Fear, Anger and Failure is William Pfaff’s contemporaneous chronicle of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” written in real time from September 11, 2001 through the end of 2003. Drawing on his columns for the
International Herald Tribune, Pfaff traces how a moment of national shock became a far reaching project to remake the Middle East — and how that project went wrong. It remade the United States as well—Americans saw an expansion of executive power: the effective suspension of habeas corpus for non citizens, the creation of military tribunals, unprecedented wartime censorship, the sidelining of the United Nations, and the normalization of talk about torture.
The book opens on the afternoon of 9/11, with Pfaff analyzing the attacks’ psychology, their likely links to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and the limits of revenge and high tech security measures. From there, he follows the rapid shift from the campaign in Afghanistan to the push for war in Iraq, highlighting how al Qaeda’s presence was overstated, how intelligence was politicized, and how the language of “evil” and “preemptive war” reshaped American policy debates.
Pfaff offers a running account of Washington’s fracture with key European allies, especially France and Germany, over unilateralism, arms control, and the sidelining of the United Nations. Writing from Paris, he captures European anger over the abandonment of multilateral rules, the dismissal of inspections in Iraq, and the wider consequences for NATO and the EU.
On the domestic front, he tracks the expansion of executive power: the effective suspension of habeas corpus for non citizens, the creation of military tribunals, unprecedented wartime censorship, and the normalization of talk about torture. He also examines the economic and corporate interests that quickly attached themselves to the occupation of Iraq, including the privatization of state industries and the expectation of profits from reconstruction contracts.
Interwoven through these chronological sections are Pfaff’s recurring themes: America’s “defective sense of history” and sense of exceptional destiny; the tension between “hard” military power and “soft” influence; and the danger of recasting political conflicts with the Muslim world as an unending cultural or religious war. He contrasts the administration’s utopian visions of transforming the region with the realities of insurgency, occupation, and eroding global legitimacy.
Fear, Anger and Failure will interest readers of contemporary history, international relations, and U.S. politics who want a clear, critical narrative of how the war on terror was conceived, sold, and fought — and why its outcomes diverged so sharply from its promises.
