Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 204 – Public Intelligence Blog

Save your money–should have stayed an article, August 24, 2008

Andrew Gelman

This book is fine as far as it goes–the author provides a mind-numbing sequence of chapters, charts, and maps showing that rich states do not vote the way rich individuals do, and poor states do not vote the way poor individuals do.

Unfortunately, while he has a point and it is a useful important point, that is as far as the book gets. I was hoping for something much more nuanced, something that focused on all of the issues the way Paul Ray does, or Yankelovich or Weiss. This book focuses on religion and income–that's it.

I found two statements worth noting.

Page 23: “…the country is polarized in two ways, *economically* between the rich and the poor, and *culturally* between upper-income Americans in red and blue areas.” [Emphasis in original as italics.]

Page 177: “We need to move beyond stereotypes of income and place in order to understand how Americans of different backgrounds, attitudes, and cultures express their views in the electoral process.”

Duh. The last sentence is the book, above, is what I thought this book was going to be about. Not so. Nor do the terms electoral reform or Congressional corruption appear in this book.

Much more important books you can spend money on (I have reviewed all):
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Clustering of America
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back

2008/08/222010/01/05

The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up

5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, United Nations & NGOs

Superb Overview, A Bright Light Into the Future,April 22, 2008

Don Eberly

I would normally penalize the publisher one star for being lazy about providing basic information using Amazon's excellent digital loading dock.

Here's the part the publisher should have provided:

Foreword: Poverty Reduction in the Age of Globalization
01 Compassion: America's Most Consequential Export
02 Core Elements of Community and Nation-Building: The American Debate
03 The Great Foreign Aid Debate: Stingy or Generous
04 From Aid Bureaucracy to Civil Society: Participation & Partnership
05 Wealth, Poverty, and the Rise of Corporate Citizenship
06 Microenterprise: Tapping Native Capability at the Bottom of the Pyramid
07 The Great Tsunami of 2004 and America's Generosity
08 Conflict or Collaboration: Religion and Democratic Civil Society
09 Understanding Anti-Americanism
10 Civil Society and Nation-Building: Prospects for Democratization
11 Conflict and Reconciliation in the Context of Nation-Building
12 Habits of the Heart: The Case for a Global Civic Culture
13 Roadmap for Bottom-Up Nation-Building in the 21st Century

Although there are omissions and correspondences that are not addressed in this book, which relies on a handful of core readings, I have nothing but admiration for the author's talent, insight, and art in bringing this all together. This one book is easily a substitute for 10-25 other books, and the author communicates some key ideas with discipline.

Highlights for me:

+ Shift from vertical to horizontal power

+ 85% of aid is NOT from governments

+ Key trends include citizen-led development; provision of opportunity instead of charity; and use of electronic devices, notably the cell phone, to counter corruption and the abuse of power (while also increasing individual and group productivity)

+ Propaganda (public diplomacy or strategic communication or covert action media placements and influence operations) DOES NOT WORK. What works is good works for the right reasons.

+ We are in the midst of an association revolution at the same time that corporate citizenship and social responsibility is on the rise.

+ Local ownership and local innovation are the heart of success

+ There is an emerging role for religion and culture that is distinct from the negative role now played by extremists on both sides

+ Anti-Americanism is making US government aid ineffective at same time that door is being left open to non-governmental aid from US sources

+ Goal is to cultivate democratic citizens by creating civil society, which the author reminds us citing Tocqueville, is what actually nurtures citizenship–not state or government directives

+ Capital trapped in poverty far exceed all combined sources of aid

+ Third World is a hot-bed of innovation and small-scale experimentation, and the cell phone is playing a huge role in helping individuals climb out of poverty

+ Pushing democracy before civil society has been established, or before reconciliation and stabilization have been achieved, will not work

+ In next 25 years 31-41 trillion dollars in wealth will become available for philanthropy (or debauchery, but the author is an optimist)

+ In the age of networks collaboration, the concept of sound governance is one that needs development–I thought immediately of a sparse matrix in which various organizations have metrics associated with a specific project, and they strive to turn each from red to yellow to green.

+ 75% of US individual taxpayers did not itemize deductions, this is a huge untapped source of charity–however, while the author focuses on increasing individual donations to intermediaries like the Red Cross, we at Earth Intelligence Network would much prefer to create global range of gifts tables that allow all individuals to opt in at any level ($10 and up) and start peer-to-peer giving on a global scale at the household level of precision.

