1-7 Star Rating – Page 269 – Public Intelligence Blog

Illuminates Disruptive Innovation, Why Manager's Fail At It,

October 7, 2004

Clayton M. Christensen

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links to natural capitalism books

I was talking to a friend the other day about why major (multi-billion dollar a year) companies are not good at innovation, and he recommended this book. Wow! Looking at the companies I know and admire, it all became clear. Innovation *is* disruptive; the most promising marketplace is the opposite of their existing defense and intelligence clients–the people that do not get adequate intelligence support from the existing cash cow; and all of the middle and senior managers (Washington-based) are incrementalists who had succeeded at building bodies-for-hire accounts over decades.

For those who feel an intuitive faith in disruptive endeavors, this book is inspiring and also instructional. It specifically suggests that entrants will beat incumbents when the objective is to substitute lower-cost good-enough solutions for client needs that are not satisfied by high end production. However, it also makes clear that the *last* place you want to sell disruptive solutions in to is the existing high end client base. Go for new customers and new contexts.

In government intelligence terms: stop trying to teach the spies that they need to do a better job on open sources of information in 33+ languages. Instead, go after the Departments of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Homeland Security, and the elements of the Department of Defense that do not get adequate classified intelligence support. Establish Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a viable endeavor there, and in ten years come back and crush the spies in head on competition.

Three “litmus tests” that the authors put forward are very helpful to those seeking to monetize disruptive new ideas:

1) Is there a population of clients that has historically been under-funded, under-staffed, and have as a result *gone without*?
2) Is this group likely to appreciate lower cost “good enough” solutions?
3) Is it possible to be profitable while providing these clients lower cost good enough solutions (e.g. monitoring risk around the world, at the sub-state level, something the spies simply cannot do effectively despite their $50 billion a year budget)?

Another major lesson I drew from this book is that alternative channels can be phenomenally successful. One example the book uses: instead of selling low-cost throw away cameras through photography shops oriented to high-end perfectionists, move them into grocery stores and discount stores for the low-end market that could not afford a traditional camera. This *makes sense.* Hence, instead of trying to sell low-cost open source services to the people who think they have the most to lose from promoting them (the mandarins of the high-cost secrets), go instead to the least well-served end-users, the logisticians, acquisition managers, diplomats, etcetera, and get them to test localized rather than centralized solutions that then “explode” as other end-users see the low-cost success and emulate through decentralized adoption of new best practices.

The last half of the book is loaded with stuff useful to how I am going to structure my relationship with any major corporation–it focuses on a number of key factors including scale, profitability over growth, proprietary end to end solutions in the beginning, transitioning rapidly to open distributed solutions at the right moment, and ensuring that the team members are *not* (NOT) incrementalist line managers that succeeded by going along within a status quo system.

The following quote captures my perception of the imperfection of the guys at the top that don't get it: “In many ways, the managers that corporate executives have come to trust the most because they have consistently delivered the needed results in core businesses cannot be trusted to shepherd the creation of new growth.” (Page 183).

The book goes on to discuss the conflict between the traditional processes of managing traditional businesses, the conflict between traditional business values versus those of disruptive innovators (who can tend to alienate and aggravate executives used to having life just so), and between the “pace” of big organizations that need 12 months to think about an opportunity, and small “fleet of foot” innovators that can evaluate, act, write a proposal, and win million-dollar jobs over a week-end.

The authors are generally negative about business unit consolidation, and make the point that the bigger the business gets, the more process takes precedence over people. They specifically caution against a strategy of acquisition as a means of growth, documenting the terrible toll this can take as a cash flow drain, in essence saying that really big growth cannot come from incrementalist approaches. I put the book down with the feeling that the really big companies need to think seriously about launching spin-offs, as Charles Schwab did, and the really small companies, like mine, have a fighting shot at beating the hell out of the established beltway bandits who are too slow, too arrogant, and too rich to be serious about innovation for the future.

