Edit of 27 Jan 07: I've just watched the author on C-SPAN Book Channel, and am very impressed by his focus on demanding that all scientists reveal their data or be cut off from public funding. I realize some have voted against this review because they misunderstand the author as saying that environmental skeptics are correct. That is not the case. He is in fact calling for complete transparency and open exchanges of information, and I find that quite compelling.
This is one of the few fiction books that I read and review, but I certainly endorse it and value it as a very fine means of educating the public with respect to both the absence of good reliable hard science on the entire issue of the environment, and as a primer on what can be done by man to either destroy the planent by staging events that leverage the underlying vulnerability, or to do constructive research and global remediation.
Many of the reviewers have reacted viscerally to this book, or not read it all the way through to include the author's superb non-fiction series of statements about the environment and the science or non-science of the environment, and the author's final statement on why the politicization of science is bad. I recommend the books (and/or my reviews) of the books on the Republican War on Sciencee and on Climate Change.
The author is to be commended for integrating truthful real-world footnotes with the fictional text. This is a book that is educational and meritorious. It could and should be both a movie and a serious game for change. While the author suggests that much of the fear-mongering about the environment is just that, he does help us understand that making the case for remediation and conservation now must be based on the most rigorous study possible.
I would be quite pleased if the author chose to create a series keyed to the ten threats identified by the United Nations High-Level Threat Panel. Apart from Environmental Degradation (threat #3), the others are Poverty, Infectuous Disease, Inter-State Conflict, Civil War, Genocide, Other Atrocities, Proliferation, Terrorism, and Transnational Crime.
Revisionist, Questionable, Valuable, and a Starting Point,
October 20, 2006
Mark Moyar
I write this in Lubbock, Texas where historian Mark Moyar presented his conclusions in very summary form to one of the most extraordinary collection of individuals to ever gather on the topic of “Intelligence in the Vietnam War,” an event co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Intelligence (Central Intelligence Agency) and the Vietnam Center (Texas Tech University).
While I came to hear authors like George Allen, whose 50 years of on-the-ground experience are presented in NONE SO BLIND, the definitive work on intelligence in the Viet-Nam war, and C. Michael Hiam, first time author who has done an utterly amazing job in describing, defending, and honoring Sam Adams in Who the Hell are We Fighting?, I have to credit this author, graduate of Harvard, student of Christopher Andrew the singular at Cambridge, with ripping me out of my chair and forcing me to think about the relative merits of documentation versus oral histories versus personal observation (I was there from August 1963 to late 1967).
Here are three bottom lines on the book:
1) It is some of the most erudite, earnest, well-intentioned, and potentially explosive revisionist history directly relevant to the intelligence-policy relationship as well as relations among nations.
2) It is lacking in an understanding of how the veterans of the war actually perceive it, taking both secondary sources and original documents from varied governments including China and Viet-Nam, at face value.
3) It merits the benefit of the doubt, a serious reading by those that were actually there, and inputs, in the form of oral histories, to the Oral History Project Head at the Vietnam Archive (Texas Tech University). If you have substantive comment to make on this book, don't stop here at Amazon–call them at 806.742.9010 and schedule a short telephone interview to add your oral history to the collection.
I read a lot and have had a fortunate life. I have always known that governments lie in the documents and their public statements, that secondary sources are all too happy to bend the truth to make a case, but it was not until this moment that I realized just how very urgent it is to dramatically increase our oral history and direct understanding of every aspect of the Viet-Nam debacle, one we repeat today in Iraq and Afghanistan, where those fighting have no memory of both the successes and failures of the past.
My gravest concern with this important and worthy book is that it plays to what the extremist unilateral militants–including the chicken hawks now serving–want to hear: that imperial adventurism can succeed if one just intervenes a little more harshly, a little sooner, with a bit more cleverness.
I have been an iconoclast, and I now find myself defending and praising an individual for having produced a work that conflicts sharply with my narrow understanding of the reality as I lived it, and that of the many others attending this conference.
I regard this book as a very courageous and intelligent offering, one that must be regarded as a work in progress, and one that will add substantially to our understanding once the author has a chance to write an epilogue that factors in the comments of those now living who were actually there.
Five stars for brave brains. This author must be reckoned with.
Here are the highlights I drew out that make this book extraordinary and worth reading even if it leaves one with a political hang-over:
1) The Federal Government is broken, and was made worse by a President who knew nothing of foreign policy, a Vice President who closed down the inter-agency policy system, and a Secretary of Defense who was both contemptuous of the uniformed military and held in contempt by Bush Senior.