+ Key trends: from the giant to the small; from the remote to the local; from the bureaucratic to the non-bureaucratic; from the impersonal to the personal; from the compartmentalized to the holistic

+ More key trends: from clientelism to citizenship; from giantism to human scale; from credentialism to capacity building (see EIN's idea for teaching the poor one cell call at a time using global virtual networks of volunteers–they do not need diplomas, they need knowledge on demand); from fragmentation to integration (e.g. must harmonize all twelve policies to eradicate any given threat); from aid bureaucracies to civil society

+ Bottom-line: empower the indigenous and do not pretend you know what they need. It is NOT “on us” to do anything other than practice the Golden Rule and be compassionate and generous.

+ The final section of the book needs to be read in detail but includes ideas such as government becoming a catalyst rather than a supplier (steer not row); achieving a means of tracking (and we hope, orchestrating) government, private and NGO giving, and remittances, which the author feels must be counted.

+ He speaks of a third way that combines conditionality (give us a good legal environment) with anti-corruption (on this point his focus is on mis-direction of aid, not on the Canadian gold company paying a single Colonel to move a village so they can loot billions in gold from the Peruvian commonwealth)

+ Corporate strategic or venture giving is a favorable emerging trend, along with social entrepreneurship and I would add, hybrid enterprises

+ Web-based giving is in its infancy (and still gives control of the money to large organizations with huge staffs–EIN wants to get to P2P Web 3.0 giving that is both point to point and on the record for all to see

The book concludes with 26 suggestions spanning the full eight tribes as I call them (government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, NGOs, and civil society) and for this alone you must buy the book or check it out of the library. Solid common sense.

Amazon does not provide a capability to link to lists, so I can only offer a couple of examples in several literatures. If I point to a book you can read my review and find 10 more links there.

Poverty Potential
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Capitalism 3.0
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

Civilization Building
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

Tao of Democracy
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Failure of Government and the Two-Party Spoils System
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It

2008/08/152011/10/22

Review: Obama–The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate

4 Star, Corruption, Democracy, Politics

Polemical, Provocative, Frightening, & Credible, April 15, 2008

Webster Griffin Tarpley

Edit of 18 Oct 2008: New book by this same author with much more detail including extensive notes, Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. Tell others. We have a problem and it is not Obama, it's the people around and behind him.

Edit of 9 May 2008: “House Negro.” That's what a Reverend of color called Senator Obama, and I agree. The Democratic “system” is trying desperately to field a “front” that can win, and Obama has rolled over for them. Just as Colin Powell betrayed all moderate Republicans by confusing loyalty with integrity (instead of quitting and calling for Dick Cheney's impeachment and then running for President in 2008), Obama is, as this book suggests, a Manchurian candidate–a House Negro.

Edit of 7 May 2008: I lost all respect for Obama when he finally disowned Reverend Wright. His original instincts were correct, his late renunciation is further proof that he is bought and paid for by the system. Reverend Wright, despite his inflamatory language, was right on target in seeking to arouse passion about misdeeds done in our name. This can still be a great Republic, but it needs integrity, transparency, and dignity for all. I respect Reverent Wright more than I respect Senator Obama at this point.

Edit of 5 May 2008: Please ignore the individuals whose hysterical reviews demonstrate they are reacting to mine, they have not actually bought nor read the book. I deal with reality, nothing else. This book is a wake-up call, just as the 935 lies and the 25 impeachable offenses of Dick Cheney are a wake-up call. I have confidence in our Collective Intelligence. I have no confidence in the think tanks, the candidates, or the political system of a two party organized crime spoils system.

Edit of 1 May 2008: In the author's own words:

This is not an academic study. It is a vigorous political polemic. It is meant to sound an alarm against a looming catastrophe. All of that is sincere, and none of it is hidden. Now that the phase of adulation and cultism is dissipating, I urge you to take a fresh look.

In the context of all that I know and have read, this book shocked me into realizing that the author may well be correct, and that Senator Obama and his wife, as intelligent and well-intentioned as they may be, are nothing more than puppets to a Trilateral Commission/Federal Reserve mafia.

