Washington's Plans For The Iraq War

Contemporary Review, April, 2005 by Ian Jackson

WASHINGTON'S PLANS FOR THE IRAQ WAR

Plan of Attack. Bob Woodward. Simon and Schuster. [pounds sterling]18.99. xii 467 pages. ISBN 0-7432-5547-X.

Bob Woodward rose to prominence in 1974 as a leading investigative journalist after unearthing the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, his colleague from the Washington Post. Since reporting the fall of President Richard Nixon, Mr Woodward has produced a string of books on Washington politics ranging from the Supreme Court to the Federal Reserve under the stewardship of Alan Greenspan. Recently, he has turned his attention to the national security policy of President George W. Bush. Mr Woodward wrote a fascinating account of the United States government's response to the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington DC on 11 September 2001, based on exclusive interviews with the President and his key foreign policy aides. With Plan of Attack he applies his well-honed investigative skills to bring to light the thinking and policy preparation behind the controversial American invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. Like the companion volume on 9/11, the present book draws on a series of revealing interviews that the author conducted with President Bush and senior officials in the White House, Pentagon and State Department.

The book makes an important contribution with regard to the history of the American military campaign in Iraq. Mr Woodward takes us behind the scenes of high-level policy debate in Washington and draws on his privileged access to key policy-makers to reconstruct the planning and execution of the Bush Administration's strategy in the Iraq War. A picture of a deeply divided war council emerges, as the 'hawks' from the Pentagon clash with the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the more dovish State Department. The author reveals that while Powell preferred a multilateral diplomatic approach to the crisis, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Vice President, Richard Cheney, convinced President Bush of the expediency of launching a pre-emptive military offensive against Iraq. Curiously, and in spite of his weakened position, Mr Powell did not resign his post. Rather, the Secretary of State publicly signalled his support for military action during and after the invasion and thus emerges as a tragic figure in the affair. Although Bob Woodward seeks to write an objective journalistic account of the Iraq War, one gets the impression that he is sympathetic to the Secretary of State's plight.

On the other hand, Mr Cheney is unveiled as the villain of the piece. Bob Woodward suggests that since he came to office in January 2001, Mr Cheney was zealously determined to oust Saddam Hussein from power whether or not Iraq had the means to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). This view was apparently shared by Mr Rumsfeld's deputy in the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz. A large portion of the book concentrates on the turf battles among Powell, Cheney and the Defense Department prior to the invasion in March 2003. Mr Woodward's portrait of the President, while not flattering, shows a thoughtful leader listening carefully to both camps of advisors and weighing up his options before electing to take the Cheney-Rumsfeld route. In particular, Mr Woodward admires President Bush's self-assurance and unflappability under pressure.

The main shortcoming of the book, however, is Mr Woodward's immediacy to the events about which he writes. Published within one year of the Iraq War, the book offers only a partial view of the international dimension of the crisis. He does not explore the Blair-Bush relationship in any great depth and when he does talk about the British contribution to the war effort it is invariably from the perspective of Washington. His narrative approach does not lend itself to much reflection or analysis. Concerned with describing events in detail as they occurred in Washington and Iraq, the author often loses sight of the 'big picture'. He does not ask, for example, what the impact of the Iraq campaign has been on US relations with its allies or the response of the American public to the war. From reading Mr Woodward's book one would scarcely believe that millions of people throughout the world marched in protest against the invasion of Iraq. In short, the author is only concerned with the presidential perspective on the conflict. This approach will clearly help historians when they come to evaluate the Bush Administration's foreign policy in the decades to follow. But, nevertheless, Woodward, at this point, has only succeeded in telling one part of a very complex story.