Terrorism & Jihad – Page 12 – Public Intelligence Blog

No Footnotes, But a Clear Alarm on Intolerant Muslims,

May 7, 2006

Bruce Bawer

The Department of Homeland Security should be reading this book. We have wasted years since 2001 when we should have been identifying and expelling Muslims from America who refuse to be educated, emancipated, or integrated. The author, who took on Chirstian fundamentalist intolerance first (Stealing Jesus), has a personal ax to grind (he is gay and gays get attacked by Muslims all over Europe) but does a phenomenal job–a really superb job, of documenting (but without footnotes) how the intolerant Muslims (not to be confused with Muslims who accept integration) are a Fifth Column with a strategic plan for becoming a majority across Europe by 2030, already outnumbering Jews in America and most other places.

The most frightening facts that the author brings forward, apart from the grotesque intolerance of many Muslims, is how they refuse to integrate. The author lays bare the false assumptions by government authorities who anticipated integration over several generations. In one case study, Turkish men imported not one but three wives over time, and have an average of 6.4 children with each wife. A small group of Turkish male guest workers numbering less than 150 thus grew to over 2,500 non-integrated and largely rabid Muslims prone to anti-democracy.

The author also addresses–as Steve Emerson addressed in his PBS film in 1994–how immans in Europe uphold the Muslim traditional of female mutilation, female slavery, and the Muslims being under NO OBLIGATION to accept the rules and conventions of the secular states where they are guests.

The author discusses how anti-semitism is on the rise across Europe, spurred by intolerant Muslims, and how the authorities tend to ignore the Muslim attacks on Jews, their honor killings and other travesties within their own communities.

The author goes further and notes how many of the children are “dumped” back home to be brain-washed in madrasses, and even if taught in-country, are taught intolerance.

On balance, despite the lack of footnotes, this is an extraordinary book, and it gives reasonable rise to the informed judgement that expulsion edits are required if individual countries are to protect themselves from both Muslim intolerance and the importation of poverty that accompanies illegal immigration.

Over-all the author provides a very broad look at how the Europeans have become lazy, are not re-populating, and are all too inclined to be anti-American as a mind-set, without recognition of all that America has contributed. European anti-Americanism, combined with European blind eye toward Muslim intolerance, is basically gutting Europe, to the point that one third of the Dutch plan to leave the Netherlands.

This excellent book has helped me see that there are two distinct views on the Muslim threat that have to be balanced. On the one hand, there is the liberal view that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were a concocted threat nurtured by the US Government in order to provide an excuse for invading Central Asia and Iraq. On the other, there is the conservative view that Muslims who are intolerant and who refuse education, emancipation of their women, and integration into the host society, should be regarded as a clear and present threat to the society, and should be expelled. I believe that both views have credibility and both views need to be considered as we move forward.

2006/05/062009/12/04

Review: America’s “War on Terrorism” (Paperback)

4 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Terrorism & Jihad

Thoughtful Views on US/CIA as the Threat, Totalitarianism Emergent,

May 6, 2006

Michel Chossudovsky

This is a helpful book, useful and pointed, that attempts to document, with some but not complete success, the charge that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were concocted threats spawned by the CIA and used by the Bush Administration to permit unilateral military operations aimed at capturing Central Asian and Iraqi energy resources.

The author has clearly done a great deal of research and independent thinking, but the book would have benefited considerably from an intergration of the timelines and other thoughts to be found in such excellent works as “Crossing the Rubicon,” “Resource Wars” etcetera.

The author's central thesis is that we are moving toward a totalitarians new world order in which war, police repression, and predatory economic policies are integrated and interface with one another to create a privileged wealth class, and impoverish the rest of the world including the American and Canadian middle classes. It merits comment that the author's primary scholarly accomplishments are in the economic arena, and this book is appreciated more if one also reads his “The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order.”

The author points out something I did NOT know from my other 700 books as reviewed here at Amazon: that Bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital on 10-11 September. This coincides with other authors who have suggested that 9-11 was originally intended to be a nuclear event, and was, by agreement between the Bush Administration and the Pakistani government, “downgraded” to a controlled hijacking.

The author is courageous and on point when he suggests that we now have war criminals in office who have the temerity to decide who is a terrorist and who is a criminal. As the author's work implies, Dick Cheney is right up there with Henry Kissinger in terms of actions against international law that could warrant his being extradicted to stand trial before the Tribunal.

The author also makes useful points–in harmony with other authors now emergent–to the effect that the drug crop in Afghanistan is essential to Wall Street and the international banks, and is fully the equal of oil trade in its importance to international speculators and economic power brokers.

There are some disconcerting errors within the book, for example, the author states that the budget of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is $30 billion a year, when anyone who follows the U.S. Intelligence Community knows that this was at the time the TOTAL budget for all the secret agencies, with CIA receiving roughly one tenth of the total. Today the budget is close to $60 billion, CIA is a disaster area, and America is no safer.

Overall the author focuses primarily on the CIA as the source of all evil, and completely neglects both the FBI, whose incompetence or collaboration were essential to both World Trade Center attacks (the car bomb, and then the airplane attacks), and he also tends to neglect, for lack of understanding, any mention of the Saudi Arabian private intelligence network that displaced CIA long ago, as well as the private global murder network (see my review of Joseph Trento, “Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA.”

There is a very clear pattern emerging in the broader literature that suggests that the Bush Administration is impeachable, and that the Clinton Administration before it is also impeachable, for a deliberate neglect of reasoned energy policy, and a deliberate nurturing of economic policies that enrich a few at the expense of both the home country middle class, and the billions around the world who are being driven to terrorism and insurgency by predatory immoral practices pursued by the U.S. Government in partnership with selected multinational corporations, many of which are fronts for importing impoverished illegal workers to the US, and destructively under-priced Chinese goods to the US marketplace–goods that destroy the local ecnomies.

I will end with a complement to the author: he offers and interesting combination of Chomsky and Sachs, a balance between deep critical commentary and deep scholarship. He speaks truth to power. His work merits our attention.

2005/12/172009/12/04

Review: Future Jihad–Terrorist Strategies Against America (Hardcover)

5 Star, Future, Terrorism & Jihad

Uniquely brilliant on jihad, glosses over the larger context,

December 17, 2005

Walid Phares

Edit of 24 Feb 08 to add links responsive to the comment about me being a Marxist. Even a cursory look at the reviews of these other books will make clear the distinction between predatory immoral capitalism and ethical capitalism.

This is a truly extraordinary book that is absolutely essential to understanding the radical jihadist threat confronting America and the West. While the author is sponsored by a pro-Israel and extreme right foundation (Jean “Authoritarians are not Totalitarians” Kirkpatrick is prominent there), I never-the-less credit him with having placed before us a superb piece of deep analysis that is steeped in historical, cultural, and linguistic nuances that are simply not available inside the U.S. Government.

The heart of the book is his coherent articulation of the three main forms of jihadist movement–Al Qaeda from Saudi-sponsored Wahabism, Iran and Hezbollah, and the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood. He introduces the term neo-Wahabi and on page 137 begins to discuss six strategies being developed against America: 1) Economic jihad or oil as a weapon; 2) Ideological jihad through the co-optation of the entire U.S. Middle Eastern studies establishment funded by the Saudis; 3) Political jihad or mollification of the public (see my review of Fog Facts); 4) Intelligence jihad, infiltrating not just American neighborhoods but providing the translators and interpreters that the FBI and CIA and DIA rely on; 5) Subversive jihad, behind our lines and using our laws to hide; and 6) Diplomatic jihad, controlling U.S. foreign policy and in particular using Saudi influence to dissuade Clinton from reacting to seven specific tests of America by the varied jihadists, from Khobar to two embassies to the Cole to the World Trade Center.

I am greatly impressed by this book. There are some truly gifted turns of phrase scattered throughout; every page has something useful and instructive. This is an intelligent book, very well-structured, with arguments very ably presented.

The author blames the U.S. educational elite, the people who train future government analysts and diplomats, for selling out to Saudi money and essentially policing themselves, being apologists for jihadists, and blinding the nation at all levels to the threat. I share with the author great dismay over how some of the early warnings caused their authors to be banned from working for mainstream media–Steve Emerson's PBS broadcast on Jihad in America should have put us on red alert.

The author's most important point is that only the last 10% of jihadist activity within the American homeland is illegal, and that if you wait to that point, it is too late. I agree with him. Jihadist ideology, like racism, cannot be tolerated and it must be rooted out. Just as Australia did recently, if radicalized Muslims wish to demand a state run under Islamic law, they are free to go there. See my review of “Forbidden Knowledge.” The author paints the 100 year war as a war of ideas, and clearly discusses how we must first educate every citizen, and then move on to confront these dangerous jihadist calls for violence against the West, elsewhere.

The book is weakest for lack of context. It is almost as if the author set out to deliberately not mention Dick Cheney, to ignore Peak Oil and the value of laundered drug money to Wall Street (see my review of Crossing the Rubicon), and to overlook what may have been the most grotesque error early in the new global war on terror, Secretary Rumsfeld's allowing the Pakistani's to evaluate 3,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban from Tora Bora where they were surrounded. Generally the book suffers from the typical neo-con's view of America as perfect. There is no mention here of our supporting 44 dictators, or our practice of immoral capitalism, or our tolerance for $2 trillion a year in illicit trade. Indeed the author is positively delusional when he describes the U.S. as a completely open system. Not only is this contradicted by his correct and passionate denouncement of the Saudi blind-folding of the Middle Eastern studies establishment, but it begs on all the secrecy surrounding the Federal Reserve (which is NOT a government agency), the gold stolen from China and Japan (see my review of Gold Warriors), and the roughly $3 trillion looted by Wall Street from the American taxpayer.

There are a few minor errors, such as claiming that the Khobar investigation did not identify the perpetrators. As the recently retired director of the FBI tells us in his book, it was Iran, plain and simple, but Madeline Albright, Tony Lake, and Bill Clinton chose to ignore that attack on U.S. forces as well as attacks on two Embassies and the USS Cole. In each instance, the author points out that the jihadists were testing us, and we failed.

This is a really extraordinary and useful book. In its given area of interest, understanding jihadism, it is beyond 5 stars and a fundamental reference. It is am important–a very important–contribution to the debate, but it lacks the context that one can find in the many other books I have reviewed, and it is my hope that this book will be read in conjunction with those I mention above, as well as Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and also The Soul of Capitalism. The author clearly knows the enemy. I am not so sure he sees our flaws–if I were girding this nation for a long-term war, my first priority would be to recover the moral high ground by ceasing our support of dictators and arms merchants and corporate carpet-baggers; and my second would be educating the American people through an Open Source Agency and a Congressional Intelligence Office that prepared daily Public Intelligence Briefs and regular Public Intelligence Estimates that raised the bar for the mediocre secret intelligence we get now–but in raising the bar publicly, such public intelligence would also out the ideological fantasies and the mendacity of those who seek to profit from elective war. Jihadists are but one of at least seven major threats to the American way of life, and right now we are our own worst enemy. We are neglecting China, water, energy, disease, and poverty as well as ethics.

This is the most practical of the several books out now on understanding terrorism–but all of them fail to understand our tangible vulnerabilities that must be corrected before we can win the global war on terror.

2005/07/122009/12/04

Review: Dying to Win–The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Hardcover)

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Terrorism & Jihad, Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Original–A Major Contribution to Understanding,

July 12, 2005

Robert Pape

The University of Chicago is an extraordinary institution–the author, employed there, lives up to their reputation for methodical, scholarly, useful reflections grounded firmly in the facts. This work significantly advances our understanding of terrorism and of the three forms of suicidal terrorism: egotistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. The author documents his findings that most suicidal terrorists are altruistic, well-educated, nationalistically-motivated, and fully witting and dedicated to their fatal mission as a service to their community.

Of the 563 books I have reviewed–all in national security and global issues, and all but four among the best books in the field–this new work by Professor Pape stands out as startlingly original, thoughtful, useful, and directly relevant to the clear and present danger facing America: an epidemic of suicidal terrorism spawned by the “virtual colonialism” of the US in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and now Iraq as well as other countries.

I will not repeat the excellent listing of facts in the Book Description provided by the publisher–certainly that description should be read carefully. If you are a Jewish zealot, don't bother, you will not get over the cognitive dissonance. Everyone else, including Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic contributors to Congressional and Presidential campaign funds, absolutely must read this book.

There are many other books that support the author's key premises, all well-documented with case studies and the most complete and compelling statistics–known facts. I am persuaded by the author's big three:

1) Suicidal terrorism correlates best with U.S. military occupation of specific countries that tend to be undemocratic and corrupt, where the U.S. in collusion with dictators and one-party elites are frustrating legitimate national aspirations of the larger underclass and middle class;

2) Virtually all of the suicidal terrorists comes from allies of the U.S. (at least nominally–they actually play the U.S. as “useful idiots”) such as Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran;

3) The three premises shared by Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and now the Iraqi insurgency, are all accurate and will continue to be so if the U.S. does not pull its military out of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other locations:

a) Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and virtual colonialism everywhere else, demand martyrdom operations;

b) Conventional inferiority mandates self-sacrifice (not only suicidal terrorism, but other asymmetric attacks including the death of a thousand cuts against key energy, water, and transportation nodes in the USA; and

c) The US and its European allies are vulnerable to coercive pressure. The withdrawal of the Americans and the French from Viet-Nam and then Lebanon, of the Israelis from the West Bank, and other concessions itemized by the author, have all made the case for suicidal terrorism. It works and it will explode.

I will mention several other books to support this author, but wish to stress that alone, his work is spectacularly successful in documenting the fallacies of the U.S. national security policy.

Among the books that support him are
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods
Understanding Terror Networks
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

This is a core reading for every officer at STRATCOM and SOCOM, and for anyone who wishes to be effective at either Public Diplomacy or Strategic Communication or Information Operations. This author should be an invited distinguished funded speaker at every single war college in the Western democracies. We cannot win without listening to him. Military withdrawals, combined with energy independence, are essential. Without them, we not only will not fully defeat the current crop of suicidal terrorists, but we will, in attempting to deal with the current threat with old counter-productive and heavy-handed means, give birth to hundreds of thousands in the next generation of suicidal terrorists.

There are not enough guns in the world to win this one, even if we had competent intelligence at the neighborhood level, which we do not. In keeping with the author's recommendations, it is clear that moral capitalism, informed democracy, equanimity toward bottom up movements for national liberation and an end to corruption, an honest policy process in Washington, D.C.–these are the keys to victory.

This is a towering accomplishment and a major contribution to strategic thinking.

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

2004/08/132009/12/04

Review: Osama’s Revenge–THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven’t Told You

4 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, America (Anti-America), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad

Third of Three “Must Reads” on Bin Laden and Threat to USA,

August 13, 2004

Paul L. Williams

This is the third of three books that I am reviewing today and that I strongly recommend be read by every adult in America. The first two, in order of priority, are Mahmood Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror and CIA Anonymous Executive Analyst, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. I should add that terror is a tactic, not an enemy, it is impossible to win a war against a tactic.

What this book does is piece together all of the English-language reports over the past ten years or so regarding the probabilities and specifics of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's having acquired several forms or portable nuclear devices. Although some reviewers have slammed this book for being fictional, they do not know what they are talking about. The FACTS are that the Soviet general officer responsible for the 100 suitcase nuclear bombs designed for Spetznatz use, some pre-positioned in the USA, has said publicly, in writing, and on more than one occasion that 66 of those are unaccounted for.

I took one star off for excessive reliance on two secondary sources, both excellent but never-the-less cited too often, and the commensurate lack of attention to foreign language materials that could have deepened this study considerably, especially when one takes into account the CIA executive analyst's comments in IMPERIAL HUBRIS regarding the straight truth-telling that can be found in Bin Laden's Arabic-language postings. “Nuclear hell storm” is out there (the author does cite this), and we had better take this more seriously than our government has.

The author opens with a notional “letter to America” from Bin Laden that is based on Bin Laden's actual statements (as itemized in IMPERIAL HUBRIS) and is alone worth the price of the book. If we don't take a long hard look at ourselves and correct the misbehavior that is radicalizing over a billion Muslims, we will not (not!) win this war.

The author does a really fine job, not just of amassing and stringing together a coherent story of Bin Laden's likely possession of nuclear capabilities, but also of showing the inter-relationship between the Afghanistan drug fields that the U.S. Government has stupidly allowed to flourish, the Pakistani production facilities that take the opium to a “Number 4” level of quality, and criminal organizations as well as corrupt governments everywhere that facilitate Bin Laden's operations. The roles of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan (especially Pakistan) in facilitating the storage, refurbishment, and technical maintenance of the purchased nuclear elements are covered in a manner that persuades me–this is a very real threat.

The book is a useful compilation of both mistakes by the US, and events taking place from 2002-2004, and it ends with full translated copies of the 23 Aug 96 Fatwa and the related 23 Feb 98 World Islamic Statement. Within the book are some extracts from Al Qaeda training manuals, one portion of which make it clear that the “sleepers” now in the US are specifically forbidden to go to mosques or appear Islamic in any way.

Bottom line, totally consistent with the other two books I recommend: the US needs to meet Bin Laden's reasonable demands, and redirect its focus from occupying Islamic countries toward cleaning up its own homeland. [I realize that calling Bin Laden's demands “reasonable” in going to infuriate many people, but I have to say, based on all three books taken as a whole, that all three authors agree on this point, and they have persuaded me. We cannot win if we persist in supporting 44 dictators, occupying Muslim lands, demanding cheap oil at the expense of the Muslim populations, and supporting an Israel that is racist as well as terrorist in nature toward the Palestinians. It is what it is–the sooner we stop deceiving ourselves, and demand that our government get back to the ideals of moral capitalism and truly representative democracy, the sooner we have a chance to avoid this “nuclear hellstorm” that I believe this book credibly documents as a very real possibility.]

2004/07/142009/12/04

Review: The Lessons of Terror–A History of Warfare Against Civilians

3 Star, Terrorism & Jihad

One Core Idea: Don't Kill Civilians, End Collateral Damage,

July 14, 2004

Caleb Carr

I would not normally have bought this book, which started out as an article and should have stayed there. However, it is being touted in Special Operations circles, and in the interest of ensuring that I respect and understand what my uniformed colleagues are reading, I made the effort.First off, the book is *mostly* about how terrorism or scorched earth tactics are not a good idea for states. I agree. However, the book completely misses the point on how effective terrorist attacks are as a means of causing great economic and social pain to industrial era states that persist in pursuing unilateralist Christian crusades as well as immoral capitalism that enriches micro-elites while disenfranchising the bulk of foreign populations. Do the math: for $500 *thousand*, Bin Laden got roughly $500 *billion* in costs to the U.S. taxpayer. He (and his thousands of successors) can keep this up forever, we cannot.

There is major aspect of this book that I applaud, and it takes it from 3 to 4 stars: it is the single most effective statement I have seen that denounces U.S. “precision” warfare as not so precision afterall, because of the pre-planned (i.e. pre-meditated and culpable) deaths of tens of thousands of civilians as acceptable “collateral damage.” Although “total war” certainly applies to state on state warfare, the author correctly notes that killing civilians is neither beneficial nor acceptable when making war on dictators or terrorists. That has to be “man on man” and America is simply not capable of doing that–the military-industrial complex would cease to exist as we know it if we actually focused on funding ground truth intelligence at the neighborhood level, and the ability to send invisible snake-eater in and out to do justice on the basis of “one man, one bullet,” something I have long advocated.

The author is conventionally leftist and in harmony with Chalmer Johnson's and other critiques of the misadventures of the Central Intelligence Agency, but I find his critiques uninformed and sophomoric. Although I certainly agree with the author's short listing of CIA's analytical and operational failures over time, as someone who actually understands CIA and the US military better than the author, I have to wave the “CRAP” flag on several of this author's pages as they pertain to intelligence, pages 204 and 260 in particular.

The book ends with the observation that terrorism is like slavery, piracy, and genocide in that sufficient action must be taken to stop individual behavior along those lines, and the sensible suggestion that “evangelical Western capitalism must learn greater restraint and respect for other cultures” and that Western governments must eschew “gunboat diplomacy as self-defeating. Golly. The author may understand but does not demonstrate substantive understanding of the degree to which slavery, piracy, and genocide (18 active campaigns right now, a great deal more than the author's “still attempted in some corners of the world”) continue to be tolerated by Western governments.

There is nothing in this book helpful to crafting a new grand strategy balancing military, diplomatic, intelligence, cultural, and economic initiatives to “close the gap” (see my review of Thomas Barnett on “The Pentagon's New Map.”

Overall this double-spaced essay with no footnotes strikes me as gross misrepresentation. The bibliography is marginal, especially with respect to both modern terrorism and U.S. intelligence. The author took something he knows about–the history of conventional state military warfare–and dressed it up as being relevant to the Global War on Terror. Yes, but it could have been done in one page. This is a very labor intensive way to get to the obvious point, made much more intelligently by Jonathan Schell in “Unconquerable World”: there are not enough guns in the world to quell instability stemming from abusive government rule and immoral capitalism. Tony Zinni sums it up in one line: the faster you introduce food into an area, the more quickly the violence ends.

Category: Terrorism & Jihad

Review: While Europe Slept–How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within (Hardcover)