I say this as someone who believed in the potential of this candidate, but who subsequently found that his campaign staff, his senior political advisor, and even Oprah Winfrey, are so enthralled with the prospects of an easy engineered win (money talks), that they are refusing to engage with or listen to Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, Naderites, or Independents. They refuse to mention the word “transpartisan” that outs the lie of bipartisanship (“keep the two-party spoils system alive, continue to exclude Independents and others from all debates”), they refuse to address the need for Electoral Reform and the naming of a transpartisan cabinet in advance of the election, and they refuse to create much less publish any semblance of a balanced budget, without which all of their promises are empty (as well as often mis-guided). So for all of these reasons, as polemical as the author's book it, I find it credible and compelling. This book also explains why Mike Bloomberg has gone silent–others with more money than he appear to have persuaded him he could, like Bear Sterns, be punished by being bankrupted.

MOST INTRIGUING is the manner in which the author dissects and evaluates Senator Obama in the context of who his advisors are.

I now realize that the refusal of all three candidates to outline any kind of strategy for eradicating the ten high-level threats to mankind by harmonizing the twelve policies is deliberate–they don't HAVE a strategy, they have an agenda, and it does not include our well-being.

Let me set the stage with two quotes from pages 178 and 179:

“Obama is best understood as a multi-contractor puppet with hardware from the Ford Foundation and software from the Rockefeller-Trilateral-Brzezinski circles.”

“The Obama campaign has thus far been shown to represent: the Ford Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberger Group, Skull and Bones, the RAND Corporation, the Soros Foundation, the Rockefeller family, and the Friedmanite Chicago School of economic genocide. Obama is the Manchurian candidate groomed and indoctrinated by those financier-controlled groups. As president, Obama would impose a regime of crushing economic austerity and a new set of foreign wars far worse than what has been seen under Bush.”

I am going to highlight a few points here, and reserve the option of modifying this review after I talk to the author tonight. I want to get this down while it is fresh in my mind.

The real kicker, the “truth-teller” that persuades me this author is on to a very important potential nightmare scenario for the USA, is the role of Zbigniew Brzezinski as the top foreign policy advisor and indeed the “maker” of both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

I have always respected Brzezinski's talents, but as I have grown older and wiser I have come to see him as nothing more than a war criminal, no better or worse than Henry Kissinger, both of them convinced that a) they know better, b) their grand strategic design demands the subversion of all who stand in their way, and c) never mind a little genocide here and there (and especially in Africa), eugenics is code for depopulating the areas we have not finished looting.

What I see in the two political parties, both Running On Empty, is a propensity to promote sycophants and then let them do great evil “in our name” and without retribution.

The book on Kissinger has been written: The Trial of Henry Kissinger. The book on Brzezinski remains to be written. For a taste, see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025.

I share the author's view of Brzezinski as a loose cannon with a rabid anti-Russian sentiment, and I for one will not vote for any candidate that allows Brzezinski to play with our loose nukes, or to antagonize Russia with missile defense in Poland.

The author is quite persuasive when he discusses the manner in which Brzezinski obtained both political asylum and a lucrative complete funding package for the Chechnyan terrorist leader now granted asylum and living in splendor here in the DC area (at taxpayer expense).

He makes it a point to observe that Brzezinski is an opponent of Third World development, wanting no more miracles such as have been achieved in Asia.

I believe the author when he describes Senator Obama as Brzezinski's last chance, at 80, to create destabilization along the Russian western border, and to goad China into invading Siberia to the point there is a Russian-Chinese war. Thus does Brzezinski go up in flames, taking the rest of us with him.

Other Obama advisors (less Joe Nye, who can be reasonable) are also frightening, buy and read the book for details.

The author has several major pet rocks that get tossed around, and I summarize them here:

1) The Clintons are the lesser evil because they have no single owner and Senator Clinton, for all her flaws and tribulations, appears to be genuinely in favor of New Deal arrangements for the working class and the vanishing middle class..

2) The young trouble this author. He considers them ignorant, gullible, and too subject to manipulation,

3) Fascism lurks, and one price Senator Obama may have to pay is that of his life–being assassinated early on (shortly after inauguration ostensibly by a foreign agent)so the Vice President can take over and fulfill the fascist/corporate control dream. I shake my head as I write this–if I had not lived the life I have, been part of the CIA, read all the books I have, all of this would be disreputable ranting. The book is an indictment, not a conviction, and merits attention.

In other provocative notes the author considers Mark Penn to have been a mole into the Clinton campaign all along, and to have provided a strategy intended to fail, bolstered by fake polling that misled Senator Clinton.

The author laments the splintering of the 9/11 Truth Movement between Kucinich and Ron Paul, and suggests that Kucinich was in grave error when he threw his delegates to Senator Obama.

