2006/12/17

Review of Jack Seward's The Japanese: The Often Misunderstood, Sometimes Surprising, and Always Fascinating Culture and Lifestyles of Japan

Another serendipitous collision of reality with politics? Or perhaps another aspect of the collapse of my own perceptions? Or have I become too fixated? Anyway, I certainly had no expectation of current political relevance when I borrowed the book from a Belgian colleague. I have read several books with the same title, and several other books from the same author, and I expected it to be another rather bland and somewhat dated survey of Japan, and mostly that's what it was.

The question of the date actually turns out to be crucial in interpreting the book. Unfortunately, the book is unclear on the topic, even though I was looking closely for anything that would link sections of the book to when they were written. I was already searching for such data because the copyright dates seemed confusing, and there was no explanation of the publication history at the beginning. My hypothesis is that the book was mostly older material published in 1971, and somewhat revised in 1992.

This is linked to the surprising political relevance of the book, because the date basically eliminates direct linkages to Dubya's neo-GOP politics of hypocrisy. The political relevance actually popped up in a way that quite surprised me, in a chapter called "Crime and Punishment in Two Countries". Up to that point, the book had been pretty much the typical collection of anecdotes. In the first part of this chapter he had a number of interesting stories about famous Japanese crimes, then some of the usual praise of the Japanese legal system and noting how well it works, and then he suddenly fell through the looking glass and landed in America as seen by little Alice. Suddenly the structure and clarity just disintegrated, but he couldn't even figure out how to say why everything that went before was suddenly irrelevant. This passage on page 97 may have been when I realized that something weird was going on: "Apparently there exists in the United States a very sizable amount of knee-jerk opposition to handguns. The mere mention of the word is enough to drive these opponents in a form of hysteria, during which they utterly lose their powers of ratiocination." Whereupon, he suddenly becomes totally hysterical and utterly loses his own "powers of ratiocination". He starts throwing out comments pretty much at random. The only clear thing appears to be that he is hysterically afraid of gun control. The logical disconnect was extraordinary, but it suddenly reminded me of neo-GOP hypocrisy. There certainly is room for a rational discussion of why gun control works so well in Japan and why it would not work in America, but to do it rationally you'd have to make some kind of rational comparison of the differences between the two cultures. In contrast, most of this part of the book is like random shotgun blasts that sounded like they'd been cut-and-pasted from NRA testimonials. It was really weird, and it started me doubting the author's credibility. Senility setting in?

With my now jaundiced eye, I started looking for evidence of other flaws. The cover proclaims him to be "America's Foremost Authority", presumably on Japan, and he certainly toots his own horn loudly in the book. However, when I started I regarded him as 'yet another old Japan hand', basically just another American serviceman who stayed on after the war, and by this point in the book I suspected he was losing his marbles... I don't want to spend too much time on a relatively unimportant book, but I'll note what I regarded as the two largest flaws in the later parts of the book. In one chapter he is discussing religious tolerance, and he mentions the arrival of Christianity as an example--but he doesn't mention the violent negative reaction that followed. This can only be described as intellectual dishonesty, because he was well aware of the history of strong intolerance of Christianity because he describes it in some detail in a later chapter. He just didn't want to mention it where it would 'confuse' his point about religious toleration. In his chapter about the Japanese language, he discusses Chinese at some length. This is highly relevant, but he doesn't mention that the root of the homonym problem here is that Chinese is a tonal language and Japanese is not. He spent lots of time with less important aspects, so I had to conclude he was simply ignorant of this fundamental characteristic of Chinese.

In conclusion, I'd rate it as an average book for surveying Japan, but much more interesting as a kind of harbinger of the coming hypocritical craziness in American politics. It was weird the way he criticizes behavior that he admits he engaged in. He even closes with a short chapter advocating special treatment for mixed-heritage fatherless children after confessing that he might have fathered some of them.

Detailed Notes:

Page 160

Arguing that the Japanese media has a terrible (liberal) bias against America. He didn't actually mention "liberal" in this passage, though he does accuse them of not being "logical", though he's the one who's sound crazy here.

Page 167

This part of his explanation of the development of Japanese was really silly, basically convincing me that he's done very little reading in linguistics. This whole section was really slipshod.

Page 175

More really weird stuff about counting the strokes in English words and comparing those numbers to the stroke counts of Japanese. I couldn't even figure out where he was getting the numbers for the English words, but he mostly gave me the impression that he doesn't actually know much about kanji.

2006/12/10

Review of Maureen Dowd's Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk

This one can easily be summarized with an pseudo-equation: (good·data) + (lazy·author) = (bad·book). Even though I bought it used, I still feel like I was basically ripped off and didn't get much value for the money. The cover art by Pat Oliphant was probably the high point, but I should have been suspicious of the "Includes New Material" in a red star that appeared on that cover. I knew the book was a collection of columns, and it should have gone without saying that it would include a LOT of new material--the glue to hold it together and contextualize material that had appeared scattered over the course of several years.

It's not actually the case that she writes poorly. She writes well enough, if not brilliantly. The problem is that a bunch of columns do not a good book make, and apparently no one was really concerned about making a good book out of it. It ran over 500 pages, but would have been much better cut in half to focus on the good stuff, and it desperately needed some additional explanatory text to provide context and fill in apparent gaps. There were a lot of comments that were probably very stinging criticisms of BushCo when they first appeared, but which seemed like wilted flowers at this late date. There were many examples showing she had access to interesting data, but there's been enough time since it was collected to figure out why it was interesting and what parts of it were actually important--but she didn't bother. Perhaps most significantly, some of her columns might have been the first reports of important information, but there are no clues here. My theory is that they just listed up all of her columns over a period of time and sorted them sort of arbitrarily into categories. Print. Whoopee. Not.

A conclusion? I suppose it's more evidence of the increasing fluffiness and irrelevance of the MSM (MainStream Media). Basically a very light read, and just rehashing a lot of old stuff. It could have been so much better.

2006/11/05

Review of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince (translated by W.K. Marriott)

My motivation for reading this short classic was actually an email discussion with an old friend who has become a neo-GOP supporter. Perhaps I should say former friend? Turned out that he was secretly into class-based eugenics, but meanwhile he had taken umbrage at some of my non-flattering descriptions of Dubya, which led to the ultra-Machiavellian Leo Strauss, which led to Machiavelli himself.

My main reaction after reading the book is "What was all the fuss about?" Compared to Strauss, he comes off as incredibly naive, but I guess Machiavelli gets the extra credit for being first. What I actually found most interesting about the book was the historical context of its creation. Machiavelli had recently been arrested, tortured, and then released by the Medicis, a family he actually supported fairly actively. A Medici had just become the new Pope, and he was ramping up the sale of indulgences--and within a decade Luther would denounce the practice and be excommunicated. The Praise of Folly by Erasmus was published only two years before this book was written, though The Prince wasn't actually published until some years later, after Machiavelli had died.

As I read the book, I was focusing on finding evidence of Machiavellian behavior by Machiavelli himself, since some people have suggested he was deliberately including some bad advice as a form of secret revenge. I didn't really see any likely candidates. It's mostly a collection of stories about recent historical events in Italy that are intended to illustrate a loose political ontology. He had been involved in many of these events as a kind of minor envoy in the years before his arrest (and he was effectively retired after that).

The highlight was probably Chapter 23, which made me think most strongly about Dubya. The title is "How flatterers should be avoided", and it reminded of Dubya's very small bubble of a few advisors and very closely screened audiences. It includes "...a prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man." Iraq? Dick Cheney? 'Nuff said.

It's an interesting and light read, but I can't give it a strong recommendation.

Detailed Notes:

Page 65, Line 4

The word "tkat" should be "that".

Page 81, Line 27

The "every one" should be "everyone".

2006/10/15

Review of Bill Maher's New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer

Basically a disappointment. He's actually a pretty funny comedian, though slightly obscene, but this book was a significant disappointment. I think the editor is to blame because the alphabetic organization was basically an awful idea. Stripped of their context, most of the jokes just weren't as funny, and the copious pictures mostly felt like padding to flesh it out to book length. There were a few longer passages that put some of the humor into context, but overall I feel like the main reason to review it is because it gives me an excuse to compare the book's humor to an example of Bill Maher's superior humor that was sadly not included in the book.

One of the best jokes in the book was this item under M:

Don't pick a German pope the day before Hitler's birthday. I'm not saying it's anything but a coincidence, but you've just given every conspiracy nut in the world a raging hard-on.

Now compare to this original piece, not included in the book, but from same show that includes these "new rules":

September 13, 2005 Bill Maher's Remarks to Mr. Bush:

"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?

"Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church, and Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What He is saying is: 'Take a hint.' "

2006/10/04 to 10/10

Review of Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

I might as well get it over with. Awful. I tried to approach it with an open mind, but it's really a very poorly written piece of right-wing propaganda. I'm not sure if the author is intellectually dishonest or just completely out of his depth here. Actually I'm pretty sure both apply. There is some valid (but highly filtered and fragmentary) historical data, but it mostly reminds me of reading Marxist histories of the French Revolution (for Professor Stoke's pro-seminar on nationalism many years ago). Well, actually my recollection is that the Marxists were better at including the actual historical facts, though you still had to treat all of their conclusions and reasoning with great caution. In this case, my basic conclusion is that poor as his scholarship is, he's still one of the best academics the right wing can buy, so they support him very generously. For example, in his acknowledgments he mentions that a couple of his new American friends just happened to be rich enough to create an endowed chair for him. Writing as a chaired professor makes him sound so much more credible, you know. All that gravitas. However, this is a historian who not only fails to learn any lessons from history, but is advocating that Americans repeat the same obvious mistakes.

The author's expertise is apparently supposed to be the history of the British Empire, and he certainly strives mightily to make it look good. His creative spin on what went wrong in India was especially impressive to me. Apparently the British just weren't imperialistic enough for the Indians' own good. Obviously the final partition had nothing to do with the sad outcome, since he doesn't bother to mention that trivial little tragedy. Somehow he missed Gandhi, too. Must have been one of those historical commas in the glorious British Empire. He doesn't want to come off as racist, but he still slips from time to time with clever little descriptions of the superior performances of colonies that just coincidentally happened to be populated by white immigrants.

The section on Egypt struck me as especially offensive, even though he was working so hard to spin it as an example of beneficial hypocrisy. That's HIS term, not mine. The chapter was actually entitled "Going Home or Organizing Hypocrisy". The main point was that the British were there for a long time, and continuously promising to leave. The main omission is the result, which is that in spite of all of that lengthy British benevolence, Egypt has become yet another hotbed of terrorism. Whoops. Must be another comma.

