《决策点》，作者：乔治•W•布什(George W Bush)，维珍出版社，建议零售价25英镑，497页
2001年春，白宫邀请我加入一个四人专家小组，在乔治•W•布什总统首次欧洲之行开始前，为他做简报。总统严肃中带着几分俏皮，用他带着鼻音的标志性德州口音连珠炮般发问。在长达两小时的谈话中途，话题转向他与俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)即将进行的会晤。
"我想深入探究他的灵魂，"布什总统严肃地宣称。对此一位俄罗斯的专家回应道："总统先生，我对此并不乐观。也许你看到的只是一块坚冰。"
我是在读到布什回忆录时想起的这场谈话。这部回忆录记叙了从911恐怖袭击到2007年金融危机期间的总统决策过程，有些地方行文很坦率，但总体仍以经过精心组织的措辞为主。正如普京总统那些轶事，布什体现的是对人际关系与信念力量的强烈依赖，而不是依赖于理性与现实政治。911以后，当他启动旨在为伊拉克和中东带去民主的"自由议程"("Freedom Agenda")，这种追随直觉的本能特征变得尤为明显。
在书中，布什以不顾文化、种族和地域去推动民主为功绩，将自己置于历史的正确一面，与其他一些伟大的总统，如林肯(Lincoln)，罗斯福(Roosevelt)和杜鲁门(Truman)等平起平坐。（布什表示，在白宫任职的八年中他读了14部林肯传记，并从南北战争总司令"诚实的艾贝"(Honest Abe)艰苦卓绝的工作中得到鼓舞。）对那些会指责布什自欺欺人的读者，布什准备了自信的回答："我确信，对于我或近期的任何一位总统，几十年内都不可能作出定论。"
目前为止，布什的生平故事已广为人知。据他自己承认，他曾是一个傲慢、粗鲁的愣头青，整个青年时代充斥着啤酒和波本威士忌。他父亲的关系在他的人生中发挥了重要作用：入读耶鲁(Yale)的资格，进入德克萨斯州空中国民警卫队并由此避免在越战中服役，以及进入西德克萨斯州石油业并小赚一笔等。
在那里，他遇到了劳拉，幡然悔悟，于是不再酗酒，并追随父亲进入政界，先后赢得两届得克萨斯州州长与两届美国总统任期。从一个暗淡无光的开端，走到无比辉煌的终点，至少就选举纪录来说，他远胜于老布什。
《决策点》涵盖许多重要决策，如对干细胞研究有保留的支持，在相关政府签约承诺反腐败的条件下，有远见地对非洲国家抗击艾滋病与疟疾项目提供资助。但是，整本书的焦点不可避免地集中于911恐怖袭击，以及随后对阿富汗和伊拉克的入侵。布什关于911本身的记述是书中最吸引人的章节，也披露了很多信息。"我感到血脉贲张。我们要查明凶手，还以颜色。"他写道。
布什最初的决策干净利落且非常高效：防范恐怖分子的再次袭击；旗帜鲜明地向美国和全世界人民宣告，美国已经发动一场新型战争；让人们确信恐怖分子没有让美国经济瘫痪或国家分裂。在硝烟未曾散尽的爆炸现场，他的话语果敢而坚定；在华盛顿国家大教堂的追悼仪式上，他的演讲则振奋了人心。
布什准确地提醒我们，令美国人饱受创伤的，不仅仅是纽约双子塔的轰然倒塌，还有寄送到康涅狄格州、佛罗里达州和纽约的包含致命炭疽的邮包。9年后，邮包发件人被确认是一位美国政府的科学家，此人后来自杀身亡。在布什接下来的任期中，美国没有再遭受到恐怖袭击，布什自己评价说，"这是我作为总统最有意义的成就"。
然而"反恐战争"的理念本身是有缺陷的。一个调动民意、琅琅上口的口号，却变成了一个使用武力的无限制承诺，这种武力既包括采用令人质疑的方式，对疑似恐怖分子近乎虐待的刑讯，也包括对包庇及资助恐怖分子的国家采取军事行动。当时，老布什的前国家安全顾问布伦特•斯考克罗夫特(Brent Scowcroft)将军敦促政府专注于警察和情报部门的运作，而非单纯着眼于军事力量。但他毕竟是少数派，正如他后来对政府推翻萨达姆•侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)提出警告时一样。当时他提出，对于一个过气的独裁者，可以通过遏制政策加以孤立。
布什坚信，对一小撮基地组织成员动用水刑得到的情报拯救了数百人的生命，而无论宪法做出了怎样精确的规定，他都将义无反顾地做出同样的决策。他还披露，当斯考克罗夫特将反对入侵伊拉克的意见公开后，他感到异常愤怒。他担心人们怀疑他父亲持有类似的保留意见，而他坚称情况并非如此。
然而，老布什运用巧妙的外交手段实现了德国的统一，不费一枪一卒便结束了冷战，并在海湾战争中仅寻求实现有限的目标，即解放科威特，而不是进军巴格达。小布什太急于洗刷另一个富有煽动性的口号"邪恶轴心"造成的破坏性影响——这个称号将伊朗、伊拉克和朝鲜归类在一起，将它们确定为军事打击的潜在目标，也助长了国际社会对美国已成为野蛮国家的看法。
正如在书中被描述成入侵伊拉克狂热支持者的托尼•布莱尔(Tony Blair)一样，布什也是一位道学家。像布莱尔一样，布什坚称，所有主要情报机构都认为萨达姆拥有大规模杀伤性武器，并且这些大规模杀伤性武器落入恐怖分子手中的威胁严重到难以承受的地步。同布莱尔一样，他无法理解为什么更多的人依旧无法接受除掉萨达姆的道德论点。"我看不出谁能否认解放伊拉克推动了人权这个观点，"他写道。
就伊拉克决策本身而言，布什承认他存在一些失误。如部队的规模应该更大，战后规划也欠完善，解散伊拉克安全部队的命令太过鲁莽，令局势陷入混乱，夺去了成千上万伊拉克人和数百名美国士兵的生命。书中用更多篇幅专门谈到了他下令"增兵伊拉克" 、大卫•彼得雷乌斯(David Petraeus)将军指挥成功反击的决策——必须承认，这是一个勇敢的决策。他辩称，这一决策给新生的伊拉克民主带来了希望。
布什为自己庆幸找到了大卫•彼得雷乌斯将军和他的继任者雷蒙德•奥迪耶诺(Raymond Odierno)将军，以及国防部长唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德(Donald Rumsfeld)的继任者罗伯特•盖茨(Robert Gates)。如林肯一样，他写道，他花了很长时间去寻找可堪重任的人选。对于没能早点解雇显而易见的傲慢且屡屡犯错的拉姆斯菲尔德，他给出的理由缺乏说服力。
