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Prisoners of War: Bob Woodward and All the President’s Men (2010 Edition)
Once a serious journalist, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward now makes a very fine living as chief gossip-monger of the governing class. Early on in his career, along with Carl Bernstein, his partner at the time, Woodward confronted power. Today, by relentlessly exalting Washington trivia, he flatters power. His reporting does not inform. It titillates.
A new Woodward book, Obama’s Wars, is a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s out this week, already causing a stir, and guaranteed to be forgotten the week after dropping off the bestseller lists. For good reason: when it comes to substance, any book written by Woodward has about as much heft as the latest potboiler penned by the likes of James Patterson or Tom Clancy.
Back in 2002, for example, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Woodward treated us to Bush at War. Based on interviews with unidentified officials close to President George W. Bush, the book offered a portrait of the president-as-resolute-war-leader that put him in a league with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But the book’s real juice came from what it revealed about events behind the scenes. “Bush’s war cabinet is riven with feuding,” reported the Times of London, which credited Woodward with revealing “the furious arguments and personal animosity” that divided Bush’s lieutenants.
Of course, the problem with the Bush administration wasn’t that folks on the inside didn’t play nice with one another. No, the problem was that the president and his inner circle committed a long series of catastrophic errors that produced an unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged war. That war has cost the country dearly -- although the people who engineered that catastrophe, many of them having pocketed handsome advances on their forthcoming memoirs, continue to manage quite well, thank you.
To judge by the publicity blitzkrieg announcing the arrival of Obama’s Wars in your local bookstore, the big news out of Washington is that, even today, politics there remains an intensely competitive sport, with the participants, whether in anger or frustration, sometimes speaking ill of one another.
Essentially, news reports indicate, Woodward has updated his script from 2002. The characters have different names, but the plot remains the same. Talk about jumping the shark.
So we learn that Obama political adviser David Axelrod doesn’t fully trust Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. National security adviser James Jones, a retired Marine general, doesn’t much care for the likes of Axelrod, and will say so behind his back. Almost everyone thinks Richard Holbrooke, chief State Department impresario of the AfPak portfolio, is a jerk. And -- stop the presses -- when under the influence of alcohol, General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, is alleged to use the word “f**ked.” These are the sort of shocking revelations that make you a headliner on the Sunday morning talk shows.
Based on what we have learned so far from those select few provided with advance copies of the book -- mostly reporters for the Post and The New York Times who, for whatever reason, seem happy to serve as its shills -- Obama’s Wars contains hints of another story, the significance of which seems to have eluded Woodward.
The theme of that story is not whether Dick likes Jane, but whether the Constitution remains an operative document. The Constitution explicitly assigns to the president the role of commander-in-chief. Responsibility for the direction of American wars rests with him. According to the principle of civilian control, senior military officers advise and execute, but it's the president who decides. That's the theory, at least. Reality turns out to be considerably different and, to be kind about it, more complicated.
Obama’s Wars reportedly contains this comment by President Obama to Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates regarding Afghanistan: "I'm not doing 10 years... I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."
Aren’t you, Mr. President? Don’t be so sure.
Obama’s Wars also affirms what we already suspected about the decision-making process that led up to the president’s announcement at West Point in December 2009 to prolong and escalate the war. Bluntly put, the Pentagon gamed the process to exclude any possibility of Obama rendering a decision not to its liking.
Pick your surge: 20,000 troops? Or 30,000 troops? Or 40,000 troops? Only the most powerful man in the world -- or Goldilocks contemplating three bowls of porridge -- could handle a decision like that. Even as Obama opted for the middle course, the real decision had already been made elsewhere by others: the war in Afghanistan would expand and continue.
And then there’s this from the estimable General David Petraeus: "I don't think you win this war,” Woodward quotes the field commander as saying. “I think you keep fighting... This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."
