Book Reviews

摘要

The latest, fascinating episode in Bob Woodward's saga of post-9/11 Washington depicts a commander-in-chief trapped by the iron law of the US political system - your opponents will try to make you pay if you look weak on national security - and subsequently hemmed in (and in National Security Council official General Douglas Lute's view, 'rolled') by the military establishment. Partly to cover himself during the campaign, Barack Obama had criticised the Republicans for taking their eyes off the ball in Afghanistan. Once elected the question facing him was never whether more US troops would be going there, but how many and to do what. Even so, the White House was taken aback and exasperated by the brazen lobbying efforts of General Stanley McChrystal and his ambitious backer, General David Petraeus, on behalf of a major counter-insurgency and nation-building enterprise. In Petraeus's case this involved using allies in the press (former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson) and Senate (Lindsay Graham of South Carolina) to lean on the administration. In McChrystal's, it included public testimony and speeches, and the possible leaking to Woodward of a secret August 2009 assessment predicting defeat in the absence of his new approach. The book shows that the incident leading to McChrystal's mid-2010 firing was not an aberration but the last straw in a behavioural pattern that had begun with his appointment a year before.