5 comments about Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11.

1. The authors do a good job of capturing the turmoil, stress and confusion of firefighters coping with a true disaster. During the events of the day, many of us overlooked the firefight at the pentagon when faced with the realities of the towers and the plane in Pennsylvania. This book has a good feel for the magnitude of that day at the Pentagon.



2. Creed and Newman have done an excellent job of researching and writing about the fight to save the Pentagon. The depth of research via fact finding and interviews make this a great read. If you want the truth of the emergency response to the Pentagon on 9/11, FIREFIGHT is the book for you. It provides an inside-the-fence view of the enormous effort and heroic actions of the first responders. It describes in great accuracy the struggle of military personnel, firefighters, and law enforcement officers to save lives and protect our military's most important facility.
   
   I spent 11 days/nights at the Pentagon as an emergency responder. I walked the lawn near the Pentagon helipad tower, stepping on air plane parts with every movement. It was impossible not to. The ground was covered with them. I witnessed the raging fire and structural collapse of the building, as well as the evolution of Camp Unity, and the transition of command from Arlington County Fire Department to the FBI. I had a front row seat to many of the events described in this book. My friends, professional acquaintances, and those I met are in this book. Some are mentioned by name but many more are identified by the hard fought successes of those days. They are the heroes.
   
   FIREFIGHT takes you into the hearts and minds of those in the battle. The authors introduce you to average people who did extraordinary things. Creed and Newman don't glamorize or exaggerate the facts. They simply share them with you from the perspective of those who were there.
   
   When a Boeing 757 plowed into the Pentagon, men and woman raced into the fire to rescue the perishing. FIREFIGHT takes you into the blazing inferno immediately following the impact. It leads you into the scorched bowels of the Pentagon in the search for survivors and evidence. It walks you through the gruesome task of body recovery and respect for the lives lost. You will get a glimpse what it was like to be there. The sights and smells, fear and courage, victories and losses are all described in FIREFIGHT.
   
   You will not find conspiracy theories or in-depth information on the other incidents that occurred on 9/11. This is a focused look into the selfless acts of bravery that saved lives and avoided national security compromise when the Pentagon was attacked.
   
   In case you were wondering, yea, it was a plane. After stepping on/over and picking up so many parts, I can offer expert testimony. As much as some desire to believe otherwise, it was an American Airlines jet.



3. I've just finished reading "Firefight," and it feels like September 2001 all over again. Creed and Newman present an exceptional amount and quality of research, and they've captured the anger, confusion and determination of the response to the terror attack on the Pentagon in a very powerful way. Conspiracy theories will come and go, but this book will stand as a testament to the heroic efforts and tragic losses of that day.



4. Just the title says it all. As book reviewer (http://911sig.blogspot.com/2008/06/firefight-inside-battle-to-save.html), Enver Masud, notes: "FBI photographer Jennifer Combs (formerly Jennifer Farmer) went far out of her way to pull hundreds of photographs from archives and narrate all of them. How did they get access to these photographs, when others have Freedom of Information Act requests pending for these photographs and Pentagon videos?"
   
   But this is even better than the passport allegedly found in the WTC rubble: "The body of the hijacker who had been flying the plane ended up in the D Ring about 107 feet from the point of impact." I keep seeing Wylie Coyote. It must be something Rumsfeld put in.



5. Pilots for 9/11 Truth examined the "Black Boxes"
   They determined that it was Impossible for flight 77 to have hit the Pentagon.
   There are over 50 video cameras that could have caught the airplane,
   we have seen none.
   There was no wreckage.
   There was no airplane
   Rank propaganda,same as the rest of the Governments 9/11 myth
   This should be in the fiction section

5 comments about Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century.

1. Phillip Bobbitt has a big idea with many consequences. Terror is not just the result of acts of terrorists; it includes the acts of mercenaries, pirates, resistance movements, and Mother Nature (e.g., earthquakes and floods). States are not just nation-states; Al Qaeda is a State. War is not just war; pursuing narcotics traffickers or Terror is also war.
   
   In Terror and Consent, Bobbitt wishes to fundamentally change the way we think about the problem of security in the new century. His prescriptions would have significant impact: changing the balance of powers among the branches of government, extensive "reform" of laws and regulations including more extensive surveillance, modified distinctions between internal and external security, and fundamental changes in the missions and powers of the armed forces. Hence, Bobbitt's arguments warrant close scrutiny.
   
   His big idea is an "impending change in the constitutional order of states" (p544), a transformation of nation-states into market states. Changes in the constitutional order drive changes in globalization and vice-versa. These developments are driving the emergence of a global terror network, which is undermining nation states. If we are not sufficiently proactive in anticipating threats and preparing responses in advance, the parlimentary democratic order we favor may succumb.
   
   Is the constitutional order changing? The strongest evidence for this proposition would have to be the European Union, yet Bobbitt tells us that the US is the leading state advancing the new order. But there have not been wholesale reforms in the US at the level of its formal constitution. The changes have occurred at the more ephemeral level of government policies and regulations. We indeed see the trends collected together in the hypothesis of emerging market-states: the emphasis on international trade, the outsourcing of government, even military functions, and a contested shift from welfare-state security to individual market-based opportunity - grandly, the increasing penetration of capitalist relations into the public sphere.
   
   We also see, however, a push-back against these trends, notably in the drive for national health insurance and rising protectionist sentiment. The 19th century era of laissez-faire trade and migration demonstrates how trends may be reversed. Laissez faire trade peaked around the 1880s; social and economic dislocations provoked a rising recourse to various protections and migration regulations. Trade continued to increase, but with the boundaries of European imperiums as the leading powers raced to acquire colonies to expand their protected markets for labor, raw materials, and finished goods. This reversal of free trade and renewed imperialism should serve as a caution: It is simply too early to predict the triumph of a constitutional order of market states.
   
   How necessary is Bobbitt's big idea to his policy analysis of the implications of Terror and his prescriptions for the Wars against Terror? Bobbitt's key argument is that because of the changing constitutional order we are facing new challenges. Terrorism is no longer the product of nationalist movements; it is international in scope and highly networked. The old ordering of strategy and law, where law concerns internal matters and strategy addresses external challenges, is insufficient for current circumstances. Strategy and law must be reformed to work in concert. Strategy without law de-legitimizes action and prevents the formation of the coalitions necessary to achieve strategic goals. Law without strategy may block effective actions, increasing the damage from terrorism. This in turn de-legitimizes governments unable to provide security.
   
   The spread of WMD is a threat multiplier. Increasing levels of international commerce and communications exacerbate the threat of WMD, providing channels for proliferation which may allow terrorists to acquire these weapons. This undermines the old anti-proliferation strategies of containment and deterence; international-networked terrorism presents no concentrated center of gravity for containment or retribution. This presents a fundamental challenge to states where government is based on the consent of the governed. Terrorist attacks with WMD are likely to lead towards martial law as publics will be willing to sacrifice liberty for security. In Bobbitt's formulation, this is a victory for Terror, for consent, which implies the ability to chose, is precisely the target of terrorists: they do hate us for our freedoms, the choices offered by markets and democracy. Therefore, waiting for attacks before responding will not provide adequate protection for states of consent. Such states must be prepared to act preclusively or even pre-emptively to head off such attacks before they happen.
   
   Bobbitt also adds natural disasters and threats to human rights to the regime of Terror. This is a matter both of legitimacy, i.e., the demand of the public for effective security; and pragmatics: only the military has sufficient forces, resources, and organization to respond effectively to the largest disasters or conduct humanitarian interventions.
   
   Here is an irony: the de-centering of the nation state requires a centralization of powers: Internally, the executive must have increased powers of surveillance and intervention, including the power to deploy the military in anticipation of attacks or in response to disasters. Internationally, the UN, even NATO, diffuse power too much for effective action. We should form a League of Democracies, which if it constrains US actions nevertheless expands the power to intervene where non-conforming states or terrorist virtual states present threats. This League would be essentially a multiple-participant global hegemon. Despite Babbitt's special pleading, I doubt that this hegemon would arouse much less opposition from those states left outside of the club than a unipolar hegemon. How would threatened states desiring to preserve autonomy react? By driving to acquire WMD and supporting terrorist groups whose actions might draw the attention and sap the power of the hegemon, escalating the threat it is supposed to counter?
   