Here we confront a series of questions to which Woodward (not to mention the rest of Washington) remains steadfastly oblivious. Why fight a war that even the general in charge says can’t be won? What will the perpetuation of this conflict cost? Who will it benefit? Does the ostensibly most powerful nation in the world have no choice but to wage permanent war? Are there no alternatives? Can Obama shut down an unwinnable war now about to enter its tenth year? Or is he -- along with the rest of us -- a prisoner of war?
President Obama has repeatedly stated that in July 2011 a withdrawal of U. S. troops from Afghanistan will commence. No one quite knows exactly what that means. Will the withdrawal be symbolic? General Petraeus has already made it abundantly clear that he will entertain nothing more. Or will July signal that the Afghan War -- and by extension the Global War on Terror launched nine years ago -- is finally coming to an end?
Between now and next summer attentive Americans will learn much about how national security policy is actually formulated and who is really in charge. Just don’t expect Bob Woodward to offer any enlightenment on the subject.
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55 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe Bob Woodward can tell us why our corporate controlled media won't tell us why the Pentagram wants eternal war.
You're right. However, I would also throw "mental illness" into the mix.
I definitely would not support making excuses for them. Perhaps we could use the concept of "criminally insane". It's just that the lust for power and wealth at the expense of the long-term viability of life and this planet - and what the US does has a huge influence on what happens to all of humanity and the planet at this point - IS totally insane, in my opinion.
Ok, how about "criminally insane?" Either way, they should be locked up for life.
Thank you for not using the crazy-looney-defense. Too often, these evil men & women hide behind that mask to escape accountability. It's easy to say that Hitler & Stalin were crazy, but doing so let's them off the hook.
Woodward's a Republican and always has been, as far as I know. Of course, he could be a Democrat and the result would be the same.
Actually, I have long believed that Woodward has and always has been a Secret Government (CIA et al) disinformation channel, going all the way back to the supposed "Deep Throat" who couldn't be outed until the guy slated to take the rap was too demented to deny it. His access, particularly to things like William Casey's hospital bed, lends itself to no other explanation.
Yes. Like Adam Lang, the Tony Blair stand-in in the film "The Ghostwriter", I think it's highly like that Woodward is a paid government asset who spreads government inspired and sanctioned propaganda.
"Once a serious journalist, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward..."
This is the MSM view of Mr Woodward. For an eye-opening, somewhat different take on him check out Russ Baker's exhaustive study on the Bush crime family...Family of Secrets. The whole watergate scenario we've swallowed for 40 years may have to be significantly altered...
Compare Woodward to the actor who portrayed him, Redford. Ouch.
As for the article, depressing at best. I find everything I listen to these days depressing -- Blumenthal extolling the virtues of Obamacare in CT this weekend, a statement I heard on NPR from some idiot about Dems fight for the middle class and Repubs fight for Wall Street.
In a sane world that Petraeus quote would be on the front page of every paper everyday until the war was ended. It would be repeated again and again by the hacks of the MSM. That is a stunning quote, as were similar quotes attributed to McChrystal in the "Rolling Stone" article. And I'll bet years ago it would have been. But with all the competing extreme plethora of noise on TV, cable and radio it gets buried, by design.
Samalabear makes an excellent point concerning Petraeus's desire for perpetual war as Petreaus's words certainly should be on the front pages of all the major dailies in this country. The desire of Petraeus to so eagerly commit U.S. forces to battle is similar to what George H.W. Bush did during the first Persian Gulf War when he sent U.S. troops and planes into Iraq in an effort to show that the United States had supposedly "kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all."
As George Carlin once observed the United States is a nation that engages in war about every twenty five to thirty years or so-always was and always has been, either at home or against people living in foreign lands.
Definitely, the refusal of the media to make this a MAJOR story and hammer away at it is just further evidence that they are nothing but a propaganda delivery system for the corporate plutocracy/oligarchy/League of Pure Evil - or whatever you want to call T.H.E.M - They Have Everyone Monitored (cue in mad, cackling laughter).