Several parts of the book would best be described as advice for the American empire builders based on the British experience. These parts frequently emphasized the advantages of indirect rule though local puppets, while the real power remained in British hands. However, the main thing that struck me on this topic was how untrustworthy the mercenary rulers were in so many of the examples he considered. Then again, it only seemed natural that such people who were so strongly motivated by money (selling their souls came to mind) would naturally be greedy and corrupt and untrustworthy. Of course he was also trying to downplay these problems since he was actively advocating empire, but I often felt like his own examples were hurting his case.

A lot of the book can't be described as history, but more like a kind of projective political science or economics--and in these areas he seems seriously lost. It actually made me think of the contrast to Chomsky who manages to effectively focus on the meaning of words in his works on history and political science. The contrast was pretty stark. I think this passage in the conclusion (page 292) may be the best example of his essential surrealism:

"... and the American prison population exceeds 2 million--1 in every 142 American residents. If one adds together the illegal immigrants, the jobless and the convicts, there is surely ample raw material for a larger American army. One of the keys to the expansion of the Roman Empire was, after all, the opportunity offered to non-Romans to earn citizenship through military service. One of the mainsprings of British colonization was the policy of transportation that emptied the prison hulks of eighteenth-century England into ships bound for Australia. Reviving the draft would not necessarily be unpopular, so long as it was appropriately targeted."

So America should create a new conscript army of non-American unskilled criminals? Bizarre. Why the racist focus on the "illegal immigrants"? And why doesn't he know that the American army is already offering to facilitate citizenship as an inducement for non-Americans to enlist? He claims that the book was extensively checked by other people listed in his lengthy acknowledgements, but none of them commented on this absurd passage? Soon after this he explains why Americans are no good as peacekeepers. He doesn't suggest adjusting their training, but rather using European soldiers as peacekeepers in a way that makes them sound like conviently portable targets. Amazing and amazinger. Then he concluded the book with a peculiar paean to Arnold's Terminator character. (Well, actually the last bit was a "See, I was right" note about an earlier book, and then the closing matter.) My conclusion to his conclusion is that he watches too many silly movies.

Detailed Notes:

The notes are kind of backwards this time. Normally, as I read the book, I flag some of the interesting parts related to aspects I want to mention when I review it. Then I write the review and go through those parts, adding them to these notes and making sure that the topics were adequately covered in the body of the review. This time that approach seemed likely to be overwhelmed, so I actually wrote up the notes before the body of the review. This seemed to be a case where there were so many logs getting into my eyes that I needed to clear some of them away to have any chance of seeing the forest.

Page ix

Two long quotes from Dubya treated with great sympathy, making me start to wonder about the author's sympathies, though he's already been trying to establish his neutrality.

Page xi

With reference to a critical review and his defensive response, I concluded that this was basically a paperback edition that was somehow required or specified by the contract for the original hardback edition. The original edition seems to have had little impact.

Page xiii

Very sweeping generalizations in defense of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. I nearly stopped reading at this point. His comments struck me as extremely non-historical or even anti-historical, but the author's expertise is supposed to be as a historian. At this point, neither of the outcomes is as clearly favorable as he thinks, but I only have a few months of additional historical perspective. In both Afghanistan and Iraq the situations seem to be deteriorating--but he's already hinted that his so-called 'American empire' may lack the will to clean up such messes. Not sure if this was the first place he started attacking the French, but it certainly wasn't the last. (Eventually I concluded the author basically just hates France, which isn't too surprising for an extremely conservative Englishman. Many of his criticisms of the French seem downright silly now. He's also very anti-UN.)

Page xviii

Sloppy editing here, with two typos on the same page. The non-word "commandes" should be "commanders", and there's a sentence fragment beginning with "For" that should be joined to the previous sentence as a conditional clause.

Page xxvi

Refers to the "Cluniacs" as a significant religious force, but I'd never heard of them. Turns out to be the Benedictines, but he's using the term to distinguish the organization after a restructuring that centralized their authority structure and led them to greater influence.

Page xxvii

I think this was the first place where he made a very peculiar sweeping generalization that seemed to be fundamentally counterfactual. He wants to argue that non-state actors are suddenly able to break the monopoly on violence and communications, and for this reason they have somehow become vastly more threatening. However, the state monopolies have never been absolute, and looking at the numbers, they scarcely seem threatened now. Most of the killing is still done by national armies, same as it ever was, and civil wars seem firm in their #2 spot. Information censorship seems alive and quite well, though partly based on somewhat innovative corporate mechanisms.

Page 2

He is arguing for a "liberal empire" from a British perspective, but for the Americans. In America the term "liberal" has been almost fully divested of any meaning, which made me wonder who he's writing for.

Page 3

He refers to the "reassertion of American military power under Ronald Reagan" as though it was a given, but I couldn't figure out what he was referring to. Surely not the invasion of Grenada nor the covert operations in Central America. Did I somehow miss an actual war?

Page 26

This was a frankly absurd defense of the British treatment of India. Basically it overlooks how hard the Indians had to fight for their independence and especially the poison pill of Partition that was deliberately intended to artificially divide and weaken the country--in contrast to how the equally artificial unification of the subcontinent had been used to maximize the convenience of the colonial administrators.

Page 27

Interesting attack on the United Nations. Doesn't seem to be justified except insofar as the UN apparently won't qualify as an empire, and he's basically in favor of empires.

Page 28

He seems to be working himself into a self-contradiction here, calling for imperial nation building by the Americans while explaining why they won't do it.

Page 29

He concludes his introduction with the peculiar sweeping generalization that the threat to America is a lack of the "will to power", which made me think he's never heard of Dick Cheney.

Page 41

A very shallow treatment of the motivations of the American Civil War. It's possible that he was actually making some reference to States' rights, but in that case it's also sloppy writing.

Page 81, Line 5

Probably a typo induced by the complicated syntax, but the grammar can be repaired by changing "reconstituted" to "reconstituting".

Page 82

His explanation of a graph is confusing and hard to follow, and even seems strained with reference to the graph itself, which actually reminded me of his confusing graph and explanation from Page 66.

Page 86

He is apparently adding Grenada and Panama to Afghanistan and Iraq to make a total of four American interventions that he regards as successful. Again, highly debatable, especially since he is trying to discount large numbers of interventions he regards as having unsuccessful outcomes. On the same page, he just cited 168 armed interventions from 1946 to 1965.

Page 103

This was a kind of surreal intrusion. He was making the substantive point that America's wars have generally not been profitable investments. He had mentioned $100 billion in relation to Vietnam, and Iraq is already several times higher with no end in sight. Then he notes that movies about Vietnam have been profitable, and even includes a table of movies and their box office receipts to prove his point. What first caught my eye was that he missed The Boys in Company C, which is the only such movie I can recall having seen. However, the topic is basically irrelevant and trivial. The total gross for his Vietnam movies is less than $1 billion, though he spends some time explaining why he can include Star Wars, which grossed almost $2 billion. I'd link Star Wars to Star Trek, but even if we grant him the point and assume the gross was pure profit it's around 3% of the war cost. If I wanted to be surreal, I'd suggest the government could confiscate the profits, since they are only profiting because of the investments in the war. I tried to think of some corresponding evidence cited by Chomsky, but couldn't think of anything this surreal.

Page 105

Quoting from speeches by UBL and Dubya, but what struck me was UBL's sincerity versus Dubya's saying whatever his speechwriter told him to say. In Dubya's case, it's only when he's incoherent that you have an impression of accessing his real thoughts.

Page 107 Line 23

Typo of "African" for "Africa"

Page 113

From this point the note-taking seemed to get out of control, with almost every page having something strange, doubtful, counterfactual, or even ridiculous on it. Here, he describes America as an "honest broker" where Israel is involved.

Page 115

He mentions a brief period over which Saudi arms purchases suddenly increased 20-fold, but says nothing about why.

Page 118

A ridiculous generalization that "all revolutionary regimes" are "soon embroiled in a war", which is especially amusing in that the specific war in this example was started by Iraq with America's encouragement.

Page 119

He gives Reagan sole credit for the mujihadeen strategy in Afghanistan, and near the bottom changes the number of 9/11 hijackers from 19 to 21.

...

Just too many to continue with, especially considering that the review is already pretty well determined to be quite negative and dismissive.

Page 125

Well, one more. He cites a claim that terrorism is declining as illustrated by a graph on this page. However, I strongly suspect that this was the fudged report on terrorism that the State Department later retracted--but his URL is not valid, so I'm not sure. Actually, it wasn't really clear what his point was in discussing it, but whatever the reason, he still comes off sounding like a dittohead repeating BushCo talking points, not like the independent scholar he claimed to be when he started the book. (This is just one of many examples I noticed, but an especially glaring one.)

...

Enough already, though I'm skipping over some beauties. He might be an expert about some arcane branch of ancient history, but he basically loses it the closer he gets to the current time--and most of this book is about recent events.

Page 163

I have to include this one. "So who won?" He is asking with regards to the anti-Saddam "war" in Iraq, but he doesn't mention the obvious winner, Iran. This entire section already looks really silly now, but he's not supposed to be writing humor.

...

Even into the into the notes it got stranger and stranger. Only mention of Chomsky was apparently a dismissive comment on page 311 of the notes, and no mention in the bibliography. This struck me because I frequently noticed that he was talking about the same events Chomsky reports, though his interpretations were starkly different. I searched through his long bibliography for related history books that I'd also read, but found almost none. Two that I had read were on page 364, The Price of Loyalty (reviewed below) and Slaughterhouse 5 (which I read in 1973). Considering that I've read over 400 history books since 1971, I was rather negatively impressed by his ability to avoid ones that I'd read. In particular, how did he miss Bernard Porter's The Lion's Share? It's still in print, though I read it many years ago.

2006/11/05 and 12/10

Not to give it its own review (because the book was in Japanese), but I do want to comment about a contrasting historical perspective. This was from a survey of world history, probably targeted at junior high school students. This is a highly illustrated (comic-book style) series, and this particular volume was focused on European colonialism in Asia. (In Romaji, the title is Sekai no Rekishi 12: Yo-roppa no Ajia Shinshutsu.) Following so soon after Colossus, I was very much struck by the various important background events that Ferguson had decided to ignore, especially in India and China. The Sepoy Rebellion and the wholesale slaughter of Indians in revenge somehow weren't worth noting. The book claims 20 million Indians starved to death because of economic policies imposed to benefit England. China and Sun Yat-Sen had somehow mostly escaped Ferguson's notice. This children's book includes a lot of juicy and unpleasant details about the Opium Wars and the partition of China (including Japan's involvement). A later volume in the same series included a long section on Gandhi and his struggles for self-rule and independence against the British.

2006/09/17

Review of Noam Chomsky's 9-11

Not a deliberate commemoration of the tragedy, but I serendipitously ran across this small book exactly 5 years after it was written. The categorical reference to the campaign of 2004 is that 9-11 has become Dubya's quintessential election pseudo-issue. Not just limited to 2004, of course, but BushCo also exploited the tragedy of 9-11 in the campaign of 2002 and is currently struggling to exploit it for this 2006 campaign. (Terrorism is only a pseudo-issue because a real issue has to have at least two sides, and there simply is no pro-terrorism side, no matter how many times Dick Cheney lies by implication.) This book is actually more like a small pamphlet that was compiled from some of Professor Chomsky's email written in the first month after the attack.