   Bobbitt's calls for a War against Terror, not a struggle under some less dire cover term. Terror threatens the survival of constitutional order as states of consent; where survival is at stake, war is the appropriate response. What are the consequences of declaring war, indefinite in geographic and temporal extension, against a loosely defined enemy?
   
   In a state of war, the president gains wide powers in the role of commander-in-chief. Indeed, George W. Bush sought a war against Iraq from the beginning of his administration, in part because he sought to expand his power to act outside of the checks of Congress and the courts. This is a problem Bobbitt overlooks. If he takes the administration to task for many errors, he assumes that the executive uses its expanded power only to prosecute the Wars against Terror. Declaring a Long War against Terror and centralizing more power in the executive weakens checks on the executive and harms the constitutional order of states of consent that Bobbitt wishes to preserve. Like the Bush administration, Bobbitt tends to exaggerate the threats and discount the importance of non-military responses.
   
   In arguing the need for changes in the law, Bobbitt misrepresents the powers already available under FISA for surveillance, or for police to detain and inspect vehicles suspected of transporting WMD. In affiliating natural disasters to Terror and calling for intervention by the national armed forces, he overlooks the powers of governors to call up military forces under state control - the National Guard. Following Hurricane Katrina, the Bush adminstration withheld aid to New Orleans, attempting to discredit the Democratic governor and to force her to turn over command of the Lousianna National Guard. Power seeks more power, and power corrupts. If the goal is to preserve states of consent - democracies under the rule of law, responses to terror must be more narrowly tailored to the likely threats than Bobbitt's proposals.
   
   Many of Bobbitt's points are well taken, particularly his insistence on combining law and strategy, our interdependence with other states in pursuing security, the need for a clear and coherent doctrine addressing terrorism, WMD, and humanitarian crises, and the need for a broad consensus on the legitimacy of our actions. His big idea adds a richness to his discussion by seeking grounding in historical contexts. Nonetheless, his big idea both overdetermines the unfolding of events and is not very necessary. Consent is necessary for any open state order, market state or nation state. Bobbitt asserts that legitimacy for markets states is particularly vulnerable to the threats of Terror, but offers little supporting evidence. The necessary responses to terror will be similar in either case. Successful responses may indeed forestall the necessity of changes in the constitutional order of nation states.
   
   There are other problems. Bobbitt collapses vital differences between different players and events, leading to their conflation, elevating terrorism, control over WMD proliferation, and natural catastrophe into Terror. Many believe that it is necessary to maintain the kinds of distinctions which Bobbitt collapses in order to tailor more efficient and effective responses to threats at a more appropriate scale of action. Such responses with their smaller scope will generate more narrow opposition, more easily overcome. Divide and conquer - the principle that enabled Great Britain to form a global empire, leveraging its limited resources to exercise effective control over a far larger population. This is the essential element of the recent successes in Iraq, often attributed to the "surge" - recognizing the differences between various resistance, insurgent, and terrorist groups in Iraq, and using them to multiply our ability to project force. If Bobbitt calls attention to some of the failures of the Bush administration in the occupation of Iraq, he hails the doctrine of preclusive intervention, and integrates the conflation of threats into the core of his big idea. The pre-surge strategy in Iraq led to an escalating cycle of violence; we cannot risk applying Bobbitt's similar idea on a global scale.
   
   The big idea of Terror and Consent and many of the arguments are problematic. Bobbitt nevertheless makes many thought-stimulating proposals and sometimes dead-on analysis of particular problems, particularly in his discussions of legitimacy and international law. Bobbitt's work will provoke much comment and debate, and that is to his credit.



2. Bobbitt follows The Shield of Achilles with Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. The Shield of Achilles is a work for the ages; Terror and Consent is a work for our time, seen in the light of the ages.
   
   In the previous book Bobbitt cast new light on the linkage between a State's ways of war and peace and its self-image and history. These evolve together according to a State's needs for survival and the challenges it faces. "The State is born in violence," writes Bobbitt, and the first things it must do are secure a monopoly on internal violence so that it may rule and secure a monopoly on external violence so that it may act strategically towards its ends. He traces the development, from Machiavelli's Italy to the present, of five successive forms of the State and shows that we are in the metamorphosis of a sixth form, the Market State.
   
   In Terror and Consent, he shows that terrorism is also adapting. In each age, the "anti-state" has matched the State's ways and means, but chosen opposite ends. Now, in our heavily networked world, the same world that Thomas Barnett looks to for our salvation (The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century) the terrorists have found their place in the network. Bobbitt takes A. Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation enterprise as an example: Khan provided knowledge and expertise, found subcontractors for materials and equipment, and managed the entire affair for clients just the same way an outsourcing firm might build and manage a data center for a client. Bin Laden built al Qaeda with similiar capabilities, but with a military dimension: the parts have redundancies; they are less dependent on a single point that can be isolated, arrested, or blown up. And, in the age of the Market State, an entity such as Al Qaeda may reside entirely within the geography of other states, making it immune to the traditional tools of statecraft and warfare.
   
   Dealing with these networks has proven difficult for our existing institutions and systems, and as the terrorists get smarter it the difficulties increase. This is a crisis with profound moral, legal, and strategic dimensions, and the dimensions interlock. Worse, we are hamstrung for want of a definition of terrorism that allows us to consider the three together. Bobbitt proposes a definition, then examines the nature and recent history of the problem and its likely solutions. He admits that there is something here to offend everybody, but reminds us that neither the enemy nor the government is the sole threat--real or potential--to our freedoms.
   
   The title, Terror and Consent, refers to the conflict between States based on terror (internal and external) and States based on the consent of the governed and good faith relationship with other states. Bobbitt shows us that to survive in a world filled with geographic and virtual States of terror we must know how we and our enemies understand means and ends. We must change the relationship between Law and Strategy because our enemies attack each one through the other. We must change not just our processes but our entire understanding of the world.
   
   Nor does Bobbitt offer easy solutions. His last full chapter, Triage of Terror, identifies three principle foreign policy goals and shows that they will provide us with a delicate balancing act, since every action we take towards one will probably compromise the other two to a greater or lesser extent. They will also leave us open to charges of inconsistancy in foreign policy and in the Wars against Terror, requiring government and the press to explain seriously what the choices are and what the priorities must be.
   
   The good news is that the USA is uniquely suited to lead the change, and will make things immeasurably better if we do so. Uniquely suited, because we have driven the change to the Market State. Immeasurably better, because if we lead change in the rules instead of ignoring them we will free ourselves of much criticism and distrust. Modern limited sovereignty began with these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident" and we of the USA still understand it better than anyone else. Now we must understand how we have changed the world, and how we must change the implemention of our principles to match.
   
   This is a deep and comprehensive analysis, not to be read in one evening or even two. Bobbitt achieves what von Clausewitz called critical analysis: he untangles the issues so that each part of the situation can be regarded on its own, and their interactions properly assessed. This is no small achievement; a clear analysis invites critics to advance it, refute it, or find other policies to recommend to answer the need.
   
   In reading other reviews, I feel as if I did not read the same book. People react reflexively and Bobbitt admits that he brings something to upset everyone. Before you respond to your deepest fears, ask whether Bobbitt is calling into question your principles or the legal and strategic ways that we have protected those principles in the world of the past. Bobbitt also admits his party affiliation, which explains what I think unfair blame (in light of his last chapter) of people trying to make the best of a situation that, until now, no one has understood. But this is a dust mote on a great work.
   
   Terror and Consent deserves careful reading by everyone serious about the threats posed by terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, government-caused humanitarian crises (think Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and New Orleans) and the ability of functioning government to survive natural and artifical disaster. The problems won't go away by themselves; they will get worse as our enemies learn and adapt.
   
   You may be sure our enemies will read Terror and Consent.



3. Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent is a big book, enormous in concept, ambition, and sweep, full of portent for transnational politics in the twenty-first century. Portentousness in a book can be a good thing, provided it delivers as promised. This brilliant, polymathic book delivers more intellectual punch on the fraught relationship between state and society, terrorism and terrorists, than any book I know. Let me simply adopt Niall Ferguson's judgment, on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, calling Terror and Consent the "most profound book on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 - indeed, since the end of the cold war."
   
