It is nearly forty years ago since I first read a Woodward book albeit with his co-author Carl Bernstein: it was the famous All The President's Men and then its follow up The Final Days. I was transfixed and still have the paperbacks in my library and a video of the film which even shook my children when we watched it a couple of years ago. I wonder whether the Clinton-Lewinsky affair will one day receive the white carpet treatment?
More recently (the past decade) I have read Bush At War, Plan of Attack and State of Denial.
So, I had some of idea how his new book would scope out. Woodward is such a fine writer which he backs with relentless research and exceptional access scoring several scoops for the Washington Post as he prepared the text.
He has fathered a new kind of writing and authors such as Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar's Poker et al), Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (Nudge) and Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point et al) bask in his shadow.
Anyway, Obama's Wars is in the same spirit of his previous books and shows the absolute dysfunctional elements of the Pentagon at their absolute worst as they have fumbled their way around Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder al-Qaeda's cell like operation makes fools of them. Still what's $3 trillion of US tax payers money to four star generals? And given, they simply won't take on north and western Pakistan for fear of upsetting the corrupt regime in Pakistan itself yet at the same time they offer them $1 billion worth of support nothing in the book really surprises you.
There is now way the West can win in Afghanistan.