What most struck me about this slim book was the cool accuracy of the descriptions and how well it has stood the test of time. Very little was known about the details of the 9-11 attack, and Chomsky simply refuses to speculate about those details when asked to do so. What he says about the perverse motivations of the terrorists seems just as valid now as it was when the towers were still smoking. His comments about UBL's aspirations for a violent American response are especially prescient, since America hadn't even attacked Afghanistan when this book was written. The contrast to the verbal gyrations of Dubya is quite striking. Instead, Chomsky was focused on the historical context of terrorism and the wars against terrorism. His older data remains valid and can still be used today, and his precise analysis of the implications of that data continues to lead to the same conclusions as five years ago.

As I read this book I was especially focused on finding mistakes or the supposed lies that Chomsky's critics accuse him of. Perhaps I'm too historical and literal minded, but I couldn't find anything of the sort. Chomsky is quite careful about the historical data, and is also careful to make it clear when he is providing his own analysis and stating his own conclusions. (The contrast of Chomsky's measured responses to the contemporary formulation of Cheney's fundamentally crazy 'one percent doctrine' is quite striking.)

Since I haven't seen any recent statements by Chomsky that by any stretch of the imagination or by any twisted analysis could be interpreted as 'lies', I have to conclude that any such accusations must be based on older statements, and most plausibly cases where Chomsky has said something different from what he had said previously. That's what happens when you're reality-based the way Chomsky is (and I hope me, too). No one has a perfect and complete understanding of reality, and when I learn new data, then I have to accept that extension of reality and incorporate it into my conclusions. Yes, it's embarrassing to make a mistake, but that's reality. I can easily think of one of the most embarrassing examples in my case. In 2000, my conclusion, based upon the data which I had at that time, was that Dubya was a harmless buffoon. In retrospect, I was obviously very wrong. A buffoon yes, but certainly not harmless.

Detailed Notes:

Page 53

This was a very interesting criticism of pre-Dubya foreign policy towards Sudan. The specific example involved rejecting Sudan's information about UBL collected during the period when he'd been living there. Though Chomsky was basically emphasizing the consistency of Clinton's foreign policies relative to those of the Bushes before and after, I wondered if this specific example was included in the recent twisted propaganda 'docudrama' about pre-9-11 history. However, it still begs the question as to whether or not it would have actually averted 9-11 if Clinton had succeeded in eliminating UBL. Given the reality that UBL's lieutenants would have simply taken over Al Qaeda and that Dubya would have still ignored terrorism until 9-11 took place, it seems doubtful that it mattered.

Page 71

The question mentions the anti-terrorism rights-restricting legislation that BushCo was preparing at the time. I thought Chomsky was too quick to disregard the threats, especially for widespread surveillance.

2006/09/04 to 05

Review of Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor and Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin's My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies and the Appalling Behavior that Inspired Them

These books have enough similarities to justify reviewing them together. Both of them are collections of public events described in short snippets, so they are primarily editorial works rather than creative writing. The differences are the kinds of events collected and the organizational structure.

As a disclaimer, I have to note that my copy of The Clothes Have No Emperor was borrowed and never returned many years ago, so this review is based on my rather old memories of the book. I actually liked this book so much that I considered buying another copy, only to discover that the historically highly relevant book was already out of print. Perhaps it was merely regarded as too trivial? However, I actually felt it was both insightful and humorous, and was most likely suppressed. There are various ways such controversial books can be quietly encouraged to go away, especially when a small publisher lacks resources. Publicity is expensive, the distribution channels are narrow and controllable, and often the mere threat of a legal challenge will utterly intimidate such a publisher. Obviously, I can only speculate, but this kind of book is already living on the line between fair use and copyright violations, and fair use has been losing the struggle...

The organizing principle of The Clothes Have No Emperor was simple chronology. It covered the eight years of the Reagan presidency and the first part of the Bush/Quayle period. Various news items were selected, often ones that I vaguely remembered from when they had happened, and usually related to the White House. Many days were skipped, but over the time covered it seemed like every day was mentioned for some year. Listing bits of data doesn't sound like much of an organizing principle, but somehow the overall effect was very powerful. It created a strong impression of the evolution of American politics to the ever-more trivial. It also left an impression of Reagan's essential detachment from the process, and more so after he was shot. It wasn't as though Slansky was trying to hammer any particular point home, but there was a strong impression created.

In contrast, My Bad is organized around paired events. In most cases, there is an apology and then the causal event. In most cases the event is just a public statement rather than an action, but something that called for the apology. Ultimate consequences might be mentioned, as when someone resigned even after apologizing. Sometimes there were several apologies for the same event, but the general pattern is a pair. There are thematic chapters, but the themes don't seem very compelling or meaningful. In the (quite frequent) case of politicians, the political party was usually mentioned, and I received the general impression that most of the apologizers were Republican. The dates jumped around at random most of the time, except for the serial apologizers. Because the apology appears before the event, I found that I usually had to go back and reread the apology after reading the context. There needed to be some stronger organizing principle or structure here. For example, it could have included some statistical summaries. I was most struck by some of the people who were missing from the index, but I suspect that's because some of the worst people never apologize for anything. On that aspect, I suppose the book should have had a section for missing apologies. However, the main point is that overall there just wasn't much impact to it. The book did end with a pair of apologies from Bill Clinton, and I got the impression that those apologies were the proximate motivation for the rest of the book--but I found the motivation inadequate.

Detailed Notes:

Subtitle

In the subtitle of My Bad, I didn't like the mix of the collective "behavior" with countable apologies and the following "them". I think it would have been better to say "actions" or "misbehaviors".

Page 39

An interesting example of the collision of Japanese manners with American liability laws. The Japanese philosophy is that everyone should apologize as sincerely as possibly, including the highest officials of the company--but American lawyers try to use such apologetic statements as proofs of guilt.

Page 79

A notably weak apology for an amazingly vicious attack on Chelsea Clinton. Gee, why do you think anyone would be offended by someone revealing where that person lives in the context of that person's "bloodied carcass"? Aren't people just too sensitive these days? Just remember that these youngsters are America's future--and try not to cry.

2006/09/03

Review of Robert Scheer's Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush

This is a rather hard book to classify. It's basically a collection of reprints wrapped with personal anecdotes and opinions. The author has been a journalist for a long time, focusing on politics from a progressive perspective, which has obviously resulted in a lot of focus on presidents. I wound up rating it as mostly history and political science, but also biography. (IH = Individual History in my book database coding.) My overall impression is that Scheer is a kind of predatory contrarian who has specialized in hunting with presidential-caliber ammunition--until the presidents got too wary of him. However, that's not the sense of unpreparedness that really applies to Dubya. Of course Dubya's handlers would never allow him to be interviewed directly by anyone as dangerous as Scheer. I felt as though the real difference in Dubya's case is that there would be no thrill of the chase. Dubya would be too easily bagged by each and every question fired at him. At least that's how it seemed to me as I was reading the summary of Scheer's view of President Carter in the current context of Dubya.

After some brief introductory material, the book deals briefly with Nixon (30 pages in all), but in a retrospective post-presidential vein. His contacts with Nixon were actually well after he interviewed Carter, which is why the book skips over Ford.

Then it goes into the long story of what is probably Scheer's most famous article, his pre-election interview of Jimmy Carter (84 pp.) for Playboy. This is probably the single story that did the most to establish Scheer's reputation, and even people (like me) who've never bought a copy of the magazine have heard that Carter admitted to lusting in his heart. Scheer says it almost cost Carter the election, though that comes off sounding boastful. I thought Scheer's hindsight-based analysis was rather more revealing of why he is not a historian. I'm not sure why he is trying to construct a framework of failure around Carter, and to a lesser degree around Clinton, but he doesn't do a very good job of it. Perhaps he feels it's necessary to demonstrate his balance? (That would also explain his mostly favorable treatment of Nixon--unless it's just his contrary nature.) However, his analysis of the long-term consequences of Carter's response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is quite imbalanced and weak. Even allowing for the advantages of supposedly 20-20 hindsight, his analysis comes off as seeming short-sighted and weak. He freely criticizes Carter for supporting religiously oriented opponents of the Soviets, but it would have taken a really amazing crystal ball to imagine the eventual blowback. More seriously, he basically ignores Carter's simultaneous opposition to the religious fanatics of Iran, which certainly seemed to be a more serious religion-based threat at the time. That was followed by the long interview.

The next section dealt with Reagan (40 pp.), but without providing much insight, even though Scheer had a lot of contact with Reagan over the years. He claims Reagan had some depth, but to me it comes of as mere personal charm around an empty kernel.

The section about Bush I (24 pp.) was actually much more insightful, though it was basically just a single brief interview. The surly and pompous attitudes revealed there did much to explain both why Bush I was such a mediocre president and how his son could be so much worse. Scheer tries to rationalize it as a bored laziness resulting in a failure to do his 'homework'.

The rather critical treatment of Clinton (36 pp.) introduced reprinted newspaper columns in addition to an interview, but ends on a favorable note. Overall, I felt Scheer did not make sufficient allowance for the political environment within which Clinton was struggling. It was not just the personal attacks, but the entire collapse of the moderate center. In essence, Clinton was sincere about seeking compromises in the middle, but his right-wing opponents were not. In practical terms, that meant Clinton's opponents could almost always count on peeling off enough Democratic votes to block his legislation, but Clinton could rarely peel off any Republican votes for his moderate proposals, no matter how reasonable the legislation in question.

The last section on Dubya (74 pp.) consisted entirely (except for a brief introduction) of commentary in the form of newspaper columns. I've already noted why Scheer will never obtain more direct access to Dubya for an actual interview--it would utterly devastate Dubya. I would say that Scheer's treatment of Dubya was also on the less insightful side, except that his main insight is that there is basically no depth within Dubya to which insight can be applied. Since I agree with that position, I can't actually criticize it. Insight into the puppet Dubya's time in the White House is going to come from looking at other people, mostly at Cheney and Rove. Dubya's involvement is just in terms of being manipulated and handled.

My overall conclusion about this book is that it shows the problems of deification of the American presidency. It mostly humanizes the presidents (except for the superficial treatment of Reagan), and shows why the now-broken system of checks and balances is such a good one. I've commented elsewhere on the roots of this problem--people who extend the personal power advantage of the president over themselves to the point of absurdity. They imagine that all of their personal problems could be solved if only the 'right' president is in the White House. An especially hilarious misconception in the context of Dubya's preaching about personal responsibility (which of course means everyone else is allowed to fail, except for himself and his minions).