This book made me smile, and it made me think. Super piece of work.

Here are some recently published books that can be combined with this one to reintegrate and re-energize our economy:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions – and What to Do About It
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Ecology of Commerce
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

2004/09/182009/12/04

Review: War, Evil, and the End of History

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

Connects 9/11 to Long Era of Imperial Deceit & Predatory Looting,

September 18, 2004

Bernard Henri Levy

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to connect to more recent books.

There are some gems in this book, but it is *not* anywhere near the kind of blindingly brilliant, deeply philosophical work that the publicists would have you believe. He is a talented and very wealthy (inherited wealth) Frenchman of the Jewish faith who could be called the Bill Gates of French philosophy, fwith irst-rate marketing.

The author is clearly a courageous and inquisitive individual, and I would rank him third, after Robert Young Pelton and Robert Kaplan, in the “journalist-philosopher-adventurer” category. He has been to all of these places, he has seen with his own eyes, and he writes thoughtfully, if often tediously, about what he has seen.

The real gem in the book is the connection he makes between 9-11 and our deliberate ignorance of the many wars, genocides, crimes against women and children, torture, corruption, etcetera that we in the West have manifested. He writes with conviction and insight about the “meaningless war” across Africa, South Asia, around the globe, where entire regions have descended into a chaotic hell of kill and be killed, work and die, slavery or death, rape then death. His point, which I like very much, is that history does not end, it recycles, and in 9-11 and the global war on terrorism what we have is a “homecoming” of all these wars to America and its Western allies.

This is not, however, completely original, in the sense that the “Map of World Conflict & Human Rights” that I have been handing out to my adult students (thanks to Berto Jongman in The Netherlands for creating it, and to the European Centre for Conflict Prevention and Goals for Americans Foundation, among others, for funding its creation) ably documents all of this is a single compelling document, and many books in the 490+ that I have reviewed cover all aspects of these “ungovernable regions” in great detail.

The author is half absurd and half correct when he condemns the United Nations for its zealous pursuit of Israel as a racist and terrorist state, while the United Nations largely ignores the many genocides taking place from Russia and China to Indonesia and Brazil and Central America and onwards. He is absurd on the first count, correct on the second.

The book is fully worth four stars, definitely worth purchasing, for its articulation of a European view on “the heart of darkness” as it exists today. I was especially taken with his discussion of Buddhist versus Hindu terrorism and extremism and the use of child soldiers in Sri Lanka, since it makes the point that other religions, not just Islam and Christianity, spawn cycles of terrorism and ethnic violence.

The book concludes on a note worthy of the greatest philosophers, a reflection on the death of memory within Western civilization, the death of *moral* memory. Having just returned from Denver, where I was privileged to observe a two-week Office of Personnel Management course on National Security, a first-class endeavor, I was struck by the recurring theme, across virtually all of the world-class lecturers: “morality matters.” Morality has a tangible value in helping nations, organizations, and individuals “get it right.” The last two pages of the book are the best, and conjure up clear and frightening pictures of billions of dispossessed swarming over the European and US cities, bringing the despair we have ignored to our doorstep. Ignore history, ignore evil, and it will eventually, inevitably, come to your doorstep. We–or perhaps even more sadly, our children and grandchildren–will pay for our moral cowardice and our historical blindness. In these final reflections, the author does demonstrate a brilliance that requires us to attend to his future reflections.

More recent books supportive of this author's insights:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy

2004/09/132009/12/04

Review: Intelligence Matters

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

One of Top Five Books on Topic, But Has Some Gaps,

September 13, 2004

Bob Graham

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

The negative reviews on this book are by people that have not read the book carefully (one appears to have not read it all, having only seen the author on television). I am comfortable, on the basis of my career in intelligence, my three published books on intelligence (two with forewords by Senators, one Democratic, one Republican), and my 1100+ reviews on non-fiction about national security issues, is saying that this book is easily one of the top five books on the topic that most Americans should consider reading. The other four are the Webster Tarpley's book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition which displaced the utterly imcompetent and unethical 9-11 Commission Report, the Aspin-Brown Commission Report (1996), Jim Bamford's book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies and George Allen's book on the failure of intelligence in Viet-Nam, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam There are many others, but for 9-11 and the urgently needed reforms to intelligence after 9-11 (three years ago, still no reforms of note), these are the five.

