Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the Bush White House

by Bill Sammon

George W., this one's for you. In Washington Times correspondent Sammon's inside account of the Bush administration's reaction to 9-11 and the resultant war on terror, readers are tendered a breathless, highly complimentary portrait of the president and an overly simplistic moral tale about the great merit and unwavering moral vision of his inner circle. What could be an extremely interesting if one-sided account is often undercut by Sammon's penchant for editorializing (Bush was "more directly affected than most Americans by the attacks themselves"; Osama bin Laden "giggled" when speaking about the attacks; and the president often "twinkles" when he speaks) and novelizing (Bush "never thought he would be so relieved to see the White House again. He scanned the magnificent curve of the South Portico...He gazed at the Rose Garden"). Nor does Sammon seem to appreciate the irony of quoting some of the president's less eloquent statements, such as: "The role of a president is to seek great objectives for the country, big goals." Sammon, author of the bestselling At Any Cost, largely writes for the converted, so the intended audience for this volume will no doubt love it. Those more skeptical of the government's policies, however, will find his narrative more hagiography than history, and will want to wait for Bob Woodward's forthcoming Bush at War, which covers the same territory from a different angle.

Genres: Politics, Biography

400 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Barry Sierer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deeply dissappointing. The author is basically a worshiper of Goerge W. Bush pretending to act as a journalist. The book gave little real details (though few may have been available at the time) but seemed to focus on why Bush is a great man and why Clinton is not.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 3 out of 5]

A largely forgotten and easily forgettable book.This was OK. Oddly, it came out in 2002 along with "Bush at War." I guess Woodward's book pushed this off the radar. I wouldn't have found out about it all if my library wouldn't have had it. This a thin book, and is mainly a briskly paced one-sided account of the days immediately after 9/11, but there really isn't that much information about the actual war. Appropriately, it begins on September 10, 2001, addressing the political situation that Bush finds himself in. Sammon also includes a detailed account of Bush's 2000 election campaign and writes in fascinating detail how 9/11 just disrupted all that and changed America so quickly. Sammon presents more fully and more accurately Bush's emotional character. The most amusing part is when Sammon describes in detail is the media's negative coverage of the war in Afghanistan. That section is very funny; Sammon obviously has no respect for those self-described, pessimistic "experts".
This isn't a must-read, but check it out at a library if you have nothing else to do...