Day 356 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Decision Points by President George W. Bush gives the reader insight into the hows and whys behind some of his biggest decisions in the White House. Though one would think it would be quite biased, it actually seems to be a very honest account of his presidency.

There are fourteen chapters, the first two of which should be read together (they go over his decision to quit drinking and how he ended up in politics and running for President), but the rest of the chapters can be read in any order. If you’re interested in his views on his HIV/AIDS initiative, you can skip to chapter 11 and read about it. If you want to know his thoughts on Iraq, start on chapter 8.

Chapter three deals with “Personnel” – how he chose his staff. The most interesting parts of this chapter were how he had connected with Karl Rove and how he chose Dick Cheney to be his VP.

Chapter four brings the reader into the big issues after all of the background covered in chapters one through three. His first topic: Stem Cells. What hit me the hardest in this chapter was the topic of “snowflake” children. I’d never heard of these, and I followed the stem cell topic pretty closely. Snowflake babies are the result of frozen embryos that the “parents” decide they don’t need/want anymore. That is, they’ve had all the children they want, so they tell whichever company who is holding their frozen embryos to dispose of them. But some people, not the biological parents of the frozen embryos, have chosen to “adopt” them. Women are implanted with these embryos and nine months later give birth to a child that would have otherwise been destroyed. The children born are called snowflake babies.

If anyone doesn’t believe that life begins at conception needs to look into the eyes of these snowflake babies. This just strengthened my belief that destroying life in the name of science is wrong. I don’t care if you can cure cancer by destroying the frozen embryo… that embryo is a defenseless child and murder is wrong. Period.

Okay, off my soapbox.

After that he talks about 9/11, the steps taken to prevent further attacks on America, then we get into a chapter on Afghanistan followed by a chapter on Iraq. Up to this point, the president has been pretty straight-forward: here is what happened, here’s the information on the topic, here are the different options, their possible outcomes, here’s my opinion, and here’s what I ultimately did. But once you get to Iraq, you see some of the passion, if not anger, that he held in check while dealing with the press that berated him during his time in office.

For example, when discussing the WMDs that were not found in Iraq, he says, “I had been receiving intelligence briefings on Iraq for nearly two years. The conclusion that Saddam had WMD was nearly a universal consensus. My predecessor believed it. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill believed it. Intelligence agencies in Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, China, and Egypt believed it… In retrospect, of course, we all should have pushed harder on the intelligence… But at the time, the evidence and the logic pointed in the other direction. If Saddam doesn’t actually have WMD, I asked myself, why on earth would he subject himself to a war he will almost certainly lose?” (emphasis his) page 242.

Good point.

On page 247 he targets those who said he rushed into war with Iraq. He makes his point: “It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since he had kicked out the weapons inspectors, six months since I had issued my ultimatum at the UN, four months since Resolution 1441 had given Saddam his “final opportunity,” and three months past the deadline to fully disclose his WMD.”

On page 256 when talking about the allies who helped with the initial phase of of the invasion (48 countries had pledged military or logistical support) he talks about President Schuster of Slovakia and his pride in helping to liberate Iraq. President Bush says, “I kept that moment in mind when I heard critics allege that America acted unilaterally. The false charge denigrated our allies and pissed me off.”

After a chapter on “Leading” which covers his attempts at education reform, Social Security reform and other things he tried to get passed, he tackles hurricane Katrina – and he is rather blunt on the topic and his opinion of Gov. Kathleen Blanco. His opinion of how she handled the situation is scathing, but is backed up with evidence.

He talks about calling the governor on Sunday before the storm hit and asked if the mandatory order to evacuate New Orleans had been given. It hadn’t been. He encouraged her to do so because “my people tell me this is going to be a terrible storm.” Then he asks what she needed from the federal government. Her reply was that they had everything they needed and that it was under control.

On day five after the storm and the looting began, the President wanted to send in the National Guard. The problems were two-fold. One, the federal government can’t send in active duty troops unless requested by the governor. Two, the governor, who despite being urged by the president to take his offer, continued to refuse it.

President Bush thought of declaring New Orleans to be in a state of insurrection, in which case he could deploy troops equipped with full law enforcement powers. However he if did this against her wishes the “world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states’ rights tension, could unleash holy hell” (page 321).

After spending three days trying to convince the governor that she needed the help, and she continuing to refuse it, he sent troops in anyway, but without law enforcement powers.

He admits on page 310, “As the leader of the federal government, I should have recognized the deficiencies sooner and intervened faster… the problem was not that I made the wrong decisions. It was that I took too long to decide.”

He ends the chapter by going through the changes that were made in at the federal level so that this never happened again.

After a chapter about his HIV/AIDS initiatives, he goes into a chapter on the surge in Iraq and how that came about. It was interesting to note how he chose to keep some of the details (personnel changes, etc) on hold until after the November election so that people didn’t think he was changing strategy to attract votes for the Republicans. I thought that was pretty decent of him.

Then there’s a chapter on his Freedom Agenda – wanting to bring democracy to tyrannically ruled countries, and why it’s important to do so. And finally he ends with the Financial Crisis. That chapter was interesting because he said as a free market man the companies, banks, etc. should have been left to go under (they made poor choices, they should pay for them, not the American people), but because it would have thrown the country, if not the world, into a depression, they had to do something to keep the economy going.

All in all, a good read. I felt it was very even-keeled, and as I said at the beginning, it seems to be an open and honest account of these topics. There’s no harsh words for his predecessor or successor, and the only person to really be “slammed” was Governor Blanco of Louisiana and even then, he faults himself for not taking action sooner.

If you don’t like Bush, I suggest you read the book. Chances are, you probably don’t like him because of the rhetoric thrown out by the media. If claim to be open-minded and haven’t listened to both sides of the story, read this. See if you feel the same way about Bush afterwords. I’d be interested in what you have to say.