Posted by: McQ on Saturday, September 15, 2007 Yeah, I'm one of those. I have a tendency to get bored with a subject if I try to commit myself to a long reading, and then lose focus. Not good with books in which every sentence is one to think about and ponder. So I tend to read a chapter or two at a time in a number of books to keep that from happening. Consequently I have a number of books going at the same time. I say 5 books I'm reading, but in reality I finished one last night. It was Max Hastings "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945". I've read a ton of books on WWII, but this is one of the more entertaining I've read in a while. Hastings does what I'd characterize as "anecdotal" or "first person" history. He sets up the meta-framework of an event or battle and then provides first person descriptions, from extensive interviews with participants on all sides, of what they saw and experienced in the battle or event. Some exceedingly good insights to occurrences that I hadn't really heard or considered before. Well worth the read. Another, of which I'm about half finished, is "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA", by Rowan Scarborough. Very interesting book which tells a believable story. The question it asks is "Has the CIA become a rogue agency". Scarborough relates some seemingly well researched information that many of the inconvenient and many times incorrect leaks of information about various secret programs and issues originated within the CIA. Most interesting is his description of how some in the CIA use Congressional staffs as their means of getting information they want out there into the media, etc. He also tells the story of the FISA (FISC) leak which doesn't at all make the New York Times look good. Obviously it is one side of the story, but it is a very compelling version. Oh, and no, this far into the book he hasn't convinced me the CIA as an institution is a rogue agency. I do believe, however, like any bureaucracy, it will fight any transient power (i.e. any administration) that threatens or is perceived to threaten its well-being or existence. 9/11 and the failure of the CIA to "connect the dots" set that mind-set up, and some have acted on various perceptions since. Then there's the blatant political side as well, as the Plame affair demonstrated. Here are three I'm just starting. "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason", by Sam Harris. "Modern Liberty and the Limits of Government", by Charles Fried. "The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West", by Lee Harris. I'll let you know a bit more about them as I get into them. But a paragraph in the last book, by Lee Harris, talking about tribalism and rational actors caught my eye and after you read it you'll understand why: "The first law of the jungle, however, states that in the struggle for survival and supremacy, there are no rules. Anything that achieves victory is automatically self-justifying. Methods that are looked upon by rational actors as barbarous, savage, or bestial are all deemed acceptable if they obtain their objective. This objective, moreover, will not be the good of the individual but the advancement and dominance of one's own tribe. For the second law of the jungle says that loners are losers. If you lack a tribe to back and support you, you will perish. to survive in a dog-eat-dog world you must run in packs - and the tribe is a pack. Taken together, the first two laws of the jungle yield the third law: You must unconditionally support your own tribe or pack, and you must be prepared to act with utter ruthlessness toward those who belong to other tribes or packs. you must see members of the enemy tribe not as individuals or as fellow humans; you mist see them as your existential enemy. That is all you need to know about them in order to be willing to kill them, torture them, or mutilate their corpses. Where the laws of the jungle rule, the very idea of humanity is forgotten."I found that to be a very apt description of our existential enemies among the Muslim fanatics who've been attacking us. But interestingly, I also found it a fairly apt description (if you make all of the "be willing to kill them, torture them, or mutilate their corpses" metaphorical) of some of the actors presently engaged in our political system as well. I'll leave it up to you to decide who they are. |
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