Biography & Memoirs – Page 11 – Public Intelligence Blog

2004/06/292009/12/04

Review: Shake Hands With The Devil–The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Biography & Memoirs, Diplomacy, History, Humanitarian Assistance, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Genocide is SYMPTOM–Lack of Public Intelligence is CAUSE,

June 29, 2004

Romeo Dallaire

I read this book with the eye and mind of a professional intelligence officer long frustrated with the myopia of national policy constituencies, and the stupidity of the United Nations Headquarters culture. General Dallaire has written a superb book on the reality of massive genocide in the Burundi and Rwanda region in 1994, and his sub-title, “The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda” is where most people end up in reading this book.

I see things a little differently. I see this book as a massive indictment of the United Nations culture of “go along gently”, as a compelling documentary of how ignorant the United Nations is about impending disasters because of its persistent refusal to establish a UN intelligence secretariat as recommended by the Brahimi Report, and as a case study in how the Western nations have failed to establish coherent global strategies–and the intelligence-policy dialogues necessary to keep such strategies updated and relevant.

According to the author, 15 UN peacekeepers died–over 800,000 Rwandans died. The number 15 is not larger because Belgium, Canada, and the US explicitly stated that Rwanda was “irrelevant” in any sense of the word, and not worth the death of a single additional Western (mostly white) soldier.

Although there has been slight improvement in the UN since LtGen Patrick Cammaert, NL RM became the Military Advisor to the Secretary General (see General Cammaert and other views in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, the reality is that the UN is still unintelligent and unable to muster the strategic intelligence necessary to get the mandate right; the operational intelligence necessary to get the force structure right; and the tactical intelligence necessary to achieve the mission on the ground. Just about everything General Dallaire writes about in this book with respect to UN culture and UN lack of intelligence remains valid today: they still cannot get decent maps with which to plan a campaign or execute the mission; UN administrators are still anal-retentive bureaucrats that will not issue paper and pencils, much less soft drinks for diplomatic encounters; UN “seniors” still like the first class lifestyle on the road (they pretend to be austere only in NY); UN civilian mission leaders still misrepresent military reporting, as Booh-Booh did to Dallaire; and the UN is still ineffective in creating public intelligence with which to communicate directly to national publics the reasons why humanitarian operations must take place early and in force.

General Dallaire concludes his excruciatingly detailed book, a book with enormous credibility stemming from the meticulous manner in which he documents what happened, when it happened, and what everyone knew when (including advance warning of the genocide from the “third force” that the UN leadership refused to take seriously), with two thoughts, one running throughout the book, the second in the conclusion only:

First, and perhaps because of the mental toll he himself paid for this mission, there are frequent references throughout the book to the urgency of understanding the psychology of groups, tribes, and cultures. This is not something any Western intelligence agency is capable of today. The closest I have seen to this is Dr. Marc Sageman's book on Understanding Terror Networks We urgently need a global “survey”, with specific reference to the countries plagued by ethnic conflict and other sources of instability, and we need to start taking “psychological intelligence” very seriously. We need to UNDERSTAND.

Second, he concludes the book by emphasizing the urgency of understanding and then correcting the sources of the utter RAGE that characterizes hundreds of thousands if not millions of young men around the world, all of whom he says have access to guns and many of whom he says will ultimately and unavoidably have access to weapons of mass destruction.

As I contemplate the six-front hundred-year war that America has started by attacking Iraq instead of addressing the social networks and sources of terrorism, I cannot help but think that this great solider and statesman has hit the nail on the head: Rwanda is coming to your neighborhood, and nothing your policy makers and military leaders are doing today is relevant to avoiding that visitation. Remember the kindergarten class in Scotland? The Columbine shootings and Oklahoma disasters? Now magnify that by 1000X, aggravated by a mix of angry domestic militants, alienated immigrant gangs, hysterical working poor fathers pushed into insanity–and the free availability of small arms, toxins, and simple means for collapsing the public infrastructure….

