What are you currently reading in 2017?

[Backwards Observer]

In a Time of Torment 1961-1967 by I.F. Stone


Polemics and Prophecies 1967-1970 by I.F. Stone

[Bill Moore]

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia
by James Bradley

https://www.amazon.com/China-Mirage-.../dp/0316196681

The “mirage” he refers to in his book is the perception the U.S. public had of China based on a 1930s American propaganda pamphlet that described China as a great nation that loved America and embraced Christianity. I can’t recall reading another book in recent times that was so well written, yet so very simplistic and dishonest overall. This book certainly is not authoritative history, rather it’s simply a diatribe about how the U.S. “needlessly” got involved in three wars in East Asia.
The mirage argument has some merit, but he gives it far more weight than it deserves. Bradley argues this “mirage” shaped U.S. policy to such an extent it led us needlessly into WW2, the Korea War, and Vietnam. To be fair, the author presents some interesting facts on our early diplomatic history with China, and power of lobbies on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia. However, as a whole the book is almost completely void of the broader historical context that shaped strategic decision making.
He implies we should have supported or acquiesced to Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere in East Asia. He claims our oil embargo against Japan as his justification for his claim our war against Japan was unnecessary. No doubt, the oil embargo accelerated Japan’s time line to aggress beyond Northeast Asia, Japan already had plans to take over the Dutch Indies to secure raw materials to sustain their war effort in China. Bradley does not discuss agreements made between Japan and German in the 1930s, then culminating with the Tripartite Pact in 1940. Bradley only focuses on East Asia, but assuming he believes our intervention in Europe in WWII (yes finally actualized after the attack on Pearl Habor) was just, doing so would have prompted Japan to declare war on the U.S. The underlying argument I’m making is war with Japan was going to happen regardless.
Throughout the book, Bradley expresses his support of Mao, as though he was more legitimate than Chiang. A historian would have pointed out that both leaders were deeply flawed. Oddly enough, the left still embraces Mao in the West, while Maoism is largely rejected in China today. After the Civil War Mao killed 45 million of his own people to establish his “legitimacy.” In contrast, Chiang’s Taiwan, while initially a dictatorship was much more successful, and eventually blossomed into a prosperous democracy. The argument that Mao was a nationalist more than a communist has been refuted by history, even the Soviets found his methods excessive.
Bradley claimed the Flying Tigers were insignificant and only conducted one raid of note, and that the investment in logistics to sustain this outfit was simply based on the influence of the China lobby in Washington, D.C. and not for sound military purposes. I have no expertise on the Flying Tigers, but the historical summaries I looked up recently provide an alternative view. Historical accounts state that the Flying Tigers destroyed 2,355 Japanese planes and compared to the loss of 127 American planes. Supposedly this record was never beaten? Maybe they haven’t have a decisive strategic impact, but it certainly contributed to Japan’s culmination.
Bradley leverages the same tired arguments regarding the U.S. involvement in Vietnam War. In his view Ho Chi Minh wasn’t really a communist and wanted to be friends with the U.S. Our involvement in the Vietnam War was complicated and arguably our strategy was deeply flawed. All U.S. Presidents during that time period admitted we couldn’t win without an effective government in the Republic of Vietnam. While true, that doesn’t mean Ho or his successor were any better. Strategically, they were much better at indoctrinating their people and mobilizing them in pursuit of a dream that rapidly dissipated once the communists won. After winning, Le Duan said he would turn Vietnam a bastion of Stalinism. Contrary to the legitimacy claim based on nationalism, he forced his people into collective communes that went strongly against the grain of Vietnamese culture. Like all communist economic theories, it failed, people starved and revolted. The Vietnam government was forced to make reforms in the mid-80s. Another so-called legitimate leader and his legacy bite the dust.
Today Bradley argues China is not an aggressive country, and that we simply misunderstand them. I suspect we do misunderstand them, and not everything China is bad, but many nations in East Asia think China is increasingly aggressive based on China’s behavior, not a propaganda booklet. In the end, I think Bradley is either naïve or a fraud, what he is not is a historian.