   Not everyone feels this way; one indicator of the book's intrinsic interest is the volatility of the reviews. The Economist was distinctly cool; Bobbitt's grand ambition, it said, "is confusing, hard to digest, and perhaps wrong." But a problem with much current analysis of terrorism, terrorists, and US responses is that it thinks small. No lack of windy tomes, true, but while much genuinely serious stuff is admirably analytic, breaking matters down into bits and pieces, it seemingly dares not synthesize the bits back into a whole again. Today's most serious efforts tend to avoid anything resembling grand strategy for winning a long-term struggle against terrorists and terrorist organizations, and the states that sponsor and shield them.
   
   Favored instead is the narrowing method of cost benefit analysis and (adopting one version of it) a tendency to favor defensive, protective, immediate measures that are most obviously cost effective. Talk of "victory" or "winning," meanwhile, might be thought to propose talk of "war" - but these days few dare call it war, at least if one wants to remain respectable among Western policy, academic, and political elites. Governments shrink back, in fear of precisely the Muslim backlash their timidity invites, and increasingly cannot even bring themselves to identify the terrorists as Islamist, let alone Islamic. Terror and Consent, for its part, is heterodox on a long list of things. Bobbitt thinks the struggle against terrorism is plainly a war, to be called a war, fought as a war, against religiously-driven Islamist ideologues who seek to establish, he says, their vision of the caliphate and which he flatly calls "states of terror" that must be defeated. Nonetheless, changing conditions of twenty-first century war, because of changing conditions of the twenty-first century state, mean that war is not as it has long been.
   
   Regnant approaches to terrorism are driven not just by narrow cost benefit analysis, but by a still narrower focus on something we might call "event-specific catastrophism": preventing the next attack. This is as true of the Bush administration as of its leading opponents. What has the Bush administration focused upon, in speech after speech to the public? The imminence of the next attack, and the need to prevent it. One hopes this is mobilizing rhetoric for larger policies against jihadist terrorism, but in considerable part, the uncertain next attack is the focus of policy - a long-term strategy, if one can call it that, even after seven years, of just trying to make it to the next day unscathed.
   
   This is understandable, considering what administration officials see every day in threat assessments. The US attorney general since late 2007, Michael Mukasey, mused publicly how constant and serious the threats against the United States are; despite no successful homeland attacks since 9-11, he is "surprised by how surprised I am." Self-serving administration rhetoric? Perhaps. But despite much discursive rhetoric about long-term policy and the war on terror, much US policy is what, in a strategically informed plan, might well be considered the last defensive perimeters. Airport security, daily monitoring of cell phone traffic, internet analysis in hopes of seeing spikes that might indicate imminent terrorist action, watch lists, and many, many cement barriers. Presumably no one in Britain is reassured by the fact that the Glasgow attack was prevented not by perceptive police work, nimble intelligence agents, deep penetration of homegrown terrorist cells - but simply by a physical barrier at the airport. But perhaps people are comforted; the cement barrier worked, after all, effectively and cost-effectively, while the rest of the counterterrorism apparatus, at enormous absolute and relative cost, did not. Still, these are fundamentally defensive measures aimed at preventing the next attack, counterterrorism in a vital but stiflingly narrow sense. The cost benefit analysis underlying such planning, shaped toward event-specific catastrophism, is necessary and fruitful, but bears little resemblance to planning or conducting a "war" on terrorism or, really, any strategic conceptual response to jihad that goes beyond preventing particular events of uncertain probability and magnitude.
   
   Terror and Consent, by contrast, offers strategic thinking on an unapologetically grand scale. There is nothing minimalist about it. It is synthetic across three large fields: history, law, and strategic international politics. In an age where academic specialization is supreme, Bobbitt's ability to move across fields is bound to annoy narrow disciplinarians - it will seem to some to be a very old-style grand explanation of the kind that academics gave up a couple of generations ago, and they will find particulars to quarrel over. Bobbitt is able not only to range across academic fields, but also to combine academic and real world experience - a Democrat by affiliation, he has served in senior positions in both law and intelligence in the Clinton and Bush senior administrations. Bobbitt understands political theory and he understands the practicalities of governing. Terror and Consent's core insight is that transnational jihadist terrorism must be understood on the largest historical scale, and that requires understanding the shifting nature of the state and society in both the liberal democratic West and the rest of the world. Sometimes nothing but the large historical scale will do. Why?
   
   Jihadist transnational terrorism gets going by being able to exploit the interstices of the state system, not just on a geographical basis - the failed state of Afghanistan, for example - but on a historical basis, as the nature of the state moves from its incarnation in the twentieth century to something quite different in the twenty-first. Readers, in other words, should not be confused wondering why the book seems peculiarly focused on the historical and political theory of the evolving state, rather than narrowly on terrorism today. Bobbitt's deep point is that Al Qaeda terrorism, and what might eventually replace and transform it, cannot be understood without reference to the state system and its evolution over a long period of time. This leads Terror and Consent into a long walk through the history of the state in the West. Once again, narrow specialists will register many particular objections, and if one rejects in principle the notion of grand synthetic history, then one's reaction will be positively allergic. Bobbitt tells us, as a deliberate caricature, a kind of rough historical sketch (and picking up the thread of his earlier masterwork, Shield of Achilles), that the "princely state" system of Europe eventually gave way to the nation-state system that gradually emerged in the nineteenth and then dominated the twentieth century. Wars of the twentieth century were wars of Westphalian nation-states, and enemies in the wars of the twentieth century nation-states were themselves, by and large, nation-states; even the wars of de-colonialization were fought largely by parties that aspired to the status of nation-states.
   
   Since the end of the Cold War, at least, however, liberal democratic nation-states - what Bobbitt calls "states of consent" - have been moving toward something different from the nation-state, something Bobbitt calls the "market-state." In the market-state, consent becomes less that of the citoyen and much more that of the consumer, for whom the state is a supplier of services. The market-state itself bears some resemblance to a corporation, outsourcing and privatizing significant activities, and is both more relaxed about its territorial sovereignty while at the same time willing to extend its regulatory reach beyond its borders. Globalization's increased wealth is one driver of the market-state, but so is the secular (in both senses of the term) drive of individuals toward greater individual liberty. "States of consent" contrast with "states of terror," the end aim of the transnational, nongovernmental and, today, Islamist terrorist groups that are also able to grow in the eco-system of economic globalization and the relaxed conditions of, and among, market-states. States of terror are the evil twin of the states of consent - parasitical upon and enabled by the states of consent, at once pre-modern and post-modern but never really modern, and irremediably hostile toward states of consent.
   
   Bobbitt's market-states crucially retain key markers of states. This is not the dissolution of the state, the disaggregation of the state, eagerly awaited by watchful academics of international law, scanning the horizons for the breakdown of state sovereignty and the rise of some form of global governance and so to fulfill, after many heartbreaking centuries, the academicians' utopian, universal, planetary dreams. On the contrary, it is precisely because market-states continue, for Bobbitt, meaningfully to be states that they are able to have national interests, marshal resources against the states of terror, and provide for security for their citizens. And vice-versa. Indeed, in considerable part because Bobbitt insists on market-states as states, he likewise insists that the response to terrorism is a war on terror. Criminals, yes, but also enemies: states make war upon their enemies. War enables forms of strategic thinking about jihadist terror organizations that neither cost benefit analysis nor the legal conception of terrorists purely as criminals allows as a conceptual frame. The double-sided vision of Bobbitt's market-state leads Terror and Consent to a remarkably rich strategic vision of how concretely to make war against terror, terrorists, and violent jihad - a vision that will make everyone, however, on every side of the strategic debate, unhappy in some measure.
   
   Law, including international law - the Geneva Conventions, for example - is crucial. The Bush administration's forays into nearly Schmittian arguments of permanent emergency displacing the rule of law have been as disastrous as they are wrong. On the other hand, while deeply respectful of international law, Bobbitt does not think it - its meaning, interpretation and evolution - lies in the hands of international law professors and international bureaucrats. Bobbitt is a committed multilateralist, not a purveyor of utopian supranationalism. His is a nuanced and practical international law regime gradually shaped by the practices of states as conditions shift - very much, in fact, the pragmatic view that the US State Department has held of international law over many generations. As to domestic law and terrorism, Terror and Consent is, for example, decisively against Alan Dershowitz's `special circumstance' arguments for torture and many other alterations to existing presumptions of the rule of law. Yet the constitution is no `suicide pact' for Bobbitt - he endorses preemptive detention for terrorist suspects, significant increases in electronic and other surveillance, and coercive techniques short of torture in some circumstances, among other things.
   