The complexity of society, which has lost its humanity, is leading to unpredictable and difficult to diagnose and correct collapses of all the basic mechanisms of survival. General Dallaire's book is not about Rwanda–it is about us and what will happen to us if we persist in being unintelligent about our world and the forces that could–if we were wise–permit billions to survive in peace.

In addition to this book I recommend the PKI book mentioned above, Jonathan Schell's book on The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Bill Moyer's on Doing Democracy, and Tom Atlee on The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All. If we do not take back the power and restore common sense to how our nations behave and how our nations spend our money around the globe, the plague of Rwanda will visit our neighborhoods within the decade.

2004/06/212009/12/04

Review DVD: The Fog of War – Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

6 Star Top 10%, Biography & Memoirs, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), War & Face of Battle

Every Miltary Person, and Ideally Every Citizen, SHould View,

June 21, 2004

Robert McNamara

This is the only documentary film to make it on to my list of 470+ non-fiction books relevant to national security & global issues. It is superb, and below I summarize the 11 lessons with the intent of documenting how every military person, and ideally every citizen, should view this film.As the U.S. military goes through the motions of “transformation” while beset by the intense demands of being engaged in a 100-year war on six-fronts around the world, all of them against asymmetric threats that we do not understand and are not trained, equipped, nor organized to deal with, this film is startlingly relevant and cautionary.

LESSON 1: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. We must see ourselves as they see us, we must see their circumstances as they see them, before we can be effective.

LESSON 2: RATIONALITY WILL NOT SAVE US. Human fallibility combined with weapons of mass destruction will destroy nations. Castro has 162 nuclear warheads already on the island, and was willing to accept annihilation of Cuba as the cost of upholding his independence and honor.

LESSON 3: THERE'S SOMETHING BEYOND ONESELF. History, philosophy, values, responsibility–think beyond your niche.

LESSON 4: MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY. Although this was McNamara's hallmark, and the fog of war demands redundancy, he has a point: we are not maximizing how we spend $500B a year toward world peace, and are instead spending it toward the enrichment of select corporations, building things that don't work in the real world.

LESSON 5: PROPORTIONALITY SHOULD BE A GUIDELINE IN WAR. McNamara is clearly still grieving over the fact that we firebombed 67 Japanese cities before we ever considered using the atomic bomb, destroying 50% to 90% of those cities.

LESSON 6: GET THE DATA. It is truly appalling to realize that the U.S. Government is operating on 2% of the relevant information, in part because it relies heavily on foreign allies for what they want to tell us, in part because the U.S. Government has turned its back on open sources of information. Marc Sageman, in “Understanding Networks of Terror”, knows more about terrorism today than do the CIA or FBI, because he went after the open source data and found the patterns. There is a quote from a Senator in the 1960's that is also compelling, talking about “an instability of ideas” that are not understood, leading to erroneous decisions in Washington. For want of action, we forsook thought.

LESSON 7: BELIEF & SEEING ARE BOTH OFTEN WRONG. With specific reference to the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the failure of America to understand that the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from China, not just the French or the corrupt Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, McNamara blows a big whole in the way the neo-cons “believed” themselves into the Iraq war, and took America's blood, treasure, and spirit with them.

LESSON 8: BE PREPARED TO RE-EXAMINE YOUR REASONING. McNamara is blunt here: if your allies are not willing to go along with you, consider the possibility that your reasoning is flawed.

LESSON 9: IN ORDER TO DO GOOD, YOU MAY HAVE TO ENGAGE IN EVIL. Having said that, he recommends that we try to maximize ethics and minimize evil. He is specifically concerned with what constitutes a war crime under changing circumstances.

LESSON 10: NEVER SAY NEVER. Reality and the future are not predictable. There are no absolutes. We should spend more time thinking back over what might have been, be more flexible about taking alternative courses of action in the future.

LESSON 11: YOU CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE. There will always be war, and disaster. We can try to understand it, and deal with it, while seeking to calm our own human nature that wants to strike back in ways that are counter-productive.

