• Bob Woodward: Bush at War; Simon & Schuster; 400 pp; 2002; $28.
I remember Sept. 12, 2001 and the days that followed. The hours and seconds were lost to a constant distraction, a sense of shock, mourning, and confusion that followed me everywhere.
Driving through the thick morning traffic and 5 p.m. rush hour I could see American flags everywhere: streaming from car windows, on stickers carefully pasted to bumpers, in store fronts, and on houses and mailboxes. Listening to news reports and patriotic songs on the radio, I had to fight back tears.
I still recall with wonderful clarity how we as a nation vowed to never forget the tragedies that struck the Pentagon, lower Manhattan, and a field in Pennsylvania. In the days and months following Sept. 11 we said we would put aside partisanship and politics and unite to defend America wherever and from whomever our nation was threatened. But that was almost two years ago. The expressions of unity that I witnessed then are almost nonexistent now.
As a person who understands politics and history, I know that the memory of the masses is fickle and that it is our collective nature to selectively forget. I realize that solidarity, even when forged through grief, cannot last. At times I hoped that Sept. 11 might be different, but deep down I knew it was impossible.
President Bush has not forgotten. When the planes hit the towers in New York we knew where we were and what we were doing. But we had little idea of where the president was, and what he was doing, thinking and planning. In Bush at War, Bob Woodward details the first chaotic hours and months following; the book ends with the United States securing victory in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden on the run.
Woodward takes the reader on an intimate journey with the President and other top administration officials as they face the reality of Sept. 11 and prepare for war. It is an essential read for any student of history and will surely capture the interest of each responsible citizen. On the whole, it is brilliant, concise, and informative, though some may find the final 111 pages less engaging because they sometimes read like a courtroom record. Still the depth of research and attention to detail are impressive and the book makes for an overall enthralling read.
The reader gets to know not only Bush but other notable characters such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and, to a lesser extent Vice President Richard Cheney. Woodward covers the interactions of these and other players as they devise strategies and prepare for meetings with the president. The information provided is interesting and dramatic. It chronicles the details of the executive branch at work: planning, argumentation from which the reader culls an understanding of what it is like to work for the president. Some of the most dramatic passages are those that reveal the in-fighting among senior officials and the activities of Special Forces personnel and CIA operatives abroad.
The 40-page epilogue is likewise rich with detail. It provides reflective commentary from Rumsfeld and Bush and insight into operations in Afghanistan. Bush is quoted at length on the politics of leadership and his opinions of North Korea, Iraq, and the U.N. While most of the issues covered in the epilogue are touched upon in the chapters, their primary focus is responding to Sept. 11, the beginning of the war on terror and the military campaign in Afghanistan.
The epilogue devotes attention to other world affairs: Bush’s speech at the United Nations and the question of how to deal with Iraq.
In a four-hour interview that Woodward conducted with the president, Bush recalled what he was thinking when word came that the second tower had been hit. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, interrupted him in front of cameras and second-graders in Sarasota, Fla., and whispered the news in his ear. “They had declared war on us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war,” Bush said.
Later aboard Air Force One, Bush was on the phone with Cheney. “We’re going to find out who did this, and we’re going to kick their asses,” Bush said.
Bush at War takes the reader into the heart of the administration during its most trying moments. It reveals precisely why Bush cannot and will not forget Sept. 11 and how the events of that day made the defense of the country the primary focus of his presidency.
In the book’s closing paragraph Woodward relates a quote from a U.S. serviceman. The soldier was standing outside Gardez, Afghanistan on Feb. 5, 2002 along with some 25 other men from U.S. Special Forces and CIA paramilitary teams. They had just finished burying a piece of the World Trade Center in the ground. After reading a prayer, the man said, “We consecrate this spot as an everlasting memorial to the brave Americans who died on September 11, so that all who would seek to do her harm will know that America will not stand by and watch terror prevail. We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation.”
Bush at War captures the importance of Sept. 11. It reminds us of the tragedies we experienced and that we are very much a nation at war.