And suddenly, I am reminded of that cult classic film, "They Live."
all that reporting on Patreaus only underlines what he is already anyway, being the "TOP GUN" of the Empire...with all his medals as "official chief Muscleman and Mass Murderer" of the Empire...what is all that but in one word?:
A MURDEROUS THUG that wants to be the next "even better EMPEROR" - the one that wants to be "julius caesar".
and in exactly the same way that the Rising Roman General used wars and conquest, the more brutal and genocidal, the better to burnish his Roman "credentials" as warrior, in order to position himself for the Emperorship....
Petreaus is exactly "I am always positioning myself for the presidency"...and like caesar probably thinks of himself as one day having his own image printed on the Glorious US dollar and coins....
Would be Caesar Petreaus has not read his mentor's Gallic Wars well. Julius was able to win in Gaul and even take England. With the slogan of "permanent war" for Rome he would never have made it to First Consul.
Exactly.
in reality -- the conquest of Gaul and England later - were - as always -- not even NECESSARY for Rome's prosperity...but endless war and conquest, the more brutal and widespread the better, WAS the roman empire's highest "HONOR" to be elevated to Consul in the senate -- and of course from there - to try to push the envelope and attempt to not just RULE LIKE an emperor - with absolute power and like a god - but even "leave a legacy" as ONE of those with godlike status.
and that's exactly what Caesar attempted...he was in fact the FIRST to have his image imprinted on coins....as a "living" emperor or consul..which at that time in his life was still a "no-no" - to the romans who thought that ONLY ROMULUS (their believed founder) was the only one that deserved that godlike status.
Petraeus is of course moving along those lines.
WAR and COUNTRY are to him - "battlefields" for PERSONAL Grandeur.
BOB Woodward talking about the goings-on-in the white house ..from bush to obama ..is like someone reporting about
the difference between TIBERIUS and his Fortress high on a clifftop where he practiced torture, sexual debauchery, murders....while training his successor CALIGULA --
and CALIGULA himself doing the same things PUBLICLY....
but they're the same types...murderers, rapists, torturers.
And poor old Obama is just a victim of the nasty Pentagon and General David Petraeus. He really didn't make a decision, he was fooled into it. He is not to blame.
Andrew Bacevich needs to take the blinkers off. And as I remember Woodward was a hero with his book exposing Bush and his administration for what it really was.
This is the kind of democratic, Obama apologia that has led to the butt whipping in the offing.
Information. What now constitutes real journalism keeps getting reduced to what books can be found before our military burns them as the nazis did and the web sites such as commondreams that can still publish the writings of people such as Professor Andrew Bacevich, Tom Englehart, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein and others. It is striking and revealing but just not reported about what the soldiers ordered to burn these things really think. But there is the horrific of those soldiers quite relishing the order to burn.
Anyone should know or at least not be surprised how destructive it is to suppress information such as Bacevich's article, where he points to what Inspector Morse called 'the undertones', here because the people who REALLY need to read this are the one's 'mainlining' the msm dope.
Time to read Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' again.
Samosamo
Any comment that singles out that most praiseworthy of British murder mysteries, the cerebral Inspector Morse, who was played by the sardonic John Thaw, is a most excellent comment indeed.
"Or is he - (Obama) - along with the rest of us -- a prisoner of war?"
He has the power to do something about it. He is not a prisoner, he is a willing participant and enabler.
"...the Global War on Terror launched nine years ago -- is finally coming to an end?"
The insane and DAFT war to prevent future terrorism everywhere and forever is enshrined in law. Public Law 107-40.
It is more likely to break out somewhere else than to come to an end.
I enjoyed the first paragraph the most, because I've long considered Bob Woodward to be a vastly overrated weasel and "ringer" of some sort. His role as the Beltway Hedda Hopper (I guess I should write "Perez Hilton" these days) is entirely consistent with this low opinion.
I'd guessed CIA, but apparently his background in in Naval Intelligence. There's no reason it can't be both!