For those who dismiss this movie because McNamara does not apologize, I say “pay attention.” The entire movie is an apology, both direct from McNamara, and indirect in the manner that the producer and director have peeled away his outer defenses and shown his remorse at key points in the film. I strongly recommend the book by McNamara and James Blight, “WILSON's GHOST.” In my humble opinion, in the context of the 470+ non-fiction books I have reviewed here, McNamara and Bill Colby are the two Viet-Nam era officials that have grown the most since leaving office. He has acquired wisdom since leaving defense, and we ignore this wisdom at our peril.

2004/06/102009/12/04

Review: Battle Ready (Study in Command)

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Insurgency & Revolution, Leadership, War & Face of Battle

Best Book Clancy Has Offered Recently, Zinni is Superb!,

June 10, 2004

Tom Clancy

For the serious, this book absolutely merits a careful reading, together with Dana Priest's “The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military,” and–for a fuller and free overview–my varioius reviews on emerging threats, strategy and force structure, and why our current “military only” approach to foreign policy is ineffective.There are some tremendous gems in this book, some of which I summarize here.

1) Zinni is mpressive in his grasp of grand strategy, of the urgency of understanding the threat, devising a full approach that mixes and matches *all* instruments of national strategy, and that focuses–as Zinni learned to focus in Viet-Nam, on the hearts and minds of the people rather than the force on force battles (a means to an end, not an end in themselves).

2) Zinni's understanding of war comes across very early in the book when he describes the six completely different wars that took place in South Viet-Nam, each with its own lessons, tactics, and sometimes equipment differences–nuances that conventional military policy, doctine, and acquisition managers back in the US still do not understand: a) Swamp War, b) Paddy War, c) Jungle War, d) Plains War, e) Saigon War, and f) DMZ War.

3) Zinni has read SLA Marshall on “The Soldier's Load”, and he notes that the equipment that the South Vietnamese carried was lighter and better for their needs–the US military-industrial complex burdens our Armed Forces with overly heavy things, too many of them, that actually impair our ability to fight. Perhaps even more fascinating, Zinni sees that buying equipment for our troops locally cuts the cost by 4/5th. Not what your average US contractor wants to hear, but precisely what I as a taxpayer am looking for–with the added advantage that this puts money into the local economy and helps stabilize it.

4) Within the center of the book, there are rich lessons about war-fighting and peace-making that will stand the test of time. Most impressive is Zinni's focus on pre-emptive relationship building across the region.

a) Relationships matter, and relationships forged in advance go a very long way in avoiding misunderstanding and defusing crises. If you have to fight, relationships are the single best means of reducing the fog of war and assuring good integration of effort across cultures, nations, and armies.

b) Speed and mixed forces matter. Zinni was the master, in four different timeframes, of using speed and properly mixed forces to achieve effects not possible with larger forces arriving late. In Viet-Nam he worked with “the Pacifiers”, especially reinforced company-size units that had been specially augmented with flamethrowers, extra machine guns and mortars, and their own engineers and scouts, all trained for instant deployment. At Camp Hansen, during the times of race riots, he learned the value of a fast, big guard force *combined with* constant and open dialog with the troops in distress. In humanitarian operations, he learned that rapid delivery of food tended to rapidly reduce the violence–get the food flowing fast, and reap the peace benefits. And finally, in developing the Marine Corps variant of special operations capable forces (not to be confused with the uniquely qualified Special Operations Forces), he developed the original capabilities of doing special things “from the sea.”

c) Non-state entities, both tribal threats and non-governmental organizations, are the heart of the new battle. Repeatedly Zinni comments on how poorly we do in terms of thinking about strategy, operations, and tactics for the sub-state war, and how badly we do at intelligence about tribes, and at coordinating with non-governmental organizations. Zinni finally discovered the true value of Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations as a flag officer, and ended up nurturing the creation of Civil Military Operations Centers, and a new language, such as “Humanitarian Relief Sectors” instead of “kill zone.”