The book is most important as an unclassified record of what can be known about our failures–in both intelligence and in policy–as understood by the then serving Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). It does have gaps–it is much less detailed than the 9-11 Commission Report, harder to read than Jim Bamford's book, and suffers from considerable gaps in both what went wrong and what needs to be fixed, as covered by my own books as well as the many other intelligence reform books that I have reviewed in their own Amazon spaces. That does not diminish its relative value as a “touchstone” for all Americans.

There are, in my view, three compelling bottom lines in this book that cannot be ignored:

1) Senator Graham recognizes better than most that in the absence of public pressure for reform, there is little incentive for Congress or the Executive to take action. As one Member is reported to have told Amy Zegart “America still does not get it–it will take another 5,000 body bags.” It is my view that the combination of intelligence community leadership misrepresentation (“its all better now, no need to make major changes” and the White House denial that there was an intelligence failure at all, which defies understanding, have led the country to fall asleep again–a point that “Anonymous” makes in Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.

2) Page 243 covers both of the other two points. The first is that the Department of State has become a neglected orphan in US intelligence and US policy making about global threats, and this needs to change. It is worthy of note that the Department of State got it right on Iraq despite its small numbers and tiny budget, and I agree completely with Senator Graham–State has to get back in the business of being America's *primary* foreign and national security policy strategist. I put together THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest but State leadership at this time is intellectually and morally challenged (2007).

3) Although disappointing in its brevity, especially since both the Aspin-Brown Commission and the 9-11 Commission found cause to note the importance of open sources of information, Senator Graham also notes on page 243 that a primary corrective measure to the failure of the intelligence community to “connect the dots” and related “incestuous amplification” lies in combining a renewed primary by the Department of State with greatly increased investments in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) such as Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) is planning to put into the House Armed Services Committee legislation addressing 9-11 deficiencies.

Senator Graham joins Dick Clarke (whose book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror I strongly recommend) in condemning both Saudi Arabian sponsorship of terrorism, and the bi-partisan Clinton-Bush pandering to the Saudi's, accepting despicable sustained actions by the government of Saudi Arabia against the government and people of the United States of America, for the sake of cheap oil (see also the book by Michael Klare, and by Robert Baer). While I distinguish to an extent between Saudi intelligence, which sponsors terrorism, and Saudi royalty, which tried to deny its roots in Arabia, the bottom line is that both governments knew that Bin Laden was being nurtured by Saudi intelligence, and both chose to ignore the danger.

Senator Graham ends his book by lamenting the lack of accountability in both intelligence and policy. He is completely correct. George Tenet failed to resurrect the clandestine service in the seven years he served as Director of Central Intelligence, and then had the audacity to tell the 9-11 Commission that he needed seven more years to do this, now that he realized it was broken. No way, Jose. It is time to fire all the losers that have been testifying to Congress on how they would do things differently, and bring in the people who resigned their commissions in order to go public from 1985-2001. It is noteworthy that both the House and the Senate have failed to ask the latter to testify–virtually all of the witnesses on 9-11 are from the crowd that allowed 9-11 to happen in the first place.

Intelligence matters, indeed. It is clear from this book that the public does not yet grasp this, and it is not clear from this book that Congress ever will. The current legislative proposals are still in lip-service, cosmetic mode. The Members are still too reliant on ignorant staff and still too prone to substitute press conferences for deep discussions with the top 15 practitioner-authors who know what is needed.

There *will* be another 9-11, and there *will* be a “nuclear hell-storm” in America, courtesy of Al Qaeda. You cannot have smart spies in the context of a dumb Nation…..

