Riding The Blunderbuss

Grahame Allison’s classic after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Essence of Decision, was a comprehensive study of the decision-making process during the Kennedy Administration. Neither of these books have that aim. But they provide insights into the haphazard, pre-emptive manner in which decisions were taken without any attention on how the script might unfold once they were put into action. For example, by placing detainees at Guantanamo Bay beyond US law, the administration was paving the way for the horrors of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now publishing houses must be looking at outlines of books on Abu Ghraib and beyond before the presidential elections in November. This is the sort of sequence Woodward and Clarke have set into motion. Deep Throat brought down the Nixon administration. Woodward, along with Bernstein, was the instrument. He may be on a repeat performance.

Clarke’s categorical: Bush’s obsession with Iraq strengthened Al Qaeda’s recruitment capacity. "Nothing America could have done would have provided Al Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country. Nothing else could have so well negated all our other positive acts and so closed Muslim eyes and ears to our subsequent calls for reform in their region." Clarke then sketches a powerful image: "It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."

The three priorities for Bush after 9/11 were homeland security, global effort to counter Al Qaeda by stressing common American and Islamic values and going into the ‘roots’ of Al Qaeda-like terrorism. To go into the ‘roots’ of terror, Clarke lists ‘priority’ countries like "Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan". No mention of Israel-Palestine! This is where American intellectual muscle fails.

Woodward is so wired into the Washington establishment since his exposure of Watergate that he has high-powered informants available on tap. Quite apart from the main theme—the invasion of Iraq—there are other insights. CIA director George Tenet and his deputy for operations James L. Pavitt inform Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice of the three threats to US national security: Al Qaeda, proliferation of wmd (Iraq is not mentioned) and "the rise of China, especially its military, but that problem was five to fifteen years away". The People’s Republic, be warned!

Why blame Bush alone for the Iraq blunder? A standing policy inherited from Clinton was, "regime change". "Up to $97 million was sanctioned in military assistance to Iraqi opposition forces to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein and promote the emergence of a democratic government." Anything Clinton could do Bush had to do better—so he impatiently, ill-advisedly, hurtled into Iraq.

The detail in which Bush and his team discuss the protection of a solitary American pilot operating in the No Fly Zone is almost comical—a diligently devised plan called ‘Desert Badger’ is to be activated if an American pilot falls into Iraqi hands.

Everyone in Washington’s power circle knew of the extraordinary access the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan had to Bush. He had served during four US presidencies and always insisted on, and had, direct access.Bandar emphasised his government’s impatience that Saddam had not yet been removed. He wanted a "joint plan" between the governments to get rid of him. But the involvement of the Saudi government, including in Iraq, was based on one condition: that there be some progress on the Israel-Palestine track to handle Arab anger.

Not only is there no apparent progress on Palestine, there is this additional almighty provocation of Iraqi prisoner abuse. Clearly, the US has not only let itself down but all others who, unlike Spain, have stayed the course and will doubtless pay penalties as the Iraqi mission sans a script goes totally wrong. Both Woodward and Clarke hint at these dangers.