5) Zinni makes some other observations throughout the book that are relevant now.

a) His respects Clinton as a quick study. Without disparagement, he makes it clear that Sandy Berger and Bill Cohen were mediocrities. He admired James Baker, who tried to do Marshall Plan kinds of things and could not get the beltway crowd to see the light. He is cautionary on General Wayne Downing (who went on with the Rendon Group to sponsor Chalabi–Zinni, on page 343, makes it clear he knew Chalabi was a thief and liar as early as 1998). He is admiring of Ambassador Bob Oakley.

b) With respect for foreign capabilities, among the insights are the integrity and capability of Pakistani and Bangladeshi troops, who maintained and then returned US complex equipment in better condition than it was received, with every single tool in every single kit present and accounted for; Italian military field hospitals; African troop tactical fighting discipline and capability.

6) The book wraps up with Zinni's recommendations for change, all of which are on target: use retired Service and theater chiefs to constitute the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rather than the Service Chiefs with their parochial interests; earmark budgets for the theater commanders–inter-agency budgets; create an inter-agency strategy and operations center to make the government, not just the military, “joint.”

Zinni's final observations deal with ethics and the obligation to avoid spin and always speak the truth. Zinni is smarter than the current crop of military leaders, who mistake loyalty to specific individuals with loyalty to the Constitution. He also differs from them in understanding that Operations Other than War (OOTW) is where it is at and will be for the foreseeable future.

Missing from the book is any reference to national and military intelligence, other than one small section where he notes it simply was not reliable and not available at the tribal level. Also missing from this book are any references to John Boyd, Mike Wylie, Bill Lind, or G.I. Wilson, all four of whom were, in my opinion, the legs of the intellectual stool that Zinni constructed for himself over time.

This is a serious book.

2004/02/292009/12/04

Review: The Book on Bush–How George W. (Mis)leads America

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs

Good Detail, Bad Writing, Worse Design,

February 29, 2004

Eric Alterman

I have read virtually all of the books on extreme rightist and Bush deception (from the serious “Weapons of Mass Deception” and “Secrets and Lies” to the satirical and polemical by Hightower, Moore, Franken, Conason, and Carville), and I was hoping that this book would finally be “the” book, a systematic issue by issue outline of what Bush Administration officials have said, when–and then the truth of the matter, well documents.I find this book disappointing. It is written as if the authors have packed together a whole bunch of Op-Eds, it is hard to read, and it is not coherent. The publisher and editor should be spanked for allowing such an undisciplined work out the door.

Although the book excels at detail and focus from issue to issue, the authors fail to do the side-by-side presentation in a manner that satisfies. This book could have been glorious if they had taken the US budget, done down the 30 agencies with discretionary funds, the relevant program lines, and then had three columns: what Bush (and his aides, most of whom do the talking and thinking) said, what they did, and what science and intelligence and real-world experts recommend be done.

The index stinks (names, not issues), and there is no bibliography. The footnotes are acceptable, but even more interesting would have been profiles with related bibliographies of how the right-wing think tanks and key personalities like Bill Kristol have shaped the debate, from the early days when Dick Cheney was saying Kristol was a moron (he is not) who could be ignored, to the later days when Cheney discovered that there are a lot of wealthy patrons who put their money where Kristol's mouth is….

In brief, then, the authors appear to have tried, and failed, to deliver the definitive book cataloging, on an issue by issue basis in a manner easily used by a Challenger for the Presidency, the many specific ways in which this Administration is lying, switching and baiting, saying one thing and doing the other, or allowing destruction through malicious neglect.

If I were guiding an opposition research team today, I would tell them to take this book, and all the others I have cited above, cut the spines off, digitize everything, index everything, create a visualization link-chart using any one of several automated programs, and from that, create 100 one-page memos that consist of a nuclear sound-bit, a one-paragraph executive summary of Bush versus reality versus the opposing proposition, and a half page of detail and references. Neither the Democratic Leadership Council nor the leading challengers for the Democratic nomination appear to be doing their homework. Kerry's math does not add up, Edward's issues are simplistic, and both Sharpton and Kucinich are absolutely right: the Democrats are not talking substance yet.