The author explores how John Edwards dominates the two major issues of the day, poverty and labor rights, and these were essentially stolen from him with “big money” we do not see behind the “little money.”

The author draws to a close warning the reader that like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama was selected and promoted by the Trilateral Commission, and that like Jimmy Carter, he will preside over a melt-down of the US. Indeed, he draws a line from “malaise” to Mrs. Obama's discussion of “broken souls.”

The author believes that Senator Obama is being set up for a fall with the national infrastructure fund, which will be speculative and lead to a major economic setback (for the little people, the funds will do fine).

The author believes that the mental health of the candidates for President is something that must be examined in public very carefully. He has grave doubts about both Senator Obama and Senator McCain, and while I have grave doubts about Senator Clinton's ability to listen to anyone other than her cronies, I do NOT have a single doubt at all about her sanity and seriousness of purpose.

His draft emergency economic recovery plan covers a stop of foreclosures, raising minimum wage, Tobin Tax implementation, single-payer health care, tax relief for families, nationalization of the Federal reserve and re-regulation of banking and finance, funding infrastructure to eliminate daily auto commutes, protection of the family farm, attention to global depression, and restoration of FDR's “freedom from want.”

So there you have it. I am impressed.

See also Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and also An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New and Updated Edition and of course all the books on the lies told to We the People regarding Viet-Nam and more recently, 9-11, Katrina, and Iraq.

There are others. Bottom line: Government lies (both left and right) and We the People need to flush all these knaves down the toilet and start over.

For competing visions that do not tolerate Manchurian machinations, see, among many others:

The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/08/152009/10/30

Review: Participatory Budgeting (Public Sector Governance)

5 Star, Budget Process & Politics, Democracy, Public Administration

The Best Book on the Topic, with a CD-ROM, Totally Rich,April 15, 2008

Anwar Shah

This is the very best book on Participatory Budgeting I could find (other than those on Puerto Alegre specifically, I will review one of those later) and once in hand, it has fully satisfied. The higher than normal cost for a book of this type is fully justified by the CD ROM.

Use the Search Inside This Book line under the book cover to see the Table of Contents and other elements of the book. I did not do that but if you have any doubts at all, reading the Table of Contents should be more than enough to overcome them.

For my purposes the two most important parts of the book were overview by the editor Anwar Shah (top expert with the World Bank); the guide to participatory budgeting by Brian Wampler; and the concluding appendix by Alan Folscher, on Citizen Participation and State Effectiveness, and also–very important–Preconditions and Enabling Factors for Citizen Engagement with Public Decisions. The rest of the book is regional case studies, and the CD ROM is country case studies.

From the Overview

+ Participatory Budgeting is direct democracy
+ It empowers citizens to deliberate, debate, and influence
+ It is a tool for educating, engaging, and empowering citizens
+ Transparency can reduce inefficiency as well as corruption
+ It strengthens governance by including the marginalized
+ It comes with significant risks (this was the new stuff for me)
– Process can be captured by interest groups
– Can cover up existing injustices
– Tyranny of group dynamics can overpower good intentions
– Tyranny of method can exclude other democratic means (much as the fine print in many legal agreements excludes access to courts and juries by including a concealed agreement to abide by arbitration)

Introduction to Participatory Budgetng

+ Four factors for success
– Strong mayoral support
– Civil society willing and able to engage in the debate (harder to find that I realized)
– Supportive policy environment that can withstand legislative pressure\
– Financial resources to actually fund programs sponsored by citizens

Guiding Tenets Include:

+ Division of municipality into regions for easier discussion and implementation
+ Government-sponsored meetings throughout the year
+ Quality of Life Index is created to weight program toward less well off
+ Deliberation and negotiatiion is public
+ Bus caravan visits all the proposed projects before voting on them
+ Elected representatives vote on all the projects (open or secret)
+ Municipal councel is elected with two representatives from each region
+ Year end report is published
+ Everything in monitored publicly year round

The above cannot possibly capture the nuances and complexities of each individual case study, so that is where ethnographic specificity must be applied.

