October 05, 2006

It Didn't Take Long, Part II.

State of Denial, by Woodward, page 179.

This is really a facinating book. It's very different from "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack" (previous books by Woodward; the first about Afghanistan, the second about Iraq up to the day of invasion); in this, Woodward clearly interjects himself. There are often asides about what "he" (Woodward) was doing, or whom he was interviewing, or the interview process ("I asked Rumseld about this in 2006..."). This is not the approach Woodward used in the two previous books. I'm not sure what this means (I'm only a third of the way through), but my anecdotal take is that Woodward is arguing that there were some serious screwups, mostly in the Pentagon. The first two books clearly attempted to be neutral (the first, "Bush at War," was seen by Bush supporters as favoring the President; the second, "Plan of Attack," was used by partisans on both sides as evidence of either Bush's successes or failures, depending on your political persuasion.) This book ("State of Denial"), however, is clearly more antagonistic to the administration. Woodward's interjections of himself into the narrative seem to be a way for Woodward to take a position on the decisions (a negative one).

A scorecard: Rumsfeld - Bad like you can't believe; Cheney - Mysterious and Powerful; Bush - Out of His Depth (though Bush is only a minor character so far); Rice - Way, Way out of Her Depth; Garner - the Tragic Hero; the Uniformed Military - Abused Endlessly by Rumsfeld.

The interesting thing about Rumsfeld is that the book reinforces an idea I've had for a while: Rumsfeld is the right man in the wrong place. He is very serious about "miltary transformation" (what might be called a "revolution in military affairs"; that's the buzzword if you want to google it). The book makes clear that Rumsfeld is/was very successful in forcing the military to re-think many of their assumptions about the multiplier effects of technology, which translates into a smaller, more lethal, more agile military. And Rumsfeld was right: he exceeded the military successes of 1991 in 2003 with a force a third the size. The problem was, Afghanistan and Iraq (the insurgency parts of both) clearly articulate that a "transformed" military isn't really very effective at fighting low-insurgency operations.

In other words: Rumsfeld is succeeding at producing a military that will absolutely destroy the Soviets as they come through the Fulda Gap (if you didn't understand that analogy, that's good: the point was the "Fulda Gap" problem was a military problem back in the 1970s and 1980s, not a present day one). Rumsfeld is successfullly transforming the military to be a more efficient version of the one prepared to fight the Soviets and their massed armored hordes. This is wonderful if you expect the US to fight some massed armored hordes anytime in the next decade or two, and much less so if you foresee the US involved in one low-intensity guerilla war after another over the next decade or so.

Further updates as necessary.

Posted by baltar at October 5, 2006 10:38 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Books | International Affairs | Iraq | Media | Military Affairs


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