What are you currently reading in 2017?

[Backwards Observer]

Imperial Bandits by Bradley Camp Davis


Evans Carlson, Marine Raider by Duane Schultz

[Bill Moore]

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Sec...ct_top?ie=UTF8

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. By Mark Mazzetti (2014)

This book is a hodgepodge of stories about CIA and JSOC operations, and the associated interagency friction/competition. He spends a lot of time condemning the CIA's use of drones, and in true western reporting fashion focuses the bulk of his comments on so-called collateral damage and very little time on the number of terrorist attacks prevented. The media should hold us accountable, we made numerous tragic errors, but there have also been numerous successes at the tactical level. As the author readily admits, when you're dealing with mostly confidential sources providing information that frequently can't be validated or dual sourced, there will be a degree of error in reporting.

If the author is trying to make an overall point, it is that our national security structure was turned upside down after 9/11. In his view the CIA assumed the role of the military, and military SOF assumed the role of the CIA (intelligence collection). In my view, he overstates this since the CIA has always been involved to various degrees in paramilitary operations and the military has always done intelligence operations. Clearly the type and scale of intelligence operations and paramilitary operations have changed since 9/11 based on the threat.

The book is a quick read, and the inside stories on Yemen and Pakistan probably make the book worth reading with the caveat that it is written with a high degree of bias.

[Bill Moore]

American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/11...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is a simple and fast read, but also a good read that tells an important story about how a Muslim American FBI American penetrated a terrorist network, or terrorist wanttobes, in the U.S. and how the investigation stretched into Canada resulting a combined U.S. and Canadian bust at the end of the investigation.

I assume there are many reasons the FBI approved the release of this book, which details how they conduct these investigations. For one, it tells the American people the good work our law enforcement is conducting to protect the homeland. Second, it demonstrates most American Muslims reject this radical ideology (to include the agent that risked his life and sacrificed his personal life to conduct these investigations and still remain true to his religion). Third, it should sow distrust among Islamists attempting to establish an operational cell in the U.S.

It is a serious story, but the author also includes a lot of humor throughout the book. On the darker side, it does illustrate how full of hate the terrorist are and their unending desire to kill a large number of Americans. It should also be somewhat alarming on well educated these terrorists are.

[omarali50]

Posted at Brownpundits.

“On China” is a curious mixture of history, geopolitical analysis and self-serving memoir (concentrating mostly on the last two elements). Kissinger reviews some of the highlights of Chinese history; ancient and medieval China is covered quickly and superficially and the material is pretty much standard issue, but the level of detail increases after greatly from the opium war onwards and the book becomes much more interesting at that point. Kissinger makes the case that the Qing bureaucrats, in dire straits thanks to internal revolts, financial crisis and administrative decay, were not completely clueless or apathetic. Faced with determined, ruthless and far more technologically advanced European powers who had already overcome or overawed other great non-Western empires, Qing diplomats did their best to play European powers against one another and try to use (very limited) breathing space to try some fitful reforms, but the court was too far gone and the situation could not be salvaged, which led to 100 years of defeat, disorder, revolutions, famines and other disasters.

Kissinger, having worked with Zhou and Mao and their successors as partners in a world-altering initiative (US-Chinese rapprochement) keeps all criticisms of the CCP rather muted, while constantly highlighting their achievements and what he (enviously) regards as their diplomatic guile, patience and their special oriental “insight”. Given that any other posture would raise questions about how close Kissinger himself became to them and how much he tried to help them, this is not surprising, but it does make his assessments a bit suspect.
Anyhow, the second half of the book is really an account of “China and I”, with Henry popping in to save Mao from the Soviets (a threat that he, and the CCP as a whole) took very, very seriously), help Deng along as he starts China’s transition to capitalism and economic success and smooth over things when something mildly unpleasant like Tienanmen happens. In all, he made more than 50 trips to China, mostly as private citizen and/or unofficial emissary. This is certainly the most interesting part of the book and is full of insider quotes and anecdotes, including one where the Chairman is generously giving Taiwan a 100 years to come back to the motherland and a fawning Kissinger is telling him “it won’t take that long”. The complete amorality of the calculations of the PRC and Henry Kissinger is most obvious in the support both provided to the Khmer Rouge as they carried out their genocide in Kampuchea; Henry spends many pages explaining why this (and the Chinese “chastisement” of Vietnam in a limited punitive invasion) was necessary to prevent Vietnamese domination of South East Asia. Why that would be a core Chinese aims is easy to understand, but why the US should partner with them in this effort is not obvious, though Henry tries to present it as such. After the war, Deng tells K “if we had driven deeper into Vietnam in our punitive action, it would have been even better”. Kissinger: “it could be”!
The book is worth reading for the anecdotes and historical information. The geopolitical explanations are enlightening in that they show how these minds operate, but whether they operate for our benefit or not is an open question.