This book is as close as I have seen to an issue-by-issue review, but if this is the best we can do, the Democrats will lose in 2004, not least because issue discussion is the non-negotiable first step toward outreach and creating a coalition of moderate Republicans, Independents, and Green-Reform-Libertarian allies without whom no one can beat Bush.

2004/02/122009/12/04

Review: The Price of Loyalty–George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Biography & Memoirs, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Book Clearly Documents Shortfalls in Ideological Power,

February 12, 2004

Ron Suskind

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links for the brain dead (at bottom, duh).

This book is a fine summary of the shortfalls in the ideological exercise of power that chooses to disregard reality for forgo bi-partisan compromise.

The author, an award-winning Wall Street journalist, makes three points in his brief introduction: 1) the greatest threat to national security is that of *bad analysis* (not just secret analysis but bad policy analysis); 2) the book is not a kiss and tell memoir as much as an eye-opening warning of what happens when ideology is substituted for policy analysis; and 3) the book is based on nineteen thousand documents–virtually every document the protagonist O'Neil touched–and hundreds of hours of interviews with people who by their very consent to be interviewed were validating O'Neil's account. This book is a classic, and the moderate Republican counter-part to Morton Halperin's similarly revelatory “Bureaucratic Politics & Foreign Affairs.”

Although much has been made of how O'Neil is disparaging of the incumbent president, that is a minor aspect. The heart of this book is about the competition between two forms of governance: the one that is overseen by Dick Cheney, in which ideological assumptions create policy without regard to the facts and in favor of the wealthy few that contribute to the incumbent's political coffers; and the one that was characteristic of wiser Republican presidents, including Nixon, Ford, Reagan and papa Bush, in which a philosophy of governance seeks to find a balanced middle ground based on an interplay of facts and political preferences.

Summing the book up in two sentences: Bush-Cheney are about ideological victory at any cost, making policy in favor of their corporate crony base, without regard to the facts or the merits of any policy. O'Neil, and the winning candidate in 2008, are about a reasoned process for arriving at sound policy in the context of fiscal discipline.

This is an exciting book, and one that every moderate Republican will want to read as they contemplate joining with conservative Southern Democrats like Sam Nunn to create a new Fiscal Conservative Party. An early quote from O'Neil talking to Greenspan sums up the problem: “Our political system needs fixing. It needs to be based on reality. Not games.”

The book rewards anyone who actually reads it word for word with a number of gems.

1) The American economy is actually two economies. One embraces automation and is very productive as a result; the other relies on expert labor and having difficulty making gains.

2) Corporate tax contributions to national revenue have been halved from 1967 to 2000 [not addressed by O'Neil, but as the book “Perfectly Legal” documents, the tax code has become so corrupt that despite the enormous growth of the economy and the enormous profits being made by Halliburton et al, corporations are now escaping virtually all taxes, and this is a big part of why the US Government cannot cover its future obligations and growing debt.]

3) Iraq was the Bush-Cheney regime's top priority from day one. The very first National Security Council meeting was scripted to put Iraq in play, and the Director of Central Intelligence was a full collaborator in this endeavor, coming to the meeting with a variety of images (all subsequently called into question) that purported to make the case for Iraq being a threat requiring action. As O'Neil recollects in the book: “Ten days in, and it was about Iraq.”

4) The unilateralist character of the regime is also addressed. As this review is being written, the Administration is posturing about going after nuclear proliferators, which makes the O'Neil critique of the Rumsfeld approach to proliferation control all the more meaningful: “A traditional counterpoint, that international organizations and a web of economic and cultural interdependencies–as well as protective alliances–could help to control such deadly proliferation, is not mentioned in the six-page memo. The neoconservative view places little faith in such arrangements, or, for that matter, in diplomacy.” There it is again. The Bush Administration is about a big military stick motivated by ideology and not at all informed by any kind of inter-agency policy review process.

