Paul Vallely and Thomas McInerney
1.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Guide to Morons in Power, June 19, 2013
This is the single best book for understanding what morons in power think when they pretend to think but are actually pursuing ideological and financial objectives far removed from the public interest.
The authors, who demonstrate how far one could get in the Cold War military without reading or thinking, call this a military assessment. It is not. It is a one-track discourse on why we need to use our heavy metal military to wipe out Syria and Iran and intimidate Libya and Pakistan. It avoids discussing Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Central Asia, Muslim Africa, and Muslim Pacifica. This is not analysis, this is flim-flam.
By way of context in my specific criticism of this book, let me just note that the bibliography does not reflect any appreciation for strategy, e.g. Colin Gray's “Modern Strategy”, or Col Dr. Max Manwaring and Ambassadors Corr and Dorff's “The Search for Security”, or Willard Matthias “America's Strategic Blunders” or Adda Bozeman's “Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft” or Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World.” I looked in vain for any sign the authors might comprehend the strategic context in which their specific beliefs and recommendations can only be seen as ill-advised. For example, a reference to Shultz, Godson, and Quester (at least one of whom is a neo-conservative), “Security Studies for the 21st Century”, or Robert McNamara and James Blight “Wilson's Ghost”, or Dean Jeffrey Garten's “The Politics of Fortune”, or Republican and conservative Clyde Prestowitz's “Rogue Nation”, or Ambassador Mark Palmer's “Breaking the Real Axis of Evil”. No cognizance of Kissinger, even.
Never mind all those *democratic* thought leaders, like Senator David Boren et al (and including Bob Gates), “Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the 21st Century”, or Joesph Nye on “The Paradox of American Power” or William Shawcross (a Brit) on “Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict”, or Paul Krugman's “The Great Unraveling.”
I did not expect to find, but mention as a final setting of the stage for a very critical review, just a sampling of books relevant to getting the war on terror right: books like Chalmer's Johnson, “The Sorrors of Empire” or Derek Leebaert's “The Fifty Year Wound: The True Price of America's Cold War Victory” or Ziauddin Sardar and Merry Wyn Davies on “Why Do People Hate America” (which could be sub-titled, most relevantly for the authors under review, “and why doesn't America understand the real world”), or any of the last 100 non-fiction books on national security that I have reviewed here, generally to very favorable judgements by Amazon visitors.
Finally, I contrast this book with Richard Clarke's book “Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror” which I recommend very highly. Clarke is real, these people are not.
I finally figured it out. This is a puff piece of, by, and for FOX Cable News viewers.
There are no footnotes in this book. It is a rambling opinion piece. Let us not confuse rank with brains, or opinions with thought. This is a double-spaced book that could probably be distilled to 30 pages of core reading, all summed up as “we're always right, no matter the cost.” This book also adopts the Richard Perle neoconservative game plan of using terrorism as a pretext to invade Syria and Iran. I assure each and every one of you, a universal draft is planned for after the election. Your sons and daughters will be sacrificed to the lack of strategic thinking that this book represents.
The book ends on two false notes. Although the authors demonstrate a semblance of balance in calling for better public diplomacy and especially the restoration of the US Information Agency, they continue to emphasize money for guns and the early use of the military in expeditionary mode, rather that a truly transformative strategy that begins with understanding the full range of threats facing us (bacteria are more dangerous than terrorists), devising a strategy for dealing with those threats by using *all* of the instruments of national power, and then a balanced budget that achieves all of that without sacrificing the earning potential of future generations.
Finally, we have thirteen pages of photographs where the authors proudly display their field trip photos, and what leaps out to the veteran's eye is that they were always in air-conditioned rooms and cars and never broke a sweat. As my good friend Robert Young Pelton likes to say (he is author of “The World's Most Dangerous Places”-you should all read it), these guys live and think in a bubble-they don't get into the gutter, they don't smell the shit, and they have no idea how close their fantasy world is to destruction from forces that are beyond their comprehension.
Iraq, and the planned war on Syria and Iran, are indeed a recurrence of Vietnam in the sense that ignorance and arrogance among the elite in power, and apathy among the public and within Congress, are creating a most costly global quagmire that will shortly explode in Australia, Thailand, Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The authors have learned nothing from history nor from the many non-partisan American strategists and scholars available to advise them.
I don't think this book is worth the purchase price, except as an example of the kinds of books, and kinds of people, that place loyalty to ideology above and apart from the public interest.
The authors have one thing right: this is a battle of wills. They do not appear to realize that there are not enough guns on the planet to execute their strategy, and that legitimacy is an intangible value that was lost to America from 2001 to date. This book is a blueprint for a nuclear winter in which America self-immolates. An Israeli tactical nuclear attack on Iran will kick off the end of the American Empire, and that may well be the best thing that could happen, to awaken the somolent Republic. We must indict and impeach Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Rudy Gulliani, and we must indict and sentence to death Larry Silverstein for his role in the controlled demotion of the World Trade Center including WTC 7 which was not hit by anything, it was also brought down to destroy evidence and complete the highly profitable elimination of asbestor at the cost of thousands of NYC lives. I am quite certain the insurance companies were part of the scam, because I have read and viewed more than enough evidence to be certain all the buildings were brought down by Larry Silverstean and his despicable little band of murderers.
Here are five books that illuminate both the treason made so easy by a corrupt Congress, a corrupt media, and an inattentive dumbed down public, and five books from the many more I have reviewed here at Amazon, on the bright possibilities if the US public ever wakes up and starts holding its elected leader accountable for intelligence with integrity
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics (Manifesto Series)
General Clark told us this was the plan — to take down five countries in seven years — and no one wanted to believe it. I believed it because I read this book when it first came out. By all means buy and read this book, it is the finest measure of the imperial idiocy that runs amok in Washington, D.C. irrespective of what political pawns are in office — “the system” owns them and unless you rebel, it owns you as well.
Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability
