This book is a very careful analysis of U.S.-Pakistani relations, especially over the last forty years. More importantly perhaps it provides the clearest explanation to date of why Pakistan appears to be so ambivalent towards Islamic extremism as manifested in what Riedel identifies as the “Global Jihad” and the Afghan Taliban movement. Indeed he does a brilliant job of guiding the reader through complexities of Pakistani politics and strategy. He makes clear that Pakistan regards India as an existential threat and treats both the Taliban and al Qaeda as pawns in its deadly game against India.
He does a particularly brilliant job describing the drivers of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate in relation to Islamic extremism, Pakistani internal politics, and Afghanistan. The ISI has a very complex agenda, which the U.S. has not always understood, but which always sees India as an overarching enemy.
This English translation of this classic work by Sun Tzu is certainly an excellent one in that in addition to providing the original 13 “Chapters” of the original work it also provides the reader with considerable background that places this work in its proper context. It also provides commentary on specific portions of each chapter by Chinese scholars of Sun Tzu. All in all, the late Samuel B. Griffith has produced one of the more complete and carefully organized versions of, “The Art of War.” Any serious student of this classic work will find Griffith's work an excellent resource.
The written Chinese language is ideographic not phonetic and consists of thousands of pictographic characters whose meanings often depend on how they are arranged and combined into compounds. Further, Chinese doe not employ Western style punctuation so it takes a good deal of skill and knowledge for a Western to know where to break Chinese texts into sentences and paragraphs. Griffith appears to have done an excellent job in translating the Sun Tzu texts into something understandable by an English reader.
When I was a graduate student in the 1970's, “Banks & Textor” was the bible, and I could not have done my first graduate thesis on revolution without its inspiration. This reference taught me how to “operationalize” from a pre-condition of revolution (e.g. concentration of wealth) to specific measurable factors within a society (e.g. a mix of per capita income and spread).
As I just wrote in a commentary on the gap between rich and poor in the US,
In the 1970's an era when “whole systems” thinking tried to flourish only to be crushed by the emergent merger of the two-party tyranny and Wall Street, there was a vital comparative international studies reference, “Banks & Textor,” or more properly, Arthus S. Banks and Robert B. Textor, A Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1963). We strongly suspect that today the USA would be qualified a failed state, certainly so if the 1% of the population hoarding the bulk of the wealth were isolated as an extraneous factor contributing little of value to the larger economy while siphoning off one fifth of the asset value through legalized financial crime. There is clearly a need for a return of the Banks & Textor model, but with the added sophistication of distinguishing between negative factors of domestic production (excessive concentration of wealth, legalized mortgage clearinghouse, Wall Street derivative, and Federal Reserve fraud, prison factories and prisons, hospitals, and marginalized enterprises among others).
I would love to see a great university somewhere take on the magnificent challenge of recreating this great work, but modernized to include the Internet factor, measures of openness across all fronts (see my Gnomedex ketone, “Open Everything”) and so on.
This book is still priceless, it was the gold standard in its time, we need it now more than ever, but completely redone and modernized.
I like the first and most popular review by the scholar. Here I will provide a snap-shot of my own and a couple of quotations from a rather good wikipedia review of Thoreau.
The film was longer, better, and had more stars than I expected, including William Hurt. Triteness was avoided. Above all, this movie is righteous and timely as we contemplate the present situation.
From Wikipedia on Thoreau:
The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is “not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
The movie ends where I expected to begin. And now America begins anew, with a convergence of forces in 2012, where I had hoped it might end with peace and prosperity for all. The fight has only now begun as the public has awakened to the injustices done at our expense and in our name.
RIGHTEOUS.
Here are two lists of lists of summary reviews of non-fiction work that bears on the current and future nature of the world. Both are at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog under REVIEWS.
1. The focus of this book is the complicated process that led to President Obama to increase the level of U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan in support of the so-called “surge strategy.” Like all of Woodward’s previous books this book is apolitical and contains minimal analysis and commentary. It is a chronological compilation of quotes and paraphrases that Woodward has selected to demonstrate how the decision making process in this case actually worked. Woodward is a respected journalist and has a track record of accurately reflecting White House Deliberations.
2. Woodward makes it clear that President Obama’s concerns with Afghanistan so often articulated in his run for the Presidency were genuine and unfortunately well founded. The military and political situations in Afghanistan were rapidly deteriorating to the point of endangering the U.S. position there. The President wanted to formulate a new strategy that would neutralize the threats posed by al Qaeda still operating on the Afghan-Pakistan Border and transform Afghanistan into stable country that would not serve as a host to al Qaeda. To do this, he sought to obtain at least three or four strategic alternatives that he could choose from rather than simply going with the military centric strategy option that was already on the table.
3. The military centric option was favored by Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS), General Petreaus (USA) Chief of CentCom, and General McChrystal (USA). General McChrystal strongly argued that the Afghan security forces could be quickly brought up to such a level (400,000!) and that an all American Force of 40,000 troops (four brigades) could easily seize, hold, and transfer key population centers over to Afghan Security Forces. Although his optimism was at variance with actual conditions in Afghanistan, Admiral Mullen and General Petreaus supported McChrystal’s argument.
4. Still President Obama wanted to be able to review other options before committing so many troops to a failing state like Afghanistan. He also was aware that any Afghan solution would by necessity involve a Pakistani solution. The all powerful Pakistani Military had a very complex relationship with the Taliban movement and, it was suspected, al Qaeda. He therefore sought to develop a strategy that would recognize this.
5. Prior to beginning his search for alternative solutions to the Afghanistan problem the president asked Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institute to draft a Review summarizing the current situation in Afghanistan and providing some strategic insights. Riedel is a thirty year veteran of CIA, a real expert on the Near East and Central Asia, and dates from the halcyon days when intelligence analysis was still considered a profession. His review followed and expanded points he had already established in his book, The Search for al Qaeda (Brookings Institute, 2008). The Review was especially useful in clearly articulating that solving Afghanistan’s problems necessarily involved solving Pakistan’s as well. In Riedel’s opinion the center piece of any strategy should be the elimination of al Qaeda from its border strongholds in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs). Riedel also pointed out that it would take a long term military-civil effort to turn Afghanistan into a viable nation-state. All of the National Security Council (NSC) principals, including the military, agreed that Riedel’s Review was the most accurate information on Afghanistan, al Qaeda, and Pakistan.
6. In reading Woodward’s account it is clear that Pakistan has its own high complex agenda in Afghanistan, driven not by U.S. concerns, but by fear of India. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) appears to be playing a very dangerous game of supporting the Taliban (usually), tolerating al Qaeda yet still trying to cooperate where feasible with CIA. The ISI has one primary target and that is India; it appears that ISI considers Afghanistan just another strategic pawn, as is the U.S., in its life and death game against India. The Pakistani Military share this world view and indeed General Kayani, Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army told Woodward as much. President Zardari of Pakistan appears weak and ineffectual, serving at the sufferance of the military.
7. Remarkably Riedel’s Review is a both timely and accurate summary of the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) yet it was developed from largely unclassified sources. Unremarkably, the U.S. Military while agreeing that the Review was an accurate situation report chose to ignore it because it did not fit into their pre-determined surge strategy which simply transferred the superficially successful Iraqi Surge model to Afghanistan.
8. Besides the Riedel Review, the NSC had remarkably little intelligence to help them in their search for alternative strategies. A close reading of Woodward’s account reveals why.
9. The simple fact of the matter is that in a reprise of the last forty years, the U.S. Intelligence System has been able to produce very effective tactical intelligence in support of military operations (i.e. locations of individuals and groups, tactical level threats etc.), but completely unable to produce strategic intelligence. Repeatedly in this book NSC participants express surprise that almost nothing is known of the organizational structures, funding, and level of Pakistani involvement in al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other affiliated groups. There is also no evidence in this book that anybody in the NSC took it upon themselves to review a reasonably extensive literature on the ethnography of Afghanistan to help clarify just what the Taliban and other Afghan groups actually are after.
10. In the end, the unrealistic strategic plan advanced by General McChrystal won out because the military simply refused to come up with any other and, in the absence of strategic intelligence nobody else could come up with a politically acceptable alternative.
1) Let's distinguish between the book and the heavy-handed (late) censorsorship. The book is an earnest personal effort by an experienced officer who knows what he is talking about. The book as now published does NOT violate even the late heavy-handed censorship. I consider the book to be an excellent overview of where US intelligence and special operations are today, along with General Mike Flynn's powerful critique “Fixing Intel-A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” (free online at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).
2) Now on to the officer's loss of clearances and heavy-handed censorship.