The only bit I quibble with is, "Once a serious journalist...". Woodward certainly POSED as a serious journalist, and acquired the reputation as an intrepid Muckraking Maverick of investigative journalism after his and Carl Bernstein's Watergate reporting.
I think it would be more accurate to write, "Once taken for a serious journalist...".
Last paragraph of article:
"Between now and next summer attentive Americans will learn much about how national security policy is actually formulated and who is really in charge. Just don’t expect Bob Woodward to offer any enlightenment on the subject."
The majority of Americans will, of course, learn NOTHING, since they perfer to live in a world of perpetual illusion.
Those who do not, will largely learn nothing new also - they already well understand the lies and deceptions of Empire and nothing new will be discovered to change this.
Bacevich should apply the final sentence to himself as well -no enlightenment ever comes from reading his articles. He is little more than a stenographer for the beltway crowd.
The following sentence from Bacevich tells you EXACTLY who he is and his overall purpose as soft propagandist for Washington:
"Of course, the problem with the Bush administration wasn’t that folks on the inside didn’t play nice with one another. No, the problem was that the president and his inner circle committed a long series of catastrophic errors that produced an unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged war."
REPEAT:"the president and his inner circle committed a long series of catastrophic errors that produced an unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged war."
???CATASTROPHIC ERRORS???
Is this FOOL really that stupid??? ...or does he think his simple-minded readers and consumers of his bullshit are???
The Bush cabal made NO catastrophic errors!!! Everything they did was cafefully choreographed lies, propaganda, disinformation, fabricated evidence (yellow-cake; Powells laundry list of imaginary gobblins etc) to acheive exactly what they had set out to acheive -WAR!
It was all spelled out clearly in PNAC before Shrub even got inserted into office by daddy's buddies.
To assert that these highly calculated deceptions were "ERRORS" should place Bacevich in the Pantheon of Empire Stenographers.
Notice that Bacevich also characterizes Bush's Iraq invasion as: "an unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged war."
Is this pathetic stenographer incapable of even saying what it really was/is -
unprovoked naked agressive war on a soveriegn nation - !!!A WAR CRIME!!! ...as defined by the USA at Nuremburg Trials.
This entire peice reveals NOTHING at all and is merley soft propaganda which has become Bacevich's specialty.
Excellent observation that Bacevich believes that the Iraq invasion could have somehow been managed better [shades of John Kerry] without Bacevich bothering to point out that that invasion, and also the invasion of Afghanistan, should never have occurred in the first place.
Thank you for stating the obvious.
For many, stating the obvious is like pulling a thorny rose stem out of their butts.
Helluva light of painful truth shining down me poor benumbedskull!
Zucker-man, You have pithily summarized the corruption and criminality of the neo's. Now, is there an Atty Gen. in the USA with the integrity and guts to prosecute these slime?
"This entire peice reveals NOTHING at all and is merley soft propaganda which has become Bacevich's specialty." –(kakh zucker)
Correct. You saved me the trouble. Thanks.
Bacevich is smarmy, and in truth little more than a reactionary. For too long he has stalked out the safe terrain as a 'respectable' critic of empire, when in fact he is little more than a tacit apologist who in truth, has never been worth reading. He has found a suitable 'niche' for book publishers to market, no more no less.
1. Obama will do whatever those who pull the strings tell him to do.
2. All of the colorful and noisy pyrotechnics of the current political campaign are only a diversion to keep our eyes off the ball.
3. Obama is a one-termer, either by choice or by design.
4. At the Republican National Convention in 2012, David Patreus will be nominated from the floor and be given the nomination by acclamation.
5. Patreus will win the Presidency by a landslide and what will follow will make this country look like an economic and social moonscape.
God help us!
General MIC Pet who is betraying us : " this is the kind of fight we are in for the rest of our lives and probably our childrens lives ". But he forgot to add.....AND THIS IS JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT! Like Kitaj says in the thread below. "These people are criminally insane and need to be locked up for life ". And I would add before they get us all killed!
