Summary: The War Within: Review and Analysis of Bob Woodwards Book
If it consists primarily of a chronicle of events, a passage of analysis occasionally intervenes. There are no such frills in Obama's Wars. A blow-by-blow account of Afghan war-policy-making in the Obama White House, it begins with Obama's election and ends when it happens to end this past July , presumably with Woodward's publisher breathing down his neck.
Woodward isn't a writer but a reporter. Obama's Wars is less a book than a quarry of materials for one. Nor is Woodward particularly skilled at characterization: His idea of vividness is to offer personal statistics. In case you were wondering, General David Petraeus's hair is brown and neatly parted and he tips the scales at an austere 5 feet, 9 inches and pounds.
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If you think of public types as colourless, Woodward's portrayals won't lead you to reconsider. Where Woodward excels is in both diligence and access. If there's a transcript of a meeting, he or his research assistant has read it. Everyone talks to him, right up to the President himself.
He also professes uncanny knowledge of what everyone has said to everyone else. Obama's Wars contains accounts of hundreds of conversations, most of them at one time private. Also, no journalist so excels at cajoling classified documents from officials sworn to safeguard them. Obama's Wars is depressing reading. Intractable wars make for turbid policy-making.
As with the proverbial sausage, you'd just as soon not know what went into it. In their incessant jostling in the corridors of power, few of Woodward's characters come across as they would wish. Generals including even Petraeus figure as unimaginative and inflexible, intriguing to mislead an inexperienced president into acceding to their maximal demands. Obama's closest aides, on the other hand, know little about foreign and military matters and care still less about them. As for the Afghan and Pakistani leaders, don't even ask.
On the whole, Woodward avoids judgments in his own name, merely reporting his characters' negative verdicts on one another.
He also transmits some positive ones. In its merely reportorial stance, the book eschews any attempt at an authoritative interpretation of the events described. If there's a hero, though, it's Obama himself.
The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-08
Cool and deliberate, he overcomes his inexperience in foreign and military affairs to foil the efforts of the Pentagon to draw him deeper into the Afghan conflict than he wishes. Woodward's own judgment of the war and of Bush doesn't really matter. In the course of four books he has given readers the conversations and documents we need to reach our own judgments. He has also, however unevenly and imperfectly, supplied enough synthesis and analysis to make that judgment genuinely informed. Sure, these books can be a slog. But they stand as the fullest story yet of the Bush presidency and of the war that is likely to be its most important legacy.
The New York Sun gave a critical review, stating that "Mr. Woodward so drowns the reader in clutter that few arguments, except the obvious, emerge. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Bush tried locking in strategy. Archived from the original on June 11, Retrieved June 2, Published September 04, Published September 12, Published September 5, Bob Woodward's 'The War Within'.
Reviewed by Michiko Kakutani. But, when you consider that these decisions were being bounced around the halls of almost every agency, bureau, and department in government while an actual WAR was going on, seems almost criminal. The access Woodward was granted to the players involved here was especially interesting. There were insights presented by key participants, and not always in a way that flattered themselves.
I learned about people that nobody ever hears about, that had an importance in the outcome, far beyond what you might consider appropriate to their position. All in all, I found the book very interesting, even while it was scaring the hell out of me. Sep 29, Ian rated it it was amazing Shelves: Sometimes you read a book that shocks you, makes you ashamed at how little you knew about something important in the world around you.
This book had that effect on me. It's too bad that more Americans won't have read this by the time they vote in November. I don't think it will change anyone from one party to another. Some Republicans have reviewed this on Amazon saying "read this if you like to read lies". I don't find this book particularly anti-war, nor do I find it particularly pro-war.
It so Sometimes you read a book that shocks you, makes you ashamed at how little you knew about something important in the world around you. It sometimes portrays the Republicans as a little foolish, and it sometimes portrays the Democrats as a little naive, but both of those criticisms are often true of the parties. This book won't tell you anything about why the war was started. It's not a conspiracy theory book. It's only interested in what steps have been taken to make the war a success in the last three or four years.
On that note, this book made a lot of things more clear to me: Whenever someone says "we must succeed" in a speech, I used to think they were just blowing rhetoric around, but the Iraq War, whether it's won or lost, is going to have a huge impact on average Americans and how they relate to the rest of the world.