布什的"自由议程"需要对国家建设做出持久的承诺，而在拉姆斯菲尔德的支持下，美国军队有一种不愿做出此承诺的本能，布什没能认清这两者之间的根本矛盾。军队更喜欢的是部署压倒性的兵力，然后宣布胜利，全身而退。
这种矛盾至今仍困扰着美国在阿富汗的行动。它也证明了布什国家安全事务团队内部的分裂，这是他第一个任期内的特征，对此他只是一笔带过。问题在于，他对此是泰然处之还是默许他人——尤其是他那不择手段的竞选顾问卡尔•洛夫(Karl Rove)——发挥了不正当影响呢？洛夫认为，布什作为"战争总统"的标签将是其连任最有力的保障。然而，这在国内具有良好的效果，即便是以民众意见两极分化为代价，在国外的影响却很糟糕。
在《决策点》一书的末尾，布什回顾了"自由议程"的进展。从积极的一面讲，他指出，除伊拉克之外，利比亚放弃了核武器计划，叙利亚从黎巴嫩撤军，伊朗反政府运动的爆发，海湾国家温和的民主运动，以及他个人对巴勒斯坦国的支持，尽管这一点相比他的另一项决策显得微不足道——他站在了以色列一边，呼吁巴勒斯坦解放组织领导人阿拉法特(Yasser Arafa)离职。这一决策引来他的母亲，直言不讳的芭芭拉(Barbara)的电话："第一位犹太人美国总统怎么啦？"（译注：小布什不同于其父辈，具亲犹太人形象。）
布什承认，"自由议程"的负面影响，包括俄罗斯以牺牲格鲁吉亚为代价，加强了在邻国乌克兰和高加索地区的影响力；伊朗正努力发展核能力；朝鲜继续其核武器计划；加沙地区伊斯兰抵抗组织的团结和巴以冲突未能结束；以及留下白俄罗斯、委内瑞拉和津巴布韦等其它"暴政据点"等。
布什相信，历史对他总统任期的定论将会比当下的评价宽容得多，美国地位的突然下跌将是暂时的，在阿富汗和伊拉克付出的兵力和财力将被证明是值得的。鉴于美国人已经厌倦了比他更理性的继任者巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)，他的观点也许是对的。
更有可能的评价是，布什的两个任期标志着美国国力达到顶峰，而他的决策超越了美国国力的极限，并招致了恶劣的后果。
译者/功文
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035933
Decision Points, by George W Bush, Virgin Books RRP£25, 497 pages
In spring 2001, the White House invited me to join a group of four experts to brief President George W Bush before his inaugural trip to Europe. The president was both impish and serious, firing off questions with his trademark Texan twang. Midway through our two-hour session, the conversation turned to his forthcoming meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
"I'm gonna look into Putin's soul," Bush declared solemnly. To which one of the Russia experts responded: "Mr President, I would be careful. You may not see much more than a block of ice."
I was reminded of the exchange while reading Bush's memoir, a sometimes candid but on balance carefully massaged account of presidential decision-making in times of crisis, from the September 11 terror attacks to the financial meltdown in 2007. As with the Putin episode, Bush is shown to rely heavily on personal chemistry and the power of faith rather than reason and realpolitik. His go-with-the-gut instincts are especially evident after 9/11 when he launched a "Freedom Agenda" to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East.
