Survivor: The White House Edition
As with Vietnam, so with Iraq: in the last act of a failed war the backstage action is about saving reputations, not lives. The flurry of exits, finger-pointing, and self-justification exploited by Bob Woodward leaves just three men to blame: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Which is where Henry Kissinger, the master survivor, comes in.
by Michael Wolff December 2006
Bush fires Cheney and names McCain as the replacement V.P.—although it is not yet entirely clear to me who tells Bush to fire Cheney, if not Cheney. The war in Iraq, except for the shooting, is so over. But between now and when, as the president has no doubt accurately described it, we "cut and run," when there's a final helicopter lifting from a Green Zone rooftop, there's a whole third act to play.
In Vietnam the third act began more or less with the Tet offensive, in 1968—when, with Saigon and the U.S. Embassy nearly overrun, it became clear that not only were we not winning, we were not going to win—and went on, encompassing the downfall of Lyndon Johnson, the election of Richard Nixon, the rise of Henry Kissinger, the dubious invasion of Cambodia, and, ultimately, Watergate (one proposed article of impeachment involved Nixon's deception of Congress in bombing Cambodia), until 1975 and the final helicopter scene from the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon.
In the third act of a failing war—when, in Vietnam, most of the American casualties actually occurred—much of the off-site drama involves how the panicky people involved with the mess manage their own public relations. The goal, obviously, is to not be blamed, and even, perchance, to emerge heroically. (John Kerry became an anti-war activist in the third act of Vietnam, and was celebrated for it; most others in the military, not so sensitive to the Zeitgeist, plodded on, and came home more or less ignominiously. In part, the Swift-boat episode during the last election was the revenge of the less adroit.)
It's the Walter Cronkite moment. Far from being remembered as a detached narrator of a situation that, for three years, had been wildly spiraling out of control, Cronkite is remembered as the man who, suddenly, in 1968, told truth to power (though, in fact, he was the power) and exposed the hopelessness of the whole misadventure.
Bob Woodward, the nation's most famous journalist—a wooden and sanctimonious television presence, as well as an author of books and a reporter for The Washington Post—is a reasonable equivalent of Cronkite. If he's going in another direction, the world has changed. He's the power barometer. And broker. If he's no longer sucking up to you, you better get out of town in a hurry.
You've lost if you've lost Woodward.
With the publication of State of Denial, Woodward's peeling away of the flesh of the Bush national-security team, the third act is under way.
Woodward is hardly the only turn of the screw. There's Bill Clinton (there's always Bill Clinton). The once and future leader, who's been building himself a global career as, in part, the other president, has taken a more or less righteous position on virtually every global issue—health, environment, economics—except the war elephant in the room. Now, as the third act begins, he seizes the opportunity and is suddenly in high dudgeon about who is or is not to be blamed for the terror mess, not just defending his pursuit of Osama bin Laden but accusing the Bush administration of idleness and negligence. Fair enough, perhaps. But 9/11 was an age ago. How come we had to wait for this most fundamental discussion?
And there's The New York Times, which, after nearly five years of highly politic treatment of virtually anything that the White House coupled with the war on terror, is now, as the press critic Michael Massing recently characterized it, "the voice of the opposition." Here in the third act, there's Colin Powell—who prides himself on his soldier's loyalty except when he's whispering to reporters—playing the martyr. There's the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Virginia Republican John Warner, saying that the U.S. might have to consider "a change of course"—translation: run, run, run for the hills. (The chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Maine Republican Susan Collins, added, for good measure: "When Chairman Warner, who has been a steadfast ally of this administration, calls for a new strategy, that is clearly significant.") Via Woodward, there's Andrew Card, the president's former chief of staff, adjusting his position; Jay Garner, the Bush administration's haplessly selected first proconsul in Iraq, telling his revisionist tale of gross mismanagement in the war zone; George Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, taking the dramatic opportunity of the third act to, finally, drop responsibility for 9/11 onto the White House; Powell's number two, Richard Armitage, dumping all over just about everything; and, indeed, even Laura Bush, wringing her hands.
Such re-inventions and rationalizations and self-justifications and personal P.R. game plans will continue until the responsibility for Iraq has been reduced to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld—the troika.
Everybody's positioning himself for the end.
The plot structure of the war, and how it reaches its conclusion, is determined less, at this point, by events in Iraq (although the Times gamely reported a few weeks ago on the front page that the military was really, truly honing a new counter-insurgency strategy) than by the involvement of so many drama queens with their super-awareness of crisis and timing.
The basic facts, after all, are three years old: no W.M.D., no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, not enough troops, no planning, and, obviously, no idea about how to deal with an ever growing insurgency.
But patience is key. Richard Clarke, the terrorism expert of both the Clinton and first Bush administrations, went public more than two years ago with his harsh critique of the Bush terror war, and, to many, seemed like a bitchy Cassandra, which is not necessarily the perfect career face. Clarke seemed to think he could precipitate the dénouement, but the drama has its own rhythms. It's only in the third act that you get the big reversals and tough truths—we're finally ready.
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I have the Shit Midas touch. Everything I touch turns to shit.
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