5) The book provides a very clear understanding of the pathologies of the Bush White House. The degree to which Rove literally shuts the Cabinet officers out and manipulates policy to appeal to “the base” of cash contributors is quite extraordinary. The degree to which Cheney manipulates letters from the Hill and other matters warrants its own chapter, titled “No Fingerprints.” The degree to which Lindsey, a loosely-educated ideological wonk in way over his head, leaks to the press to undermine the Secretary of the Treasury, is noteworthy.

6) Rove's conspiratorial manipulation of Presidential policymaking led, in Bush's *first* State of the Union message, to the first known instance in which the president “said something that knowledgeable people in the U.S. government knew to be false”, this with respect to a $1.2 trillion calculation that was knowably false and enormously important to the bond market. This was nothing less than a precursor to future false statements by the president that can be attributed to an unprofessional policy process dominated by a few ideologues.

7) There is a very fine section on clean water and reliable electricity as the heart of saving the Third World, and we are treated to the contrast between a beltway bandit costing out a water network for one country at $2 billion, and O'Neil saying it could be done for $25 million. This vignette captured everything that is wrong with both Washington and the military-industrial complex.

This book is packed with gems, all of them useful to anyone seeking to document why Bush and Cheney are unfit to lead America. They broke most if not all of their promises to “the center”, and they are twice removed from reality: once on tax cuts and a second time on the doctrine of preemption in foreign affairs.

‘Nuff said. See my lists as well.

2003/12/232009/12/04

Review: Al On America

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Culture, Research, Democracy, Politics

Leader with Specifics, with Dignity, with Persistence,

December 23, 2003

Reverend Al Sharpton

Edit of 21 Dec 02 to add comment and links.

New Comment: Oprah Winfrey has replaced Al Sharpton as the leader of black America, and while Barack Obama is a rising star and has already earned my vote, Al Sharpton is still, in my view, an essential voice and spirit. See links below for why.

Black Commentator noted in November that Al Sharpton has assumed the mantle of leadership for black America, and that it is highly likely that he will receive a majority of the black votes, at least in the South. For that reason alone, this book is *must reading* for every Democratic and non-Republican voter.

Below I summarize a few highlights from this rich book that took an afternoon to absorb:

1) Reverend Sharpton is strongest in his articulation of the hypocrisy of America, its lip service to slogans. I take him at face value when he speaks of the need to unite the country again around its values, and when he speaks of the emerging black/Latino coalition that resonates on the street level.

2) He lists some of his role models, and it merits comment that three of the four are pioneers of non-violence: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Ghandi. Later on the in book Reverend Sharpton discusses James Brown and Adam Clayton Powell as length, and I found his account of their merits and his lessons drawn from them to be compelling and credible.

3) Fidel Castro comes in for special mention, as do Ronald Reagan and Minister Louis Frarakhan, and I have to give Reverend Sharpton very high marks for directness and accuracy. Others, those with less integrity, might have left Fidel Castro out for fear of the kind of unethical attacks it might unleash against him from the extremist Republicans. I for one agree with Reverend Sharpton, as I agree with his view that the embargo against Cuba should be ended immediately.

4) He is powerful and convincing when he addresses the prison-industrial complex, a complex as threatening to America's long-term security and prosperity as the more well known military-industrial complex. As he points out, prisons are big business, and politicians on pay-offs have every incentive to keep pumping out contracts for major construction and related services including guard employment.

5) Reverend Sharpton is intellectual and emotional dynamite when he describes the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) as an anti-Rainbow Coalition organization, and Bill Clinton (and by extension, Joe Lieberman) as rich boys eager to stay to the right and reap the benefits, rather than true Democrats committed to delivering people from poverty. In brief, Al Sharpton has to run for President precisely because neither the DLC nor Dean are unwilling to reach out to and represent black America in the truest sense of the word. On this basis, I see Ralph Nader's 2000 campaign in a different light–Nader was campaigning for those that the DLC had shut out of the Democratic Process, and Al Gore was too slow to understand that he was leaving a very big crowd out of the big tent.