In the book, Bush uses this promotion of democracy, irrespective of culture, ethnicity and geography, to cast himself on the right side of history, alongside other great presidents such as Lincoln, Roosevelt and Truman. (He says he read 14 Lincoln biographies during his eight years at the White House, drawing inspiration from Honest Abe's travails as commander-in-chief in the civil war.) To those who would accuse him of self-delusion, Bush has a cocksure riposte: "I believe it will be impossible to reach definitive conclusions about my presidency – or any recent presidency, for that matter – for several decades."
By now Bush's life story is well known. By his own admission, he was a lippy, rowdy brat who coasted through his youth on ample amounts of beer and bourbon. He owed much to his father's connections: a place at Yale, a slot at the Texas Air National Guard, thereby avoiding combat duty in Vietnam, and an entree into the oil business in west Texas, where he made a small fortune.
There he met Laura, found God, gave up the booze, and followed his father into politics, winning two terms as governor of Texas and two as US president. From the most unpromising of starts, he ended up with a far more impressive record, at least in electoral terms, than George H W Bush.
Decision Points covers important decisions such as Bush's qualified support for stem cell research and his administration's far-sighted funding of anti-Aids and malaria programmes in Africa, which was conditional on governments signing up to anti-corruption. Inevitably, though, the focus is on the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. His account of 9/11 itself is the most gripping and revealing passage in the book. "My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this and kick ass," he writes.
Bush's initial decision-making was crisp and effective: keep the terrorists from striking again, make clear to the American people and the rest of the world that the US had embarked on a new kind of war, and make sure that the terrorists did not paralyse the economy or divide the country. His rhetoric was resolute at a still smoking Ground Zero, inspiring at a memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington.
Bush correctly reminds us that Americans were traumatised by the collapse of the twin towers in New York but also by the dispatch of envelopes containing deadly anthrax to addresses in Connecticut, Florida and New York. Nine years later, the author was identified as a US government scientist who later committed suicide. That there was no repeat terrorist attack on the US for the rest of his time in office was, in Bush's estimation, "my most meaningful accomplishment as president".
