Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh is a collection of Hersh's columns from the New Yorker. As the subtitle would suggest most of them are on the War on Terror. As well as the scandal around Abu Ghraib. Each column is introduced with updates up to 2004 when the book was published. When these first came out they were earth shattering but now they have seemingly fated into the backround. If you've been following the story over the last several years there isn't much that isn't referenced by everybody else. It's still interesting to be reading the columns that broke the news.

Recommended.

With Every Mistake by Gwynne Dyer

With Every Mistake by Gwynne Dyer is an edited collection of columns from between 2001 and 2005. Dyer an expatriate Canadian writes on current affairs, international relations, history and the environment. Each selection is prefaced with an update as well as some notes on his state of mind as he wrote the column..

There is quite a bit of self-flagellation about his inability to discern neoconservative strategy quicker. This concerns the run-up to the Iraq war and the nonsensical claims of weapons of mass destruction. He does seem to be a little too hard on himself after all no one else connected the dots either. Hindsight being perfect sometimes makes it difficult to figure out just what we knew at the time.

Dyer is somewhat of an iconoclast He argues that terrorism is really not that bad. More people die of automobile accidents every year. Israel will have to make concessions. The North Koreans aren't crazy. I tend to hold opinions like these so I enjoyed it. If you don't your mileage will vary. There is a very interesting section on media ownership and how this can stifle different perspectives. His columns were tossed out of various newspapers for their perceived bias.

Highly recommended.

Is available through Abebooks.

After Terror: Promoting Dialogue Among Civilizations edited by Akbar Ahmed and Brian Forst

After Terror: Promoting Dialogue Among Civilizations edited by Akbar Ahmed and Brian Forst this is a collection of very short essays discussing how a clash of civilizations can be prevented. I can't fault the contributor list there are some very heavy hitters here they include Benjamin Barber, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Amitai Etzioni, Bernard Lewis, Martin Marty, Queen Noor, Joseph Nye, Judea Pearl, Jonathan Sacks, Ravi Shankar, Bishop Desmond Tutu, E.O. Wilson and James D. Wolfensohn. Unfortunately the essays are very short most a few thousand words. Which really isn't enough time to develop an idea. Some ideas are interesting but a lot of the essays and up sounding like platitudes. Rather interesting was Bernard Lewis who actually comes off sounding like a rational individual unlike in his recent ranting.

Not recommended!

Is available through Abebooks.

Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition by Robert W. Merry

Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition by Robert W. Merry Is an analysis of American foreign policy and history. Merry argues that there's been several streams of thought in American foreign policy they are the idea of progress which led to Francis Fukuyama's end of history thesis, liberalism interventionism championed by Woodrow Wilson, the neoconservatives basically imperialists and finally Huntington's clash of civilizations. The analysis is actually pretty good discussing various obscure theorists and nicely in capsulizing their arguments. The problem is when we get to the discussion of real-world events.

Merry believes in the clashe of civilizations. Which leads to some bizarre conclusions. One of the large sections of the book is on the Balkans. According to the author NATO and the United States should not have been involved and if anything should have been much more supportive of the Serbs. Merry does acknowledge the war crimes but does not seem to comprehend the level of outrage they produced in the US and Western Europe. Going forward America should support anybody as long as they are willing to suppress Islamist forces. Funny I think that's what got them into this mess in the first place. Saudi Arabia should be ignored instead Iran should be cultivated. There's no reference to the Israeli position on this. The book concludes with some ranting about Islamic immigration.

It's too bad first 100 pages were superb.

Recommended for the discussion of the different positions except for the clash of civilizations which is not dealt with in a particularly evenhanded way.

Is available through Abebooks.

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr is an excellent description of the historical background to the conflict of the Shia and Sunnis. Most of the book discusses Iraq but reference is also made to other areas in the Middle East particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia. Considering that President Bush apparently can't keep the two groups straight this is exactly the sort of book that American decisionmakers need to be reading. The challenge of the Shia is something that the Americans will have to deal with in the war on terror.

