to go ahead as it did, the economic results would have been better than what happened through war (1950-3), which only led to subsequent revolution and near-revolutions against U.$. puppets. Germany was already an economic success before World War II, and likewise it was trade and land reform that led to better economic results in a Japan that was already far enough along economically to challenge the united $tates in the Pacific in World War II.

Domestically, the Amerikan public lies to itself that its superior culture is the reason for its economic success. The wealth of Amerikans comes from exploiting the world, not "freedom." "Democracy" also exists in India and such a result is hardly worth occupying Iraq to guarantee.

Notes:
1. http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2008/02/obama-won-caucu.html
Against us on this point, one persyn argued that Obama did just as well in the Minnesota secret ballot caucus. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013095.php
2. http://thatsrightnate.com/2008/03/10/the-truth-about-mccains-daughter/