Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 301 – Public Intelligence Blog

Jim Wallis for National Chaplain–Extraordinary Book,

May 4, 2005

Jim Wallis

Jim Wallis has my vote to be Chaplain to the Nation. This is an extraordinary book. Indeed, if the President has a Science advisor, I have to ask myself, why doesn't he have a Faith advisor?

I recommend this book be read together with “Faith-Based Diplomacy” by Douiglas Johnson, and “The Soul of Capitalism” by William Greider. This hard-hitting book is full of both common sense and scholarship. Over-all it slams both Right and Left–the Right for claiming that Jesus is pro-war, pro-rich, and a selective moralist; the Left for not embracing faith and God as part of the politics of America.

Early in the book I am immediately won over by the author's preliminary manifesto in his preface: we who have faith are not single-issue voters; we believe that poverty is a religious issue; that caring for God's earth is a religious issue; that war–and making peace–is a religious issue; that truth-telling is a religious issue; that human rights are a religious issue; that our response to terrorism is a religious issue; and finally, that a consistent ethic of human life is a religious issue.

Throughout this book the author returns again and again, to a theme that I am now seeing everywhere: morality matters. The author is superb at relating the power of faith and the morality of religion (not pretentious morality, but practiced morality) to the real world. On pages 105-107, if you are glancing through the book in a bookstore, he repeats key points he made a year after 9-11 on how to defeat terrorism–among his ten points a few simply leap off the page: 4. Let's define terrorism the right way, and allow no double standards. 5. Attack not only the symptoms, but also the root causes of terrorism. 6. The solutions to terrorism are not primarily military. And so on.

Poverty, economic justice, and *moral* capitalism are the underlying challenges that confront the author, and he does a really fine job in this book of showing how America will never be safe if we fail to address global as well as homeland poverty. (In this regard, see my reviews of “Working Poor” by David K. Shipler, and “Nickled and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich.)

The book ends with an extraordinary list of 50 predictions for the future. This list, by itself, is worth the price of the book. #45 is consistent with the eight movements centering around collective intelligence: “All our media will be owned by two or three corporate conglomerates unless and effective movement rises up to stop this trend and restore a genuinely democratic public discourse.” I have the strong feeling that the author's faith is being tested by both the Right and the Left–indeed, in the social and economic policy arena, the author, from a religious point of view, is a perfect counter-part to the Chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations, Peter Petersen, whose book, “Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It,” is the practical counterpart to “God's Politics.”

This is a world-class, Nobel-level discourse.

2005/05/032009/12/04

Review: Winning The Future–A 21st Century Contract with America (Hardcover)

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Future, Politics

Powerful Focal Point–Not Perfect But Best Available Vision,

May 3, 2005

Newt Gingrich

EDIT of 20 Dec 07: adding links.

The author provides a litmus test up front by which one can decide if they want to read the book–ten questions. I agreed with 94% of his propositions. The issues he has chosen to highlight here are not perfectly reasoned, but they are the best available and worthy of support.

In the one area where I have spent a lifetime, that of intelligence, Newt Gingrich is flawed on the one hand–suggesting that we need to triple the amount of money we spend on intelligence is certainly well-intentioned but understandably uninformed about the nuances of national intelligence–more money just makes these people worse [see my book On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, with a Foreword by Senator Boren, and The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption with a Foreword by Senator Roberts]–and brilliant on the other. When he writes so clearly about how we need to monitor all knowledge being created worldwide, with virtual real-time translations services, a Google for science & technology, and no publication overseas going more than ninety days without being translated into English, I am just blown away. This is what the national Open Source Agency recommended by the 9-11 Commission is supposed to do, but CIA is trying to “capture” that mission, which they have consistently screwed over since the end of World War II. Where it really matters, Newt Gingrich not only gets it, he is leading us. He also focuses on our lack of participation in global knowledge forums across all domains, and he champions nothing less than a global presence and global monitoring of all knowledge. This is *powerful* stuff.

I miss Ronald Reagan. No one now running as a Republican candidate, except Ron Paul, comes close. Somewhere in there, Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan have important roles to play. They have earned the right to share–but not monopolize–leadership in America.