Yet the very concept of the "War on Terror" was flawed. A quotable slogan to mobilise public opinion turned into an open-ended pledge to use force, including questionable interrogation methods bordering on torture against individuals deemed to be terrorists, and armed action against countries harbouring or sponsoring terrorists. At the time, General Brent Scowcroft, formerly national security adviser to Bush Sr, urged the administration to focus on police and intelligence operations rather than on military force alone. But he was in a minority, as he was later when he warned against ousting Saddam Hussein, an old-fashioned dictator who, he argued, could be bottled up through containment.
Bush is adamant that waterboarding of a handful of al-Qaeda operatives produced intelligence that saved hundreds of lives, and he would do the same again, whatever the constitutional niceties. He also reveals he was furious when Scowcroft went public with his opposition to the Iraq invasion. He feared people would suspect his father harboured similar reservations, which he insists was not the case.
Yet Bush Sr had used artful diplomacy to achieve German unification, ended the cold war without a shot fired in anger, and pursued only limited objectives in his own Gulf war, namely the liberation of Kuwait rather than a march on Baghdad. Bush Jr is far too quick to brush off the damage done by his adoption of another rhetorical slogan – the "Axis of Evil" – which lumped together Iran, Iraq and North Korea as potential targets for military attack and encouraged the view that the US had become a rogue nation.
Like Tony Blair, painted in the book as a fervent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, Bush is a moralist. Like Blair, Bush insists all the major intelligence agencies thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and the threat of WMD falling into terrorist hands was too great to bear. Like Blair, he cannot understand why more people still do not accept the moral argument for removing Saddam. "I didn't see how anyone could deny that liberating Iraq advanced human rights," he writes.
On the Iraq decision-making itself, Bush concedes some mistakes were made. Troop levels should have been higher. Postwar planning was imperfect. The order to disband Iraqi security forces was rushed and contributed to the descent into chaos that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of US soldiers. More space is devoted to his admittedly courageous decision to order the "surge", the successful counter-offensive led by General David Petraeus which, he argues, has given the fledgling Iraqi democracy hope.
Bush congratulates himself on finding Gen Petraeus and his successor General Raymond Odierno, as well as Robert Gates, the successor to Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary. Like Lincoln, he writes, he took time to find the right men for the task. His excuse for not firing Rumsfeld earlier, despite the latter's manifest arrogance and catalogue of errors, is lame.
Bush fails to recognise the fundamental contradiction between his "Freedom Agenda" which requires sustained commitment to nation building and the instinctive reluctance of the US military (supported by Rumsfeld) to make such a commitment. Their preference was to deploy overwhelming force, declare victory, and move out.
This contradiction still plagues the US operation in Afghanistan today. It also speaks to the divisions within Bush's own national security team, a feature of his first term to which he all too briefly alludes. The question is whether he was well served or whether he allowed others, notably Karl Rove, his Machiavellian campaign adviser, undue influence. Rove thought Bush as "war president" was the safest ticket to a second term. Yet what played well at home, even at the expense of polarisation, played terribly abroad.
Towards the end of Decision Points, Bush reviews progress on his "Freedom Agenda". On the plus side, aside from Iraq, he notes Libya's abandonment of its nuclear weapons programme, the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, the eruption of a protest movement in Iran, modest moves towards democracy in the Gulf states, and his own support for a Palestinian state, although that was overshadowed at the time by his decision to line up behind Israel and call for the removal of Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader. This prompted a call from Barbara, his no-nonsense mother: "How's the first Jewish American president doing?"
On the negative side of the "Freedom Agenda", Bush acknowledges the increase of Russian influence in neighbouring Ukraine and in the Caucasus at the expense of Georgia; Iran's ongoing efforts to develop nuclear capability; North Korea's continuing nuclear weapons programme; the consolidation of Hamas in Gaza and the failure to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; as well as other "outposts of tyranny" in Belarus, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Bush believes that history's verdict on his presidency will be far kinder than contemporary assessments, that the precipitate collapse in the standing of the US will be temporary, and that the sacrifice of blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq will prove worthwhile. Now that Americans are tiring of his more cerebral successor Barack Obama, he may be right.
The more likely judgment is that Bush's two terms marked the moment when US power peaked and he over-reached, with execrable consequences.
Lionel Barber is editor of the FT
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