Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform) – Page 43

Useful in Understanding the Arrogance and Ignorance of Presidential Sychophants,

January 8, 2006

John Yoo

EDITED 17 Oct 07 to add links to ten relevant books.

There is absolutely no question but that the author of this book is patriotic, educated (after the American fashion), and well-intentioned. Sadly, this does not mean that he has any common sense, any historical context, any strategic vision, nor any relevance to the future. Indeed, and I rarely write negative reviews (5 out of 1015+), this book is most useful for understanding the ignorance and arrogance of Presidential sycophants who place loyalty to a single man and office and party (or rather, ideological branch of the party) above their loyalty to the Constitution, the Republic, or the public interests they are supposed to be defending.

The book is best summarized by a quote from a White House staffer who is reported to have said, in talking to an expert on foreign affairs, “You must be one of those reality-based people. We are an empire, we make our own reality.”

The problem with this arrogant and ignorant statement, which is manifested throughout this interesting book, is that a reality based on ideological fantasy and the security of hiding behind the Secret Service completely begs off on confronting the harsh realities of a world in which 5 billion pissed off poor people are inevitably going to sponsor 1 million armed terrorists who know how to create Improvised Explosive Devises (IED) and know how to deliver the “death of a thousand cuts” to US infrastructure (water and fuel pipelines, energy generators, shipping port cranes, key communications switching stations, key banks, etc.

The “sucking chest wound” in this book is that it does not recognize the role played by the (once) wise men of Congress, in two houses–one, the Senate, designed for long-term deliberation, the other, the House, designed for mid-term respect for the “wisdom of the crowds,” both of which were created by the Founders to temper Presidential hubris, Presidential ambition, and Presidential mendacity.

The fact that our Congress today is grotesquely corrupt and dysfunctional does not in any way render the above point moot. As we saw in the rush to war on Iraq, which has now put us in a six-front-war that will last 100 years, the Executive is all too fragile and malleable and prone to short-term error with long-term consequences.

The author makes a case for Presidential power in this book that is isolated from historical, ideo-cultural, socio-economic, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic context. This is not a debate about how to get from here to 2008 “efficiently,” but rather a debate about how to survive and prosper as a Nation over the next 200 to 500 years.

Were the author more intellectually-honest and reality-aware, he would understand that the future of American cannot be secured by a few guns against 5 billion at the “Bottom of the Pyramid,” and he would understand that the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, the rise of pandemic disease, the looming catastrophes of poverty and environmental degradation are all context within which long-term strategies are essential, in which we must help create indigenous wealth that is scalable and self-generating.

Bottom line: this book represents the kind of narrow, ignorant, sycophantic view of the Presidency that has come to characterize the Cheney-Addington-Gonzalez view of Bush as a puppet and the people as stupid. If this book were to become “reality,” not only would Congress and the people forfeit all their powers (of the purse, of the power to declare war, of the power to hold elections, of the power to live under the rule of law), but in becoming “reality,” this book's premises would destroy the Republic.

Read this to understand the internal threat to our Republic. Well-intentioned individuals who have no clue how to serve the people, and are intent on serving their narrow constituency of a single President whose wealthy pals want to loot the Commonwealth with as few restrictions as possible until the party is over and they can move to Switzerland and leave us to deal with their multiple deficits.

I have three sons. This book has persuaded me that they must each receive a liberal arts education before going on to specialize in a craft, for in this book, I see all that is evil about narrowly-educated individuals who mean well but know little of the real world.

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: The New Pearl Harbor–Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Paperback)

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Truth & Reconciliation

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt–Makes Case for Public Investigation,

November 24, 2005

David Ray Griffin

I am a former Marine Corps Infantry officer, a clandestine case officer, the senior civilian responsible for founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, the author of books on intelligence, and since about 2001, the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about national security matters, into which category this book certainly falls.

For those who would doubt the depths to which privilege power might go to get its way, let me just point out that it is now a documented fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed the staging of a terrorist attack within the US that would murder U.S. citizens, in order to provide a pretext for an invasion of Cuba in the early decades of the Cold War. Do not ever under-estimate what the Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's and Goldman Sach's of the world might be willing to do to further their profits. Also do not underestimate the power of blind mis-placed loyalty within the military, doing its “duty” to the President while overlooking its more sacred duty to the Constitution.