President Obama has repeatedly stated that in July 2011 a withdrawal of U. S. troops from Afghanistan will commence. No one quite knows exactly what that means.
My sources tell me it means we're never getting out of Afghanistan.
Big-talking, "profound-SOUNDING" OBAMA the rhetorician and actor is a CITIZEN of the Washington DC "consensus"..
he is , currently , the first Citizen and wanna-be-great-leader of the American Empire.
The grand dilemma of 2012 is that our country cannot afford "four more years" of CIC Obama nor of any of the currently touted GOP replacements.
True enough, yet that is the only "choice" we will be given as usual. Two-Pary, De-Facto One Party. Sadly, elections in the USA are merely the world's most expensive Public Relations Stunts. The illusion of choice must be maintained (however superficial) in order to make at least half of the electorate believe that their vote makes a difference.
Therefore, expect more of the same - no matter which of the two parties are in power. We are in store for more than just "inverted totalitarianism" (coined by Sheldon Wolin) or neo-Fascism, I believe we are headed for Neo-Feudalism. Whatever the case, we must adjust for the inevitable future: diminishing standards of living, ever rising disparity between the rich and the rest, collapsing public sector and privatization of everything that is not bolted down and that is bolted down.
Private Schools (charters); Private Prisons, Private Security etc. At this rate we should have private Fire Deptartments.
I presume you saw the article entitled "Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries" in the news column.
Benjamin Franklin is renowned, in part, for being an industrious entrepreneur and "self-made man", but he also pioneered free libraries and municipal fire brigades because he recognized the greater social good in these approaches.
As a born and bred Philadelphian living just outside the city, I should make a trip into town, mosey up to Christ Church Burial Ground, and listen for humming sounds, like the spinning of a mummified top.
No I had not read that yet, but I just posted a comment.
I can now go around saying something like: "I don't need police depts., fire depts, health care, or any public services, I cut out the middleman and bought protection insurance from the Mafia"
It's all just business after all, nothin personal.
I agree with some but not all of which you posit. The ruling elite of our nation is only one factor in the political equation. A second factor which is too often ignored is that the huge segment of our population which is truly "working class" because it must work to live considers itself to be "middle class" that is to say a cut above "working class". As long as that continues to be the case there will be exploitation, unemployment, and all of the other "blessings" of capitalism. History teaches me that this arrangement can continue to exist for a while but that it is certain to fail. No economic/social system has ever survived and capitalism will not survive either. The "Tea Parties" will not end capitalism as we know it but they are, in my opinion, a handwriting on the wall that some kind of serious rebellion is brewing.
Crowsnnest: True, capitalism is un-sustainable just a matter of how much longer it will take and that its demise comes sooner than later. I hope the next system is not a form of neo-Feudalism (post capitalist). I do not believe, as doctrinaire old-school Marxists, that capitalism will automatically implode leading to socialism. My guess is that when material conditions deteriorate for a significant majority of the population - when folks have little to lose - then we can expect rebellion or at least peaceful civil disobeidience. When too many people can still afford to drive SUVs and watch ever gargantuan HD -3D TVs, have the latest electronic must-have gadgets and games.
We live in a perpetual garrison state, in a perpetual state of political campaigning; that just about adds up to two major industries in this once-democratic republic.
The other usual suspects: the media-pharma-petroleum-insurance-finance complexes.
A Republican candidate in my hometown stated that the town should go to a volunteer department.
Many of the neighboring communities had volunteer departments.
One of the department houses nearby caught fire shortly afterward and the fire spread so quickly that it had engulfed the place before the volunteers showed up, and their equipment was all inside at the time.
They had to call the professional department that the Republican candidate was saying should be disbanded to put out the fire at their firehouse.
A mayor running as an Independent won that year.
So let's mine for Feingold!
Feingold, Kucinich, Grayson, Wiener, & Howard Dean are the only patriots with integrity.
