Book report…..

I’m staying away from a lot of my favorite blogs for a while. The fact that they have gone so totally gaga over Gidget Palin is just too much. And I’ve given up trying to find nude pictures of her on the internet-so that’s a dead end hobby too. I’ll have stick with my old favorites.
(NSFW)

So what to do with the extra time? Read, that’s what. Especially with the S.O. glued to “America’s got Talent”.-Ugh.

So here is a summary of some of the recent books I have read or am reading:

First, I want to acknowledge up front that Spike was right-Buchanan has gone too far with this book. I share his desire to bring back the British Empire and as I said before the fact that it is not here is a great source of the troubles in the world.

But his theory is just not thought through. The book is just one long diatribe against Churchill and I think he ignores the very real sentiment that was at play at the time-which was that the Europeans did not want to fight a war against anybody-while the Germans were spoiling to get even for Versailles. That was the first, last, and only word on World War II.

Skippy-san rating? Two thumbs down.

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So after that waste of mental exercise-I went for something more eclectic:

Fresh out of Harvard and Yale, Elizabeth Samet began teaching English at West Point a decade ago, when life there was peaceful — “there’s no other word for it,” she writes. Then came 9/11. Where once the Army might have been just a job-now it had returned to being a vocation, with a war that was going to go on, and on, and on, and on. And just might cost them their lives.

So her prose is very timely, I think, as she watches the cadets grow and she slowly but surely comes to understand the way of the Corps. And while she and I do not agree about the place of women in the Corps-at least she had the smarts to realize its corrupting influence:

If the history of the military profession presents certain obstacles to women’s ambitions for meaningful service today, women in uniform likewise destabilize a military culture founded on essential chivalric traditions.

Now Samet and I admire that quote for opposite reasons-she writes it in order to show the curve that women have to overcome,whereas I relish it as proof that military academy went the wrong way in 1976-and I accept the later half of her statement as God’s own truth.

However when you get beyond her own politics-she does show her self as keen observer of people, and she shares the fact that the really smart men and women at West Point, are not the monolithic conservative bloc they are portrayed to be-rather they are a diverse group with diverse ideas and not all of them are of a mind that America’s adventure in Iraq is in the national interest. They-like me in a previous era- will go where they are told, however, because they do believe in living up to their commitments. Normally, honor and loyalty re-enforce each other; in bad times, they can come suddenly into conflict. Accordingly, her book makes a interesting read. As an English professor she writes well too. I strongly recommend her list of books to read at the back of the book.

One other interesting part of the book is the cadet’s observations on the Officers Christian Fellowship-it is a disturbing insight into what later occurred at both the USMA and the USAFA. She portrays the troubles in an even handed manner.

Skippy-san rating? Two Thumbs way up!

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On the plane back from DC last Friday, I read the following magazine:

It is an interesting premise-namely that the internet has changed are reading habits and not necessarily for the good. In particular the magazine notes that people can no longer concentrate on long trains of thought and read for content-now they need to be visually impressed.

I agree with that idea and find it at play in my own reading-both at work and in blogging. I tend to gloss over long posts unless it really grabs my attention-and at work, well given a choice I’ll read the PPT before I read the abstract.

So the writers at the Atlantic may very well be on to something.

PLUS-there is also a great article on how Rupert Murdoch is destroying the Wall Street Journal, a paper that used to be good reading-it is  now pulp for losers the easily amused-and intellectually handicapped.

Skippy-rating? Two thumbs up!

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That’s what I have finished so far. Next on my coffee table are two books I am sort of reading in tandem:

Bing West’s book comes highly recommended-he’s staunchly for the war-but he spares no punches in assessing blame for the things that could have been done better. He skewers Rumsfeld-and what’s not to like about that? From the review in the Post:

West calls it like he sees it, and there is probably no American not wearing a uniform who has seen more of this war. A large number of senior (mostly Army) generals come in for scathing reviews in The Strongest Tribe, but West reserves his most critical assessments for politicians and journalists. Democratic Congressman and former Marine John Murtha of Pennsylvania was responsible, with the assistance of the media, for “distorting and deliberately exaggerating” the Marine killings of civilians at Haditha. In West’s opinion, President Bush failed at his primary responsibility, which was “to persuade the American people to support the war,” and also failed to spread the burden of the war equally on all Americans. Instead, the soldiers and Marines who do the fighting and the dying endure repeated tours of duty because we have more war than our too-small Army and Marine Corps can handle. West tells the story of their sacrifices better than anyone else, with an infantryman’s keen eye for combat and a father’s love for those who engage in it.

Then there is Pollack’s book. Now mind you, Pollack was a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq back in 2002-although he says he did not believe the country had to be attacked until we were finished with Afghanistan. A point  I agree with-if attacking Iraq was necessary at all.

Five years of tragic waste in Iraq have convinced him that maybe it was not, and his central point seems to be one I can definitely agree with-Its not about Al Quaeda-Its the economics stupid!

From the Post again:

Once the reader gets past the U-turn on Iraq, there is much to recommend A Path Out of the Desert. Pollack provides a grand tour of the Middle East and dissects its pathologies, including booming numbers of jobless youth. In one startling example, he notes that in several Arab countries, college graduates have unemployment rates well above the national average. In Morocco, the most extreme case, the overall unemployment rate is 7.7 percent; for those with higher education it is 26.8 percent. “Many of the worst failings of the Arab educational systems,” he writes, “are manifested in how poorly they prepare both the average person and the members of the elite to compete in the globalized economy.”

Pollack views reform in the Arab states as a long, hard slog that will be measured in decades rather than election cycles. The United States needs to nudge the process along steadily with, among other things, dollops of financial aid. “Think of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the United States is now sinking into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he writes. “Doesn’t it make sense to put a fraction of that, perhaps as much as $5 billion to $10 billion per year, into foreign aid programs for the Muslim Middle East . . . and hopefully head off future wars?”

A former CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, Pollack frames key issues as an analyst offering options for a policymaker. He refrains from making any bold, short-term policy prescriptions because he does not think the region can be transformed in one stroke.

A great point our fearless President would have been well off learning.

I’m only about 90 pages into both of them-I’m reading West to find out how we got here-and Pollack to figure out how to get the hell out of this God forsaken region.

I’ll let you know how it comes out.