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Class of 1957 Book Review Site. ©2007. To add a Book Review, or to comment on a book already in this listing, send your material or review to Sam Coulbourn at Persnav@shore.net. Photo at top of each page shows VADM C. Turner Joy (1895-1956). Joy was Commander Naval Forces Far East for most of the Korean War, presided over Armistice Talks with the North Koreans, and then came to Annapolis to serve as Superintendent. He was our Supe during our plebe year. Revised 3 August 2008. |
![Text Box: MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
By Robert Spencer, 2005
Praised by an Islamic Website with these words: "May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back and then do it over and over again.
The author points out that: (Quote)
- Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states
-American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine and history
-Today's Jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as the Muslims who fought the Crusades
- Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centuries-and still goes on (Unquote)
The book a short read of 231 pages is liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Qur'an and cites numerous other sources. Of unnerving note is the Muslim article of faith which commands that believers should not befriend or enter into treaties with non-believers, unless it is to further Islam and then only on a temporary basis.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Dawn Over Baghdad
By Karl Zinsmeister, 2005.
Description: Chronicles the author’s experiences while an embedded reporter with US military units in the Sunni triangle during periods in 2004 and 2005. He compares the situation during both tours, offering evidence of improvements and setbacks. He identifies the US military personnel who are establishing the roots of a democratic society while conducting operations against insurgents, gives examples in which the Iraqis are participating in representative government, reveals the methodology by which Iraqis are polled and analyzes the results of Iraqi provided responses to questions. He also critiques the media’s coverage of US operations, using quotes and comments from media sources.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein
By General Georges Sada, Iraqi Air Force, 2006.
An autobiography by a former Iraqi Air Force General narrating what it was like to serve in the military under Saddam. Sada was trained to fly MIGs in Russia and also went to flight training in the US. His account tells of the way Saddam took over and ran the country. Sada says that Saddam had the WMD's shipped to Syria via a commercial 747 and 727s and commercial trucks as humanitarian assistance when Syria had a flood.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Shadow War
By Richard Miniter, 2004.
Miniter has researched what has been accomplished on the war against terror since 9/11. He contends that the war on terror is a long term effort more like the Cold war than Vietnam or WW2. He points out that more than 3000 al Qaeda operatives have been seized or slain since 9/11. He also documents the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Fighting Back
By Bill Salmmon, 2002.
The author covers the White House from the inside. He was given unprecedented access to President Bush 43 for exclusive interviews in the WH and aboard Air Force ONE. His book gives the reader a factual account of what happened in the period shortly before and in the hours after 9/11; how the counterstrikes were planned; how the press underestimated W and how biased, ill-informed reporting misrepresented the Afgan War; how the President bonded with families of the victims of terrorist attacks; and the President's plan for defeating global terrorism.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
By Natan Sharansky, 2004.
Sharansky is the Soviet political dissident whose efforts along with Andrei Sakharov were instrumental in hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union and its repressive society. He argues that there is linkage between freedom and peace and tyranny and terror; that freedom is rooted in the right to dissent and that publicly declaring one’s views should not result in punishment or reprisal. Societies/governments that do not protect that right can never be reliable partners for peace. He maintains that the democracy that hates us is much safer than the dictator that loves us. The author develops his thesis by discussing the performance of the Soviet Union and other, notably, Mid-eastern states in the area of human rights. A good portion of the book is devoted to a historical analysis of the Israeli/PLO peace process, concluding that hostilities in that region will not cease until true democracy and the respect for human rights are instituted in Arab lands. Not surprisingly, Sharansky believes that the US must take the lead in making this happen.
MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
The Middle East- A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
By Lewis, Bernard, 1997
Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University. He’s written over two dozen books on the Middle East.
Lewis tells the history of Islam, from a western point of view, from the birth of Mohammad in Mecca in 571 A.D. and then the sweep of the new faith of Islam across the Arab world in the seventh century, the start of the caliphates, the involvement of Persians and Turks and the rise of Ali… the start of the Shi’a … civil war, murders, assassinations, the continuing prominence of Jerusalem, or al-Quds, or Bayt-al-Maqdis, or Baytha-Miqdash, or Aelia, as home base for the Jews, then a holy place for Christendom, and also for the Moslems. He relates the "Persianization” of Islam, and the shift of the capitol from Syria to Baghdad.