Detailed Notes:

Page 54

Major criticism of Carter for lacking a crystal ball for the future of Afghanistan.

Page 65

Carter's insight into the lack of issues in modern political campaigns. He comments about how the reporters only interest in issues is in tricking the candidates into a "crazy statement", which seems somewhat prescient considering how the interview ended with the comment about lust.

Page 167, Line 11

The "wooed" should almost certainly be "wowed".

Page 184

Bush I accuses Carter of faith-based foreign policy, and criticizes him for it (with poorly presented examples), which is certainly a hilarious accusation considering his son's actions.

Page 186

Bush I defending the CIA, again quite amusing considering his son's track record. At the bottom of his page is an example of his surly refusal to answer questions. There were several of these in the interview, which is also how it ends.

Pages 188-9

Bush I attacks Scheer personally for asking unusual questions. Comes off sounding pompous and immature and surly--making me think again of Dubya. The interview goes into the CIA and Iran, and he starts sounding very shallow, too--again reminding me of Dubya.

Page 192

Bush I says "one of my more brilliant moments", but the pompous Dubya-like arse probably meant "many" rather than "more". See where Dubya got it?

Page 194

Bush I tries to use the First Amendment backwards in some bizarre way that reminds me of Dubya's twisted reasoning.

Page 196

The rude finish. It would have been classier if he'd closed with "Go away, son, ya' bother me."

Page 199

Criticizing Clinton for 1996 welfare reform legislation when he was already in a increasingly hostile and Republican-controlled situation.

Page 208

Criticizing Clinton for not going after the Taliban to weaken UBL. Where was that crystal ball when Clinton needed it? Elsewhere he does mention that Clinton approved killing UBL and that Clinton's staff warned Dubya's staff (but were ignored) when that didn't succeed, but that was apparently insufficient to satisfy Scheer? I guess only results count, eh? (Actually, I think it reasonable to doubt that killing UBL would have been sufficient to stop 9/11.)

Page 222

Clinton praising the virtues of hard work and experience.

Page 230

A column of late-term praise of Clinton in 2000 including the example of not needing to learn Japanese. Amusing in retrospect as it appears Chinese may be the language of the post-Dubya future. He also mentions not needing to ban immigration, which is again a hot topic, and not sacrificing labor standards, which were then vigorously sacrificed by Dubya. Looks like Scheer is the fellow who needed a crystal ball.

Page 232

The end of this favorable column got pretty back-handed. Clinton himself complained about the comparison to Eisenhower here.

Page 233, Line 13

The "super" should not be a floating prefix. I'd favor "super-rich" here, because it looks too odd without the hyphen.

Page 233

The "What, me worry?" quote was well used as a summary of Dubya's attitude.

Page 242

Scheer mentions the trivialness of the governor's job in Texas, but I felt he could have gone farther with it. Not just "cutting ribbons, casually signing execution orders, and playing golf", but in Dubya's specific case, spending lots of time campaigning and pre-campaigning for the White House. Minor point, but I don't think the governor of Texas actually signs the execution orders. I think he just has a negative authority to intervene, but otherwise does nothing, and the execution proceeds. Of course, doing nothing is clearly Dubya's greatest talent.

2006/08/11 to 20

Review of Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies since 9/11

What an amazing book. A whole lot of important new information here. From a computer science perspective, it shows the fundamental flaws of 'security by obscurity' to the point where I'm rather surprised the book was ever published. There is a whole lot of information here about anti-terrorism tactics and strategies, including lots of information that it would be rather nice if the terrorists didn't know. So why didn't Dubya's minions lock it up with 14 kinds of lawsuits? Because all of this surprising information must already be known to the terrorists. That in itself is bad enough, but it points at the fundamental problem of security by obscurity. There is no way to know what additional information the terrorists already have. Even if the terrorists act in ways that seem to indicate that they don't know our newest and most secret counter-terrorism strategies, that might be a feint, using their actual knowledge to mislead us.

The book covers so many important aspects in so much detail that it's quite difficult to know where to start. The book itself is basically historical, but there are many important higher-level themes addressed and illustrated at various points throughout the book.

Of course the title theme is a very important notion, and something that I hadn't known anything about before this book was published. This insane rationale is apparently Dick Cheney's main pseudo-contribution to the long war, or the war on terror, or whatever new label they're marketing by the time you read this. The key notion was that a 1% possibility is enough to justify a 100% response. According to Suskind, Cheney originally introduced the notion in the context of possible nuclear terrorism, and it grew and evolved from there. Sure, nuclear threats call for extreme measures, but there is no limit on this principle. If we can act without proving anything, with only a 1% suspicion of a possibility, then there is effectively no limit on our action. Cheney dismisses such nuisances as analysis or "preponderance of evidence" and jumps right to the response.

You might think it doesn't matter to you personally, but it does, and it fits perfectly with the rest of BushCo's behaviors over the years. For example, if there is a 1% chance that something 'useful' might be discovered by monitoring all phone calls, then the 1% doctrine justifies doing it--and they probably have done so. The Fourth Amendment's "probable cause" and "Warrants" and the rest of the Constitution are simply not relevant to the 100% response based on 1% suspicion. You, personally, should reasonably assume that all of your phone calls and credit card transactions and medical information and what-had-you are being monitored, no matter how innocent you are. As long as Cheney can be persuaded that there's a 1% chance it will lead to something, that's okay. Sorry, but that's not okay. That's insane.

During the course of the book, the question of "1% of what?" had become basically a silly question. As the principle was gradually extended and revealed in public policies (or in secret policies that affected the public), it doesn't really matter. A serious attack? Events that will create the possibility of an attack? Vague planning and daydreaming that is 99% certain to lead to nothing? Evidence is not the issue--the response is intended to be total and devastating even if there's nothing there to be devastated. Many of the responses wind up as merely ridiculous, which is what happens when you're always half-cocked. You're chasing wisps, and the book is full of examples of these mistakes. We apparently have another example from last week in the liquid bomb panic--unless the timing was purely political manipulation (and that's what the actual evidence increasingly strongly suggests).

Another important theme of the book is the lack of a 'policy apparatus' in Dubya's White House. Dubya just isn't concerned about carefully considered policies and policy alternatives. He already 'knows' what he wants to do, and he has no interest in considering the options, even when events happen that prove the current policy is completely broken. No wonder Dubya ignores reality so often. Obviously the anti-Saddam war and resulting fiasco is the largest and most blatant example of this. Dubya's 'policy' is that shite happens, and he'll just deal with it like a cowboy. It makes me think of a barefoot and horseless cowboy trying to stop a stampede.

The lack of a policy apparatus is combined with sustaining 'plausible deniability' (another important theme in the book), to illustrate how Cheney manages Dubya. It's not just that Dubya doesn't know what the options are. It's that he aggressively does NOT want to know, and aggressively rejects contradictory evidence from 'untrustworthy' sources--like the rest of the world except for a few people he actually trusts. In Dubya's context, 'trust' means that he trusts them to tell him what he wants to hear. The plausible deniability thing was actually developed for Reagan as a response to Nixon's self-destruction, but it works much better with Dubya. Cheney simply gives Dubya the option he wants to hear, perhaps along with a ridiculous alternative just so Dubya feels like he has a choice and is making an actual decision, and Dubya is perfectly happy to "lead" by agreeing to whatever Cheney wants. (I'm pretty sure that Karl Rove handles Dubya in the same way, though the book doesn't say much about Rove.) The rather weak CIA response was to try to persuade Dubya by carefully selecting briefers with personalities that Dubya would 'respond' favorably to, thus getting him to agree to the CIA recommendation--as long as Cheney hadn't already vetoed it.

The book has a very interesting example of a major case where Cheney was having trouble getting his way. Secretary of State Powell had finally gotten Dubya to agree to mention seeking a UN resolution against Iraq, but Cheney didn't want to be hampered. As Dubya was reading his speech, he actually realized that the UN resolution had been deleted--and he tried to reinstate it from memory. That's produced the bungled vague threat about the UN making itself irrelevant, while the reality was that Cheney already regarded the UN as totally irrelevant (like Secretary of State Who).

Kind of a minor theme involved the fundamental philosophic differences between the FBI and the two wings of the CIA. Suskind didn't describe it in these terms, but I regard it as the policeman mentality of the FBI versus the bankrobber mentality of the CIA. The FBI is supposed to follow the rules and the laws and produce courtroom-ready proof. The entire notion of preventing crimes is a strain for them. Suskind didn't really say much about the CIA's actions to change the reality of the world, but he emphasized the CIA's desire to describe the world accurately, even when the reality does not support Cheney's desired policies. Basically moot, however. How much support do you need to get to 1%?

Not sure if it should be called a theme of the book, but as should already be clear, Dubya's personality is addressed in some depth. The story about Dubya's win-at-all-costs and to-heck-with-the-rules basketball experience was very revealing because it meshes so perfectly with his political behaviors, especially in the post-election escapades of 2000. However, I think the more significant personality aspect was the portrayal of Dubya as a not-so-bright trainee intern who is ostensibly controlling the show. It's not just that Dubya has been inserted into the loop, but that's he's supposedly right at the top of the loop. The stark reality is that Dubya is clearly totally overwhelmed--but doesn't even care. The decisions are made elsewhere, mostly by Cheney (and Rove). Those decisions include considerations of 'protecting' Dubya from responsibility by not telling him what's going on, even though he remains theoretically responsible for the entire mess.

In spite of being a large and interesting book, I did feel like it skirted around a number of significant issues that were related to covered themes. For example, there was a lot of talk about investigations of how 9/11 happened, but he left out the evacuation of the prominent Saudis after 9/11, which included siblings of UBL himself. If understanding your enemy helps (and I certainly think so), then that was a horrible mistake due to political expediency. As noted, there was very little mention of Rove's partisan shenanigans, though it's quite clear that many of the 'anti-terrorist' actions are politically influenced, especially for the timing of terrorist alerts and the allocations of anti-terror funding. The post-9/11 anthrax attacks and the Valerie Plame outing were essentially ignored.

There are two other important topical areas that I felt the book didn't address strongly enough, though I can't accuse it of actually skirting them: torture (my #1 issue) and warrantless searches targeting American citizens. They were mentioned frequently, and Suskind seems to agree that they are important issues, and yet I was still left with the impression that he was treading lightly. In these areas, I feel he cold easily have said much more. Abu Ghraib is perhaps a good example. I regard this as one of the most important and deliberate abuses of what America supposedly stands for, but he barely mentioned it. The index has only two references. I don't remember his making any direct reference to prisoners who died under torture. He was similarly 'diplomatic' around such topics as telephone records made accessible to the government without warrants, even though he included several pages about the Fourth Amendment.