There are four aspects of this book that stand out with me, and that I believe warrant the appointment of a 12-person citizen's commission with full access, no holds barred, able to apply “Able Danger” data mining technologies to *all* materials bearing on 9-11.

First, I am absolutely persuaded by all my reading, that the Administration, the CIA, and the FBI, at a minimum were complicit in allowing 9/11 to happen, as a pretext for invading Afghanistan (for energy and drug reasons, since Rumsfeld let 3,000 Al Qaeda escape when we had them surrounded) and Iraq.

Second, I find the objective case, from Fire Engineering and other serious sources, against the buildings having been brought down by the fire, and instead that they were brought down by pre-placed explosives, to be sufficiently compelling so as to cast a reasonable doubt on the Administration's story, and hence a need for a full and open investigation.

Third, I find the objective case for a U.S. missile hitting the Pentagon, instead of Flight 77, to be, again, compelling enough to raise a reasonable doubt, particularly since no aircraft parts were recovered at the Pentagon and all bodies from the flight appeared in Dover without every appearing to have been transported from the Pentagon. I helped clean up a jet crash in San Diego long ago and there was luggage, seats, debris, everywhere. (The third one, the crater, looks like a bomb crater with a truck load of metal debris dumped in–military analysts scorn that one.

Fourth, the fact that relatives of George Bush were in charge of World Trade Center security, and that there was a total power down prior to the 9-11 event that would have allowed the explosives charges to be planted while also ensuring no security camara records, and that there were both insurance claims and stock futures transactions against key losers, that the Bush Administration continues to obscure, all suggest that this matter has not been properly investigated (see next comment).

I also read the author's follow-on book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions and I find that compelling as well. He recasts all that he knows from the previous book, into a parallel critique of the 9-11 Commission. While I consider the Commissioners to be individuals of very high integrity, I believe they failed in their dual mission of properly investigating this matter, and of devising recommendations to avoid failure in the future.

Taken together, the author's two books comprise a “People's Grand Jury” that surely calls for a People's Investigation. This would be something that receives funding form concerned philanthropists, and the focus of effort for popular investigation between now and November 2006.

See also the varied DVDs, and especially Webster Griffin Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

2005/11/212009/12/04

Review: A War Against Truth–An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Misinformation & Propaganda

The Anger is Justified–Listen to the Conscience,

November 21, 2005

Paul William Roberts

I have just posted a list of books relevant to citizen evaluation of whether Dick Cheney should be impeached for dereliction of duty and high crimes and misdemeanors (lying to everyone including his ward, the President), and this book is on that list.

I agree with those reviewers that are put off by the seething anger, but I would also hasten to add that seething anger is exactly the right emotion with which to view the thousands of US dead, the tens of thousands of US woundeded including more amputees than ever before in history, and the billions of angry Muslims who see America as a rogue nation.

I am, with all humility and perhaps the good fortune of timing, the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about global issues and national security. I take this book very seriously, and believe that everyone else should as well. Viewing my list “Books Relevant to Evaluating Cheney” will provide some helpful perspective. Two US Senators, and three major league Republicans have written books against Cheney, and this should carry some weight with the public.

This is a good book, worthy of everyone's consideration.

2005/10/302009/12/04

Review: Blood in the Sand–Imperial Fantasies, Right-Wing Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy (Hardcover)

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Fast Read, Brutal & Riveting, A Call for Progressive Engagement,

October 30, 2005

Stephen Eric Bronner

This is an absolute gem of a book, one I was able to polish off in a couple of hours before Crossfire comes on. It is brutal and riveting, nothing less than a thoughtful manifesto calling for progressive engagement and a restoration of engaged dialog.

Here are a few of my summative notes that serve as a review of the author's key points, all of which I find to be admirable and well-documented:

1) US Democracy is in crisis, in part because the “Halliburton Administration” is comprised of several liars and thieves, among whom I would suggest Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are the worst. Their resignations, and the appointment of Senator John McCain as an ethical vice president, strike me as necessary.

2) The Democratic Party failed to understand that ideological passion and the Republican mobilization of their own base would more than crush the Democratic pragmatism, focus on the economic case, and a heroic but insufficient increase in registered voters. In essence, the Democratic Party relied on mobilization and failed to find its voice or its spine in 2000 and 2004. Even when the Democrats knew–as Greg Pabst documented–that the Florida election was stolen twice (one with the disenfranchisement of over 35,000 people of color, the second time with the rejection of over-count votes in pro-Gore countries–while revalidating them in pro-Bush counties), they failed to rise to the challenge.