WOODWARD has become a Scribe for Palace Intrigues..without ever making a difference about the question of WHETHER the palace should even be standing and all the people in it because they , all of them, drink from the same cup to feed their self-grandeous delusions...and the palace intrigue is really about their fights to GRAB the cup....
so -- in reality -- what's WOODWARD's POINT as a "writer or reporter?"
absolutely NOTHING .
MUCH ADO about nothing at all....except to BUSY HIMSELF with something that makes him feel he is of ANY significance at all in the human society.
he is more concerned about mincing words, "weighing" phrases, constructing "paradigms" than telling TRUTH....whose only remaining REASON for existence is to be the "scribe of empire"...that gets his sense of honor from being "unique" in being given the keys to the "inner sanctum" among "journalists" ..and therefore he is , somehow, ELECT in a twisted , lonely, and completely DETACHED way from reality of life itself and what his Empire does..even as he Serves as its "honored scribe"....
"so -- in reality -- what's WOODWARD's POINT as a "writer or reporter?"
To sell books.
To make money.
To get his face on television.
To remain one of the powerful who has the ability to say, "Only yesterday, I was talking to Hillary Clinton."
To look at himself in the mirror and say, "You made it, motherfucker."
Yes of course I agree with Bacevich's take on Woodward. (although I do not agree with everything Bacevich wrties)
Not to pick on poor Bob Woodward, we can add many other names to the list of sycophantic pundits who pander to the public.
Let's see, John Nichols and Matt Rothschild pop to mind as well, for that matter.
Come to think of it, the question is who among the so-called journalist community is not a sycophantic, ass-kissing lickspittle?
It's not news, it's not information -it is just business.
what's up with the heroin? Bob? Andrew? Ted?
if we can't get beyond the use of the word 'fuck', we're never gonna deal with cold blooded murder...JFK was killed 45 years ago, and the same bastards are still running the show, all around the world...Watergate was small potatoes compared to what's really going on...
fuck the tv
fuck the landlord
fuck the murderous thieves running our government
if peaceful resolutions are not possible...
Is it not quite clear by now that war(s) needs no purpose? It serves a function and so can go on indefintely, in fact it needs to do just that to serve its function.
Rail as they do against the best-known articulations of John Maynard Keynes, those who urge and support our current military offenses against mankind are practicing a grotesque form of Keynesianism in which the government funds expended go to armament makers et al in the MIC. Take away that spending and the economy would fall flatter than the proverbial pancake.
Those in charge never notice their own contradictions, of course.
But a few of us are starting to recoil in disgust at just how grotesque this whole situation really is, and are finding it increasingly difficult to regard as fully human these overpaid murdering sons of bitches in their thousand dollar suits or bemedalled uniforms.
Is it not quite clear by now that war needs no purpose? It serves a function and so can go on indefintely, in fact it needs to do just that to serve its function.
Rail as they do against the best-known articulations of John Maynard Keynes, those who urge and support our current military offenses against mankind are practicing a grotesque form of Keynesianism in which the government funds expended go to armament makers et al in the MIC. Take away that spending and the economy would fall flatter that the proverbial pancake.
Those in charge never notice their own contradictions, of course.
But a few of us are starting to recoil in disgust at just how grotesque this whole situation really is, and are finding it increasingly difficult to regard as fully human these overpaid murdering sons of bitches in their thousand dollar suits or bemedalled uniforms.
"the problem was that the president and his inner circle committed a long series of catastrophic errors... the people who engineered that catastrophe, many of them having pocketed handsome advances on their forthcoming memoirs, continue to manage quite well"
Which means the "catastrophes" were not errors but rather events that were designed precisely for the profit of those that "engineered" them. It always irks me when analysts refer to U.S. military actions as mistakes or errors rather than the calculated wealth and power grabs that they really are.
yes...
'the people who engineered that catastrophe...'
if a catastrophe is engineered, is that not a crime? these people, as defined, are criminals...
great word, catastrophe...