[davidbfpo]

A well produced paperback (358 pgs) from UK-based Helion & Company:http://www.helion.co.uk/bandit-menta...-a-memoir.html

This is a refreshingly honest account by a New Zealander who volunteered to serve in Rhodesia’s British South African Police Support Unit, as the insurgency gained momentum 1976-1980. The Support Unit was the still largely civilian police’s para-military unit (1200 strong), with black African other ranks & NCOs and officered by regular, white police officers and those whites doing National Service.

What motivated him to serve? Simply ‘a selfish love of combat and life with a complete lack of routine…I was hooked on the adrenalin rush…adventure for the sake of adventure’ (Pg.267). Plus the opportunity between six week tours in the bush to drink, party and relax. By 1978 even with his experience no-one bothered to persuade him to stay, so the author left and ended up as an adviser to newly recruited UANC fighters, known as security force auxiliaries.

Little has been written about the ordinary black African role in Rhodesia’s insurgency; I exclude the Selous Scouts who were mainly turned ex-guerrillas. Loyalties were not fixed, the author recounts in the autumn of 1976 a captured guerrilla recruit claimed to be a serving policeman’s wife (Pg.79). Their motives were mixed, paid employment, revenge for some; they were loyal to the Support Unit and the BSAP – who ‘watched over them’ and like the French Foreign Legion ‘gave solid service in return’ (Pg.172).

The stance of the majority, rural African population in the Tribal Trust Lands facing violence from the guerrillas and the Rhodesian security forces was to steadily change. The Africans would claim ignorance of the guerrilla’s presence to actively supporting them. A good illustration at a Rhodesian firepower demonstration from an old African man asking ‘He said that if we are so powerful, why are there so many CTs in the bush? A good question’ (Pg.80).

Counterinsurgency warfare success is based on the security forces protecting the civilians from the insurgents; Rhodesia simply had extremely limited spending power, let alone forces able to live with the rural Africans and protect them (Pg.132). Personally I doubt the white Rhodesian government had the motivation to ever protect "their Africans", an attiude that hardened as the war developed.

This is a book which rightly concentrates on hunting insurgents, although criticisms of the Rhodesian approach abound, for example the lack of any briefing and debriefing (Pg.289). It helps to explain why Rhodesia failed to survive as the numbers of disaffected Africans grew, with so many leaving to join the nationalist guerrillas the security forces could not “hold the line”.

Worth reading, in part for the author's recollections and what can be learnt today. "Holding the line" is an appropriate phrase, yes a negotiated settlement was reached in 1979, but the "line" was simply full of holes and lacked after the Portuguese exit in 1974 strong foundations.

*Copied to Rhodesian COIN thread*.

[davidbfpo]

Cited in part (from Post 47):

A well produced paperback (358 pgs) from UK-based Helion & Company:http://www.helion.co.uk/bandit-menta...-a-memoir.html

This is a refreshingly honest account by a New Zealander who volunteered to serve in Rhodesia’s British South African Police Support Unit, as the insurgency gained momentum 1976-1980.

Thanks to a "lurker", ex-BSAP at the time for this comment:

I concur that the book was a good read, as I could reference places and situations the author mentions.

On the book, the author portrayed a very “Gung Ho” approach to events and I find it strange that he was allowed to get away with a number of things he actually did. I believe there was quite a bit of literary licence used. Initially, contacts and events were as one would expect, but as the book progressed so did the valour and attitudes. It may be me reading between the lines as the author was decorated for bravery.

In the book, he emphasized his position as being one of trust and honesty when dealing with matters, but then at the end he mentioned that he “sold up” his collection of stolen arms to pay for his trip back to New Zealand.

I did however, enjoy the book and would recommend it.

[Bill Moore]

The Force of Reason
by Oriana Fallaci

https://www.amazon.com/Force-Reason-...70_&dpSrc=srch

It has been awhile since I have read a book written with this much passion. She is a self-described Christian atheist, whose isn't left or right politically, but she viciously attacks the brain dead far left incapable of reason. More to the point she describes what she sees as an existential threat to Europe, the Eurarabia trend, where European culture is rapidly being displaced by Islamic culture, enabled by feeble far left politicians.

I write not for money, I write out of a sense of duty. A duty which is costing my life to dispel the silly and cynical lies dispensed to us like arsenic inside the soup.