Overall I was left with three major impressions. First, Dick Cheney is much more crazy and much more dangerous than I though he was. My already low opinion has been greatly lowered. In the absence of any reasonable explanation for his behaviors, I feel driven to speculation. Pure megalomania in a super-authoritarian personality? Is it some kind of overcompensation for his feeling of guilt for ignoring terrorists prior to 9/11? In particular, Richard Clarke had been trying to increase the focus on terrorism, and perhaps Cheney was the main obstacle, and knows it? I even find myself wondering if the incident of shooting his 'friend' in the face could have been a 'localized' application of the 1% doctrine and some sort of insane preemptive self-defense. When you're dealing with so much craziness, anything begins to seem possible. (My opinion of Rumsfeld as an increasingly incompetent henchman was little changed.)

A second impression was that Dubya's war on terror is failing--but that's fine with Rove as long as the voters continue to see terrorist threats as a reason to vote for his candidates. One of the big problems is that we can't even trust our own allies in the war on terror as BushCo is fighting it. The lack of trust cuts both ways, and actually reminds me some of Bush I's few sage words of advice. He said you make someone trustworthy by trusting them--but Dubya can't and doesn't, and everyone winds up doubting everyone else.

My third major impression is linked to the old joke about the fellow looking under the streetlight even though he lost his wallet elsewhere. "But the light is better here." An awful lot of our war on terror seems to be like that. We're focusing on high-tech computer stuff and money flows because those are the places where we have lots of light--but it's not where we 'dropped' the terrorists. The essence of asymmetric warfare is that it is NOT symmetric, and if we expect the terrorists to come to rely on OUR favored tools and motivations, then we're the ones who are being stupid. Hint: A suicide bomber is not doing it for the money.

Detailed Notes:

Page 62

Introduction of Cheney's 1% doctrine in the context of a meeting of UBL with Pakistani scientists.

Page 144

This discussion of the funding was where I concluded that chasing the money was getting crazy. We're focusing on large money flows and spending billions for countermeasures and reconstruction while the terrorists are estimated to have spent only about half a million dollars for 9/11--but they were sincere enough to die for it.

Page 171

This is where Dubya realized the line about the UN resolution had disappeared. Suskind doesn't speculate, but I'm confident it was Cheney's work.

Page 174

Excellent discussion of plausible deniability leading into how Dubya is manipulated.

Page 188

This is George Tenet's version of the infamous 'slam dunk' meeting. Suskind reports that the CIA side doesn't remember it, but stops short of saying that the other side deliberately decided that's what he said.

Page 211

Here is a place where George Tenet actually used "slam dunk", but with regards to tracing financial transactions and with no direct relation to Iraq.

Page 226

This section talks about controlling the information Dubya receives and preserving the secrecy regarding what he's actually heard.

Page 232, Line 1

Typographic error of "the Israel" for "Israelis".

Page 259

Follows the official Israeli version on the Osirak reactor incident, which is basically dismissing the notion of peaceful nuclear technology. (Not a big thing, since everyone agrees that Saddam did have a nuclear weapons program after that.)

Page 331

Mention of the start of the disastrous Cheney-directed politically-motivated purge of the CIA. The book could have said more, but that was probably moving too close to material we still hope the terrorists are ignorant of.

Page 363

In the Valerie Plame entry in the index, it says there was some mention of her on page 243, but I couldn't find any related text. Just a random and accidental check of the index, but more annoying than a regular typo.

2006/08/06
2006/10/08 (mostly the supergerm stuff)

Review of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

Professor Chomsky bracketed the election of 2004 with two major books. This one was published before the election, but remains quite relevant now. However, the tone of this one seemed somewhat more upbeat and optimistic than Failed States, the post-election book. The content is pretty much the same as it ever is in Chomsky's books, drawing pretty much on the same historical examples in slightly different analytic frameworks, and unfortunately the conclusions come out about the same no matter how you look at the evidence.

Chapter 8 on useful truisms was especially interesting to me, though he could have been more clear in the introduction. He was basically focused on two essential philosophic principles of ethical behavior, and it was quite easy to show that they were historically irrelevant--though frequently proclaimed. Actually, he several times cited examples where the truisms were explicitly rejected. Giving Henry Kissinger credit for brutal honesty?

My main dissatisfaction with the book is that it doesn't really spend much time on the theme of the title. Chomsky basically takes it for granted that we can exterminate ourselves, and that continuing on the usual course of ever-increasing violence can only lead to that outcome. He does address this aspect (in terms of the mechanisms) more clearly early in Failed States, but I was hoping to see more on the topic here, and perhaps even some consideration of the alternatives. While he's usually pretty clear about his assumptions, this was something he glossed over in this book. We, even the Americans among us, can actually apply our intelligence for better purposes than ever greater violence and creating an ever more vicious jungle. However, Chomsky is just assuming that the dominant motivations and behaviors will continue to be as short-sighted as they always have been. Unfortunately, his lists of examples are rather overwhelming, but I want to remain more optimistic. Perhaps we actually can learn from our mistakes before we exterminate ourselves?

As clarification, Chomsky apparently believes that high-tech animals must exterminate themselves if they pursue unlimited power (hegemony). While I think this is possible, I basically disagree with Chomsky regarding the two main extinction mechanisms he discusses here. In particular, even though nuclear war would be devastating to society as we now know it, I do not believe it could exterminate all human beings. I think there would probably be some survivors--even though they most likely would be wishing they were dead. I do think there are two high-tech paths to making the human species extinct, but Chomsky doesn't address them. I think a genetically modified supergerm (or supervirus or superfungus) could wipe us out, possibly even by accident. Alternately, a revolt of the robots could do it, especially if we have succeeded in teaching them to obey the law of the jungle. The supergerm may already be possible with today's genetic engineering technology. If Chomsky wanted to restrict "survival" to the society rather than the species, he should have said so.

In terms of the production, I think this book was quite well prepared. I only noticed one typographic error, on page 182, where it refers (in quotes) to the destruction of dams that furnished most of the "controlled rice supply" for North Korea. Obviously that was supposed to be "controlled water supply". It's possible the mistake came from the specific source he quoted, but in that case he should have used a different one. The incident is fairly well known.

2006/07/30

Review of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation

This book deserves a more substantive review, but it has to go back to the library, so... Basically the same reason I never wrote any review of Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat this Book. That book was more focused on McDonald's and more aggressive, but both books are revolving around the same questions. I think the higher level perspectives would involve considering the focus on instant gratification and propagandistic advertising techniques used by the rich and powerful to increase their wealth and power, but even Fast Food Nation only touches relatively lightly on those topics. The connection to quick-fried candidates like Dubya is too direct.

The approach of the book is fundamentally historical, reporting on the history of many fast food companies (but especially McDonald's) and of the related companies and industries. The coverage spans from potato farming to cattle ranching to slaughterhouse management to flavor development to obesity to international business and to various other aspects. Advertising targeted at naive children was an especially interesting aspect. However, the book kind of lacks an overall focus--which is actually an accurate reflection of the unplanned growth of the fast food industry itself. Cancerous growth might be the better adjective...

Detailed Notes:

Page 49

It seems odd that the agreement between McDonald's and Disney would specify that Disney characters could never be depicted with McDonald's food or in their restaurants.

Page 136 and page 14

He mentions inheritance taxes as a concern for small family farmers and ranchers, though I thought they were almost never affected, since the existing exemptions for family farms and ranches were already above the value of such small businesses.

Page 139, Line 16

In that context, I think "chickens" would be better than "chicken", which sounds strained.

Page 149, Line 13

Basically the same comment regarding "steers" versus "steer".

Page 246, Line 3

The "last" should be "least".

Page 279, Page 8 notes

The number "1,860,520" at the end seems to conflict with the earlier 1.3 million. Perhaps the jail population is left out of the earlier one?

Page 323, Page 233 notes

The distance is unclear here, but the European rental car must have been metric and reporting in kilometers?

2006/07/23

Review of Al Franken's The Truth (with jokes)

This is one I'd bought a while ago, but only got around to finishing about a month ago. The main reason for the delay is basically that it wasn't nearly as amusing as another Al Franken book that I'd read back in 2003, Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them. I thought that book had been reviewed here, but I see that I never did, so I guess it was a rushed loan from someone. The earlier book also benefitted from having funnier targets and straight men. Actually, I still remember that it featured Bill O'Reilly, and he's so twisted it's hard to keep a straight face even while calling him a straight man. O'Reilly has practically become the linchpin of anti-BushCo humor.

I suppose the fundamental problem with this more recent book is that it's hard to be funny about large-scale disappointment. This book is mostly an attempt to understand how Dubya more or less won the election of 2004. It does focus on some of the key tactics and how they were used to effect, but overall I feel like it's just looking at some of the larger trees and ignoring the forest. For example, he tries to make it funny with rhyming word play in the chapter titles involving fears, smears, and queers, but it mostly just comes off as out of focus and ineffectual. He tries to close on an optimistic note with an imaginary letter to his grandchildren, but it comes off sounding like escapist fantasy. It just doesn't come to terms with the underlying problems. However, I admit that I already considered America's future to be hopeless when the first cheap facade President, Ronald Reagan, was reelected back in 1984.

Mechanically, it was well prepared, and the only typographic mistake I noticed was on page 185, where the word "be" is missing after "There would" and before "more money going out...." No substantive mistakes--but also nothing that was especially interesting. No jokes I took around to my friends.

2006/07/04 to 09

Review of Noam Chomsky's Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

Another recently published book, and especially interesting to read in proximity to Palast's Armed Madhouse. Much of the content and many of the conclusions are similar, but the styles are so diametrically opposed that it's pretty amazing there could be so much overlap. Succinctly, Palast is infuriating and annoying and you feel like someone needs to be punched or strangled, while Chomsky is just reciting an endless litany of tedious facts, droning on and on, and ultimately boring you to sleep and beyond. Palast wants to make you feel, but Chomsky is just thinking out loud (if on paper), almost to himself.

Another difference is hard to describe except as a matter of depth of focus of their differing perspectives. Palast likes to focus on the money, and he wants to link under-the-table decisions to specific documents that he's obtained, quite often illicitly, that show where the money is moving as a result of those decisions. Palast seeks the devil in the details of the crimes. Chomsky has a much more historical perspective that focuses on the flow of political power and the abuses of that power. Chomsky is focused on the higher level patterns and repetitions, and most of his data is just dry old historical stuff. Compared to Palast, Chomsky hardly mentions money. He does talk about it once in a while, and he clearly appreciates the scale of BushCo's corruption, but he's mostly concerned about people's lives and deaths, not simple theft or even grand larceny.

In comparing the two authors I'm reminded of a Johnny Cash song where two guys are having a big fight and wind up rolling around in the "mud and the blood and the beer", but I feel like it's Palast who is doing the rolling--and enjoying it. Chomsky is like the quiet guy sitting at the corner table--making notes. Maybe snapping an occasional photo.

In contrast to most of Chomsky's writing that I've read, I did not feel there was any underlying thread of strong optimism this time. I felt a kind of quiet acceptance of what is happening to America. His love of such traditional American values as freedom and democracy is still clear, but they've become too detached from what America is now? Maybe it's his age catching up with him? Or perhaps it was the government-sanctioned torture that finally broke his spirit? (Or perhaps I'm projecting my own age and priorities?) I still feel like the general historical trend is in favor of progress, but Chomsky's discussion of that notion is much less optimistic than mine. I'm basically doubtful that we can exterminate ourselves completely, but Chomsky apparently sees racial suicide as an increasing risk.

The structure of the Chomsky's book is typically difficult to describe. It's thematic, but the themes are very high level constructs, and it's quite difficult to review them succinctly. His first chapter considers the great threats we actually face (and terrorism isn't one of them), and shows how BushCo has increased those dangers. The second chapter is called "Outlaw States", but I think it would be better described in terms of 'rebranding' the enemy of the day. Chomsky emphasizes that the policies and the expressions of benign intent remain pretty much constant, but the labeling of the enemies does change fairly steadily. He doesn't say it this way, but I think that the negative labels lose their efficacy as too many parallels with the 'good guys' are discovered. The third chapter is more about word games by the powerful. The title of "Illegal but Legitimate" comes from a description of NATO actions under Clinton. The fourth and sixth chapters are about 'democracy' abroad and at home, and the interleaved fifth chapter is mostly a case study focusing on Israel. (The more I learn about that mess, the more clear it is that two wrongs don't make a right. Unfortunately, the Arabs mostly see it as another old historical pattern that started with the Crusades.)

General conclusions? As is always the case with Chomsky's writings, I'm surprised by the clarity he brings to complicated topics. In another place, I remember Chomsky criticizing himself for a lack of concision, but it is reality that lacks concision, and (wearing my historian's hat) I think he does an excellent job of extracting out relevant facts and focusing on how they contribute to the larger meanings within the tangled reality. There are large patterns to be seen, but usually they are obscured within layers of trivial detail, and yet Chomsky has an unusually keen eye for spotting and staying focused on the underlying patterns--which was also the essence of much of his work in linguistics. The facts that Chomsky cites are almost never surprising, but rather representative, and quite often I even remember hearing about the events at the times when they were actually taking place. However, I did not mark their significance, while Chomsky is able to observe how the various bits of evidence fit into the larger historical patterns.

Another conclusion is that Chomsky always makes me do some heavy thinking. One of the main topics of the book concerned protectionist economic policies in relation to non-democratic governments. I certainly didn't feel like he was defending the Chinese quasi-Communists, but he presented those economic facts in a way that makes you wonder if that's such a bad economic system after all--at least by the growth-based criteria BushCo worships. The Chinese don't have much of what we'd recognize as freedom and democracy--with my attitudes, if I were a Chinese I'd spend all my time in political prisons. However, they are producing the economic results, both in their own economy and in the leverage they are gaining in the world's economic system, especially government-bond-based leverage over the United States. I was strongly reminded of the long-term perspective of the Chinese. From their perspective, the normal state of the world is for China to be the most powerful, wealthiest, and most civilized nation. They see China as the natural leader, but the country has merely had a couple of bad centuries. It happens once in a while, and they think it's time for things to get back to normal--and I'm sure they sincerely appreciate the great help they are getting from Dubya.

Looping back a bit, but another conclusion regarding concision. Not Chomsky's lack thereof, but the artificial concision of BushCo talking points. Actually, I had come to this conclusion before starting this book, but the book strongly reinforced it. What propagandists like Karl Rove and Goebbels do is focus on concise themes, repeated vigorously and loudly. It doesn't matter whether or not they are true. The only concern is that many people accept them without thinking about such details. Reality is more like Chomsky: boring, but patient and very persistent.

Detailed Notes:

Page 13

The name MccGwire seemed very odd, but appears fairly widely on the Web.

Page 33, Line 14: "Sentor" should be "Senator".

Page 40

This section about American-government-sponsored torture mentions that Alberto Gonzales "passed on to Bush a memorandum on torture", but I felt the relevant question here was whether or not Dubya read or even looked at the memo, let alone understood it. The slicing of legal hairs is scarcely one of Dubya's skills.

Pages 70-1

The key quotation about the NPT as "a convenient instrument of US foreign policy" is repeated. I think that's a typo rather than for emphasis, though it was actually quite far-sighted of them to anticipate the 'asymmetric threat' of nuclear weapons under the control of 'small targets'. Amusing that Rumsfeld created or at least publicized the label while greatly increasing the asymmetric threats the world faces. However, the point here is that the NPT was supposed to be a treaty with two sides, and now it's just a one-sided instrument of one nuclear power. Except for the US, the other nuclear powers were at least willing to pretend they could live up to their side of the treaty.

Page 82

The ironic use of "sometimes mislabeled" was hard to follow here as he equated "anticipatory self-defense" with the out-of-fashion "preemptive war".

Page 88, Line 1: The "demand" should be "demands".

Page 143, Lines 4-5

This usage of "condominium" was new to me, but might be British. It requires collaboration of several foreign countries in controlling the 'condominium'.

Page 158

The usage "sometimes every week" is a case where the parallel structure needed to be disrupted. Perhaps "sometimes in one week" would work.

Page 165

The conclusion that "the scale of the catastrophe could hardly have been anticipated" seems debatable to me. The outcome in Iraq to date is only near the limit of the worst case scenarios, but it hasn't yet gotten to the conditions of the worst of them. Also, the statement sounds like a description of the possibilities, and it certainly was possible to anticipate a catastrophe of this scale, or worse.

Page 234

Here he says that the people surveyed favored a specific value of "$24 billion" for increased research and development of renewable energy, but I don't see any solid basis for "the public" deciding on such a number. All I can imagine is that the survey listed certain programs with probable expenses and asked them which ones they supported.

Page 245

Here is a case where the poll numbers of 71% and 46% go over 100%, and Chomsky's description is unclear. The wording could mean that the 46% is a subset of the 71%, or that they are referring to different questions.

Page 263

I just liked the sentence: "Another conservative suggestion is that facts, logic, and elementary moral principles should matter." That seems to sum up most of what is wrong with BushCo.

2006/06/22

Review of Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse

Hot off the presses, this book has already received a lot of coverage--but not in the MSM (MainStream Media). Amazon even shows it as #40 in today's book sales, though that's a shaky metric. They say this one was #63 only yesterday, which is suspicious volatility. Should we expect it to hit #1 on the 8th? Amazon even claimed that demon Ann's latest drivel was briefly #1, which is pretty hard to believe with a fan base of such proud illiterates. Maybe each of her fans is buying several copies to put under table legs? Whoops, I've already gone off on one of my tangents, but that's kind of like this book. Palast does jump around quite a lot, but I'll try to be more focused and thematic now.

So the first theme here is the general overview: Annoying, saddening, and often infuriatingly frustrating. The annoyance is mostly due to the way he writes, but I guess that his aggressive and hostile attitude is part of the package that made him an investigative reporter in the first place. Kind of a dying breed. Even hunted to extinction in some locales--such as most of America. (He tangentially says quite a bit about the necklacing of Dan Rather as a highly effective threat to keep the MSM in line.)

Saddening has to do with the information he presents. I certainly want to consider myself well informed on most of these topics, but a great deal of the information in this book was new to me--and unusually depressing. Mostly of it was not completely new, but I'd only seen vague outlines or even rumors before this. In other places I was quite surprised--but in the worst ways. I don't recall any pleasant information in this book. However, all of it was presented very forcefully, and there were too many links to previously verified evidence to dismiss it. All in all, he makes a very strong case that the situation in America is distinctly worse than I thought it was--and I've already become quite pessimistic about the future of America.

That leads naturally to the angry frustration. There really doesn't seem to be much that can be done about it at this point. Most of the problems he describes seem to be unbounded. We've gone into the realms of negative dynamic stability, and once you're in that condition, there are only two possible outcomes. Disastrous collapse when the system breaks down completely, or the application of large amounts of counteracting force. In America, the only plausible source of balancing corrective force would appear to be the Democratic Party--but that's hopelessly dominated by little leaguers who are just trying to stretch their own political lives past one more election. (That's related to some of his tangential but very sharp criticism of Al Gore.)

The structure of the book is hard to describe. There are three main themes, the war on terror (and its mismanagement extending into Iraq), class war (including general economic incompetence that is harming America), and electoral shenanigans and fraud (focusing on 2004). These area don't map precisely to the book's five chapters, but I think that reflects the way reality works. I'm mostly reminded of Chomsky saying he lacked "concision" as a form of self-criticism. Lots of important topics (such as education) don't fit concisely into any convenient framework.

That actually led me to thinking about the propagandistic approach Rove and his henchmen use for BushCo. They call them "talking points". They decide on specific and CONCISE things to focus on, and that's the message they all recite for the MSM. Being concise and focused is much more important than being true or accurate. In certain narrow cases (mostly the "reality" of public opinion), such propagandists can actually influence things, but reality normally persists in it's stubborn lack of concision. This isn't so tangential, since I'm sure it will be part of the BushCo response to this book, though right now they're still on their first line of defense: Trying to ignore it.

The most interesting area of new information for me involved the dynamics of the internal struggles between the neocons and the IOCs (International Oil Companies) within BushCo. They were in agreement about removing Saddam, and they firmly shepherded Dubya in that direction, but their long-term goals diverged radically. The neocon vision was to use Iraq's oil to break OPEC and drive oil price down, but the IOCs preferred stability and high prices--and it is clear that they ultimately won that battle. The leading neocons were kicked upstairs to symbolic and useless positions, and the price of oil is now fluttering over $70/barrel, with record profits for the IOCs now and for the foreseeable future. Palast's interesting conclusion here is that the fundamental reason for removing Saddam was because he had enough residual influence to play games with oil prices.

In spite of the abrasiveness of the writing style, the quality of the book is pretty good. Some of the graphics were not especially clear, and I don't like the emphatic pasteover technique he used with some of the cited documents. I'd guess these are supposed to ad market appeal. I'm listing the typographic errors or layout problems I noticed mostly to show that I read it closely--but that's the way I normally read.

1. Page 80: Line 12 should be "... killed thousands of Shias."
2. Page 89: The graph is misleading, but it would have been much stronger if the rightmost bar just extended up the page.
3. Page 90: First line says "a quarter" when the graph shows "a third [of a]".
4. Page 144: Line 3 says "college", but "collage" would make much more sense. Google shows both, though "college seems to be favored.
5. Page 161: Palast claims Mundell invented the Euro, though I'm pretty sure the idea was much older. Possibly a fellow named Warner. I can't confirm these details, but I'm pretty sure the "father of the Euro" was actually half-Japanese, and his mother was named Mitsuko.
6. Page 167: This document is especially poorly reproduced.
7. Page 252: Palast describes President Carter as "witless", which I think is quite unreasonable (but a good example of Palast's aggressive obnoxiousness).
8. Page 342: Line 17 has "web" when it should be "Web".
9. Page 344: He thanks someone for making him remove a rather weak punning joke which was not removed.