2004/09/122009/12/04

Review: Where the Right Went Wrong–How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency

5 Star, Philosophy, Politics

Buchanan–and Nader–More Mainstream than Bush-Kerry!,

September 12, 2004

Patrick J. Buchanan

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

The most shocking aspect of this book, in a positive “eye-opening” sense, is that Pat Buchanan seems to be more in touch with what I as a moderate Republican believe, than anyone associated with the current Bush-Cheney Administration. Although he has some extremist views that I do not agree with, notably a desire to set back attempts to achieve racial equality, on balance his focus on avoiding elective wars, on eliminating the deficit, on reducing the size of government, on restoring state rights, and on putting the Supreme Court back in its place, all strike me as more “representative” than the views of the neo-conservatives, whom he attacks with eloquence and force.

There are some gems in the book that most people will enjoy because they are not being discussed. Chief among these is that the 2004 election is about the Supreme Court, and who gets to nominate as many as five new Justices. Fully enjoyable is the author's blistering critique of the Court, and the moral cowardice of the Congress in allowing the Court to take on powers of legislative review never envisioned by the founders. The author's quote of Lincoln is especially compelling on this point.

The author is also compelling in his discussion of the role that a common faith must play in keeping democracy alive. As the US foolishly strives to demand “secular democracy” in Iraq, something of an impossibility, the author is moving and thoughtful in showing that the decline of faith (and of the family) has harmed US democracy and its prospects.

Over-all the book is a litany of ills associated with an extremist Republican party run amok, funding Chinese weapons development at the same time that it exports jobs, funds the debt of loser nations while running up our own debt, etc. The author provides several lists of poor policy decisions that provide food for thought. Most troubling is the degree to which the USA is hostage to others for 72% of its medicines, 70% of its computer equipment, etc.

This is one of the few books I have encountered that covers both economic issues–the author is blistering on how “free” trade is not free, with fullsome detail on how we need *fair* trade–and national security issues. The author clearly understands that we are not winning the war on terrorism, only minor battles, and–in a phrase that especially moved me–that you cannot defeat a faith without a faith of your own. “To defeat a faith you need a faith.” I would refer the readers to Doug Johnston's Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik as well as Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.

Over-all, this book caused me to reflect on the reality that the two so-called “mainstream” political parties are no longer representative of America. Pat Buchanan is right–the moderate Republican Party with conservative values that I thought I was a member of has been hijacked and corrupted. At the same time, the same can be said for the Democratic Party, whose traditional values are now more ably represented by Ralph Nader. In brief, Americans are in limbo, lacking collective associations that truly represent their needs and concerns, and America is in need of a realignment of its grass-roots political organizations.

Super book, essential reading for anyone concerned about why the 2004 election is not a choice at all, only a pretense.

Estranged moderate Republican that I am, I grow more and more respectful of Patrick Buchanan. He saw this all coming. Little did we know.

Other books that add weight to his message:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Plus)
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart

2004/09/042009/12/04

Review: Blood and Oil–The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, True Cost & Toxicity, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Absolutely Extraordinary: Cheap Oil Equals Lots of Bloodshed,

September 4, 2004

Michael T. Klare

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

I have heard this author speak to groups of international intelligence professionals, and they take him very seriously, as do I. In many ways, his books complements the one by Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century except that whereas Barnett says that the military must go to war to make unstable areas safe for America, Klare points out that a) we don't have enough guns or blood to stabilize a world that we antagonize every time we deploy into an “occupation” mode, and b) cheap oil is going to be very very expensive in terms of American blood on the floor.

Although I have reviewed many books about both the problems within America and its policies, as well as books optimistic about the future of America and the world, I give credit to Klare and this book for finally forcing me to realize that our federal budget and federal policies, in relation to protecting America, are “inside out and upside down.” There is, and Klare documents this beautifully in relation to petroleum, a very pathological cycle that could be easily stopped. We insist on cheap oil, this leads to bloodshed and high oil prices; this comes back to lower quality of life for the workers, etc.