Appendix on Citizen Participation

+ Types of participation
– Information sharing
– Consultation
– Joint decision making
– Initiation and control by citizen stakeholders

+ Preconditions and Enabling Factors
– Openness and democratic depth of the political and governance systems
– Existence of enabling legal frameworks
– Capacity for participation inside and outside government
– Existence of functional and free media institutions
– Willingness and capacity of government to make budget information open

What most surprise me as a lay reader (i.e. I claim no expertise at all, I simply believe to direct democracy) was the MANY OBSTACLES to participatory budgeting. I have heard that WikiCalc is coming along, which would along for budget information to be commented on and then different perspectives aggregated from the individual to the neighborhood or political preference level; and I hope that EarthGame will become a reality in which each person plays themselves and has access to full information, but in the context of populations that struggle day to day, it is going to take much more than an “invitation” to achieve participatory budgeting. In a nutshell, we know now that it can work, but getting it to work anywhere is going to be a real challenge.

Great book. A solid academic endeavor that if I were repeating my MPA this year, should certainly be in the Budgeting Course.

2008/08/142009/10/30

Review: Losing the Golden Hour–An Insider’s View of Iraq’s Reconstruction

5 Star, Diplomacy, Iraq, Stabilization & Reconstruction

Unusual Primary Source on Stabilization & Reconstruction, April 14, 2008

James Stephenson

I heard the author speak at the Army War College Strategy Conference organized by the Strategic Studies Institute (8-10 April 2008) and was so impressed I ordered his book on the spot. As a person, this man strikes me as supremely professional, competent, worldly, down-to-earth, and above all, without ego. This is a courageous individual that has specialized–only a handful can say this–in delivering aid into combat environments.

The book is relatively short–under 150 pages–well written and easy to read. Here are the highlights from my flyleaf notes:

1) 28 years experience in stabilization & reconstruction, seven failed states behind him that he tried to help

2) Foreword of the book is by Rich Armitage, a former Navy Seal that I have found to be a speaker of truth to power (one reason why the Bush Administration hated him)

3) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part I. They closed the Department of State and the Agency for International Development (AID) out during the critical year before and year after the elective invasion and occupation of Iraq.

4) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part II. They created a Pentagon version of AID run by a General that had no clue about the more nuanced community based assistance program, who blew his whole wad on heavy duty infrastructure projects instead of the community water, electricity, food, and sewage treatment and health security needed.

5) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part III. Instead of embracing skilled experts from AID and elsewhere, the Pentagon staffed their program office with ideologically-pure puppies, enfants terrible whose only qualification was a resume at the Heritage Foundation and the ability to chant the mantra, “God Blesses Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney IS God.”

MOST IMPRESSIVE to me was the author's elegant discussion of how stabilization must be secured BEFORE reconstruction can begin.

The author points out that at 18 billion and up this was the largest RECONSTRUCTION project since the Marshall Plan (explicit throughout the book is the fact that the US Army, handicapped by Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz, never, ever, achieved sztabilization.

The author is kind to Wolfowitz. In his words, Wolfowitz was a decent man who fell sway to the “swan song” of Chalabi and the other knaves representing Iran and one slice of the Iraqi exiles.

The author is also careful to point out that he saw no villany, only incompetence and hubris, during his time in Iraq. [There is a superb recent memo, look for it at Earth Intelligence Network, on the utter incompetence of Foreign Service Officers and Pentagon “temp hires” to manage any kind of program.

Early on we learn that the Pentagon's program office for Iraq is totally dysfunctional, mockingly called the “Jonestown” of Iraq (where everyone drank the poisoned kool-aid).

The author slams Paul Bremmer as a good man who paid his dues in traditional diplomacy and had absolutely no clue how to manage an occupation presence. The author is careful to note that Bremer was an enigma, personable and competent but not right for the job, and to be faulted for allowing DoD to foist off on him an army of incompetent puppies, each a minor-league ideological hack.

The author is clearly a world-class expert in identifying stabilization first, then reconstruction, and in the latter, focusing on the urgency of domestic security, border control, and accommodating neighbors.

He is devastatingly critical of Admiral Nash (a Sea Bee) focusing on big engineering projects dealing with big infrastructure reconstruction, while completely missing out–not having a clue–on the importance of the less expensive but necessarily more pervasive and localized community reconstruction–rule of law, water, electricity, food, and don on.

He points out that because of ignorance at all levels of the Pentagon “chain of command” that completely excluded State and AID during the critical pre and post “Golden” years, agricultural reconstruction was not funded at all.

He returns to the theme of hundreds of US advisors whose only qualification was ideological insanity, each capable of doing great harm as long as they were within Iraq.