In spite of all the turmoil, the story of Islam is growth and expansion across the Middle East and as far west as North Africa, up into Spain and France, to Vienna, the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Then, in 1248 the Mongols come roaring down, all the way from Mongolia, and sack Baghdad. And – they all become good Muslims!
Then the Turks have their time in the sun, and we see the rise of the Ottoman empire, which reaches a high point in Europe, and then ends with the victory of the West in World War I.
At each step in these 14 centuries we see a marvelous continuum, at least in the way westerners view Islam, right up to the Cold War, when the United States and the USSR become the two cops on the block, and police the Middle East, at the same time that Israel is born, pushes the Palestinians out, and all that turmoil begins.
Review by Sam Coulbourn
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Charlie Wilson’s War
By George Crile, 2004 (Reprint Edition)
Publisher’s Review says “ . . . this covert-ops chronicle is practically impossible to put down.” No thriller writer would dare invent Wilson, a six-feet-four-inch Texas congressman, liberal on social issues but rabidly anti-Communist, a boozer, engaged in serial affairs and wheeler-dealer of consummate skill. Only slightly less improbable is Gust Avrakotos, a blue-collar Greek immigrant who joined the CIA when it was an Ivy League preserve and fought his elitist colleagues almost as ruthlessly as he fought the Soviet Union in the Cold War's waning years. In conjunction with President Zia of Pakistan in the 1980s, Wilson and Arvakotos circumvented most of the barriers to arming the Afghan mujahideen --- distance, money, law and internal CIA politics, to name a few. Their coups included getting Israeli-modified Chinese weapons smuggled into Afghanistan, with the Pakistanis turning a blind eye, and the cultivation of a genius-level weapons designer and strategist named Michael Vickers, a key architect of the guerrilla campaign that left the Soviet army stymied. The ultimate weapon in Afghanistan was the portable Stinger anti-aircraft missile, which eliminated the Soviet's Mi-24 helicopter gunships and began the train of events leading to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites. A triumph of ruthless ability over scruples, this story has dominated recent history in the form of blowback: many of the men armed by the CIA became the Taliban's murderous enforcers and Osama bin Laden's protectors.”
Charlie Wilson was a USNA grad in the class of 1956 (some of you probably knew him). Though virtually unknown to the public at large, he and Gust Avrakatos probably had more to do with the downfall of the Soviet Union than most of the leaders who get the public acclaim. They may also have had more to do, however inadvertently, with the rise of terrorism in the Mideast and beyond. A superb book about two simply astonishing men.
Reviewed by Paul Roush.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
India: Emerging Power
By Cohen, Stephen Philip, 2001.
Stephen Cohen has spent his life studying and writing about South Asia, and his knowledge of India seems impressive.
The book was originally published in 2001, but the paperback edition contains a preface that brings events up to 2003, and notes that 9/11 contributed to an India-Pakistan crisis that lasted over six months.
This is the story of India’s emergence, from the initial prime ministership (1947-1964) of Jawaharlal Nehru, a liberal, peace-loving man who eventually learned that in order to talk peace with adversaries, you need to have something else up your sleeve—even if you are very reluctant to use it.
His daughter, Indira Gandhi, was PM (1966-1977; 1980-1984) and she developed a very authoritarian leadership that gives us the idea that India might easily slide away from democracy, under the influence of the Hindu right.
Countless times in this book Cohen mentions the defeat of India by China in 1962. This seems to have burned a lasting impression upon the Indian conscience, lasting even today, and contributing to the country’s inferiority complex. However, since 9/ll, the broadening of Islamic terrorism across Asia has moved the threat of China back a notch, in India’s view, it appears.
Pakistan is the eternal bête-noire. From the days of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1875-1948) who led the drive at India’s separation from Great Britain, to create East and West Pakistan. From 1947 onward, India’s enemy has been Pakistan. Indira was responsible for giving the Bengalis the push they needed to break East Pakistan free of the rest of Pakistan. Kashmir has always been the elephant in the room of any conversation about India and Pakistan. Presidents from Truman onward have tried to help solve this problem, but today, as our policy supports Pakistan and aims to improve relations with India, we leave that issue on the shelf.