It's also going to make a huge impact on how the rest of the world views us. We invaded a country, yes. Did we fix it before we left? Or did we break it and run? You really need to read this book before you can pretend to have an opinion. Jun 07, Marie Gase rated it really liked it.
Book review: Obama's Wars, by Bob Woodward - The Globe and Mail
I figure nobody wants to hear my politics. So I will put that aside for now. What becomes evident to me after reading this book, is my assumption that goverment has a better working framework than let's say a local school district. Seems everything is sent to committee and there are a dozen committees all on the same subject and nobody listens to a committee other than their own.
I'm not sure that it's possible to get anything done anymore. This is a fascinating read but leaves me wit I figure nobody wants to hear my politics. This is a fascinating read but leaves me with the thought- "Democrats and Republicans! Get it together dudes. While your in committee for the better part of a year, soldiers are out there and it's costing 2 billion dollars a week. I understand you can't say it's going badly.
The Globe and Mail
Even military chain of command has gone caput. Figure something out- do it and do it well. My one critizism of this book is that Woodward is not a fan of Bush and he does nothing to hide that in this book. In past 3 books on Bush, it was a more objective view. Not so in this one. I think that the participants own comments and the action of this book made it very difficult not to voice his opinions but they were scathing. I'm not saying rightfully so- but they weren't necessary. Sep 26, Caleb rated it liked it Recommends it for: Anyone who cares enough about the Iraq War to spend pages with Woodward's prose.
A pretty typical Woodward book: Reads like a newspaper article that goes on and on for hundreds of pages, has an unbelievable amount of access, delivers information that would have been very helpful to have known a few years ago. For example, just how much politics played a role in the conduct of the Iraq war Surprise! It was a lot! The fix eventually came in the form of t A pretty typical Woodward book: The fix eventually came in the form of the surge, but talks on strategy were kept quiet and slowed down so as not to jeopardize Republican control of congress in which they lost anyway.
It's a really depressing read, showing how quixotic the entire endeavor was on every level from the very beginning and just how long it takes to correct course in the U. The book is probably most noteworthy for being the fourth and final of Woodward's books on the Bush administrations "war on terror," offering Woodward's mixed assessment of the president in the epiloguee. Dec 02, Ikonopeiston rated it it was ok Recommends it for: The subject matter is engrossing and confirms all one's worst suspicions about the Bush White House. However, the writing is prosaic and genuinely bad in spots.
I fear Woodward is no stylist and has no real love for the language. I shall continue to read this because I am interested in the period but I do not read it for the pleasure of savouring good literature. Therefore, I intend to mix this with some more enjoyable books. Thank g-d this is done! The writing grew steadily worse and the going more and more difficult.
There were parts where the clumsiness of the sentence structure made understanding the point well nigh impossible. There is much meat on these bones but it is almost too difficult to reach it. I will not willingly read this book again and I am not at all impelled to read any of Woodward's other writings.
Perhaps if he had edited and smoothed the prose of his research assistants rather than, apparently, pasting their reports unaltered into his manuscript it would have made for a better book. Now, back to better stuff. Dec 02, Jon rated it liked it Shelves: This book didn't fully hold my attention since I didn't read this until after the election.
Even though the information here is good and has lots of relevance to Bush's legacy, I just can't get excited about reading the subject of a Bush presidency anymore.
Thus, I skimmed through it pretty quickly. Two things of interest. Woodward in the book says the soft-skills are what was the game changer. I still maintain that Congress the House especially has the spending authority according to the constitution and they could have stopped funding the war, the new military bases that were built, and the 1, employee US embassy in Baghdad.
It is clear the US including under Obama will have a presence in Iraq for some time. It may not be patrolling the streets, but they will be in bases protecting "our interests" in the Middle East area from Iraq. Woodward explains this in the book. Dec 15, Jimmy Tarlau rated it liked it Shelves: This is the first Bob Woodward book I've every read listened to.
This one covers the last two years of the Bush Presidency and the debate over the 'surge' strategy in Iraq. It's based on numerous interviews with various Generals and insiders in the Bush Administration.