2) My opinion of the Secretary of Defense actually went UP with this book. Rumsfeld has clearly been well-intentioned, has clearly asked the right questions, but he let his arrogance get away from him. Given a choice between Admiral Clark, a truth-telling transformative person, and General Myers, an acquiescent warrior diminished to senior clerk, Rumsfeld made the right choice for his management style, and the wrong choice for the good people in our Armed Forces. I *like* Rumsfeld's Anchor Chain letter as it has been described, and wish it had been included as an Appendix. Rumsfeld got the control he wanted, but he sacrificed honest early warning in so doing.
3) This book also improves my opinion of the Saudis and especially Prince Bandar. While I have no tolerance for Saudi Royalty–the kind of corrupt debauched individuals that make Congressman Foley look like a vestal virgin–the Saudis did understand that Bush's unleashing of Israel was disastrous, and they did an excellent job of shaking up the President. Unfortunately, they could not overcome Dick Cheney, who should resign or be impeached for gross dereliction of duty and usurpation of Presidential authority.
4) Tenet's visit to Rice on 10 July is ably recounted and adds to the picture. It joins others books, notably James Risen's “State of War,” “Hubris,” FASCO” and “The End of Iraq in presenting a compelling picture of a dysfunctional National Security Advisor who is now a dysfunctional Secretary of State–and Rumsfeld still won't return her phone calls…..
5) The author briefly touches on how CIA shined in the early days of the Afghan War (see my reviews of “JAWBREAKER” and “First In” for more details) but uses this to show that Rumsfeld took the impotence of the Pentagon, and the success of CIA, personally.
6) The author also tries to resurrect Tenet somewhat, documenting the grave reservations that Tenet had about Iraq, but Tenet, like Colin Powell, failed to speak truth to power or to the people, and failed the Nation.
7) Rumsfeld recognized the importance of stabilization and reconstruction (and got an excellent report from the Defense Science Board, not mentioned by this book, on Transitions to and From Hostilities) but he vacillated terribly and ultimately failed to be serious on this critical point.
8) This book *destroys* the Defense Intelligence Agency, which some say should be burned to the ground to allow a fresh start. The author is brutal in recounting the struggles of General Marks to get DIA to provide any useful information on the alleged 946 WMD sites in Iraq. DIA comes across as completely derelict bean counters with no clue how to support operators going in harms way, i.e. create actionable intelligence.
9) Despite WMD as the alleged basis for war, the military had no unit trained, equipped, or organized to find and neutralize WMD sites. A 400 person artillery unit was pressed into this fearful service.
10) General Jay Garner is the star of this story. My face lit up as I read of his accomplishments, insights, and good judgments. He and General Abizaid both understood that allowing the Iraqi Army to stay in being with some honor was the key to transitioning to peace, and it is clearly documented that Dick Cheney was the undoing of the peace. It was Dick Cheney that deprived Jay Garner of Tom Warrick from State, the man who has overseen and understood a year of planning on making the peace, and it was Dick Cheney that fired Garner and put Paul Bremer, idiot pro-consult in place. Garner clearly understood a month before the war–while there was still time to call it off–that the peace was un-winable absent major changes, but he could not get traction within the ideological fantasy land of the Vice Presidency.
11) Apart from State, one military officer, Colonel Steve Peterson, clearly foresaw the insurgency strategy, but his prescient warnings were dismissed by the larger group.
12) General Tommy Franks called Doug Feith “the dumbest bastard on the planet,” –Feith deprived Garner of critical information and promoted Chalabi as the man with all the answers.
13) The author covers the 2004 election night very ably, but at this point the book started to turn my stomach. The author appears oblivious to the fact that the Ohio election was stolen through the manipulation of 12 voting districts, loading good machines in the pro-Bush areas, putting too few machines in the pro-Kerry areas, and in some cases, documented by Rolling Stone, actually not counting Kerry votes at all on the tallies. Ohio has yet to pay, as does Florida, for its treasonous betrayal of the Republic.
Today I issued a press release pointing toward the Pakistan treaty creating the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan as a safehaven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the definitive end–loss of–the war on terror, which is a tactic, not an enemy. As Colin Gray says in “Modern Strategy,” time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. As a moderate Republican I dare to suggest that resigning prior to the November elections, in favor of John McCain, Gary Hart, and a Coalition Cabinet, might be the one thing that keeps the moderate Republican incumbents, and the honest Democrats–those that respect the need for a balanced budget–in place to provide for continuity in Congress, which must *be* the first branch of government rather than slaves to the party line.