2a) First, his loss of clearances was ABUSIVE, unwarranted, and totally reflective of the pathological operational decrepitude of our entire clearance system. I am not speaking of those who administer the system, they do the best we can. I am speaking of Colonels and Flag Officers who abuse the system to punish and silence and bankrupt–this is a form of political assassination akin to CIA's “Fitness for Duty” physicals that seek to declare any person with ethics unwilling to go along with insane or unconstitutional practices to be “crazy” and unemployable.
2b) Secondly, the book was CLEARED for publication, it is only after the fact that someone (if I had to speculate, I would guess General Ron Burgess, Director of DIA) decided that the book might make them look bad and sought desperately and foolishly to find a way to get it off the market. One of the real problems we have in our Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information world is that it turns intelligent adults into morons (Daniel Elsberg said this to Kissinger, I am just borrowing it). They actually end up with the delusion that they can “control” anything by making it secret.
The US is hosed strategically, financially, operationally, politically, and ethically. What we “do” at vast expense to the now bankrupt Treasury that has wasted over 14 trillion on the bank bail-out and over 4 trillion on an out of control Pentagon that can no longer build ships or airplanes or even provide squads with effective personal weapons or immediate area surveillance devices, is not in the public interest. Poverty has skyrocketed under this Administration precisely because it continued the previous Administrations two wars, both wars justified to the public by 935 lies led by Dick Cheney while Colin Powell stood silent.
This book is valuable, it merits five stars on its own, and now that Pentagon and CIA clumsiness have made a free online side by side version of the book available, one side as written, the other as redacted, the public has the added advantage of being able to see with great precision that 90% of the redactions are idiotic and have nothing to do with national security anything–precisely the kind of ineptitude that 90% of our expensive and unwarranted secrecy seeks to cover up across the $75 billion (going on $90 billion) secret intelligence archipelago.
I have not deleted the review and welcome the negative votes as a reminder to myself that we have differing views and that many do not see the world as I see it based on my very broad experience and very broad reading patterns. I am loyal to the Republic, to the Constitution, and to the idea that is America. Much of what we do today is inconsistent with the Constitution and the idea that is America. This book is a checkpoint in our road back to being in a state of grace with our Founding Fathers. IMHO.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, in support of my latest book (free online there but better if bought in hard copy here at Amazon: INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty, I have two massive free lists of lists, the first everything that is wrong with America (according to other authors); the second everything that could be right with America (according to other authors). I am but a bridge to the thinking of others, and I commend to everyone's attention, these lists.
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Bless you all–too many of you think of the author of this book, and of me, as being part of the enemy force. Not so. We are the good guys who have been left wounded on the battlefield by comrades who should have known better. Neither the chain or command nor careerism are worth dying for, but today our brave troops are dying for precisely that: ideologically and politically justified decisions divorced from reality; and flag officers prostituting themselves to careerism and not doing what I as a young lieutenant knew was my job: protecting my troops from other officers and their bad judgments.
Phi Beta Iota: Rarely, if ever, do we find a book reviewed by someone we know, and in this instance, two someone's we know. It is for that reason we are ranking the book as 6 Star and Beyond.
38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Frightening Book of the Decade – Genius!, January 24, 2008
Steve Alten clearly states that many of the factual threads running throughout “The Shell Game” were based upon the extensive research found in my book, “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil”. I actually didn't know about Shell Game until after it had been written, when Steve offered to send me a review copy. I am so glad he did.
My book is 600 pages of non-fiction with a thousand footnotes. It is in the Harvard Business School Library.
Steve's book is a gripping, fire-breathing, page-turning novel that the great Robert Ludlum would envy. Both books convey exactly the same message: that the world is running out of oil fast; that human civilization hangs in the balance; and that the US government used this crisis as a rationale for perpetrating the attacks of 9-11 and (very likely) attacks yet to come.
Why? The American people would never allow their sons and daughters to be used and sacrificed as bloody oil conquistadors unless we could call ourselves victims.– We are victims, but not that kind.
Steve's absolute genius is in his ability to make the unpalatable irresistible. It lies also in his ability to separate research “ice cream” from research “bs”. “Children”, hucksters and some with more sinister motives have hijacked the so-called 9-11 “truth movement.” That clear thinking is what makes “The Shell Game” slice through consciousness and reach the soul like a hot scalpel through butter. Steve takes us into a terrifying future as though he were reading a military GPS locator.