I've already mentioned two examples of criticisms of prominent Democrats. Palast is certainly not blind to their faults. However, the critical focus of the book is very much on BushCo. Somewhat surprisingly, it isn't much focused on Dubya, and it's clear that Palast does not regard Dubya as a particularly important player in the games. Dubya's minimal significance is apparently mostly symbolic, and Palast just explains why Dubya is so bogus in reality.

The key decision-making figure is clearly Dick Cheney, though in many places Palast simply describes the damage done without pointing any fingers at any one in particular. There are two likely reasons for that. One is that BushCo has succeeded in disguising the responsibility for their crimes--and BushCo is certainly trying very hard to be as secretive as they can be. Hint: Karl Rove, who is barely mentioned in this book. However, since Palast clearly has a lot of inside information, I lean the other way, to the theory that Palast may actually be protecting his friendly sources while they are still in exposed positions within the government. (Another aspect of his aggressive attitude was snide or rude comments about non-friendly sources.)

It's possible that I'll feel better about it after thinking over the book's data for a while--but I doubt it. Palast does try to end on an optimistic note, and I really appreciate how much he loves America and how saddened and disillusioned he feels by the recent changes. However, right now I feel pretty discouraged by the seriousness of the problems and the brazenness of the criminals.

2005/12/16

Review of Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

Perhaps this is the first time I was actually motivated to go out and buy a book based on promotional interviews with the author. I saw at least two of them. The Daily Show interview was the most recent before buying the book. Watching Jimmy Carter reminds you what a sincere and honest man of integrity is really like. What a stark contrast to Dubya, most recently featured as the bubble boy.

Since I'm not a religious person in any Christian sense, I'm sometimes offended by people who loudly proclaim their Christianity. President Carter talks a lot about his religious beliefs in this short book, but there's nothing preachy or offensive there. It's just that religion is naturally important to him, and he's able to deal with it. Reality in general, and scientific reality in particular, are not threatening to his strong faith, and he makes that clear.

The primary non-religious theme of the book is the breakdown of the American political system. He blames this not just on religious fundamentalists who demand political power, but also on political fundamentalists who are eager to exploit any group that can deliver votes. Though there is some overlap, the main focus of political fundamentalism is the neocons, and he makes it clear that they are acting on dangerous non-religious ideologies with little or no regard for unpleasant realities.

This is actually a simple little book, so I'm going to leave this as a simple little review. I do want to include a paragraph from his conclusion to give you an idea of how clearly he write and how profound his words are:

"It is good to know that our nation's defenses against a conventional attack are impregnable, and imperative that America remain vigilant against threats from terrorists. But as is the case with a human being, admirable characteristics of a nation are not defined by size and physical prowess. What are some of the other attributes of a superpower? Once again, they might very well mirror those of a person. These would include a demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity, and the upholding of other moral values."

This is a book I strongly recommend. It's not long, and it's easy to read, but it gives you hope for the future of America.

2005/08/27

Review of Ian Buruma's Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan by Ian Buruma

When I saw this book in the library, I didn't have any expectation of relevance to this webpage, but it appealed to my interests in history and Japan. The book was published around the time Dubya reentered Texas politics, but many of the passages struck me a extremely relevant to the current situation, either now or as seen from a few years in the future.

First, a bit of general background. The author is Dutch and fluent in English and German, and probably in Japanese, too. He certainly discusses points that involve linguistic subtleties of Japanese, and if he's not fluent, he certainly had expert advice in some of the nuances. He spent some years compiling the information that appears in the book, and I only noted one factual mistake: The dog Hachiko (mentioned on page 282) was female, not male. [Or that might be my mistake--some Japanese people tell me that the name could be used for a male dog.] Overall it's a kind of psychological treatment with heavy historical support. Lots of interesting trivia, too, such as Sunshine 60 standing on the site of Sugamo Prison, where the convicted war criminals were executed. Following are some of the passages that struck me as I was reading the book.

On page 166 he is talking about the side effects of the Tokyo war crimes trial: "[The trial] received wide coverage in the Japanese press and revealed for the first time to millions of Japanese the scheming, duplicity,and insatiable desire for power of her entrenched militaristic leaders..." Exactly what most Americans currently don't know (and don't want to know) about BushCo.

Later on the same page, quoting from the Nippon Times: "the Japanese people must ponder over why it is that there has been such a discrepancy between what they thought and what the rest of the world accepted as common knowledge. This is at the root of the tragedy which Japan brought upon herself." In Dubya's America, even scientific knowledge is under attack in many areas. Climatology (global warming) and biology (evolution) are especially prominent examples.

On page 168, quoting Frank Tavenner, one of the prosecutors: "These men were supposed to be the elite of the nation, the honest and trusted leaders to whom the fate of the nation had been confidently entrusted..." Again, the gap between the reality of BushCo and their facade.

On page 267, he is quoting from a letter written by a German soldier who is trying to defend the actions of most Germans as the Nazis consolidated their power: "...one thing had to be made clear: you were either with us or against us..." Shades of Dubya in many of his speeches.

The final quote I'd like to include appears on page 207 with reference to neo-Nazi violence: "People are dangerous everywhere, when leaders acquire unlimited power and followers are given license to bully others weaker than themselves."

The resonance with current events in America is extremely saddening. Far too easy to imagine replacing those foreign references with American ones... Mostly reconfirms my belief in the wisdom of America's Founders when they tried to divide and conquer the powers of their own government.

2005/05/22 to 7/31

Review of Michael Scheurer's Imperial Hubris

You should read this book with a grain of salt. A grain of salt THIS big. I'm pretty sure it was not the author's intention, but my main reaction to the book is to conclude you can't trust anyone from the CIA. Perhaps it's an inevitable result of their confused mission? Good guys using bad methods? Bad guys, but supposed to be working for good guys? More on that below, but for now, my main point is that this book is like a clinic on lying. Therefore, we need to start with a bit of epistemology before we can even begin to evaluate this one, so the overall summary appears later on.

There are various dimensions you can use in classifying lies, and the nature of lies is quite a complicated topic in epistemology. For example, lying requires volition, so you could consider the motivating factors for the lies. Easy enough when someone is lying for personal advantage or profit, but what about someone who is lying because he is just a fanatic believing what he wants to believe? Did he have any obligation to be aware of the truth? What if the truth is clearly visible (but the fanatic is fully accustomed to ignoring it)? That's just a minor taste of the complexities. You can assess lies by the damage they do to someone, which is also the key to their effectiveness as lies. However, my analytic focus is going to be along a dimension of technique, using a typology derived from a passage written by the science fiction author R.A. Heinlein. For each category I'll select a couple of the most notable candidates from this book, and explain why I believe they are lies. This review will then continue with a section of reactions and attempts to separate out some of the truths that are mixed in here, and then I'll close with some residual detailed (but admittedly tedious) notes.

The lowest category of lies is Class 0, self-contradictions. The ease of identifying them depends partly on the proximity of the two statements that are in conflict, and partly on the clarity of the statements. Next there is Class 1, the counterfactual statements. As part of his appeal for credibility, the author actually spends a lot of time discussing the opposite of Class 1 lies, the factual statements that he calls "the checkables". Moving upwards, the Class 2 lies involve partial truths that lead to false conclusions. Many skilled liars overtly recommend Class 2 approaches. Finally, we come to the masterful technique of the Class 3 lie, which is how I feel about most of this book. For a Class 3 lie, the liar has to tell the truth--but do it in a way that causes the truth itself to be rejected as a lie.

Most people naturally avoid Class 0 lies because they are so obvious and therefore ineffective. They can even be taken as a kind of stupidity, since most of us almost instinctively reject the idea of "A and not A." They most commonly appear in the form of inconsistencies that are separated by time, and the usual explanations or excuses are "I forgot" or "I changed my mind." Such excuses are not very acceptable in the context of a non-fiction book, where the author (and editors) should resolve these problems before publication.

The most glaring primary example of a Class 0 lie here involves equating the nebulous war on terror with a "necessary" war against the Moslem world which is also equated with defending the American way of life, which is apparently equated with a particular opulent life style. He even attempts to use President Lincoln to support his confusing position, which is something of a giveaway insofar as the lifestyle in question did not exist in Lincoln's day. Near the end of the book he actually argues for reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy (in connection with some Class 1 lies about domestic energy resources). Meanwhile, he also frequently emphasizes that the Moslems do not hate our way of life or our freedom, but rather are angered by specific policies. Meanwhile, he argues that the policies cannot be changed because that would destroy Lincoln's vision of the American way of life, only to turn around and argue that the policies should be subjected to public discussion and evaluation and possible affirmation. (This is really moving into the area of Class 2 lies, but there is no considerations of possible changes of the policies.)

Another group of Class 0 lies involves blanket criticisms of political and military leaders for moral failings, and then turning around and praising certain ones that the author clearly approves of. The main case in point here is Reagan, who the author repeatedly praises even while criticizing counterproductive policies that Reagan maintained right along with those other morally bankrupt politicians he attacks. So why does he like Reagan so much? Not sure, but it's interesting to note that the Reagan period was one when the CIA was operating with very little constraint, since Reagan didn't know much about what was going on, and the vice-presidential Bush was a staunch friend of the CIA (which he had headed in earlier years).

Onward and upward. The Class 1 lies are usually regarded as trivial to identify, since "any clod can have the facts" (as Charles McCabe said). However, this category includes most lies by exaggeration, which can be much more difficult to assess. "I am wearing a red shirt" is easy to check, but "I am wearing an ugly shirt" may be false in your opinion, simply because our tastes differ, and "This is the ugliest shirt in the world" is almost surely a lie or said for some rhetorical or humorous purpose.

Given the author's emphasis on "the checkables", his extensive academic background in history, and the fact-checking resources applied to the publication approval process required by the CIA, one would expect the book should be free from Class 1 lies. Surprisingly, there are quite a number of places where he does say things that seem likely to be Class 1 counterfactual statements, but my current feeling is that these are probably red herrings. There is only one place where I am quite convinced he is lying outright, and even there he manages to confuse the issue. That involves the pre-9/11 plans to deal with Al Qaeda. In Richard Clarke's book there are many details about the comprehensive plans to destroy Al Qaeda that were prepared in response to the Cole attack. Unfortunately, Clinton decided against starting a quasi-war of that kind at the end of his term, and decided it was best to leave that decision to Dubya--who ignored Al Qaeda until 9/11--at which time the plan was suddenly revived and used. All checkable stuff, but now we get to the confusing wrinkle. Richard Clarke appears on the back cover giving an endorsement this book? Did he really say that? Or is the "endorsement" taken out of context?

