Here follows the first two pages of State Of War, by James Risen. This is a great read. I highly recommend the book. Sorry, no link, these pages are from a scan.
Prologue: The Secret History
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH angrily hung up the telephone, emphatically
ending a tense conversation with his father, the former
president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush.
It was 2003, and the argument between the forty-first and forty-third
presidents of the United States was the culmination of a prolonged,
if very secret, period of friction between the father and son.
While the exact details of the conversation are known only to the
two men, several highly placed sources say that the argument was
related to the misgivings Bush's father felt at the time about the
way in which George W. Bush was running his administration.
George Herbert Walker Bush was disturbed that his son was allowing
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative
ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy,
particularly concerning Iraq, and that he seemed to be tuning out the
advice of moderates, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. In
other words, George Bush's own father privately shared some of the same concerns that were being voiced at the time by his son's public critics.
Later, the president called his father back and apologized for
hanging up on him, and no permanent rift developed, according to sources familiar with the incident.
Yet the father-son argument underscores the degree to which the
presidency of George W. Bush has marked a radical departure from the centrist traditions of U.S. foreign policy, embodied by his father.
Since World War Two, foreign policy and national security have
been areas in which American presidents of both parties have tended
toward cautious pragmatism. On issues of war and peace, both liberal
Democrats and conservative Republicans have in the past recognized
that the stakes were too high to risk sudden and impetuous
actions based on politics or ideology. Even presidents with strong visions
of America's place in the world-Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy-
moved slowly and deliberately before taking actions that
might place American soldiers in harm's way. The United States was
supposed to be slow to anger.
George Herbert Walker Bush grew up within that tradition and
embraced it as president. When he went to war against Iraq in 1991,
he did so only after Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait,
and only after gaining the broad support of an international coalition.
After liberating Kuwait-the sole stated objective of that
war-the elder Bush halted American troops rather than march toward
Baghdad to topple Saddam.
George W. Bush was elected by voters who expected a repeat of
the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush. He reinforced that
belief when he said, at a campaign debate in October 2000, that he
planned to pursue a "humble" foreign policy: "If we're an arrogant
nation, they'll resent us; if we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll
welcome us."
But after 9/l1, George W. Bush parted ways with the traditions of
his father, and that decision has had consequences that are still playing
themselves out. Above all, it has led to a disturbing breakdown of
the checks and balances within the executive branch of the United
States government. Among the consequences: a new domestic spying
program, a narco-state in Afghanistan, and chaos in Iraq. |