As Klare points out, the pipelines (and I would add the pipe to ship portals) cannot be protected. American policy makers are deceiving the public when they suggest they can stabilize the Middle East and protect cheap oil. Not only can the pipelines not be protected, but on America's current consumption path, according to Klare, the Gulf States would have to DOUBLE production to keep up with American demand.

Klare is also intellectually powerful in painting a future picture when China, Russia, and Europe are in armed competition with the USA for energy from Central Asia, Latin America, under the Spratley Islands, etcetera. As I read Klare's book, I was just shaking my head. Our policies on energy are delusional and destructive, and Klare is among the few that is providing an objective report to the public on this reality.

Klare is actually kind to the current Administration (Bush-Cheney), pointing out that they are no more or less corrupt than previous administrations going back to World War II. Cheap oil has become a mantra, and military power has become the unquestioned means of achieving that–along with supporting 44 dictators, genocide, state-sponsored terrorism (as long as we like them and we get the Jewish vote to boot).

I especially liked Klare's observation that cheap oil for the US is a major contributor to unemployment and destabilization within Arabia. Buying oil from Saudi Arabia subsidizes terrorism. Buying cheap oil from Saudi Arabia increases the number of unemployed who might be inspired to become terrorism. Hmmmm… At what real cost shall we continue to demand cheap oil?

Klare is also very effective in objectively criticizing the manner in which the US Administrations have integrated anti-terrorism initiatives with energy-protection initiatives. Bin Laden is still at large, but by golly, we have 200,000 Americans sitting on top of the Iraqi oil fields.

Klare joins Jim Bamford Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Chalmers Johnson The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project), Derek Leebaert The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World and a score of other authors who have in one way or another alluded to the fact that we are now doing to China what we did to Russia after the Cold War: needlessly confronting them, scaring them, and pushing them to arm themselves. Klare focuses on our “occupation” of Central Asia, an area of direct concern and interest to China, but I would add our sending seven carriers to the Formosa Straits recently and part of the problem–reminding me of how we sent squadrons of nuclear bombers deep into the Soviet Union from the north, immediately following World War II, just to see how far we could get. WE started the arms race!

The book ends as intelligently as it begins, with emphasis on getting to a post-petroleum economy. Listing all the ways we could get there would be another book in itself, but we could start with neighborhood level solar power, more wind power, deep conservation (which must also apply to water), a gradual elimination of chlorine-based and petroleum-based industries, a turn toward self-sustainment across the board, and what Klare cites as his big three steps:

1) divorce energy purchases from security commitments—stop tolerating dictators and arming terrorist nations for the sake of cheap oil

2) reduce our reliance on imported oil, dramatically

3) prepare the way for a transition to a post-petroleum economy that includes conservation, hybrid vehicles, public transportation, the two-way energy grid that WIRED featured on its cover the same week Cheney met secretly with Enron…and so on.

Fool's gold at high moral cost. Klare makes it clear that if we do not heal ourselves from inside out, that no amount of guns, blood, or destruction will save us from the inevitable implosion of the unstable places where oil is to be found.

Special books read since then that carry the argument forward:
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

2004/09/032009/12/04

Review: Exporting America–Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Provokes, Overlooks, Inspires, Read Reviews First,, Then Buy,

September 3, 2004

Lou Dobbs

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links.

I've said for some time now that Amazon is a virtual university, and that I consider the reviews of any book to be at least the equal of the book as educational material. This certainly applies to the reviews inspired by this provocative book by Lou Dobbs, and I give both the book, and the reviews, high marks when taken together.

It is clear that Lou Dobbs is both an intelligent patriot, and somewhat simplistic in his presentation. This does not diminish the value of what he has offered us, but we have to frame it in the right way: this is a one hour read, from Boston to DC, and needs to seen in the context of my other 1000+ reviews of national security non-fiction.