3) The author is brutal in a very polite and professional way as he describes the origins of the neo-conservatives and their commitment to looting the commonwealth of the poor and middle class in order to fund wealth transfers to the already rich, and a larger garrison state with which to pursue imperial adventures.

4) The author provides a very helpful review of what Ghandi was trying to accomplish (see also my review of the DVD by that name) and what I took away from this chapter was that non-violence is not only moral, it is educational and pragmatic. It unites the oppressed and enlightens the oppressor.

5) In the chapter on reflections from a personal visit to Baghdad, the author makes it clear that on-the-ground eye witnesses could plainly see–as the UN inspectors saw and US Marine Scott Ritter said–that Iraq was no threat to the US. The educators also heard from taxi drivers and intellectuals who said plainly that the demise of Saddam would be welcome, but occupying forces would inspire a massive nationalist insurgency. How is it that neither CIA nor the White House heard these voices? We conclude that CIA has become stupid in its reliance of classified sources and fabrications from defectors seeking resettlement, while the White House is merely unethical.

6) In an overview of the geopolitics of the region, while the author does not fully examine the nefarious misbehavior and selfish refusal to help from the other Arab nations, all of which continue to refuse land or status to Palestinians, he provides a very interesting discussion of the possibility of Iraq being divided into three parts–one aligned with Turkey, another with Iran, and suggests that colonial borders should not be considered permanent–much better to accommodate, better late than never–to tribal and religious realities. He also maps the planned Israeli walls, and I can only say that I consider this a very effective exposure of the lunacy of the Israelis. Palestine should be divided in half, each half augmented by additional land from contributing adjacent states, and Jerusalem made an international city-state under a joint religion and United Nations council

7) The book concludes with a very thoughtful discussion of 9/11 and of democracy. I agree with the author when he says that 9/11 had a *basis* in the US support of the corrupt Saudis, of the Israeli persecution of the Palestinians; and of the continuing imperialist ambitions including what Al Qaeda, not the author, have called virtual colonialism. The author tells us that democratic dynamics require accountability, morality, and reciprocity, and pointedly suggests that the neo-conservatives that have hijacked the Bush Administration have replaced all three with know-nothing fundamentalism and a grotesque imperial ambition that is quite ignorant and quite craven in thinking that we can “take over” the oil and water of the Middle East, and continue to occupy any portion of it.

This book is elegant, solid common sense, capably presented.

2005/10/192009/09/25

Review: Rage of the Random Actor

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secession & Nullification, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, Compelling, Urgently Applicable to All

October 19, 2005

Dan Korem

I am utterly astonished to not see this book at the top of the charts and being absorbed by every school principal, every small town mayor, every police chief, and every counter-terrorism expert. This book is extraordinary, it is compelling, and it is utterly and urgently applicable to every single person who wishes to “defuse” potentially deadly “random actors.”

Although it is a thick book packed with details, you do not have the read the whole thing to extract value. Suffice to say that armed with this book, communities and organizations will have all they need to know to achieve early warning of potentially threatening “random actors.”

This is not a book full of psycho-babble. If anything, it is solidly grounded in practical case studies going back twenty years, and I for one, as a 30-year veteran intelligence professional, including clandestine service with constant exposure to bad boys and girls, find the book credible, useful, and easy to understand.

The bottom line, without seeking to simplify the book, is avoid de-personalization, prevent bullying, open up to individuals and empower them, and above all, be alert for any sense that they see teachers or other authority figures as “CONTROLLING” and rules as “INAPPLICABLE.”

The author's finding that terrorism is a rich kid's game, and that most US-based random actors will come from upper middle class families in small towns, are consistent with my own research and practical experience with revolutionaries.

Sadly, the underlying theme across the book is that of societal collapse. The major institutions, from school to church to sports to social clubs are all degenerating and failing to provide the inclusiveness and alternatives to boredom and alienation that they once represented. The threat of “random actors” imposing catastrophic fatal acts on their communities is very real.

This book is an important reference work, and one that I would recommend be bought in bulk, and discussed in a structured manner by every school staff and every local police department…and of course by parents!