From the time of Nehru, Indian politicians have wished that Pakistan would simply wither away, but today, with raging Islamic extremism and Islamabad’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, a weak and failing Pakistan could be a greater threat to India than a coherent Pakistan. [p.307]
Cohen examines the India-United States relationship over the years. India has traditionally been very leery of the United States. This became most acute during the Cold War when India found ties with Moscow more to her liking. The U.S. supported Pakistan, in one of those countless “either-or” matchups that the Cold War created.
In 1971 India went to war with Pakistan. President Richard Nixon sent the nuclear carrier Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal to demonstrate American support for Pakistan, and to show our flag to China and India. This event is also burned into the memories of Indian leaders as a show of American hostility.
India, after much agonizing, became a “nuclear power” in 1998. During the 1970s American policy toward India was all about non-proliferation. Jimmy Carter, according to Cohen, made non-proliferation the centerpiece of his foreign policy–until 1979, when the USSR invaded Afghanistan.
Americans and Indians have not done well with their relationship since 1947, but the author has great hope for improvements as the United States recognizes the economic and military importance of India; in the world of 2006 the presence of a strong, secular democracy in this part of the world is of vital importance to us.
President George W. Bush demonstrated this importance when he traveled to India and met with PM Manmohan Singh in March, 2006.
Review by Sam Coulbourn, May, 2006.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Kissinger: Years of Upheaval
By Henry Kissinger, 1982; Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1281 pp.
Kissinger takes 1281 pages to tell the story of a whirlwind two years in the history of our nation. He begins with Nixon’s victory in 1972, taking all but one state, when the voices of opposition to the War in Viet Nam were muted for a time with the January 1973 Ceasefire. The book begins with a pleasant time around the swimming pool at Nixon’s San Clemente White House in August, 1973 when Nixon asks Henry to become his Secretary of State. The story ends with Nixon’s resignation a year later.
I was commanding a destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf when the Viet Nam war ended, and then the next year, commanding an ammunition ship carrying bombs, bullets and rockets, missiles and nuclear weapons to our forces in the Mediterranean, as we looked for all hell to break out in the Yom Kippur War of 1974. This makes reading Kissinger’s account of that time so fascinating for me, because it explains what he and others were thinking, and what they were doing, as we went from a shooting and bombing war in Southeast Asia to the surprise attack on Israel by forces from Syria and Egypt.
During the Cold War, no matter who was involved in the many regional conflicts, somehow there was a connection to Moscow and Washington. Nothing that Washington did in Viet Nam was just to oppose the drive of North Viet Nam into South Viet Nam. It involved China and the Soviet Union, and Kissinger was just the man to take us through that maze of relationships and entanglements.
It was Kissinger who engineered the marvelous breakthrough when we restored diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Here’s a neat little bit:
Kissinger notes that he and Zhou En Lai had achieved a sort of camaraderie. When they met one time Kissinger said, through an interpreter, that he was especially intimidated by Zhou’s presence.
Zhou: Why?
Kissinger: Because I read his remark to the press that I am the only man who can talk to him for a half hour without saying anything.
Zhou: I think I said one hour and a half.
In his chapter, “Persian Gulf Interlude” Kissinger discusses the very strong support the U.S. received from the Shah, an effective counterweight against the Soviets to the north.
Why did the Shah fall? Kissinger says “The single most important factor in the Shah’s collapse was the policy he learned from the West: the modernization of a feudal, Islamic society, the rapid economic development that absorbed far more of Iran’s revenues than did arms purchases.” ….. “Western liberal maxims caused the Shah to build a secular, modern state in the reformist mold of Kemal Ataturk and to force-feed industrialization that had barely left the feudal age.”
“What overthrew the Shah was a coalition of legitimate grievances and an inchoate accumulation of resentments aimed at the very concept of modernity and at the Shah’s role as a moderate world leader. The Shah was despised less for what he did wrong than for what he did right. He was brought down by those who hated reform and the West, who were against absolute rule only if it was based on secular principles.”
Review by Sam Coulbourn, May, 2007.](image423.gif)