   Terror and Consent sharply criticizes the Bush administration for the incompetence of its post-invasion Iraq policy. It observes that many mistakes arose from the profoundly erroneous belief that this was a war of nation-states in which the fall of the regime completed things whereas, in the wars of market-states and terrorist and insurgent groups, the war was just getting underway. Yet Bobbitt not only supported the Iraq war, he firmly believes (unlike many others following Iraq) in preventative war - he thinks we will need more of it over the long run, not less, because of the nature of terrorist threats. His strategic vision embraces carrying war to an enemy defined as such.
   
   Each bit of this will discomfit someone. But the success of Terror and Consent as an argument depends largely on whether `market' and `state' can be corralled together as Bobbitt proposes or whether, instead, the categories eventually fly apart. In my estimation, the argument is highly persuasive; its success as policy in the real world, however, depends upon something different: whether the market-state partakes of more than simply the ethic of the market. The logic of the market, after all, is to write off the past as past, treat sunk costs as sunk, cut losses and get out as soon as cost benefit analysis says things are looking dim, look not sentimentally back to the past except as a source of future dividends, coolly calculate anticipated future flows of value, mark to market, and each and every day ask, "But what have you done for me lately?"
   
   Is that really enough? If those are indeed the values that the market carries into the market state, is the market-state sufficiently nurtured by other values to have the will to defend itself as a political community? As consumers and not - in the older sense of the word, at least - citizens? Defend itself as a political community against not only external terrorist enemies, against states of terror, but also to have the courage to defend core internal values, not just of the market, but of liberal democracy - as against those, for example, who would see liberal democracy converted, in the name of multiculturalism, to a form of religious tribalism and religious communalism?
   
   George W. Bush and Tony Blair have found it weirdly easier, after all, to send whole armies to fight in faraway places than ever to say no to demands of communalist, ultimately illiberal, Muslim groups at home; easier to fight wars abroad than to insist at home upon the liberal separation of church and state, mosque and state; insist upon a public sphere that is neutral as between varieties of religion but which insists on the independent values of a liberal society; insist that this means limits, firmly drawn and enforced, to today's tightening ratchet of one-way religious accommodations; and, finally, insist that these limits are integrally part of liberal toleration, a regime of liberal toleration that is a species utterly apart from fashionable and, for liberal values, fatal multiculturalism. Communalism is not liberalism; the religious communalism of the Ottoman Empire was, in its way and time, a relatively humane order, but it was not and never could be liberal. It is, however, the path of least resistance that Britain appears to be taking.
   
   A believer in liberty and consent, I should greatly like to share Bobbitt's hopes for the market-state. It does not take a conservative to wonder, however, whether this is enough to sustain liberal democracy in the face of spiritual threats requiring a vision and courage to stick with it, rather than the cold, reactive calculus of net present value. A long tradition of what Lawrence Solum has called the "left Burkeans" - Christopher Lasch, for example, or Zygmunt Bauman - has argued that the market is as much socially corrosive of the values of liberal democracy as it is materially supportive. The market and liberal democracy are both sustained by wells of social capital that stable material prosperity helps deepen, but which are not the moral logic of the market itself.
   
   The market of the market-state is not self-sustaining. On the contrary, it requires a form of social life that goes outside it in order to function in the long term. Honor, loyalty, sacrifice, courage, gratitude to those who came before - these are not the evident virtues of capitalism, but they are necessary virtues in a liberal-democratic-capitalist form of life. Without them, society eats its seed-corn, devours and uses up today the social capital bequeathed by the past to bless the future. Even after the marvelous argumentation of this marvelous book, therefore, room remains to question whether the market-state pays sufficient attention to the spiritual habits of the heart that make the market-state - and the willing defense of the market-state, states of consent as against states of terror - over the long struggle of years in this twenty-first century, even possible.



4. I find Dr. Bobbitt rather wordy and repetitive. He does not clearly (to me) define what a market state is. He doesn't (as far as I know) distinguish a MAJOR difference between the market and nation state: the ability of the nation state to tax. The ramifications of of this oversight could possibly knock down many of the thesis proposed. This my main problem with the book so far.



5. Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century
   
   This book is beyond question the most illuminating discourse on the subject I can imagine. The thinking is clear and yet very expansive and the subject is of urgent concern to every citizen of the world. I believe that only those who are blinded by religiously held preconceptions will fail to be transformed by this amazing book. So many myths with which we pupulate our contemporary thought and discussions are demolished that it would be pointless to list them. It is worth reading all the reviews, as there is a clear trend for the negative review to display firm adherence to some of these myths. I leave it to other readers to judge themselves, but for me, the positives are vast and the negatives are puny jealousies of people who are beyond rational argument.
   
   A feature of the book for me was the outstanding writing. I usually find that reading 700 page books tiresome either because they are repetitious or poorly written or both. This book is neither. The writing is elegant, transparent, communicative, and a joy to read. The editing and organization is outstanding.
   
   I've bought 75 copies of this book and am giving it to people who I think will appreciate, understand and benefit from the concepts argued, and who can do something about spreading this coherent vision to those who need to understand it and apply its wisdom in day-to-day affairs.

5 comments about Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror.

1. This was a fantastic book. I'm having a hard time finding unbiased literature about the modern trend of PMCs (mercenary companies). Books written by conservatives paint PMCs (especially American ones) as purely patriotic and heroic organizations. They often overlooking or minimize the problems PMCs create and in some cases the crimes they have engaged in. Books written by progressives describe PMCs as evil agencies with immoral killers who profit from death, nothing more.
   
   Mr. Pelton covers how the trend toward smaller government (including militaries) have lead to the rise in PMCs. He describes incidents where mercenaries have stepped into help nations the world will only talk about. He also covers incidents where mercenaries have illegally tried to topple small governments.
   
   Unlike many "expert" authors, Pelton went to hot spots around the world to assess each situation for himself. He spoke with leaders and with people on the ground in and around the business.
   
   Pelton credits the Bush administration for creating a situation where the US military is required to rely heavily on PMCs in Iraq and for their lack of accountability. He also credits the international community's lack of involvement for the fact that smaller nations have resorted to PMCs to end their violent conflicts.
   
   If you think PMCs are the greatest thing on earth, here to promote democracy around the world, or if you think they're hired killers, here to kill innocent indigenous people in the name of corporate wealth and racist regimes, please read this book. Don't merely read books with an agreeable point of view.
   
   Mr. Pelton does express a concern about the lack of oversight and accountability with PMCs around the world, but if he was trying to push another political message, I didn't see it. Great reporting. This is a book with a wealth of information that I didn't have to read with a grain of salt or read with the mindset that the author was trying to manipulate my views one way or another.
   
   You may also want to view the DVD "Shadow Company," which covers the same topic.



2. I really enjoyed this book. A very interesting take on the life of a contractor, without the political objective.



3. Completely devoid of preaching, no axes to grind, no ideology to promote... you have to wonder how this ever got published in the USA. Not a trace of faux compassion. No uplift. In short, an almost miraculous book. Remarkable achievement.



4. Licensed to Kill : Hired Guns in the War on Terror is a damn good book. It's an unfiltered and unjudgemental look at the security contractors who do security, assault and intelligence work on behalf of governments around the world. If you've heard of companies like Blackwater, DynCorp or Aegis, then by all means, pick up this book.
   
   1. So who are these guys? Who are these guys are all over the news these days, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Basically, security contractors are highly-trained masters of warfare. They are usually ex-special operators (e.g. Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Marine Recon) or at the very least, ex-infantrymen or cops in the governmental forces. Some do security detail work for top dogs like Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer. Others guard escorts and convoys, and other work as non-official spies.
   
   On one extreme end there is a guy like Billy Waugh, an ex-Green Beret-turned-CIA-turned-contractor. He is extremely experienced, guile and professional. Most of all, he is very patriotic, and his zeal to defend America keeps him going even though he's almost 80.
   
   And just like sports teams, there are the walk-ons. This one guy named Shannon Campbell is the security contractor's answer to Rudy. He's not a veteran of the Special Forces or SAS, but a regular Joe who had a dream of making it. He trained in martial arts and firearms until he could break in to the industry, and he did!
   