2005/09/112009/12/04

Review: Running The World–the Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (Hardcover)

4 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Documents Arrogance and Naivete of Top Executive Officials,

September 11, 2005

David Rothkopf

The arrogance and naiveté of the National Security Council and its principal protagonists is ably reflected in the title. The pretentiousness and unreality of “Running the World” is fittingly complemented by a cover photo of a Cabinet meeting, not an NSC meeting-the latter take place in crummy little rooms with poor ventilation, not at all the kind of image one wants as an Emperor, naked or not.

There are three consistent and very useful themes throughout the book that make it extraordinarily valuable to any student of the pathologies of the national security “decision” process (I use that term *very* loosely).

First, that each Administration allows personal ambitions and an almost pathological desire for “differentiation” from the previous Administration to first destroy and then slowly rebuilt the NSC. Hence, it is dysfunctional much of the time, regardless of the ideology prevailing at the time.

The second prevailing theme, one that Amy Zegart captured so well in her seminal scholarly work, “Flawed by Design,” is the perpetual dysfunctionality, a constant dysfunctionality, between the Departments of State and Defense, and between Defense and the loosely managed U.S. Intelligence Community. The bottom line is that personalities and politics, not intelligence nor wisdom, are the prevailing drivers of U.S. national security.

Lastly, the irrelevance of secret intelligence to the White House decision process, regardless of what Administration is in power, is documented. Page 361 is an especially good indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in particular, and with specific reference to its complete incompetence at economic intelligence needed by the Department of the Treasury. In general, intelligence in this book is portrayed, accurately, as either irrelevant or a pawn to the politically-driven preferences of the White House.

This is not a scholarly work, but merits great credit for the many interviews. Over-all the author has leveraged close access to a large variety of U.S.players over time, while not engaging the other players, including foreign players, private sector players, and non-governmental players. The book, even with its focus only on US players would have benefited from an annex charting and comparing the approaches of various NSC iterations to various issues and topics, to include number of action officers, number of meetings, and number of decision papers, but that kind of hard work does not appear to have been part of the plan. There is also little mention of the role lobbying and blatant corruption play in making foreign and security policy–for example, there is no mention of how the White House and the U.S. Senate, from 1974-1979, knew full well that Peak Oil (the end of cheap oil) had arrived, but in what may well be the most treasonous and retrospectively impeachable offence against the public interest, both the White House and the Senators decided to “live the dream” and waste 25 years during which we could have achieved energy independence and sanity.

The book, by virtue of its focus on primary research, does not address the substantive literature on global issues, nor the scholarly and practical literature on the NSC. Morton Halperin's seminal work on “Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy” and other works on the NSC such as those edited by Dr. Loch Johnson, the foremost academic observer of secrecy and policy, are essential complements to this author's offering.

The book whitewashes Tony Lake, whose incapacity as an advisor merits note. Most of what the author puts forward about Lake is contradicted by other accounts including those of Dick Clarke, who says he could not get Lake's support until the time came for the latter to leave government and write a book. Naturally there are different points of view.

The book is a hatchet job on the Reagan era, even catty in its tone, but the author avoids appearing to be a sycophant to Bush II in that he very properly documents the grotesque dysfunctionality of the Bush II team (and the extraordinary competence of Vice President Cheney in getting his way as co-President). The author has done a good job of leading up to a severe indictment of the Bush II national security decision process, and excels at showing how Condi Rice was “run over” and side-lined by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neo-conservatives. His documentation on Cheney as a de facto prime minister is quite good, and these few pages are alone worth the price of the book. Pages 428-429 are “hot” and make it clear that the Bush II Administration, where Cheney was given the terrorism mandate in passing (something not widely known to the public), chose to emphasize invading Iraq, national missile defense, and energy sweetheart deals over counter-terrorism during the critical three months leading to 9-11.