Highly recommended!

For more Iraq book reviews take a look at My Iraq bookshelf.

Superb US soldiers blog from Iraq

Truly excellent stuff, Army of Dude.

Rudy Giuliani gets hammered

Check out this blast against Rudy Giuliani from Rolling Stone. An exert:

Rudy giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.

WOW.

Harry is not going

So Harry is not going. Can't say I'm shocked with the decision or the rhetoric. "It was the media's fault". So why exactly did they waste all that time and money if he was just going to patrol a desk somewhere.?

Support Canadian Forces bloggroll

No matter where people stand on the issue on the mission in Afghanistan I believe or anyway hope that most support our troops. This and my feeling that there hasn't been much blog activity on this has led me to create this bloggroll.

The rules for inclusion are pretty easy. You must be willing to add the code to your blog's sidebar and do a posting on why you support the troops. Your page doesn't have to specifically talk about the mission in Afghanistan or Canadian politics. This isn't just for the military and political junkies. After you do so drop me a comment with your post URL. I’ll take a look I'll add you. Here's the code to add just cut and paste what's inside the box.


<p>Supporter Canadian Forces bloggroll</p><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=aa0cd6c4ad0b204d4c000aa729de4d69"></script> <p><a href="http://jmnlman.blogspot.com/2007/04/support-canadian-forces-bloggroll.html">How to join</a>

Naturally I reserve the right not to add web sites with pornographic content or hate speech.

Disclaimer: this is completely unofficial and has no relationship with either the Canadian Forces or the government of Canada.

15 months

Just watch Defense Secretary Robert Gates's news conference on CNN. The armshare strategist in me says that unit familiarity with the local situation can only be good but man this is going to play havoc with recruitment and retention. It also makes me wonder about unit effectiveness. Something there hasn't been much research done for counterinsurgency. Most have been done on fixed deployments. Algeria had a combination of both but there were political variables that makes the analysis pretty difficult. It has not been easy to get numbers for recruitment and retention recently wonder why.

Afghanistan casualtys

This Toronto star article is interesting reading. Basically we have more casualties than other NATO countries. Problem is in the analysis this means maybe we should get out. Where the more obvious conclusion is that we need to get better protection. The peace tried to dismiss this by saying when we get better equipment the insurgents will be better to. This is true partially but other NATO countries apparently have this equipment now and it's saving their people.

Update: it's nice to be right.

theinsurgencycenter.com a web site to watch

http://theinsurgencycenter.com looks like it should be a very interesting resource for insurgency material. It was started up by a disabled war veteran. So far there is mostly links to the usual suspects but the site says they will be adding new stuff as they go along. What they do have now is an excellent list of documents. However no pictures or videos yet. Its all in one place which is good.

This will be a web site to watch in the future. I'll be very interested to see just what they come up with.

New US Army uniform bad idea

Apparently those who designed the new U.S. Army uniform [the Army Combat Uniform] weren't terribly bright. This review describes the good, bad and ugly aspects of it. Perhaps most terrifying is that it's made from 50% cotton and 50% nylon. Let me repeat that it's made from 50% nylon! When I was in Boy Scouts we were being constantly warned about nylon and fire. Apparently these idiots never received the memo. Now they have to hand out tan Nomex flight suits to at risk personnel.

Rounding up the usual suspects?

Interesting piece from a few days ago in the Washington Post. It looks like part of the strategy may involve what amounts to racial profiling of the population. Lockup anybody that might be a terrorist and hope it works out.

The article also describes the level of paranoia that has to be used when dealing with locals. Even the food has to be brought in from another country. Obviously the insurgents have managed to make the occupation much more expensive than otherwise then would have been. It's not just the increased American footprint on the ground.

Zarqawi

Anyone else wondering if the ratting out of al Zarqawi was an internal purge by bin Laden?