   2. And what are these guys like? They are basically just humans, just like us. They just happen to be extremely alpha. Although many media outlets portray them to be these monsters who have no remorse and shoot kids on the streets of Baghdad for fun, Robert Young Pelton does a great job keeping things in perspective. Security contractors have fun; they have camaraderie; they have fear; they worry about family and finances; they surf the web for porn. They are just like guys out there in the regular "world." It's like asking what NBA players are like, or what NFL players are like. Until you've lived in their world, you don't know what it's like. But if you want to know what they are like as human, just look at the people around you.
   
   Of course, with the good and normal, you have the bad and the ugly. Besides the possibility of someone going berserk on some women and children after having seen too much war, you have guys motivated greatly by greed, greed and more greed. On one hand, you have companies like Sandline and Executive Outcomes and guys like Niek du Toit and Timothy Spicer, who scour for unstable nations rich with resources like Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea and try to capture the market - even overthrowing the government is not out of the question. Niek du Toit sits in a Equatorial Guinean jail, and is unlikely to ever see daylight again.
   
   And in a market that is exclusive, secretive and relatively unregulated, you must always watch out for the opportunists, like Jack Idema. Portraying himself as a well-connected and well-informed ex-Special Forces member, Idema scammed journalists, filmmakers and locals in Afghanistan. Like Niek Du Toit, Jack Idema is currently rotting away in an Afghan prison.
   
   3. And what is the future of the private military/security industry? Only God knows, but the faithful founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, has ambitious dreams. He visions Blackwater fielding a battalion-sized force of security operators with small-arms, heavy weapons and planes, that can be deployed globally on short notice. It may sound bolsterous, but with Blackwater's capital, reach, and track record, Prince's plan is certainly not unrealistic.
   
   Also, with small conflicts popping up everywhere, urbanization, and the rise of mixed martial arts, I can certainly imagine more Shannon Campbells popping up. With more manpower neededm with elite war vets who decide to pass on becoming contractors, and with companies that offer tactical training, it is not unrealistic to envision young males decide to get in shape, learn hand-to-hand and weapons, and join in for some gold and glory.
   
   I don't want to go on forever, but Licensed to Kill : Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton was a great read, and I could not put the book down. And I don't think you'd be able to either.



5. I wanted to learn more about Security contractors after I heard so much about them in the news on Iraq and Afghanistan. I found this book and read it quite quickly for it was very interesting and for the most part worth the money. Robert Pelton has written a engaging investigation where you feel for both the contractors and the opponents against their existence. There is one chapter about a con artist that I felt didn't need to be included in the book but nonetheless I commend Mr Pelton for his good writing ability.

5 comments about While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within.

1. Solely as a recitation of recent events in Europe that are under-reported in Europe and the US, this is a must read. Bawer is a journalist who spent quite a bit of time living, working, and traveling in Europe, and his insight into how real events are morphed as they find their way into the evening news or morning paper can help one make sense of what's going on in Europe, the UK, and the US.
   
   This is not an academic excercise in "what's wrong with Europe". For that, perhaps try Weigel's "The Cube and the Cathedral".



2. This book contains a rich collection of chilling facts on the growth of radical Islamic thought in western Europe and how Multiculturalist thought encourages many "political correct" individuals to refuse to acknowledge that this is becoming a serious problem. The author has spent a large amount of time living in both the United States and Europe as an openly gay man. I mention the author's sexual orientation because I think it supports how even though the author is very sensitive to discrimination against minorities, he still sees the spread of radical Islam as a serious problem.
   
   Although this book is a quick read with a dense amount of information, it is really written as just one endless stream of facts. I think that the author could have organized all of this valuable information into a much better book. In its current form, using this book for reference is near impossible.
   
   Nevertheless, I still strongly recommend this book as a primer on the growth of radical Islam in western Europe and the moral paralysis induced by the dominance of Multiculturalist thought throughout the continent.



3. There are many who will blast this book as being antiMuslim propaganda. That is complete nonsense (but as the author points out in the book, anything less than complete submission to the teachings of Islam will be viewed by Islamic extremists as being antiMuslim). This is a book that desperately needed to be written, and now needs to be read by every freedom loving person in the precariously free world. It is interesting to learn the bio of the author: he is an openly gay man originally from New York who, after taking the Christian Right to task for several years, decided to live in the Netherlands with his partner in order to experience a whole new way of life and the freedom to be gay in a culture that warmly embraces homosexuality. In other words, he's not a Coulter-O'Reilly clone who believes that the world needs to be ruled by the Bible and that the US is the only nation of the planet. We needed an unbiased, nondogmatic view on this subject, and for the most part Mr. Bawer gives us just that. As we read in his book, the evolution of the Europe to which he first moves (a lovely, accepting if a bit snobbish and antiAmerican place) into a callipate in all but name is laid bare for all to see. Like many of the other reviewers, I wish that Mr. Bawer had included endnotes if for nothing else but to allow the reader to view the ghastly comments of the political and intellectual elite of Europe in their own words (I defy anyone to read the comment of Unni Wikan who basically said that if Norwegian women wish to avoid being raped, they must learn to conform to the Muslim ideal. In other words, nonMuslim women must put on a burka or else face their "deserved" punishment of being assaulted). This is a very scary book because it is true. The fate of France as a Muslim state under sharia is all but certain, and most Scandinavian countries seem hellbent on following Her path. I enjoyed Mr. Bawer's writing style (other than lack of footnotes) very much; he makes the reader feel as if an old friend who has been living abroad showed up for a chat about these issues. If the reader wants pure stats, he/she should goggle them or look at a spreadsheet. This is written to appeal to a public who reads "Time" or "Newsweek", not "Consumer Reports". One can only hope that Europeans read this book and take it seriously (which, since it was written by an American, I doubt they will). They need to reevaluate their entire immigration policy (for instance, an American brain surgeon probably couldn't obtain citizenship in Britain, but an iman who doesn't even speak English and openly calls for the overthrow of the secular government and establishment of an Islamic state is welcomed with open arms? I don't get it) and realise that they are harming all of their citizens (including law abiding Muslims) when they allow these monsters to take up residency. Militant Islam may be the biggest threat in history (much more so than Nazism or Communism, since it combines the philosophy of both of them with a lust for conquering and ending the world). Now is the time for the world to wake up and start taking it seriously.



4. It is true that most European coutries have ignored the issue of immigration and integration for far too long, causing a certain ghettoization and the emergence of parallel societies. Particularly immigrants of Islamic countries frequently hardly speak their host country's language, perform poorly in school and often end up unemployed. There are also problems with violence, fanaticism and the oppression of women in this particular class of population (left-behind muslim immigrants).
   
   However, it is populist, inconsiderate and hasty to blame Islam for all of this and to predict Europe's downfall (or even the entire West's!). There are several other explanations for intolerance and violence among Muslims in Europe: a large share of them is poorly educated (high correlation with violence and fanaticism for low education in all population segments), socioeconomically disadvantaged and often unemployed (again high correlation with violence and fanaticism for those attributes regardless of religion or ethnicity). There is no evidence that poor, uneducated, unemployed Muslims have a higher crime rate or affinity to extremist ideologies than e.g. poor, uneducated, unemployed Catholic French or Atheist Germans. This is an interesting and important question / field of study, but the author does nothing to bring to light some empric evidence from comprehensible trustworthy sources.
   
   Also, many European countries have failed to design processes for integration (education about rights and duties, language classes, coaching), relocating immigrants to gloomy suburbs with already high crime rate. This is another factor that is hardly mentioned in the book.
   
   Rather than providing new insights based on a thorough analysis, this book is merely exploiting xenophobia and airing itself as the skryer of a dark future...every bit as intolerant and undifferentiated as the fanaticism it attacks.



5. One of the common themes that appears in many writings of Spencer, Emerson, Steyn and others is that there are many Americans who, for one reason or another, are not proud to be Americans. Bawer alludes very strongly to that as well, and I believe he may even have been one of those people until his long term experience of living in Europe and seeing first hand the Islamization taking place there.
   
   Americans (all Westerners, really) need to understand the total erosion of rights we take for granted being summarily squashed under Sharia. Bill of Rights? Fuhgeddaboudit! All men created equal? Not anymore!
   
   As Bawer points out on almost every page, he is unabashedly and unashamedly gay, and the gay community must someday come to terms with the fact that right-wing America is going to do more to protect their civil rights than the liberals, who turn a blind eye to Muslim atrocities against gays in Europe and elsewhere. Civil unions don't provide much benefit when one's head is no longer in union with the rest of the body.

