Hello all and Happy New Years,
I finished reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars a little while ago, and was actually quite astonished by what I had heard was a 'boring, long winded book'. Ghost Wars covers in detail pretty much all the decision making, intelligence intake, and context of the U.S.' contact with islamic extremism and terrorism since the very start of U.S. covert envolvement in Astan (Carter admin).
I felt that the book was worth a recommendation based on two merits.
1. The book has no discernable political bias. It tells it like it is, and does not attempt to make judgements- I really feel that the reader is simply given full information and left to make decisions for his or herself. Because the book spans several political leaderships and approaches to the nascent GWoT, the lack of prejudice really highlights how history can turn on political nuance and complexity.
2. The second reason is just that: the book reveals extreme complexity. It does so in a way that makes the information easy to absorb, but really gives the reader a broad and deep understanding of just what was happening at all relevant levels of government and civilization, foreign and our own. This is above all the reason I loved the book. It really does demonstrate that the beating of a butterfly's wings can bring a hurricane to the other side of the globe.
A tangent:
I will probably get a lot of flak for this, but I feel that the movie Syriana (starring everyone's beloved George Clooney
) conveys the complexity of the U.S.-ME oil situation in an equal depth relative to the duration of the film. People will probably say that the movie is a liberal rant against oil companies and U.S. foreign policy, but instead what I see it as is a realistic demonstration of the difficulties this country faces, the webs it must weave and negotiate, and ultimately the ugly cost of preserving our national interests. Although the characters could be seen as stereotypes, with a more careful eye for detail it seems that the majority are complex characters who simply wear their motives on their sleeves to make the film easier to absorb. I also liked that the bombers at the end of the movie were not the typical 'evil terrorist' character, but were instead representative of what a lot of people say a certain kind of terrorist is like.
ANYWAY. Bottom line is that Ghost Wars and Syriana are excellent because they give a look into the extreme complexity that the U.S. faces and will face in all of its decision making.
Solid
Hybrid Mode