It's crunch time. This book is the last straw. The American people are now *very* angry.
EDITED 16 Jun 06 to add heat stress hypothesis below.
I ordered this book when I first heard that the Marines had gone bezerk and killed several families in cold blood in Iraq, an action that caused me as a former Marine to weep silently for a time.
I certainly recommend that the reviews titled War Crimes and WAR CRIMES, and Hatchet Job, be read, for they have at least two good points that must be remembered and respected:
1) Indiscriminate air strikes are vastly more of a war crime than isolated incidents of ground forces going bezerk.
EDIT of 16 Jun 06. I met a really fascinating individual in Louiseville, Kentucky, H.C. (Bud) Meyer, ex NASA, now Advanced Systems Integrators, who in a very active retirement is doing everything he can to help fire fighters not die at an average age of forty. It turns out that heat stress on their hearts over the course of twenty years is killing them. He developed a new suit that uses the backback (lessned in weight) to both feed them oxygen and to cool their suits, and the preliminary results are nothing short of sensational. I'be been a Marine and seen combat but never had to “do” combat with a full load and all the body armor, in the desert. I am absolutely convinced that a “heat stress defense” would be plausible. As much as I believe that Marines should be punished for indiscriminate murder of civilians, I also believe that Bud had brought forward an objective factor that is both relevant to to ground troop war crimes evaluation, and relevant to national-level leaders looking for ways to increase discipline by lessening the stress of combat in heat with a full load.
2) The failure of Pentagon, theater, and service leadership to investigate and prosecute may be understandable from a total force morale perspective, but is unconscionable in the larger global hearts and minds or “Information Operations” perspective. We have lost the moral high ground in the Middle East for many reasons, but Abu Grahib and the indiscriminate Marine executions of several families shame America and make it more likely that more America soldiers will die than otherwise.
A few things jumped out at me:
1) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, then serving as President Ford's Secretary of Defense, refused to investigate and prosecute this matter. We should not expect him to be morally aggressive with respect to atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.
2) There are clear signs when troops are beginning to “lose it” and are more likely to go bezerk, including body mutilation, and bodies without weapons (and very little bodies, such as the beheaded baby featured in this book). It should be possible for our generals to keep a pulse on the troops by having medical forensics and simply “paying attention.” Just as genocide has eight stages and can be predicted, I believe that ground force war crimes can be anticipated and personnel rotated and calmed.
3) Finally, I share the author's concluding view, that writing this book and bringing these atrocities to light, is valuable as a vaccination for the future. I believe in retrospective indictment and retospective impeachment, not necessarily in the serving of sentences past the statute of limitations (although war crimes have no such limitation). There are in my view three levels of war crime: strategic (elective wars, lying to the public); operational (indiscriminate air campaigns, focusing on nuclear proliferation instead of the control of small arms); and tactical–indiscriminate murder without honor, especially of women and children.
It merits comment that this book could not have been written without the emergence of a new file following the death of a key person. I believe that we will see a great deal of historical information come out in the next ten years that will, with the power of distributed processing, allow the people to judge their elected and appointed officials, in detail. I sense a new passion for justice and accountability being made possible by books such as this, and the Internet, and it is my hope that this will overtime reduce the “culture of cheating” as well as the likeliness of “going bezerk.”
The war crimes in this book were isolated, and are vastly surpassed in evil by things we are doing now and are planning to do, but I cannot shake the feeling that the men in this book are “us.” This is not a war story for wanna-be warriors (some of the reviews really cause me sadness, as if this book were entertainment)–it is an ethics lesson for future and present leaders of all ranks, because there but for God's grace go I, or you.
Several excellent contributions, fails to connect to open source intelligence,
April 9, 2006
Alexander T. J. Lennon
This is a pretty good volume from 2003, with a good mix of academics, journalists, and practitioners. The most useful pieces for me personally were on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America.
On balance this is a solid reference on all but two of the aspects of soft power: it completely neglects the importance of getting a grip on historical and cultural reality through open source intelligence (OSINT) and also neglects the strategic bottom line that demands an educated American public that is fully informed about the real world and demanding of intelligent policy choices.
The book certainly does well with the limitations of military power, the importance of nation building, the urgency of having a massive capability to do stabilization and reconstruction operations as needed, and the critical roles that public diplomacy and foreign assistance could, but do not, play in winning hearts and minds.
Of special interest to me was the failing report card on the broadcasting board of governors, whose equipment is 30 years old in many cases. I applauded the informed judgement of the author who made the case, based on experience, for keeping the short wave and middle band capabilities that too few understand is essential for Africa and other locations.