5 comments about The Messenger.

1. Daniel Silva is a masterful story teller. Gabriel Alon is a worthy hero and this installment does the entire franchise justice.



2. Another efficient but artless offering from Silva. I've read all his novels which once seemed like fun throwbacks to 70s paperbacks. Lately, these humorless exercises with Neo-Con lectures thrown in, are getting harder to enjoy. I'm not asking for Jason Bourne-style self-disgust, but could Gabriel Allon have just one moment's expression of the slightest qualms about ignoring all international laws as he traipses the globe assassinating the enemies of Israel? (Here he even gets props from his old buddy the Pope!)



3. This is an incredible book, thrilling and keeps you on the edge till the end.



4. Mr. Silva is a direct cross between John LeCarre (the early) and Lee Child. He has brought action to his cerebral character as if Jack Reacher gave George Smiley some courses in spy field work.
   
   What separates Mr. Silva from almost all the authors of the spy/thriller genre is the genuineness of his characters, particularly Gabriel Allon, his main character. Allon has very real human emotions to go with his spycraft expertise and relationships with other characters, all of whom also have depth. There are no cardboard cut-out characters.
   
   In "The Messenger", Allon is onto the Saudis who bankroll and mastermind anti-western terrorism, espcially anti-Israeli and American. There is an unnerving realism to the scenario that is underscored by the Afterword. After a strike against the Vatican, Allon is on the mission and brings in an amateur to make life even more difficult in the anti-terrorist fight. The plot travels the world, illustrative of the reach of the rich who bankroll the suicide bombers and martyrs.
   
   From the outset, the tension builds. It is a credit to the author that the tension never wanes. It may change shape and venue, but it is always there - what better complimnet for a thriller? One never gets the feeling that everyone will live happily everafter at the end.
   
   This novel can stand alone, although I have some passing familiarity with Allon, having read one or two predecessors. Reading this installment inspires me to go back to the ones I missed. This is as good as this genre can get.



5. ... because you'll have to be a fan to get through this one.
   
   The author no longer recounts in detail scenes from earlier stories or extensive character descriptions. This was a welcome change, but it did seem a bit ridiculous to find Gabriel Allon striding into the audience of the Pope without a little back story.
   
   "The Messenger" was a disappointment after the cultural insight and emotional depths reached by Silva's writing in previous installments, "The Prince of Fire" and "A Death in Vienna." It felt like the sort of installment that's just meant to get the characters in position for the next (usually much better) volume.
   
   That said, it did not make me any less likely to read the next volume.

5 comments about Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit.

1. A great read & insight into what these people go through to get their job & then do their job. I found Eric Haney's story, well written & very easy to read. I guess he had to edit particular details, as i did find some gaps in certain chapters. This Is understandable due to the nature of what he's writting about. I'm sure that anyone who reads this will enjoy it.



2. I read this book after being a long-time fan of "The Unit". Haney gets straight into how he came to selection with Delta then spends the rest of the book giving generally matter of fact no nonsense descriptions of his time in Delta. Having read a number of books on the special forces world it was interesting finally reading something about Delta Force and I really enjoyed Haneys book. The most memorable thing is how much of Delta Force is taken directly from the SAS. I knew they were inspired by the UK's finest but I didnt realise they were a direct copy! Most of the component arts of Delta are lifted from the SAS - and they rarely even bothered to change names!!!
   Good Book though!



3. I'll leave the reviews to everybody else. I just want to contribute my 5 star rating and tell everybody it's a must buy.



4. This is an awesome book, by a no nonsense guy, who has been there and done that. The book came quickly, and for a great price. It was new, and with no marks, and the binding was as if it never had been opened. Thanks for a great book!



5. Shame on you Haney for blaming the Navy for that Desert 1 fiasco. There should have been Army mechanics servicing those choppers, not Navy guys who had never seen a sand filter before, after all not much sand when flying over water.For the casual reader, those were new helicopters with just enough hours on them to be broken in and be proven combat worthy.They were Army birds serviced by Navy mechanics aboard the carriers.They were getting "bad gas millage" compared to comparable Navy Helios.Wondering why? Navy mechanics searched for a reason for what was perceived to be a problem.The solution was to remove what seemed to be an unnecessary component,which unfortunately were sand filters.The helicopters, not all of them developed mechanical problems over the desert.At Desert 1 Army & Marine units mingled with no clear command structure and the accident that took the lives of some very brave men, then President Carter canceled the operation.This operation could still have proceeded especially since we already had troops right across the street from the embassy.I've best heard it described as like "the bride waiting at the alter".
   I remain convinced that the hostages would have been freed that night if President Carted had only pulled the trigger.
   Seeing is believing.

5 comments about The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

1. I've been studying insurgent warfare for a long time before it became a hot topic... again. I still recommend Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare and Hamilton's The Art of Insurgency which is a great book but is little referenced. There are of course books by Kitson and others. (Nagl's book which I've reviewed is a good dissertation but is limited in it scope and perception. He writes the forward to this edition.) The two volume War in the Shadows is okay background but not worth a two volume read. Which brings us to the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which if you are serving and only have time to access one source, this is a dependable one.
   
   Although the CFM is oriented more toward the current unpleasantness the principles of counterinsurgency have been carefully gleaned from the best sources and multiple situations as well as updating insurgent response for the 21st century. Keeping food deliveries out of active insurgent areas might have worked for the British in Malaya, but you could imagine the field day CNN would have with it today. Probably the best things the writers do in this manual is freely admit that the devil is in the details and that these will have to be worked out locally and supported nationally.
   
   For those who still aren't buying into "the insurgent stuff" which unfortunately over the last 30+ years has gone under state department approved phrases like "nation building" and executive office of the President terms like "counter terrorism" you don't have to worry that the Army or Marines are going to lose their conventional edge with these approaches. The CFM makes it clear that this is only one form or warfare and that modern war can slip across the entire spectrum. What is not needed is more doctrine...what is needed is a tool box and the CFM attempts to be one of those tools.
   
   The CFM makes many good points and I'm not going to list them all here, but the most important one I felt has to do with the assumption of more risk. Insurgent warfare requires soldiers to go out and get in the streets with people to provide the basic security for everyday activities that will lead to a legitimate government. Legitimacy cannot come from the national level down no matter what form of government people actually settle for (A basic concept found in any undergraduate PolySci 101 class which no one in the State Deptment or Congress must have taken.) The average Joe doesn't care about the grand schemes. He wants to go to work, get married, raise a family and have a shot at some level of comfort without getting killed. The key to winning against insurgents is that the most committed to providing these basic parameters for the average Joe, wins. You show your true colors and level of commitment when you have to go out and get shot at. But the alternative, which never works, and we still seem to be doing is to concentrate forces on large FOB's and separate them from the population. This has got to be one of the toughest of balancing acts to provide force protection, logistics as well as force projection and maintenance that supports an ongoing relationship with the civilian population. Fighting an insurgency is not for the faint hearted, the draftee, or those who needed to be reelected every 2 years. It takes soldiers in neighborhoods who know the people and have the power to affect their lives...albeit indirectly if possible.
   
   I disagree with the CFM on two points. I disagree with using the idea of "counterinsurgency" for philosophical reasons. The term by its very nature places you at a disadvantage to the insurgents. I believe you fight an insurgent war and win it by being better insurgents, not by being better "counterinsurgents." But this is probably more a matter of semantics. My second area of disagreement is really the book itself. This "new" book on insurgent warfare is really a great gazette of all the current knowledge that has been around for years plus the all necessary Army doctrine, without which the lowliest private cannot have a bowel movement. The Army's "can't do it without doctrine" attitude is what made this book come out so far behind the power curve to begin with. All this information is and has been known and available but the Army couldn't "discover" it. The US has a long insurgent history that is little studied or learned from. Our nation was founded by an insurgency. We've fought insurgents throughout our history: Native Americans, especially in the West, the border struggles during the Civil War, Phillipines, Cuba, Nicuagua, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. As organizations that need to be highly adaptable, the Army and the Marines need to stop paying tuition for the same lessons over and over again. I realize that not all of this lack of organizational awareness is theirs. A great deal of the responsibility for lack of responsiveness lies at the feet of elected officials who do not do their part and provide the clarity of purpose upon which coherent military strategies are based. The mist in Congress becomes a dense fog for those who are tasked with the nation's defense.