I am VERY impressed by the author's recounting of the logic behind ensuring that AID personnel received hardened cement residences instead of trailers–the cement could be done faster, provided more protection, and was cheaper. The idiot general in charge of housing, on the other hand, went with trailers because he was not a combat general that understood the dangers of loose shrapnel in the night (in Viet-Nam, after each of 10 coups, I would pick shrapnel out of those wonderful French roll-down windows that could stop anything short of an RPG).

Kudos go from the author to, among others:

David Wall of International Resources Group

General Peter Chiarelli of 1st Cav gains huge face here, to the point that he could be a real star at the four-star level in the near term. This is a general that understood and demanded community-level assistance to prevent the need for deaths and bullets.

Fernando Cossich is described as heroic and clearly merits his own Wiki page at Wikipedia.

Ambassador Negroponte gets very high marks from this author, who describes Ambassador Negroponte as forceful in demanding everyone recognize that his arrival represented the END of the occupation, and the beginning of US representation to the Iraqi sovereign government. I was deeply impressed by this portion of the book.

In dealing with rumors and morale, the author found, based on his experience, that transparency and constant accountability was the best.

USAID kept 30,000 young men from insurgency by employing them via various means that did not cause them to be targets.

The military, up to and including General Abizaid, had no clue what AID did or was capable of doing. A Capt as permanent liaison to AID proved to be worth his weight in gold.

During the darkest days, the author discovered that the Pentagon has no evacuation plan, a mandated requirement.

The Pentagon was considerd so very blind, reliant on sources that told them what they wanted to hear, that the CIA Station challenged and mocked the “good news blinders”. The author elaborates that the Pentagon wanted to pretend everything was fine, and did not understand that security in a non-permissive environment was something to be managed, not pretended.

The author concludes that we missed the Golden Hour by persisting in occupation and allowing looting and then allowing contractors to spend on security that should have been the precondition for contractors entering the country at all.

The author is careful to praise the contractors. They did what they were asked to do, in a non-permissive environment that the Pentagon allowed to exist when General Shinseki, General Zinni, and so many others had warned in advance, as did Mr. White of the Department of State, of the insanity of going it at all, much less “Rumsfeld Lite.”

The author concludes that Iraq cannot remain whole. The Kurds and the Shi'ites have their act together and are already independent, while the Sunnis self-immolate in chaos aided and abetted by US incompetence.

The author himself recommends the following two books:
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (Vintage)

I put this book down with a sense of reverence and admiration. I knew AID people in Southeast Asia, in Viet-Nam, in Thailand, and elsewhere, including AID people that died in the line of duty. I am now convinced we need a Vice President for Foreign Affairs with complete oversight of State, AID, a restored US Information Agency with the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Open Source Agency as the two main divisions, and Defense as a reduced power.

Of all the books I have read on Iraq, this is the one that I take most seriously. It is a first-person account, focused on the good side of America. The author is clearly qualified to be director of AID under a sane president and a legal vice president, and I for one think he is one of the very best men in public service.

2008/08/112009/10/30

Review: War and Decision–Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

4 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), War & Face of Battle

Articulate Vindictive Oblivious but Ultimately Necessary Reading, April 11, 2008

Douglas J. Feith

This book is essential reading for historians and those concerned with national security reform. It is not recommended for normal people, including those that have strong political views one way or the other. You will get much better value simply by reading reviews of a 100 related books starting with the ten below, and buying the book Fixing Failed States and checking out the reviews of the books I recommend there.

I read the Index after the Table of Contents and before I actually read the book. It became immediately evident to me that:

1) The index stinks in not including place names like Jalabad, Tora Bora, Kandahar, etcetera.

2) The author has written a personal account that opens with a concise (even impressive) summary of the high points of “alleged” criticisms and conspiracy claims, but with the exception of Bob Woodward, I could not find a single other reputable author in the index (see my list of ten books below, a token of the 100+ books that generally refute most of what this author has to say at the external level). I have no doubt this author is honest and credible on the details he knows, but as with the Viet-Nam rejoinder, “so what”, I really question whether the author–good man that he is–is at all in touch with reality. Baer, Bamford, Clarke, Ritter, etc. do NOT appear in this book's index or footnotes that I could find.

Getting into the book, I am immediately impressed by the existence of a supporting website (waranddecision.com just add the www) and I am generally very impressed with the level of detail, the sequencing of information, the able reference to those he talked with by name. There is no question in my mind about the authenticity of this book. The author speaks from his mind and his heart, he is not dumb, just self-centered.