2005/04/282010/09/18

Review: New World New Mind–Moving Toward Conscious Evolution

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

cover new world new mind — Vote and/or Comment on Review

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2005/04/282009/12/04

Review: Phantom Soldier–The Enemy’s Answer to U.S. Firepower

5 Star, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Addictive Common Sense, Trashes High-Tech Blinders,

April 28, 2005

H. John Poole

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This author is addictive. I started with Crescent Moon, got Phantom Soldier next, and now am eagerly awaiting the Last 100 Yards. Although I do not expect to see combat in my remaining years, I have three boys that almost certainly will if things keep going as they are, and this book is frightening to any parent or voter.

His bottom line is clear: all of our expensive high-tech equipment is increasing the soldier's load (shades of SLA Marshall) at the same time that it is reducing the soldier's ability to see (one eye covered by a sensor), smell, move, and communicate. We are pursuing a very expensive top down command and control model of confrontational fire-power warfare that is rather easily bogged down by stealth adversaries patient enough to crawl for days and dig underground for months in adavance. I am reminded of the “Tunnels of Ch Chi.” The author is totally tuned in with what I think of as 5th Generation or “bottom up” warfare in which the small units do most of the sensing and thinking, and they are not simply pawns on a giant chessboard.

Much of the book is a highly readable and easily understood account of the common sense and complex thinking that allows Eastern units that are very well-trained to defeat or avoid Western units that are very well-provisioned (I am also reminded of MajGen Bob Scales “Firepower in Limited War,”, but not trained in the infantry skills needed to go man on man in stealth mode.

There is a very great deal to this author's thinking. I do not expect him to have the impact necessary on our new brigade Army or expeditionary Marine Corps, but I hope that by the time my three boys are of draft age, there are generals in power that share this author's wisdom. This is seriously good stuff that every parent and voter should be reading.

I would add, however, that there is another side of grand strategy that we are neglecting. While this author focuses on the tactical excellence that Eastern warriors can achieve, I also worry about American naivete in not understanding that some countries–China and Iran for example–are home to very strategic cultures that know how to “set the stage” with all of the instruments of national power. As I watch China infiltrate Latin America, pushing a wide range of treaties and trade deals, investments in oil and other resources, pipelines to by-pass the Panama Canal and move Venezuelan crude oil to Cartagena, Colombia, and then refined crude to ships on the coast headed for China, I have a very strong sense of foreboding. In 50 years–a fraction of the time the Chinese consider when thinking strategically (not our strong point), we may well have been marginalized. I hope not–but the same traits this author discusses at the small unit level exist in Iran and China at the top leadership level, and I recommend the book for anyone interested in either the top down threat or the bottom up threat.

2005/04/282009/12/04

Review: New World New Mind–Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (Paperback)

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

From 1989, Not Updated, Superb Never-the-Less,

April 28, 2005

Robert E. Ornstein

EDIT 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This superb book was published in 1989 and is being reissued, and I am very glad it has come out again. I bought it because it was recommended by Tom Atlee, seer of the Co-Intelligence Institute, and I found it very worthwhile.

As I reflect on the book, I appreciate two key points from the book:

1) The evolution of our brains and our ability to sense cataclysmic change that takes place over long periods of time is simply not going fast enough–the only thing that can make a difference is accelerated cultural evolution, which I find quite fascinating, because cultural evolution as the authors describe it harkens to noosphere, World Brain, co-intelligence, and what the Swedes are calling M4 IS: multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information sharing–what I think of as Open Source Intelligence–personal, public, & political.

2) One of the more compelling points the authors make is that not only are politicians being elected and rewarded on the basis of short-term decisions that are by many measures intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt, but the so-called knowledge workers–the scientists, engineers, and others who should be “blowing the whistle,” are so specialized that there is a real lack of integrative knowledge. I realized toward the end of the book, page 248 exactly, that Knowledge Integration & Information Sharing must become the new norm.

This is a tremendous book that is loaded with gems of insight. I have it heavily marked up. Although it integrates and reminds me of ideas ably explored in other books, such as Health of Nations, Cultural Creatives, Clock of the Long Now, ATTENTION, Limits to Growth, and Forbidden Knowledge, these two authors have integrated their “brief” in a very readable way–as one person says on the book jacket, they effectively weave together many strands of knowledge.

The annotated bibliography is quite good, and causes me to be disappointed that the publishers did not provide for the updating of the bibliography–the ideas being blended are timeless and need no update.

Two notes toward the end were quite interesting. They speculate that Japan may be the first modern nation to collapse, if it is subject to disruption of the global trade and transportation system. They also have high praise for Global 2000, an integrative work whose predictions for the 2000 period (written in the 1970's, I believe) are turning out to be quite accurate.

Finally, woven throughout the book, is the simple fact that we are now burning up our savings–consuming the Earth at a much faster rate than it can replenish itself. We are very much out of harmony with our sustaining environment, and at grave risk of self-destruction. Interestingly, they remind of the Durants last word in “The Lessons of History:” that the only revolution, the only sustainable revolution, is that which takes place in the human mind. As these authors would have it, if we do not develop a new collective mind capable of integrating, understanding, and acting sensible, for the long term, on what we can know as a collective mind, then our grandchildren will become prey for the cockroaches of the future.

At a time when the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Ambassador Negroponte, is seriously contemplating the establishment of a national Open Source (Information) Agency as recommended by the 9-11 Commission, to get a grip on all the historical and current knowledge, both scientific and social, that we have lost touch with, I can think of just three books I would recommend to the DNI as a foundation for his reflections: this one, Buckman's “Creating a Knowledge Driven Organization,” and Wheatley's “Leadership and the New Science.” I would end his tutorial, or perhaps inspire it, by screening Tom Atlee's video, “From Group Magic to a Wise Democracy.”

Strangely, for I tend to be very gloomy about our prospects these days, I find that this book has cheered me somewhat. I sense the possibility of a break-out through a combination of wise information acquisition and sharing policies, and the application of the new technologies that L-3, CISCO, and IBM, among others, are bringing out, technologies that put intelligence on the edge of the network, and permit the creation of infinitely scalable and shareable synthetic information exactly suited to any need at any level.

There *is* an answer to all that ails us, and these two authors discuss it in a very capable manner.

2005/04/242009/12/04

Review: Tactics of the Crescent Moon–Militant Muslim Combat Methods (Paperback)

5 Star, Terrorism & Jihad, War & Face of Battle

Extraordinary–Breaks the Code and Outs China and Iran,

April 24, 2005

H. John Poole

This book is quite extraordinary, and all of the reviews are helpful in appreciating its content. The author has done a brilliant meticulous job of culling through open source references to create a thoughtful, well-structured, and superbly foot-noted document that is nothing less than “Ref A” for what must become the new “American Way of War.”

Big ideas:

1) One third of the world is Muslim, and if we do not restore morality to our form of democratic capitalism, and they adopt asymmetric warfare techniques, we are toast.

2) Iran certainly, and China probably, are fostering global terror as part of their grand strategy–each with different objectives–to end Anerica's status as a super-power.

3) Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia continue to train and support terrorists, with North Korea, Yemen, Sudan and various other countries (e.g. Bangladesh) having diverse roles to play.

4) Hezbollah out of Iran, rather than Al Qaeda out of Saudi Arabia, is the major player in the Iraqi insurgency, and its methods (hostages, suicide bombings, disguised IEDs) are clearly visible across the Iraqi theater of operations and now beginning to appear elsewhere in the world.

5) We cannot win 4th generation asymmetric wars with firepower alone. The heart of the book is a dissection of the Muslim insurgent's inspired excellence at close and asymmetric combat, and a carefully articulated case for getting back into the business of field light infantry that has the skill to infiltrate, surprise, and defeat enemies “mano a mano”–as some of us have been saying for some time (my own phrase has been “one man, one bullet”), but this author does a fantastic job of nailing it in war-fighting terms, modern way must be won by bottom up squad-level observation and skill, not top down command and control wielding firepower that kills 10-100 non-combatants for every US life that it might save (and ultimately–the author is compelling on this point–the deaths of those non-combatants inspire more suicidal terrorists who kill more US fighting men and women than might have died if we had done it right in the first place.

6) The author outlines in detail, with absolutely first-class documentation of his many sources (this is the first book I can remember reading where a single short sentence might contain as many as six different footnotes) the tactical techniques that Muslim radicals have learned to use, to including tunnels and disguises for both themselves and their Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). I agree with General Zinni–this book is required reading for every member of our Armed Forces, from Private to General. If you have a loved one in the Armed Forces, buy them this book and send it to them immediately.

7) Light infantry, acting as a gendarme with superior human intelligence, can nail the terrorists, but unless we want to occupy the world–something impossible to do (see point one)–then we must mobilize all of the instruments of national power and dedicate ourselves to nurturing legitimate effective *indigenous* governments everywhere. That means we must stop supporting 44 dictators, and we must stop imposing immoral capitalism (carpetbagging) on South America, Asia, and Africa.

This book is nothing short of ispirational. Sadly, it will probably be ignored by the Pentagon because, as the author himself points out, the old outdated and ineffective American Way of War is based predominantly on massive firepower and a heavy contractor presence that is most profitable for our arms merchants (see General Smedley Butler, “War is a Raquet”) and our beltway bandits. Consequently, I pray that this book will be bought, read, and acted upon by anyone who has every served in the U.S. military, is serving now, or knows someone now serving or likely to serve (I have three boys, the oldest will be of draft age in two years). What we are paying for now is not working and time is running out. We need a fundamental change in direction, and that will not happen absent a national uprising, or at Tom Atlee would say, “from group magic to a wise democracy.”

The author gets special high marks from me for relating morality and our acknowledgement of God to being able to win at war. He is absolutely right to castigate the Supreme Court for removing God from our national fabric, and points out that the same Supreme Court once declared slaves to be non-humans. He understands, as Clausewitz did, that the moral is to the material by at least one order of magnitude–in today's information-rich era, I would double it. Morality matters, and we have lost that high ground by allowing special interests to dictate America's profiteering foreign policy, rather than letting the common sense of the American people enrich America's foreign policy for the common good of all–as the Golden Rule suggests: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If the public demands that its politicians attend to this author's views, and if our military leaders–both suited and uniformed–attend to this book, it will save hundreds of thousands of lives, tens of billions of dollars, and perhaps the American way of life.

See the links at Phantom Soldier: The Enemy's Answer to U.S. Firepower

2005/04/212009/12/04

Review: Decisions of the Highest Order–Perspectives on the National Security Council (Paperback)

4 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Classic–Contains Useful Material Not in the New Edition,

April 21, 2005

Karl F. Inderfurth

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This is the orginal gold standard book on the National Security Council, now “replaced” but not fully so, by the new edition, “Fateful Decisions: Inside the National Security Council,” just published in February 2004.

However, this original edition contains two sections, one on “Disorders” (of the NSC) and the other on “Remedies” (for NSC dysfunctionalities) that have not been fully migrated to the new book, and for that reason, I recommend that this version of the book also be bought, as a supporting element for the value of those two sections and a few other items of significant historical value in understanding the NSC.

Readers should be aware that both books focus on the NSC as primarily a “big stick” actor obsessing with the use of military “hard” power to impose America's will, and while there are helpful mentions in both books of “soft” power options, by and large neither book really addresses the full range of instrumental of national power (commercial, cultural, religious), nor does each book address how one understands and orchestrates all the non-Federal actors including American evangelical organizations, chambers of commerce, multinational corporations, etcetera, in stabilizing and reconstructing the world.

Never-the-less, this is standard book in the field, bringing together the very best minds available in America, and the updated version, while updated, does not completely replace it.

The editors and publishers might usefully consider a new volume on “comparative national security decision-making” in which sections address how Arab, Chinese, European, South American, South Asian, and Russian national security decisions are made.

Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

Review: God’s Politics–Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Hardcover)