2. I actually bought this book some months back but I kept putting off picking it up because I assumed this would be a dense work filled with military jargon and more acronyms than one could shake a stick at. I assumed that it would be a tedious and difficult read so I found reasons to put it off, but when I finally forced myself to begin this book I was quite shocked. The book is very easy to read and very well written. The book has just a few acronyms that I had memorized within a couple of pages after their introduction, and the book is very well laid out with impeccable organization (as should be expected I guess). I dare say I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book on all levels. Of course the information and the knowledge to be gleaned from this work is extremely important.
   
   I think if this book were to become required reading for students then I think we could prevent some costly misadventures in future because this book really details what an occupation requires. Everyone would understand that military action will require a deep level of commitment for the military and on all levels of civil society as well.
   
   I also think it is the least we can do as citizens to educate ourselves on what our military men and women are doing and attempting to implement in situations where they face this type of conflict. One gets a sense of what a soldier goes through and the huge load that is put on the ordinary soldier. It is an extremely difficult task they are asked to perform in these situations, and they are asked to perform this task with honor and discretion in the face of terrible situations.
   
   There are some good reviews here that speak more to the content of the work by people obviously more versed in the topic than myself, so I will just say that this book is very well done and an easy read. If you are like me and are putting off reading or buying this book, then let me just say go ahead. It is worth the money and the effort. I highly recommend this book.



3. This is the best manual that the military has ever published. While it is very thorough and covers every aspect of how to run a successful counterinsurgency, it is broken down into easy to understand concepts. Designed for commanders at all levels, it easily applies to every military member involved in the campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. This should be a must read for anyone deploying to the AOR, military or civilian as it will shape the way you think, speak, and act while trying to successfully end the insurgency that grips these countries.



4. This manual should be required reading for any candidate for public office at a national level, as well as all foreign staff personnel. After reading the manual I was better able to understand the motivations and actions of the various factions within Iran today. It also re-enforces the idea that terrorism / insurgency is not just an issue for a single nation, but anymore is a global issue.



5. I believe this manual is an excellent overview of counterinsurgency strategy and some tactics. This includes the broad strategy as well as to the drill down for the units/teams/boots on the ground. Its stated audience is for battalion commanders and their staff and higher. I would recommend it to any soldier, sailor or marine regardless of rank and for U.S. citizens generally who have an interest in the topic.
   
   According to the manual, the host nation (HN) and the counterinsurgency force (COIN) will win if they can provide security first, and then other functions of a responsive - responsive to the HN populace - HN government. Otherwise, the populace will seek security and services elsewhere (i.e., in insurgent organizations/militias). This is not necessarily a sequential ordering. While basic security is fundamental - once a baseline is reached - other governmental functions responsive to HN's populace's concerns should also be instituted, supported, and reinforced, while still improving and accelerating the improvement of the security environment for the populace. One example used is how insurgency organizations/militias can destabilize the security environment and create insecurity through terrorist strikes, in order to then be viewed by the populace as the cure to the insecurity by operating militias to defend against such insecurity, and thus try to gain popular support.
   
   Bottom line: creation, maintenance and sustainment (or assisting/building up) of legitimacy in the host nation vs. the insurgent organizations is the contest and crux of the matter. Insurgency and counterinsurgency is a fight for the support of the populace (i.e., the big middle). This conclusion should have been clear by now - insurgency has been with us for a very long time. For some examples, in the West, you can go back to at least to Julius Caesar for lessons; see also Napoleon; in the East, you can go back to at least to Sun-Tzu's The Art of War.
   
   According to the manual, to win an insurgency/counterinsurgency type conflict, requires staying power without intentional or unintentional signaling of wavering support for staying the distance, at least until the HN has achieved the "tipping point" in terms of legitimacy and popular support.
   
   As an aside, there is a good appendix on Social Network Analysis (SNA), which provides a cogent overview of some of the key concepts for those not familiar with SNA or its use in war, conflict, or intelligence.

5 comments about The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion.

1. Robert Spencer is a brave man. Seemingly the rest of the world insists that Islam is a religion of peace and that terrorists--like those that flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center--have hijacked an essentially peaceful religion, a religion building on centuries of its peaceful Judaic and Christian forerunners. This view is pervasive, and Spencer dares to contradict it.
   
   What Spencer aims to do with his book is outline the theological basis on which groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban operate. His findings are damning--rather than radical theological hijackers, Spencer shows that terrorist groups have a firm, easily defensible foundation in the example--the sunna--of Muhammad himself. Spencer accomplishes this using solely Muslim sources, including the Koran, the ahadith (the sayings of Muhammad, as opposed to the Koran, which is the divine words of Allah Himself), the sunna, and the corpus of historically authoritative Islamic theologians, the ulema. The portrait of the Prophet that emerges is not a pretty one.
   
   If Spencer skews his view, hammering home the negative examples of the Prophet's life at the expense of Muhammad's good traits, he does so because he is not attempting to write a definitive biography of Muhammad. Rather, he has selectively chosen his material to show that all the terrible actions of modern Islamic terrorists have some solid grounding in the deeds of their supreme example himself. That Muhammad did sometimes preach peace and tolerance (of a sort, provided infidels pay the jizya) goes unsaid. Spencer is proving that Islam is just as much a religion of warfare as it is of peace.
   
   Which is where Raymond Ibrahim's Al Qaeda Reader comes in. I recommend Spencer's book in addition to the former, as the two have a great deal in common. Where Spencer details the less than sterling example Muhammad has provided to today's terrorists, Ibrahim allows today's terrorists to speak for themselves--and they make precisely the arguments for jihad, the subjugation of women and the murder of innocents that can be found in Spencer's book.
   
   Whether or not you read this book along with Ibrahim's, The Truth About Muhammad is a terrible but enlightening look at one of the most important figures of world history.
   
   Highly recommended.



2. This book uses little factual proof behind the claims that the other makes. Dont waste your money on this book. This guy is just showing his anti-muslim sentiment.



3. Please read this book and others like it that expose Islam as a destructive belief system and Muhammad (Damnation Be Unto Him) as a delusional child molester whose followers are incapable of accepting or recognizing the falsehood of their beliefs.



4. There is no better book on Islam than this one. A very Non-PC book and a fair guide to what every sane Westerner must know about the religion of Islam and its psychopath founder Muhammed. This is truly a great work and lots of research has been done to get it right.



5. like a typical angry westerner with biased opinion, this is a book for those people who want to hate islam and dont want to learn the truth, citing sources out of context and just hate speech. if you want to hate 1 billion people then go ahead and buy this book, but if you really want to understand the reasons behind what Mohammed did on many ocssions look towards books written by islamic scholars, then you can judge for your self.

5 comments about To The Death.

1. I read and enjoyed two of Robinson's earlier works, Hunter Killer and Ghost Force. Both received "rave" reviews from me.
   
   Unfortunately, "To The Death" is a turkey. It is dull, highly predictable, contains many factual errors and borrows heavily from the plot of The Day of the Jackal. The novel, which is billed as the "conclusion of his bestselling series starring Admiral Arnold Morgan and his terrorist nemesis, General Ravi Rashood".
   
   The book begins with a bang, so to speak, with a terrorist bomb in Boston's Logan Airport. This scene is so far-fetched that I was tempted to set the novel aside within the first few pages. I would have been better off doing so.
   
   I don't like getting into a lot of plot details for fear of spoiling it for others who may not share my opinion of this book as a waste of time. After all, if you're looking for something to put you to sleep while stuck at an airport or on a long flight, "To The Death" may be helpful.
   
   In any event, the clumsiness of the opening scenes is simply a harbinger of all that follows. A Middle Eastern appearing male in line at an airport security checkpoint asks "Excuse me, sir . . . I have two quite heavy briefcases here and I'm just going over to the Starbucks for some coffee. Would you mind keeping an eye on one of them for me . . .?" The story is set in 2012. Does Thompson seriously expect us to believe that someone would be stupid enough to go along with this request? How is the Middle Easterner going to exit the security queue? No questions about how he is going to manage carrying a coffee with his two "quite heavy" briefcases? In any event, the companion to the yokel who agrees to watch the one briefcase notices - big surprise - that the Middle Eastern appearing gentleman has passed the Starbucks and is heading for the exit.
   