There are a few disconcerting errors or failures in the book. In lambasting Reagan for invading Grenada, he says that 8,612 medals were handed out. Had he troubled to check with the military, he might have learned the difference between medals and campaign ribbons. He seriously over-sells both Burger and Lake while ignoring the blatant manner in which the Clinton Administration, and Madeline Albright in particular, sought to down-play terrorism to the point of suppressing alarmist reporting and ignoring or side-lining Dick Clarke. He claims, on page 387, that the Clinton Administration “foiled plots against trans-Pacific jumbo jet traffic.” Not so fast. The terrorist blew himself up in the Philippines prior to executing the plot, which was completely undetected by U.S. intelligence, and it was that error that revealed the plot when Philippine authorities responded to the resulting fire. On page 457 he makes the observation that the Congress has less turnover than the Soviet politburo. This should have been credited to Peggy Noonan and Ronald Reagan, who used it in an address to a joint session of Congress. He ends the book wisely, saying, “The ultimate check is an educated American public,” which thought tallies nicely with Thomas Jefferson, who said “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.”

This is a book that needed to be written. It documents the pathetic manner in which U.S. national security is in the hands of a small group of people that place loyalty to one another above intelligence, wisdom, and strategic thinking. We all suffer. It is a primary reference for all who would wish to understand why the greatest Nation on the planet has such a pathetic lack of strategic culture, vision, process, and outcome.

The Exective, and the Congress, and Broken. Here are some other books, with my reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
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
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

2005/07/252015/01/09

Review: Running on Empty–How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (Paperback)

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

6 Star Holy Cow! “Insider” Speaks Truth, Tars Both Parties,

July 25, 2005

Peter G. Peterson

Edit of 9 Jan 15 to elevate to 6 stars. In the context of the hundreds of books I have reviewed (see my master list easily found, Worth a Look: Democracy Lost & Found Essay, Book Review Blurbs and Links, this book stands out as one of the earliest and most thoughtful — still a classic, still relevant. SIX STARS.

Edit of 16 Apr 08 to add more links on the bad and the good.

Edit of 17 Jan 07 to add links.

UPDATED 15 Dec 07 Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial BranchesThis extraordinary book should be read in tandem with Lewis H. Lapham's Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy and perhaps also William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy as well as Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World.

I find it extraordinary to have the Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, which I have always considered to be an old man's club of established elites, largely out of touch with 80% of the real world (that is to say, the 80% that has almost nothing in the way of wealth, health, or rights), step up to the plate and speak truth.This book addresses the second core issue in America's future, i.e. the twin deficits that are not only going to kill the business of America, but also deprive the children of America of their future. (Lapham addresses the first: restoration of honest democracy). In combination, the $7 trillion deficit in federal spending, and the $500 billion a year trade deficit, with roughly $2 billion in foreign loans being required every single day to keep America afloat, both suggest that we are snorting political cocaine and every one of us is a damn fool for allowing two political parties to get away with selling us down the river.As the author points out in the Preface, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cautions its own master, the USA, that it is in danger of becoming an insolvent Third World country, running up bills that “would require an immediate and permanent 60 percent hike in the federal income tax, or a 50 percent cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits,” we cannot say we have not been warned.The author is balanced, focused, deliberative, and earnest. He carefully explains how both the “mainstream” political parties have completely abdicated all responsibility, and completely betrayed the public interest in their eagerness to sell legislation to the highest corporate bidders.

There is one grievous flaw in the book. In concluding that we can only survive by educating ourselves and then finding our voice, the author neglects to address the fast means of achieving short-term fiscal recovery in tandem with campaign finance and electoral reform: the elimination of subsidies, tax fraud, and tax relief for corporations. We have close to a trillion in unwarranted and unsound subsidies to poor agricultural, fisheries, forestry, and minerals programs where every dollar in subsidy is yielding high long-term costs to the taxpayer citizen; we have over $50 billion a year in documented import-export tax fraud ($25 rocket engines going out, $3000 toothbrushes coming in–advanced money laundering and tax avoidance); finally, the corporate share of federal tax revenue has dropped from 32% to 6% in the past twenty years, with corporations like Halliburton paying $15M in taxes on billions in profit–easy to fix: pay taxes on the profit declared to the stockholders.

See also the more recently published book by John Bogle, Wall Street mutual funds giant, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, in which he singled the author of this book out for special praise. What this means is that Wall Street and the “elite” now realize, as Dean Garten from Yale tried to tell them in The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders, we are all in this together, government is hosed, labor is vital, morality and integrity are non-negotiable foundations for mutual prosperity. 2008 could be the foundation year of the 2nd American Republic.

See also (with reviews):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
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

Category: Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Review: The Powers of War and Peace–The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (Hardcover)