As the book progresses, I am astonished by several factors:

1) Dick Cheney appears only 28 times in this book, and not before page 53. The Cheney-Rumsfeld relationship is one that was evidently not shared by the author. He consequently is oblivious to the reality that Dick Cheney orchestrated 935 distinct documented lies in the rush to war; and committed 25 distinct impeachable offenses, not least of which was leveraging the nine advance warnings of the plans to attack the World Trade Center to allow a Pearl Harbor.

2) I had to go forward to read Chapter 6 (“Why Iraq”) because of the prominence of the author's claim of the many “proven” instances in which Iraq trained, supported, or financed terrorism, but I quickly note that the author makes no reference at all the many proven open sources, including the former President of Czechoslovakia, who totally trashed this assertion.

3) The author is actively deceptive on more than one occasion. He cites the New York Times as “evidence” while casually neglecting to mention that he is citing the notorious Judith Miller, a fellow traveler at least, if not an active agent of influence for Israel.

4) The author is critical of the CIA throughout the book, including Milt Bearden whom I happen to respect greatly, and while I myself think CIA needs to be burned to the ground, I do not respect the manner in which the author manages to completely disrespect by omission of three major facts:

+ CIA got it right on WMD. Between the son in law that defected and the 30+ legal travelers that Charlie Allen orchestrated, CIA established without a shadow of a doubt that they kept the cookbooks, poured the stocks into the river (something that will have downstream impacts for decades), and were bluffing for regional sake. Since Rumsfeld and Cheney delivered the original WMD supplies and the joke is they kept the receipts, what I see here is an elegant concealment of the reality that the Pentagon was not about to listen to the CIA no matter what. The fact is that the professional CIA got it right, George Tenet sacrificed his integrity, and the White House was able to ignore secret intelligence because both the CIA professionals and the Pentagon's flag officers drank the koolaid and confused loyalty with integrity to their Constitutional oaths of office. ALL of our checks and balances failed us.

+ The author infuriates me with the manner in which he blatantly misleads the reader about how he and Rumsfeld triumphed in pushing for both early precision targetting inside Afghanistan, and the push to Kabul prior to the winter. He is maliciously evil in failing to credit the CIA teams that are described in “First In” and “Jawbreaker” and he can be excused for not being told that Putin told Bush he could take Kabul before the winter. Obviously the author does not read widely, and one can understand how immersed he might be in the reality of his own creation.

+ He misleads the reader in parroting Ahmed Chalabi's accusations against the CIA, while failing to point out that CIA fired Chalabi for stealing and lying; that Chalabi was convicted in Jordan for embezzlement; and that Chalabi is almost certainly a very well paid agent of influence for Iran, one reason most in Iraq's leadership circles want nothing to do with him.

In passing, there is no mention in this book of our love fest with 42 of 44 dictators; there is active (virulent) hatred for Colin Powell and Rich Armitage (I would follow either over any hill), nor is there any mention, as the book draws to a close, that ignorant treasonous rendition and torture aside, the score for nailing terrorists right now is CIA 40+, DoD zero (I may not know of one or two).

I bought and labored through this book because James Schlesinger recommended it and because it may be the only book among the 100 or so I have read circling the sordid regime from 2000-2008, that comes from one of the avowed “insiders.” I give the author high marks for his homework, his documentation, and his writing.

Doug Feith is what you get when you agree to elect one man who picks a few cronies that pick other cronies who in turn orchestrate their kind of crony in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere. In Singapore, I am told, one must have a Master of Business Administration before being qualified to run for Parliament. We don't need to go that far. I believe that in the General Election, we must demand that Presidential candidates appoint a Cabinet in advance of election, at least three of whom must participate in the debate process (State, Defense, Attorney General), *and* they must produce a balanced budget proposal for public scrutiny at least 90 days before Election Day. It's time to put Citizen Wisdom back into the Republic.

2008/08/072009/12/04

Review: The Way of the World–A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics

Forgery is old news–focus on the loss of morality, August 7, 2008

Ron Suskind

EDIT of 3 Sep 08 to add CIA published denial and attack, and comment from Association of Former Intelligence Officers, as a comment.

I have reviewed all the books linked to below, and my reviews of those books will add depth to this review.