So let's move upward again... There are several factors involved in assessing a Class 2 lie, and this can be quite complicated. For example, when caught in a Class 2 lie, the liar will often claim ignorance of the omitted information, or say that it had to be left out because of some other constraint, such as time or space. Also, an effective Class 2 lie has to cause the person who is the target of the lie to believe something false, but this complicates the liar's task, since it can be quite difficult to predict exactly which false conclusion the target will reach. Fortunately, these lies tend to unravel over time, as more information is revealed and collected, but unfortunately that is often too late and the damage has already been done by that time. For that reason, these lies are most effective and probably used most frequently for time-dependent deceptions. That's a big advantage for the liar, since he knows what is coming and will try to escape before the truth comes out.

Though it's more difficult to recognize Class 2 lies because you have to look for what isn't there, the outing of Valerie Plame is dazzling in its omission, and there is no timing-related defense. The book was first published in mid-2004, and Plame was exposed in July of 2003, so ignoring it must be a Class 2 lie. Even if it was not known to the author at the time the book was originally written, this was clearly worth mentioning in the new epilogue that was added to this 2005 edition. He actually has a long section beginning on page 192 where he focuses on leaks of classified information, but none of the examples he cites is nearly as significant or damaging as the politically-motivated exposure of Valerie Plame, which he ignores. However, I admit that I'm stuck at this point, since I don't understand what false or misleading impression this omission could have been intended to create, especially since this episode is so widely known. However, there is a difference from the examples that he cited, since he focuses on leaks that are motivated for more positive reasons, while this particular one is spectacular mostly for its short-sighted vindictiveness.

However, on reflection, I suspect the most important Class 2 lie here involves the author's language abilities--or actually his lack thereof. This is especially significant since the author emphasizes that we should begin by taking Bin Ladin at his word--but his word is not English. If the author does not actually understand Bin Ladin's words, then everything he says on that topic moves into the categories of hearsay and secondhand interpretations. There are two things that make me doubt the author actually knows Arabic. The first is that he talks a lot about his own qualifications and experience and why his ideas should be taken seriously, but he does not say anything about his personal knowledge of other languages. Second, the various translations that do appear in the book are annotated in confusing ways, and if he were fluent in the original languages, I would have expected him to resolve those confusions by referring to the originals. Actually, some of the (sic) annotations actually seem to be designed to cast aspersions on Bin Ladin, which is in direct opposition to the author's point about Bin Ladin's rhetorical skill.

Now we come to the dramatic and confusing Class 3 lies. This is where the lie can become almost a form of art, and where I think much of this book belongs. By their very nature, these lies are extremely difficult to recognize and evaluate, and much more so when they are mixed in with a complex blend of lies and undisputed truths. To identify this kind of lie, you have to first figure out who the targets are, and that's already difficult for a book that reaches many readers--a "national bestseller" in this case. Then you need to demonstrate that the truth appeared in the book, and that the targets mostly rejected the truth. Even better if they then acted based upon that rejection of the truth, and "best" (from the liar's perspective) if they acted in the manner intended by the liar. It's essentially impossible to get so deeply into anyone's head, so it's impossible to make any absolute statements about this kind of lie, though I wish I could make some probabilistic assessments.

Okay, so it's time for examples of Class 3 lies from the book, but I feel like I've painted myself into a corner here. His mixture of ingredients is quite impressive, even dazzling, and I'm not sure which things he says are true, which are misleading, which are outright false, which are partly true, etc. A lot of what he says is in sympathy, even deep sympathy, with things that I want to believe, which is the most powerful belief motivator of all, and yet... The way he mixes his conclusions and policy recommendations into the mix leaves me with LESS certainty, as though his thinking so makes me doubt things for which I was confident I already had plenty of evidence. Just my chronic state of devil's advocacy? Or am I one of the targets whom this book is intended to deceive and confuse? Or is it more likely that I can't clearly identify the Class 3 lies (even though I "feel" them) because I am not one of the targets?

The Overall Summary

So what is the big picture here? He repeatedly states that America needs to use much more force and use it more ruthlessly until the entire Moslem world is totally defeated and capitulates unconditionally. He is arguing that there is no room for negotiation or compromise, and no other alternatives (though of course he thinks the CIA should be given more support, too). He admits that there are reasonable Moslems, but denies we have any way to reason with them, but must concede their loyalties to Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, he also advocates impartial public debate about the policies, but that such debate is unrelated to being reasonable towards other peoples and nations? His general conclusion is apparently that we can only defend our freedom by destroying theirs--and that killing lots of Moslems is the best way to do it. Reminds me of the history department joke: "The only lesson you learn from history is that no one learns any lessons from history." Even the historian, in this case. (It seems he would agree when Paul Harvey recently worded it as not leaving our best weapons in their silos--indirectly advocating nuclear war.)

At the beginning of this review I said that my main conclusion is that you can't trust the CIA, and it's time to clarify that statement. The problem is that the CIA has a fundamentally twisted and distorted perspective. It's easiest to approach that by way of contrast to other organizations. Most visible in the book as a target of criticism is the FBI, but the FBI's perspective of their mission is not difficult to understand. The FBI is basically a police organization, and their job is to detect and investigate crimes and arrest the perpetrators. Their basic philosophy is to "serve and protect" the citizens of America. The NSA is never mentioned in the book, which is probably another kind of Class 2 lie. The author is quite eager to direct blame for 9/11 at failures within the FBI, but the NSA probably had equal or better opportunities to avert the tragedy, and yet he finds that organization completely unworthy of mention. (It's probably yet another Class 2 lie to skip so lightly over the CIA's own culpability, which is probably greater than anyone else's.) However, the mission of the NSA is also clear and relatively easy to understand. Their job is to find and analyze information about America's adversaries. He probably ignores them because they do it better and less expensively than the CIA. The author actually emphasizes that aspect of the CIA's own work, but very much downplays the complex and open-ended "operational" aspects of the CIA. He does emphasize that he thinks the CIA is good and effective and should be less hindered in doing its job, but what he doesn't say (Class 2 lie) is that the CIA's main job is to be bad guys working for the right side--if you're standing in the "right" position. Actually, this ties back to the only organization that he expresses admiration for, the USMC, but what he reminds me of is the mutant version of the psalm that we learned in boot camp: "Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest mother in the valley!"

The CIA wants to have that "baddest mother" title among all of the world's spy agencies, and that's where the problems arise. There are some pretty bad boys out there, and if our boys are actually going to be badder, then what's to keep them in line? For example, there are spy agencies that aggressively meddle in the internal affairs of their own national government, so is the CIA supposed to ignore that particular "challenge" and just accept that such a spy agency is "badder"? How is the CIA to understand and defeat such "bad boys" if they don't understand the techniques and strategies they use, and how can they learn about those techniques unless they experiment with them? "Just trust us," says the CIA, "and we'll be sure to only do those nasty experiments in places that deserve it!" Where? Spain, perhaps? That's not a random guess, since he does mention the Madrid attack several times, and presumably thinks it would have been a good thing if the CIA had managed to intervene to prevent Al Qaeda from meddling in Spanish politics. But where's the line to be drawn? For example, if the CIA had been able to respond quickly enough to help frame the Basques for that attack, America might still have Spain as an ally in Iraq... "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive", but the CIA perspective would probably have been limited to getting past the "crisis" of a democratic election that was going the "wrong" way. However, even this example is complicated by the fact that Al Qaeda was meddling in someone else's national politics and that Al Qaeda isn't even a spy agency (though that is how BushCo wanted to treat Al Qaeda, as long as it helped justify the anti-Saddam "war").

My final conclusion is that this book does not contribute to constructive debate on the real issues, because it mostly muddies the water and confuses more than it enlightens. You need to get the same information from several other perspectives to have any chance of understanding much about the topic. Someone who relies heavily on this book is only sure to be confused.

Detailed Notes:

These notes are basically my linear thoughts as I read the book. They're here for completeness, though I hope I've managed to include all the important aspects above. Far more reactions near the end of the book, which in retrospect makes me think he was preparing a foundation in the first part.

Page 4:

Excellent point about Moslems thinking their politicians are supposed to be speaking the truth and how they therefore assume that non-Moslem politicians are also speaking the truth, even when the politician in question is speaking from the lunatic fringe. The contrast is against our secular expectations that politicians lie long, hard, and often. However, elsewhere he argues that many Moslems regard their politicians as irreligious hypocrites, too, though that's in the context of some politicians that America supports.

Page 24:

Brief mention of the post-9/11 exodus of UBL's relatives with FBI and NSC facilitation.

Page 28: 'Change the word "less" to "not"...'

Here he is claiming Al Qaeda is no longer susceptible to counterterrorism measures, which is a Class 1 counterfactual lie. This is an absolute claim beyond exaggeration, and non-grammatical, to boot. Without the grammar mistake, it could be a rhetorical flourish, though still false.

Page 69:

Perhaps the first appearance of his repeated claim that terrorism should not be regarded as criminal, but as a form of warfare. He never makes the case very strongly, but perhaps that's because of a Class 2 lie of ignoring politically motivated crime.

Page 72:

He's arguing for UBL's strength based on popular support as fuzzily indicated by polls--which are too easily manipulated or contradicted. Probably should count as a Class 1 lie, depending on whether or not conflicting results are available.

Pages 81-2:

Basically attacking the Internet as a tool for Al Qaeda propaganda and information, but overall a Class 2 lie, since he ignores competing news and propaganda positions. He also talks about recruiting and ignores the ease of planting bogus information and stool pigeons. This topic is especially relevant in light of the latest rounds of squabbling about Koran abuse, where the real problem is not in the details of the torture and Geneva Convention violations, but in America's increasing lack of credibility to refute any accusations. At this point even the most ridiculous accusations will find some believers...

Page 89:

Typo of "threee" for "three. However, it's worth noting as regards these lists that he's quite subjective about what he classifies as a success or failure in many cases.

Page 103:

Here he labels UBL a "great man", which is a strained claim even with his attempt to evade the controversy with a "Viewed from any angle" distractor. Even if you accept the "great man" theory of history, this seems to be part of a Class 0 lie insofar as he elsewhere argues that Al Qaeda's strategy of insurrection is to have no single point of total destruction--and it's obvious that Al Qaeda must have contingency plans even for UBL's death or capture. (However, I basically reject the great-man theory, except insofar as the men with the best timing do get to put their own names on things and events.)

Pages 106-107:

Extraordinary and peculiar hyperbole here. His reaction is "In all bin Laden literature there is not a more interesting sentence." The reaction seems much more interesting than the rather mundane sentence it refers to: "Totalitarian Islamist revivalism has become the ideology of the dystopian new world order." Perhaps projection of the same mindset revealed on page 166?

Page 119:

This is probably the introduction of his theme of UBL's appeal to moderate Moslems. He argues it is a mistake to think that UBL is only a darling of the lunatic fringe, but I was ready to dismiss the idea--until I remembered my initial reaction to Dubya, which