- Misconceptions and the Facts
- Citations by Chapter
- Timelines, Maps, and Charts
- Reviews and Comments
- Documents and Articles
- About Douglas J. Feith
 | NOTE: The author is donating all of his book revenues to charitable organizations serving U.S. veterans and their families |
Reviews and Commentary
Reviews
Feith presents genuine scholarship, an interesting and original argument concerning 9/11, American actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the general war on terror, and a valuable behind-the-scenes look at the way in which foreign policy, defense and national security policy was made during the course of the Bush Administration.
Pejman Yousefzadeh
. . . In War and Decision, Feith offers a dispassionate counterresponse-the first,
one can only hope, of others to follow from Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
and George W. Bush. Feith is not interested in getting even, but rather in
systematically exploring the accuracy of the entire pessimistic narrative
that has grown up about Iraq. Although he does not question every detail, he
subjects enough of the narrative to cross-examination to show that it is
largely a myth. His tools are understated irony and extensive
documentation-some 600 footnotes and dozens of reprinted documents. These
bring forcefully to view what the Bush administration was actually thinking
in the days, weeks, and months after 9/11.
As the record adduced by Feith clearly demonstrates, neither he nor Rumsfeld
advocated a preemptive war for democracy. Feith was more interested in
simply removing dictators like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power
before they or their surrogates could trump the horrors of 9/11, while
Rumsfeld was almost obsessive in his anxiety over mounting costs, unforeseen
battlefield complications, and occupations with no predetermined end. Far
from wanting an imperial American presence in Iraq, Pentagon officials
wished to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis as quickly as possible-unlike
their counterparts in the State Department, and unlike Paul Bremer, whose
quest for the perfect constitutional government got in the way of
implementing an interim governing body that would have been good enough.
Powell and Armitage-as the record also demonstrates-were neither critics nor
supporters of the war, but had carefully situated themselves to be for it if
it worked, and against it if it did not. Their studied triangulation meant
that when things went well they were never enthusiastic advocates of the
policies they were charged with overseeing, while when things turned bad
they were ready to provide off-the-record quotes and background information
to the growing chorus of antiwar critics. . . .
Victor David Hanson
Secretary Powell was not antiwar so much as inscrutable, in Feith's telling.
He agreed that Saddam Hussein was dangerous but downplayed the urgency of
the threat. At best, he supported the administration's Iraq policy
halfheartedly, without outlining an alternative solution.
"Powell put himself in a position where, if the war went well, he could say
he supported it, and, if not, he could point to his warnings as proof that
he was a prescient dove," writes Feith.
Peter Grier
Commentaries
I think the most recent that I read, Douglas Feith's "War and Decision," is the most informative. And I think it's the most credible for one reason - that it's the best documented.
Victor David Hanson interview
If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism <http://www.amazon.com/War
Feith was and is very much identified with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, and he certainly did not believe that Saddam Hussein was ever containable in a sanctions "box." But he is capable of separating his views from his narrative, and this absorbing account of the interdepartmental and ideological quarrels within the Bush administration, on the Afghanistan and Guantanamo fronts as well as about Iraq, will make it difficult if not impossible for people to go on claiming that, for instance:
- There was no rational reason to suspect a continuing Iraqi WMD threat. Feith's citations from the Duelfer Report <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
/Duelfer_Report#Duelfer_Report> alone are stunning in their implications. - That alternatives to war were never discussed and that the administration was out to "get" Saddam Hussein from the start.
- That the advocates of regime change hoped and indeed planned to anoint Ahmad Chalabi as a figurehead leader in Baghdad.
- That there was no consideration given to postwar planning.
It's also of considerable interest to learn that the main argument for adhering to the Geneva Conventions was made within the Pentagon and that the man who expressed the most prewar misgivings concerning Iraq was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Feith doesn't deny that he has biases of his own. One of these concerns the widely circulated charge that his own Office of Special Plans was engaged in cherry-picking and stovepiping intelligence. Another is the criticism, made by most of the neocon faction, of Paul Bremer and the occupation regime that he ran in Baghdad. In all instances, however, Feith writes in an unrancorous manner and is careful to supply the evidence and the testimony and, where possible, the actual documentation, from all sides.
Without explicitly saying so, Feith makes a huge contribution to the growing case for considering the Central Intelligence Agency to be well beyond salvage. Its role as a highly politicized and bewilderingly incompetent body, disastrous enough in having left us under open skies before Sept. 11, 2001, became something more like catastrophic with the gross mishandling of Iraq. For these revelations alone, this book is well worth the acquisition. (I might add that, unlike McClellan, Feith is contributing all his earnings and royalties to charities that care for our men and women in uniform.)
I don't know Feith, but I can pay him two further compliments: When you read him on a detail with which you yourself are familiar, he is factually reliable (and it's not often that one can say that, believe me). And his prose style is easy, nonbureaucratic, dry, and sometimes amusing. If a book that was truly informative was called a "tell-all" by our media, then War and Decision would qualify. As it is, we seem to reserve that term for the work of bigmouths who have little, if anything, to impart.
Christopher Hitchens
Unlike most of the "Washington insider" books I have seen over the
years, this is a very carefully written and serious historical work, and
will be required reading for someone who wants a better understanding of why
and how we went to war in Iraq. And, especially for the Iraq war critics,
the book allows one to put strong opinions aside for a moment and learn
about the decision process and how it ended up where it did. It's all here -
and, whether one agrees with it or not, it's fascinating story and very well
told.
Daniel Gallington
Copyright Douglas J. Feith