6) Reverend Sharpton impresses me on the foreign policy front. Although his experience is limited to foreign travels and specific interviews, his intellect and his gut instincts are totally consistent with the 430+ books I have reviewed on national security and international relations. Reverend Sharpton gets it: America has made many deals with the devil, with dictators like Saddam Hussein, with terrorists like bin Laden, and the American people do not realize that 9-11 is in fact the beginning of payback for decades of official US hypocrisy in its international relations.

7) Although very short on the topic, in my special area of interest, intelligence qua spies and secrecy, I give Reverend Sharpton the highest marks. He is the only Democratic candidate to really understand that we need “an intelligence unit that would allow us to really know what's going on out there in the world.” Reverend Sharpton is also committed to allies, investments in nation-building, and strong relationships nurtured over time. He also understands that you cannot threaten those who are not afraid to die suicidally, and that whipping out a bigger gun against them is precisely the wrong thing to do.

8) He focuses correctly on the internal dynamics of America as its greatest area of vulnerability, as the area most in need of attention if America is to be strong and prosperous. He correctly notes that the 30 percent increase in the US military budget in 2002 was *not* about making America safer, but about buying all the things that could not be rationalized before, and at the expense of domestic priorities such as health and education.

9) There are several chapters that offer up specific lists of initiatives that he would support, across many policy areas, and I find them all sensible. This is a man I could work for and follow.

10) I am satisfied that he puts the Tawana Brawley matter to rest with a chapter.

11) His chapters on black leadership, Jessie Jackson, why anti-Semitism is strongest in the Billy Graham-Richard Nixon crowd, and how the hip-hop movement is both wrong to be obscene and yet a major power in waiting, a power that can mobilize youth toward a more Christian vision, are quite fascinating, words that are not to be found anywhere else.

Bottom line, and I say this with the utmost respect, being scornful of most beltway politicians and bandits: Al Sharpton may have baggage and be a spendthrift in some ways, but when all is said and done, his voice absolutely must be fully and consistently heard as America charts its course into the future. Like Pat Buchanan, Sam Nunn, and a few others great voices that may never be President, Rev Sharpton has a depth of intuition, understanding, and experience that he has ably articulated in this book. We need to read it and we need to ask for his views in all major future decisions bearing on the security and prosperity of American's core black community and constituency, a community and constituency that too often in the past has been over-shadowed by new immigrant communities–Asians and Hispanics, for example. America cannot be great if its black community is not itself great. Rev Shapton stamds for this.

I notice from the tags that those who do not like this review appear to be literate but ignorant whites. As Michael Moore notes, it is the whites that have done the most damage to our economy and our society, and in my view, the Wall Street whites have finally realized the error of their ways, and Reverend Sharpton's views will receive a more respectful hearing, especially if we can all come together to elect Barack Obama as President in 2008.

2003/11/302009/12/04

Review: The Art of Happiness at Work

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Religion & Politics of Religion, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Calming, Reflective, Worthwhile,

November 30, 2003

The Dalai Lama

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links.

Although I agree with some reviewer's who feel that this book is mostly about Howard Cutler's efforts to draw out the Dalai Lama, I also feel that the Dalai Lama is a full party to this effort, is no fool, and understands that lending his name to this book could be helpful in reaching many many more people than would every give a hoot about anything Howard Cutler, MD, might have to say. On that basis, I give the book a solid four stars.

Although Peter Drucker and I have both written about “work as a calling” and the importance of finding joy in what you do, and that could serve as a one-sentence summary of the book, there is more to this book than that. Taken with patience, and used as a mind-calming exercise to slowly read a chapter or two and then apply it to one's own (presumably uncalm) work environment, the book could serve as a touchstone for “backing off” and reflecting.

There are a number of books on Zen Buddhism, and my very own all time favorite, not by a Zen Buddhist, on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, and they all seem to boil down to fulfillment within the circumstances, making the most of what you have, treating everyone as an equal, and being glad you are not in a Turkish jail on drug charges–life could be worse.

I bought the book, the Dalai Lama lent his name to it, it can't be any worse for you that a diet drink loaded with Nutra-Sweet.