Dobbs does take on added importance, together with Stephen Flynn's book, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism, because Dobbs helps us understand that we do not have a proper trade strategy nor a related demographic and employment strategy. To those who would say “let the free market do its work” I would point out that the free market would not raise national armies, collect taxes, or provide social security. Some things have to be done by the Nation and its State governments, and one of those “duties” is to conserve and enhance national power from “the bottom up”, meaning the population's ability to produce and to fight.

There is a related concern: when goods are created by foreign workers earning $1 per hour, instead of US workers earning $15 per hour (as discussed on page 11), two bad things happen: the first is that the goods tend to be less lasting in nature–more throw-away products that thus consume precious metal, plastic, etc (this is less applicable in IT, where Indian programmers cost 1/10th and are as good or better than US programmers); and second, they have to be transported, using tons of oil and other fuels. These are called “trade-offs.” I'm not an economist, but I do believe that in a limited growth natural environment, and in an unstable world, it makes sense to localize or regionalize as much of your agricultural, light manufacturing, and energy production as possible. Sustainable environments range from local to global, but they start with the local.

The author spends some time identifying and negating twelve “myths” associated with outsourcing jobs, and I for one find these valuable, and would consider any politician unable to address the points that Dobbs makes to be unqualified to be President (I am mindful of the possibility that no one qualified to be President might actually be able to earn the nomination).

Finally, and this is a criticism of Dobbs, I think he misses the main point, and it is one that is made very ably by Peter Peterson in “Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It as well as others writing about democracy: there is no single issue or challenge facing America that could not be more ably addressed if the people were informed and engaged and actually had the power to vote on the matter. Although Dobbs notes, as does Peterson (who is Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and hence no liberal), that corporate America, and the two “main parties”, no longer represent America or American labor or the American voter, he does not focus on this as the core issue. This in my view *is* the key issue. When Dobbs asks America to vote on CNN, as he did last night, and the only issues he presents are a few foreign/defense versus economic/health issues, I ask myself: what doesn't he understand? These are dog on dog issues. The “dog-catcher” issue in America is this: does our vote count, not only in politics, but in the workplace? The answer is NO, and around that answer, we should be building a popular revolution that demands a Constitutional Convention and a completely open election in 2006. We need to churn Congress, join labor unions, and take back the power.

Newer books by Lou Dobbs, with reviews:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War onthe American Dream and How to Fight Back

Other books that complement his earnest populist investigative journalist campaign to be an advocate for We the People:
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions – and What to Do About It

2004/08/292009/12/04

Review: American Soldier

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Military & Pentagon Power, War & Face of Battle

Earnest Officer Covers Bush, Rose-Colored Glasses, Useful,

August 29, 2004

General Tommy Franks

Edit 20 Dec 07 to add links.

Tellingly, the book opens with Sun Tzu on the importance of the art of war to the state, and fails to reflect, at any point in the book, the more vital Sun Tzu observation that “the acme of skill is to defeat the enemy without fighting.”

The author is justifiably proud of being able to take down Iraq with half the troops and half the armor and artillery needed in Gulf I. If you read this book in conjunction with Stephen Flynn's book on “America the Vulnerable,” where he cries out for 16,000 more Customs inspectors, you can see US national security is “inside out & upside down”–in the 21st Century we need half the uniformed military troops and half the military “hard power” acquisition, but we have failed to understand that we need ten times the manpower and ten times the acquisition within homeland security–we are still lying to America about this contradiction, one reason why I chose to tie these two books together with complementary reviews–Flynn is nothing short of brilliant as a counterpart to Franks.

Among the little gems in this book:

Franks got purple hearts in Viet-Nam only for the wounds that sent him to the hospital–minor wounds not requiring evacuation were ignored. What a contrast with Kerry! Page 114.