Ron Suskind's first book on the current Administration, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 was extraordinary for its deep look at Dick Cheney and how since his Ford days, he has always favored unfettered Executive power and has never, in every Continuity of Government exercise, NEVER, given any thought to Congress. He ALWAYS went for an Executive dictatorship that used “war powers” to overturn the Constitution and every single civil liberty. However, the better books on Cheney (25 documented high crimes) and Bush (a tragedy within a farce) are these:

Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Bush Tragedy

The media and the other reviewers are placing excessive emphasis on the forgery. This is old news. Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, personally said that the White House claims that Iraqi intelligence met Al Qaeda in his country were false. The son in law of Sadaam Hussein who defected asserted, very credibly (and without torture) that the regime kept the cookbooks, destroyed the stocks (Army intelligence tells me they poured so much stuff into the river the future of those downstream is very scary), and were bluffing for regional influence's sake). The fact is that in addition to Cheney's 25 high crimes, there were 935 documented lies told by the White House, and their lack of ethics, integrity, and respect for the Constitution is now beyond repudiation. See for example:

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

I continue to be astonished that citizens of the US are not burning tires in the streets and surrounding the White House demanding the immediate exile of Dick Cheney and the appointment of a care taker Vice President, at a time when open source intelligence (OSINT) is telling all of us, and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that Dick Cheney has promised Israel the US will nuke the Iranians between November 2008 and January 2009.

The core value of this book is NOT in the forgery, which is old news, but in the broad picture it paints of a Republic that has become a Third World dictatorship in which Cheney calls the shots, Congress is complaint (both parties be damned, the Republicans for being collaborators, the Democrats for being doormats), the war loots the individual taxpayer for Halliburton's financial benefit, and brave Americans die for an illegal, immoral war justified by a cadre of liars: Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Feith.

I read a a great deal–an almost fruitless attempt to remain sane in a time of mass insanity–and what I admire most about this author and this book is his broad focus on morality, civil liberties, and the values that differentiate true conservatives who read and value philosophy–and liberals who parrot phrases they do not understand. This is SERIOUS stuff!

In support of this author's “brief” to We the People, who should all be absorbing and then acting upon his message of paradise lost, I can only point to four more books within my Amazon limit, but urge all to look at my lists of books on evaluating Dick Cheney, on the case for impeachment, and on strategy, emerging threats, and anti-Americanism for good reason.

Will and Ariel DurantThe Lessons of History, a capstone volume on their 10-volume History of Civilization, tell us that MORALITY is a strategic asset that is priceless. Ron Suskind is right on target when he points out that it is this aspect–the loss of our national morality–that distinguishes the Bush-Cheney regime. Other Presidents have lied, cheated, and stolen, but this is the first in modern history to combine BOTH global imperialism AND domestic subversion on a scale that makes Richard Nixon look like a novice.

Max Manwaring, contributing editor of The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, and his distingusihed authors, make the point that LEGITIMACY is the single most priceless asset for any government, for it empowers citizens and enables commerce, innovation, and civil society.

Ambassador Mark Palmer, author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 points out that the US is not respected nor trusted in part because the Bush-Cheney Administration has chosen to be best pals with all but two of the 44 dictators in the world. Rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaping at home (including Guantanamo); deep secret and financial relations–at our expense–with 42 dictators busy looting and terrorizing their publics. Go figure….

Much of what the author has brought together is not new for those of us that continually monitor and agonize over crimes against the Republic, but I have to give him credit for crafting an elegant presentation that makes his book a moving and hence essential wake up call for the Republic. The people are NOT sovereign today, the people are sheep whose civil liberties, freedom of expression, right to bear arms, even their right to assemble, are all under attack.

With my final link, choosing from over 1,000 candidates, I conclude with a strong recommendation for the book Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. America is a failed state, and it is not just Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson that are saying this, but also true conservatives steeped in thinking and integrity who are aghast at both the crimes of this Administration “in our name,” and the two clowns we have running for President, neither of whom can produce a strategy to restore America in the face of the ten high-level threats to humanity, a coherent policy matrix (twelve policies from Agriculture to Water), or a draft balanced budget and notional Cabinet proving they have a clue. They do not.

The USA has become a Third World nation. We let it happen by abdicating our moral and civic responsibilities as citizens of a Republic. Right now, regardless of who “wins” in November, we all lose. THAT is the point of this great book. The Republic is adrift and sinking fast.

Learn how to do public intelligence in the public interest at Earth Intelligence Network. It's time we take back the power.

Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

Review: Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State–Why Americans Vote the Way They Do