Across the book it becomes clear that the US needs to upgrade the Combatant Commanders or mirror them with a civilian coordinator for non-military strategy, power, and resources. As someone who grew up overseas with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and served in three Embassies overseas, it is crystal clear to me that we need to double the Department of State, in part by reconstituting USIA as a separate organization, and by placing USIA, the BBG, and a new Open Source Agency (for collecting and making sense of all public information in all languages all the time) in a tight partnership. We need to double and triple aid, develop a peacekeeping from the sea program, as well as the ability to do multiple Berlin Airlifts.
This is a good basic book for anyone thinking seriously about “soft power,” a term popularized by Joe Nye, whose varied books I have reviewed and recommend very highly.
Top Ten Book. Moral Legitimacy, Inter-Agency Unity of Effortt, Deep Language & Cultural Skills,
March 17, 2006
John T. Fishel
Max Manwaring is one of my heroes, and it upsets me to see the publisher do such a lousy job of posting information about this book, which is a gem. This book was a classic when it was first published, and it is even better now that it has been updated and the SWORD model slightly refined. Along with The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century and Max's other edited work, which I cannot find on Amazon, “Environmental Security & Global Security,” this book is about all any professional needs for a good clear appreciation of how to address low intensity conflicts, complex emergencies, and operations other than war.
The authors understand what Will and Ariel Durant emphasized in their summative The Lessons of History when they said that morality is a strategic value. The heart of this book is about the non-negotiable value of moral legitimacy to govern as the precursor to addressing root problems and preventing terrorism and instability. Winning uncomfortable wars is an IO/psychological and sociological challenge, but you cannot win them, regardless of how much might, money, or message you put on target, if you are not moral in the first place (and if your supported government is not moral).
The other two core messages in this book focus on the urgency of unity of effort across all agencies and the coalition, and the desperate need for LONG-TERM operations with LONG-TERM funding and LONG-TERM commitments from the leaderships of the nations as well as the United Nations and other NGOs. The authors are damning of both the US Congress and the UN for failing to be serious about budgeting for long-term stabilization and reconstruction operations.
The SWORD model has seven parts: unity of effort; legitimacy of the coalition and the supported government; interdiction of support to the belligerents; effective supporting actions by the coalition; military actions by the coalition; interactions between the coalition and the belligerents; and finally, actions tailored to ending the conflict.
Ambassador Corr could easily be credited with being the third author. His forward provides a sweeping review of history while his conclusion emphasizes that we cannot win without first having “a deep understanding of the cultures and languages…”
A few case studies round out the book. Colombia, where my mother was born, has long been one of Max's special interests. His identification of the three wars (narcos, insurgents, and paramilitaries) reminds me of Tony Zinni's elegant distinctions among the six Viet-Nam wars a) Swamp War, b) Paddy War, c) Jungle War, d) Plains War, e) Saigon War, and f) DMZ War.
Max is far more polite and diplomatic than I am, but his message is clear: US policy is in la-la land when it comes to crop eradication. On pages 197-198 he points out that farmers make four times more from narcotics than from the next available legal crop, and that they are trapped in circumstances where even if they had a profitable legal crop, there is no credit, there are no roads, there is no market, there is no security, for them to evolve legally. Credit, roads, market, security–for the LONG TERM.
Helpful in National Soul Searching and Confronting Reality,
February 10, 2006
Nicolas Cage
Many of the reviews of this movie are unusually naive and stupid.
My review of this movie is based on a lifetime overseas as the son of an oilman, as a Marine Corps infantry officer, as a clandestine case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, and as the foremost trainer of governments interested in getting a grip on reality by focusing on open source of information in all languages.
This is a first rate movie with some truly extraordinary visuals and some truly extraordinary lines. It is an intelligence movie for intelligent people, and it should certainly give anyone both a couple of hours of enjoyment, and a couple of hours of reflection.
Among the highlights:
1) AK-47 as the real weapon of mass destruction
2) Africans stripping a plane overnight, literally pulling every piece of it off and making it “disappear”
3) There is one gun for every 12 people, the arms dealers goal is to arm the other 11 as quickly as possible
4) The top arms dealers (“merchants of death”) are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
I read more than I watch movies, and will end with two comments: a) all of my reading bears out the importance and relevance of this movie; and b) it is easily one of the more serious and appreciable movies I have seen in some time. The intellect in the devising and presentation of this movie is absolutely first rate.
Stake in the Heart of the W Presidency