In the 1970's, when the information revolution was just started, artillery units did not have their own communications. Franks rightly earned a reputation as an innovator by buying CB radios such that his artillery pieces moved as if they could read the mind of the operators they were supporting. Today, not only has the information revolution largely passed by the intelligence community, but the “rest of government” including state and local law enforcement, and private sector partners vital to national security, are in precisely the same position, in the year 2004, as was military artillery 30 years ago. Page 125.

When General Franks was selected in the early 1990's to lead the creation of the 21st Century force, I find it absolutely riveting and fundamental that intelligence was not one of the domains or building blocks of the Army (one reason why the Stryker fraud was so easily perpetuated on Congress and the public). Page 173.

As of 2002-2003, Service “parochialism”, Service chiefs and staffs out only for themselves and their service, and completely unwilling to work jointly or even worse, procure systems and capabilities that worked jointly, remained the single largest cancer within DoD. Page 207, page 288, and passim.

Bin Laden's attack on the Cole “had the force of a cruise missile.” Page 220. See my review of Paul Williams, “Osama's Revenge”, where the bottom line is that individuals now have the power to deliver both nuclear and cruise missile effects inside of America, but our national security investments and priorities remain “upside down” and fail to protect us from an “inside out” perspective.

Both defense department and U.S. intelligence community counterintelligence and intelligence relevant to force protection failed miserably in the closing years of the 20th century. We were blind in part because we relied on Yemen to tell us about threats, rather than being able to penetrate groups in Yemen directly–hence the “surprise” of the USS Cole attack being so successful and so unconventional. Page 224.

Throughout the book there are references to capabilities that avoid discussing time lag issues–cruise missiles that take 2-6 hours to get to the target, B-2 bombers that take 40 hours to get to the target, all easily detectible. In my view, General Franks paints an overly positive picture of our “hard” capabilities, in part because he glosses over or ignores time-space-detection-avoidance issues that are vital. Pages 245, 259, and passim. This also applies to the movement of Special Operations Forces into denied areas. Page 296.

Rumsfeld evidently believed that invading Afghanistan would “finish” Bin Laden. How wrong was he? Page 285.

Franks and the U.S. leadership evidently believe that Special Operations Forces are “hidden” at K-2 Air Base in Uzbekistan. I personally think they will be rolled over and massacred at some point in the near term (2-4 years). Page 286.

Franks is brilliant in his creation of a Lines of Operations versus Target Slices conceptualization, this is the single best page in the book, a real keeper. Page 339, illustrated 340.

Franks fell for the myth that money will buy loyalty and action among the tribes of both Afghanistan and Iraq, a completely erroneous view. Page 332. He also fails to mention that Rumsfeld allowed 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda to be evacuated from the Tora Bora trap by Pakistan, with Rumsfeld's active permission (out of naiveté). Page 377.

Troubling to me is Franks' blindness to the cost, both in dollars and in opportunity cost (time, space, pol-econ, etc.) of using very expensive and very ineffective hardware to achieve marginal results. His approach to warfare is almost mechanical in nature, eager to send waves of aircraft against Stone Age tribal positions, without regard to cost and effect. Pages 379-381.

Regional commanders-in-chief need to manage U.S. Intelligence Collection requirements, priorities, and capabilities. This one hit me with “wow” force. I actually agree, provided that the regional CINCs become inter-agency in nature. We are at war forever, and placing clandestine and technical collection as well as open source intelligence collection assets under CINC operational control makes sense to me, especially if DoD finally steps up to the plate and creates an intelligence component commander [this does NOT undermine the need to move NRO, NSA, and NGA out of DoD and into the DCI's management authority.] Page 234. Later on he alludes to the need for CINC budgets, and I agree–we need to change Title 10, and strike a better balance between acquisition and budget authority for type and regional commanders. Page 397.

My summary: Intelligence failed, heavy metal military did what it was asked to do under solid operational leadership, we are still losing strategically and in the long-term.

Better books:
The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose
Battle Ready
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

Category: 1-7 Star Rating

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