Woodward doesn't seem to interview anybody from Iraq or from other countries to get any other kind of perspective. It actually shows how the idea of 'coalition' forces was a complete joke. Not once in the book does anybody in th This is the first Bob Woodward book I've every read listened to.
Not once in the book does anybody in the administration say let's see what the British or any of our allies think. It was interesting for me to learn about the strategic thinking of some of the military people in the Administration. Must of the time this was going on, I didn't remember who was saying what. My only thought was getting out of the war as soon as possible.
I do wonder what some people think about how important it was to restore 'democracy' in Iraq with all the people who died when a couple of years later there were rebellions in a lot of other Arab countries without our having to send over , troops. I probably will read Woodward's next book, Obama's War, to see how it all ends up.
The book discusses the debates and decisions being made about the war, especially the surge in troops, who was for and who was against, and how the idea was sold to President Bush. Woodward also makes a point that the improvement in the status of the war in Iraq, while often attributed to the surge in troops, may have more significant reasons which ar The "War Within" is the last in the Woodward series about the Bush Administration, covering Bush's last two years and focusing on the War in Iraq. Woodward also makes a point that the improvement in the status of the war in Iraq, while often attributed to the surge in troops, may have more significant reasons which are not often discussed, specifically the military's efforts to work with the Sunni and Shiite leadership and gaining trust and cooperation.
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Evidently, since he was able to maintain unprecedented access to the President and Cabinet members through four books and eight years, the Administration must have felt that Woodward's coverage was fair and accurate. Therefore, assuming that Woodward didn't have an axe to grind or a political perspective he was pushing, I found the facts he brought out to be very interesting and insightful. Oct 09, Blake rated it liked it Shelves: The War Within deals with the Bush Administration's change in strategy and all the Beltway drama that went along with it other books deal with the invasion and post-invasion aftermath.
Critics and stallwarts of President Bush will each find something to like in this book. The book vindicates President Bush's decision to continue fighting in Iraq when the world was calling for a hasty retreat. However, it also leaves you with the impression that President Bush was asleep at the switch for during the post-invasion period, content to beleive the rosy misinformation coming from the field and the Pentagon when events on the ground painted a starkly different picture.
One strong warning, while I consider this book and this series essential for anyone who wishes to understand the war in Iraq, don't read this book if you couldn't care less about how your government makes sausage. Feb 07, Taruia rated it it was ok Shelves: This was longer than the other books and partly because it did a lot of 'for those who came in late let me tell you what you may have missed' which was incredibly tedius.
It may have been better to weave this into the narrative but, we went for the 'in my first book I said, which was reinforced in the second one'. Woodward showed the extraordinary access he received from the Administration particularly evident with his description of the vast number of reviews on the existing Iraq strategy or lack thereof. If a Government is able to wage war for six years but not be entirely sure what victory would look like.
With reviews from the private sector, State, Defence, NSC and the Joint Chiefs all occurring simultaneously the scary part was the fact that they were all conducted separately and never the twain shall meet. This book isn't the best I have read, but still worth a look. Nov 05, Samantha rated it really liked it. This is the last book in the Bush Years series of Bob Woodward. It was an extremely fascinating book and I'm glad I read it almost 4 years after the events that it talks about. It's always good to get some distance from the actual event when reading about history.
I enjoy most of Mr. Woodward's books because of their detail and their quotes.
You can tell he has numerous sources and actually talks to the participants themselves about the events. He always makes it very easy to follow all the different people that are involved in the saga. The comparsions to other wars especially Vietnam were interesting to me. I feel he gives a very balanced view on the events and tries to tell all sides. Yes, there is a lean to the book but it isn't as noticable as some other books.
I gave this book 3 and half stars which rounds up to 4 stars because it is definitely the weakest of the four books on President Bush. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good recent historical book. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. While an investigative reporter for that newspaper, Woodward, working with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, helped uncover the Watergate scandal that led to U. President Richard Nixon's resignation. Woodward has written 12 best-selling non-fiction books and has twice contributed reporting to efforts that collecti Robert "Bob" Upshur Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post.
Woodward has written 12 best-selling non-fiction books and has twice contributed reporting to efforts that collectively earned the Post and its National Reporting staff a Pulitzer Prize. Other books in the series. Bush at War 4 books. Books by Bob Woodward. Trivia About The War Within: