The title is clearly misleading: this book is only concerned with the war in Afghanistan. The “wars” referred to in the title are the battles waged by the US president and his White House aides with his military advisers in the Defence Department, the Pentagon and the generals in Afghanistan which led to the president’s announcement in December 2009 of the deployment of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan.
Woodward is a privileged observer and rapporteur. He has been present at some sensitive meetings, has had detailed briefings from several senior officials and generals, and has also had access to classified material from officials, rounding off his narrative with an hour-long interview with the president in July 2010.
Three principal themes dominate the book: first, the responsibility of the Bush presidency for the Afghan imbroglio; second, deep concerns relating to Pakistan’s simultaneous role as ally and as the nursery and sanctuary of Al Qaeda and Taliban, with serious consequences for US interests in Afghanistan; and, third, the pressures exerted on the president by the generals to get him to agree to their proposed troop deployments.
Obviously, the Bush presidency has much to answer for: eight years into the war, the US leadership remains unclear as to what its interests are in the country and how they should be secured. General Petraeus, in an attempt at black humour, is quoted as saying: “There’s been lack of sufficient funding, people, concepts, structures and authorities; other than that, we’re doing great.” More seriously, with the Bush presidency preoccupied with the Iraq war, little effort was made to pursue and apprehend Osama bin Laden.
The central problem in regard to US interests in Afghanistan remains Pakistan’s schizophrenic role: it is seen as a valued and even indispensable ally, while large sections of its armed forces, particularly the ISI, are actively involved in supporting the enemies of the US.
At the end of the book, the US National Security Adviser, General James Jones, ruefully admits that “success in Afghanistan is tied to what the Pakistanis would or would not do”. But, he notes, they do not share the US sense of urgency in confronting the Taliban or even giving up terror as national policy, nor do they have concerns about the implications for them of another Mumbai-type attack. Instead, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who masterminded the Mumbai attacks, “continues to direct LeT attacks from his detention centre” even as thousands of Taliban fighters pour into Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistan to combat US forces. Al Qaeda elements remain in sanctuaries in Pakistan and spread their tentacles with impunity to Yemen, Somalia and other parts of the region.
At one point, President Obama himself states that “the cancer is in Pakistan” and needs to be excised. Woodward reveals that in response to proven Pakistani complicity in a terror act on the US mainland, American contingency plans provide for “a retribution campaign of bombing up to 150 known terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan”. Even with this evidence, the US seems unable to confront Pakistani duplicity and its enduring alliance with radical Islam and terror.
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Besides the problem of Pakistan, US officials frequently mention the unreliability of President Karzai, the failure of governance and rampant corruption. General Petraeus refers to the Afghan government as a “criminal syndicate”, while Defence Secretary Gates says that “good governance is contrary to Afghan history”. Even as recently as April 2010, an intelligence adviser describes the long-term outcome in Afghanistan thus: “malign actors, disrupted, ineffective, collapsing government in Kabul; a re-emergence of violent extremist groups and safe havens.” In short, no change since before 9/11.
During the US president’s “strategic review”, while the generals often exhibit deep personal animosities, jealousies and childish one-upmanship among themselves, the central divide is between the Pentagon and the White House. The generals present their demands for additional troops to the president without offering real alternative options, and at times undermine him by lobbying with politicians and the media.
The debates in Washington confirm that there is no clarity about what US interests in Afghanistan are: the defeat of the Taliban or merely its disruption or degradation? How are these concepts to be defined? Should military policies be counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism? Should these policies be implemented across Afghanistan or limited to certain sub-regions? At no stage is there consensus on any of these basic issues.
At the end of the book, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, describes the CIA as “fundamentally an organisation that’s like a really finely trained, not very smart, dangerous animal that needs to be controlled very closely by adults”. This description can readily apply to the US war machine in its entirety.
The book raises a troubling thought: What is it that, generation after generation, impels America’s best and the brightest to lead their country into war, with little clarity regarding national interests and war aims but pursued with an extraordinary passion and firepower that destroy the lives of thousands of its soldiers and leave behind a horrendous debris of devastated nations and cities, wrecked societies and broken peoples that take decades to repair and heal?
The reviewer is an Indian diplomat. The views expressed are personal
OBAMA’S WARS
Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, London
441 pages; £20