Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Explorers' Club, № CCCLXXV

Smedley Butler's cock-&-bull account of the "Business Plot."







The Queue
The central problem with The Way of the Knife is that author Mark Mazzetti neither confines himself to simply reporting nor extends himself to offer a useful critique of how the national security & defense apparatus of the United States has executed the War on Terror in the decade-plus since 9/11. Mazzetti states emphatically the the C.I.A. should not be used as a paramilitary force to capture & kill jihadist terrorists. he also asserts that the uniformed services of the Defense Department should not conduct missions outside of declared war zones, such as Afghanistan & formerly Iraq. The practical effect of this would be for al-Qaeda to operate with impunity inside the tribal areas of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, & Libya, et al. Mazzetti does not confine himself to simply reporting on the growth of the C.I.A. as a paramilitary killing machine & the intrusion of the Pentagon into the world of espionage. No, he takes it upon himself to denounce the entire history of covert action. (He doesn't confine himself to the post-1947 C.I.A., either, but reports the opinions of Churchill's S.O.E. that the American O.S.S. was reckless in carrying out sabotage inside Hitler's Fortress Europe. Mazzetti never bothers to report to his audience that M.I.6 held as dim a view of S.O.E. as S.O.E. did of O.S.S., casting S.O.E.'s remarks in an entirely new & possible envious light.) Worse than this, though, is that once Mazzetti has stepped beyond his brief as a reporter & offered his analysis & opinions about how the War on Terror has been conducted, he never takes the necessary step beyond to offer an alternative. He details the impotence inside a pre-9/11 C.I.A. & Defense Department that lacked the tools to act against Osama bin Laden & al-Qaeda targets inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, but then by his repeatedly stated opposition to black ops & failure to articulate an alternate strategy, essentially endorses such inaction as the policy the U.S. should have pursued after 9/11. Mr. Mazetti, if the C.I.A. shouldn't be hunting & killing terrorists but instead confining itself to conducting good, old-fashioned espionage against nation-states, & the Pentagon shouldn't be hunting & killing terrorists but instead confining itself to conventional warfare, whom exactly should be hunting & killing terrorists bend on mass-casualty attacks against civilian targets? Or, if we should not be hunting & killing such terrorists, what method would suggest to defend ourselves & our national interests against those same terrorists' murderous schemes?

In short, The Way of the Knife is long on sanctimonious indignation & short on practicable solutions. Throughout the disappointing book (which was blessedly short, being three hundred pages in an almost comically huge font), I recalled to mind the line of the Colonial Marine from Aliens, on being told that he & his compatriots dare not use their sophisticated firearms to defend themselves: "What are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?" If not the C.I.A. nor the Defense Department, what are we supposed to use to defend ourselves from al-Qaeda, its affiliates & allies, & other terrorist organizations? Harsh language?

Recently
Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
Matthew Kelly, The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic: How Engaging 1% of Catholics Could Change the World
Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife: The C.I.A., a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Currently
Christian Caryl, Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century

Presently
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Swords of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Synthetic Men of Mars
Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Llana of Gathol
Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars
Richard Price, Clockers
Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator, "Sinbad the Sailor" from The Arabian Nights

Lately Neglected
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
Edmund Burke, The Evils of Revolution
F. J. Sheed, Theology for Beginners

The Rebel Black D.O.T. Song of the Day
War, "Low Rider" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

3 comments:

Dr. Hee Haw said...

You got my attention with Smedley Butler and "cock-and-bull," and you provided the entry point to an interesting story. (Also, I really should learn more about the history of the gold standard in the U.S.) Thank you.

Dr. Hee Haw said...

I apologize for placing quotation marks around "cock-and-bull" when it should have read "cock-&-bull."

Mike Wilson said...

While I certainly appreciate the dedication to precision inherent in your apology, good Doctor, even my captiousness is not so severe as to find fault in "cock-and-bull," since "cock-&-bull" is indeed meant to be read aloud as "cock -and-bull."

I thank ye for the aside about the gold standard in the United States, which I shall treat as a suggestion for future episodes of "The Explorers' Club." The "Cross of Gold" speech & "Free Silver," Bretton Woods & Richard Nixon, Ron & Rand Paul & Poe's "The Gold Bug;" the gold standard is ripe for exploration.