Bob Woodward's State of Denial

"History is never old news," is what one of my former college history professors told me. Of course he could have been a bit biased toward his beloved subject, but the saying is actually wise. History is never old and, like current events, is always changing and evolving. What we learn today is likely to have taken on a different hue come tomorrow. But every word written is an essential part of history's puzzle.

This is the case with the war in Iraq and the administration of now former-President George W. Bush. As the 43rd president always liked to say, "history will be the greatest judge of his actions" and I feel that history hasn't made its final decision. Granted, his presidency wasn't the best time for the United States, but we still lived through it with him at the helm. Much has been written about the previous eight years, trying to satiate a public's increasing taste for information right now. Some of it has been informative. Some of it has been downright tabloid.

Bob Woodward's four books on the Bush presidency, commonly referred to as the "Bush at War" series, are perhaps the best documentation of what went on in the Bush White House from 2001 to 2009. Criticisms of Woodward's writing style aside, he has given us the best story of the last 8 years of our lives. Granted he takes some license with his material, but all writers do. In my opinion his books will be at the forefront of the sources historians pour over in the decades to come to analyze the George W. Bush presidency.

The best of the four, in my opinion, is "State of Denial" published in 2006. The book covers a lot of ground in its 491 pages. The prologue gives us the story of Bush asking Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar for his advice on whether or not he should run for the presidency in 2000. The main body of the book is spent looking at the build-up to and the aftermath of the Iraq war. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, if you were to put this book in the context of literature, would be the book's main antagonist. Most of the policy failures in post-war Iraq are blamed on Rumsfeld's incompetency. The only thing the reader is sure of is that Rumsfeld was very good at pulling the wool over the eyes of the president as far as his job performance goes.

The book can be a bit tedious at times. A lot of scenery is centered in the Middle East. You begin to get an understanding of the situation on the ground before and after the war and begin to appreciate how really appalling the decision to go to war in Iraq was. Woodward paints the reader a vivid picture of how poorly planned an operation it was and how it was almost destined to become a quagmire. You can get irritated with almost all of the players in the book, wanting to scream at them and slap them around for not standing up for what they believed in since, through Woodward's portrayal of events, most of them thought the idea of going to war with Iraq was terrible, but nobody ever said so. And you feel both badly for and mad at George W. Bush for allowing himself to be "intellectually lazy" as Senator Carl Levin is quoted as saying about the president in the book.

The book is a fast read for 491 pages, even at its most tedious and even for a notoriously slow reader like me. The only real problem with the book is with Woodward's dramatic flourishes. They've been documented in other reviews, so I would repeat them here. The timespan documented in the book gives the reader the full-scope of what drove Bush in his presidency. I would recommend this book for anyone who is studying current issues or is just interested in them, such as myself. While you're at it, make sure to read the rest of the "Bush at War" series as well.