Although she has a history of leaning left politically, she rejects the new left (my words), which is incapable of independent thinking and void of logic.

"Though the daughter of secularism, (besides a secularism begotten by liberalism and consequently not consonant with dogmatism), the Left is not laic. Whether it dresses in red or black or pink or green or white or in all the colours of the rainbow, the Left is confessional. Ecclesiastic. Because it derives from an ideology of religious character. That is it appeals to ideology which claims to possess the Truth. . . Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth. Like Islam it never acknowledges it faults and its errors, it considers itself infallible and never apologizes. Like Islam it demands a world at its own image, a society built on the verses of the Prophet. . . Like Islam it does not accept different opinions and if you think differently it despises you. It denigrates you, it punishes you. Like Islam, in short, it is illiberal."

In sum this book is about resistance to Islamic fascism. She argues Troy is burning in Europe, but she has great faith in America to oppose this evil.

"The war that Islam has declared on the West is not really a military war. It's a cultural war. A war, Tocqueville would say, that instead of our body wants to strike our soul. Our way of life, our philosophy of Life. Our way of thinking, of acting, of loving. Our freedom.
Don't be fooled by their explosives. They are just a strategy. Those death lovers don't us just for the pleasure of killing: they kill us to break our spirit.

The decline of intelligence is the decline of Reason. And everything which now happens in Europe, in Eurabia, is also a decline of Reason. A decline which before being morally wrong is intellectually wrong. Refusing to admit that all Islam is a pond inside which we are drowning, in fact, is against reason. Not defending our territory, our homes, our children, our dignity, our essence, is against Reason.

I enjoyed the passion, the prose, and agree with her message.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period. Oriana Fallaci

To learn about this fascinating author who sadly passed away in 2007, the following links to one short story and one of medium length provides some insights to her life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/b...e-stefano.html

Oriana Fallaci, Right or Wrong
By NINA BURLEIGHNOV. 3, 2017

Her interviews remain studies in speaking truth to power. Interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini, she famously called the chador a “stupid, medieval rag” and took it off, provoking the Ayatollah to leave the room. (It is a testament to her journalistic power that he came back the next day.) She badgered Ariel Sharon about the meaning of the word “terrorist” and accused him of having been one himself. She got Henry Kissinger to compare himself to a cowboy, alone “with his horse and nothing else.” Nixon, De Stefano writes, “was not at all pleased by the cowboy metaphor.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...hought/305377/

She Said What She Thought
Mark Steyn December 2006 Issue

One would have been only mildly surprised had her interview with Ayatollah Khomeini followed the same trajectory. After traveling to Qom and cooling her heels for ten days waiting for him to agree to see her, she was ushered—barefoot and wearing a chador—into his presence—and found what she subsequently described as the most handsome old man she’d ever met. In his own way, Khomeini must have dug the crazy Italian chick. The meeting was terminated when she tore off “this stupid medieval rag” and hurled her chador to the floor, but he agreed to finish the interview a day or two later.

[Bill Moore]

I had a strong interest in peak performance physically and mentally as it relates to being a warrior, but the interest now is more in peak performance for life in general. Over the years the Special Operations community has explored these topics, but disappointedly never really embraced as part of our culture. However, there is interest now in using mediation to address PTSD.

The two most recent books I read are:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/14...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

The first book provided some interesting insights on the how scientific research is evolving, how the tests are conducted, the associated bias that is difficult to eliminate, etc. However, it provided less than a chapter in total on how mediation is proven to change your mind, brain, and body. Frankly, there isn't sufficient scientific evidence yet, but according to the authors that is changing based on the large volume of ongoing research.

The second book I enjoyed much more. The author draws parallels in the latest views from the world of psychology and how they align with what Buddhists have discover centuries ago.

The author does a good job of explaining some the key tenants of Buddhism in plain English, such as mindfulness, emptiness, and nirvana. While in plain English, the concepts are not simple and the author doesn't simplify them. If you're interested in the topic, I would recommend this book.

[Backwards Observer]

Military Misfortunes by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch


Endless Empire by Alfred W. McCoy, Josep M. Fradera, and Stephen Jacobsen (editors)