   There begins what is supposed to be an exciting sequence where a cop grabs the suspicious briefcase, runs through the concourse, across the roadway, throws it into the parking lot where it explodes without seriously injuring anyone. Believable? No.
   
   The bomb tossing cop's partner just happens to spot a car picking up the terrorist and manages to shoot the driver, capturing the other terrorist. Believable in the circumstances? No.
   
   Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe, assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency, is frantic over a call the NSA has intercepted. One call to Damascus. Yeah. Sure.
   
   By page 12, this novel has fallen on its face. It is simply unbelievable. I won't go futher into the plot, but it pits Ravi Rashood, deserter from the British SAS and convert to radical Islam, his (what else would you expect?) ravishingly beautiful terrorist wife Shakira against Admiral Arnold Morgan, former NSA head, confidant of Presidents and his colleagues. Rashood, Morgan and others were interesting characters in earlier books. In "To The Death", they are transparent and unbelievable.
   
   The storyline concerns Rashood's obsession with assinating Morgan. One unbelivable scene follows another. Of course, brilliant Ramshawe is always both a step behind and a step ahead in warning Morgan that an assination plot is afoot, but stubborn old Morgan won't listen.
   
   Ultimately Robinson borrows a big part of the plot from "The Day of the Jackal", which only makes this novel worse than it already was.
   
   Robinson either wrote this in a hurry, didn't do his research, has contempt for his reader's intelligence or all three. Factual errors abound.
   
   For example, the devout Muslim General Rashood is aboard a naval vessel belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran - where he enjoys a ham and cheese sandwich. Ham on a ship belonging to the Iranian Navy? A supposedly devout and fanatical Muslim eating ham?
   
   On the same ship, Robinson describes the captain as being so knowledgable that "[u]pon the slightest problem with the ship, the crew aways called on the commanding officer, who understood the workings of his ship better than anyone else". Can you imagine any ship's captain who would put up with crew members coming to him to solve their "slightest problem"? Give us all a break, Mr. Robinson.
   
   Like all too many authors these days (Barry Eisler being a particularly egregious example), Robinson tries to fake a knowledge of computers and information technology. Robinson - not for the first time - has Rashood doing a search with Google. He has Rashood "waiting patiently" while a search is carried out. In another instance, he has Google taking nine seconds to return results. Google, of course, is famed for the speed of its searches. A Google search for "Patrick Robinson" returned 245,000 results in 0.27 seconds. Mr. Robinson either doesn't know how to use Google or believes his readers dont'. It appears to be the former since this super sophisticated know-it-all terrorist submits some truly silly search requests.
   
   To enhance the supposed importance of one of the characters, Robinson has him ferried from Washington to Scotland aboard Air Force One, which Robinson correctly says bears another designation when the President is not onboard. Simply unbelievable.
   
   He has one of his protagonists using a Sig Sauer "revolver". As far as I can determine, Sig has never produced a revolver. A 7.62mm rifle with a silencer is featured. While such a suppressor would reduce the noise of firing at the shooter's location, there would still be the crack produced as the supersonic bullet moves through the sound barrier, thus making the use of a silencer worthless in the situation Robinson describes.
   
   All in all, "To The Death" is readable, but you'd probably have to be desperate to read it. I was simply foolish in doing so. I wanted to see if it could get worse than it was - and it did. A great disappointment from Patrick Robinson, whose earlier work I enjoyed.
   
   Jerry



2. 
   
   I have been a big fan of Patrick Robinson's series with Arnold Morgan. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm jaded or maybe the novelty has worn off.
   
   Maybe the series is just grinding and winding down. For some reason, I grew bored with this tale, which tracks arch villain Ravi Rashood - a/k/a The Towel head - in his obsessive quest to assassinate Adm. Arnold Morgan.
   
   By the end, you might be begging Rashood to put you out of YOUR misery.



3. I have enjoyed all of Patrick Robinson's books with Admiral Morgan but I thought this was one of the best reads. The plot was OK (I would agree with some of the other reviewers that the story had some weaknesses) but I found I could not wait until I could get back to reading the book.



4. This was a story that had a lot of potential, but turned out to be shallowly written. The bomb plot at Logan was a great start, but the development of the story went downhill from there.
   I was totally disappointed with the performance of the Mossad in Damascus. They missed the obvious by not paying attention to details. They weren't sure that Ravi Rashood was with his wife when they returned to the house, but they just assumed that it was him. Huh? I thought that they were a great intelligence agency. It was obvious from the story that it wasn't him. Also, the team leader stated that they would watch for the return of Ravi and Shakira and trigger the bomb when they entered the house, but then another stated that they wouldn't be able to get away afterwards, So the leader said that was why they were going to put the bomb on a timer. How did he get there?
   The author had a propensity for stating the obvious in many cases. And the characters, who were supposed to be "bigger than life" missed a lot of obvious clues. I was expecting Admiral Morgan to get killed in the story and it would have only been just based on the performance of the characters who were supposed to protect him. It was hard to connect to any of the characters in the story.
   After reading Vince Flynn and Lee Child, this story was a real disappointment. It was my first Patrick Robinson book and it will be my last. I'm glad that I got this book from the library. I would have been really upset if I'd paid money to read it.
   
   Craig



5. I read someone using the word "climax" in describing this book. I too would have been disappointed if that were my expectation.
   
   I bought this one because I enjoyed all the others and I happilly gobbled up every word.
   
   For the next one, Mr. Robinson, I want more submarine time. OK? Ships, too. Oh, and another femme fatal....

5 comments about Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.

1. Gas is $3.80. OPEC continues to bleed us. The Saudi's continue to export radical Islam financed by our oil dollars. Environmentalist continue to obstruct. To counter these factors Zubrin lays out a solid, cogent plan utilizing METHANOL not corn based ETHANOL. This plan uses existing technology not pie in the sky maybe here in 10 years hopes and dreams.



2. Great historical information on the middle east. Lines out the strategy to become energy independent in short order. Fabulous book.



3. Brilliant ideas for solving the recurring energy crises once and for all! Must-read for every American, especially politicians. Thank you Mr. Zubrin!



4. I was recently sent a preview copy of an upcoming publication, "Energy Victory," written by Robert Zubrin. The book attempts to layout a plan for America to break free of its oil addiction ­ a path that, he claims, current US Policy will never achieve. Although the book's main focus is on energy solutions, Zubrin does spend a significant amount on time on the genealogy of terror, America's tumultuous relationship with OPEC and debunking myths.
   
   Having not paid much attention to the history of terrorism (although I would argue that Americans, should spend more time learning about this), I found this section interesting. It brings to light a little more urgency for Americans to find solutions to replace oil that is purchased from the volatile Middle East - an area that is obviously not friendly to Americans.
   
   So what are the solutions, sensei? Renewable fuels such as ethanol and methanol. Before you start arguing that ethanol is not a solution because it has less energy, this is not true. Ethanol has a positive net energy. Updated in 2004, the most definitive analysis (by USDA) concludes that for every 100 BTUs used to grow corn and process it into ethanol, 167 BTUs of ethanol is produced. In other words, ethanol generates 67 percent more energy than it takes to produce. Zubrin explains that the misinformation has been fueled by ethanol detractor David Pimentel, in conjunction with Tad Patzek, whose research is so out of date and scientifically unsound that his own university, Cornell University, discredits the research.
   
   As ethanol is gaining traction, with the support of the Big Three, especially GM in bringing Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) to market, and more than 50 percent of American's fuel being blended with some percentage of ethanol, and more than 1300 E85 stations across the U.S., Zubrin says that many people are not happy with the developments. "Not everyone is happy with this development, of course, and the reasons are plain to see. The 4.9 billion gallons of US ethanol produced in 2006 took ten billion dollars away from the oil cartel. Thus it is hardly surprising to find the ethanol program regularly denounced by journalistic hired guns and other business analysts associated with oil industry funded think tanks, as well as by ideological libertarians whose sensibilities it offends." Ha, take that!
   
   Zubrin continues in his book to layout long­term plan for reducing America's energy dependence on foreign oil using an "alcohol economy," and spends some time ruminating about how the world can help defeat global warming while simultaneously reducing fossil fuel use. Interestingly enough, he supports raising all countries' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which may come at the short-term expense of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but over time, as fossil fuels are phased out, greenhouse gas emissions would decrease.
   
   This is not a lighthearted reading for those who want the top line view of an issue. This is a very technical book (scientific terms, chemical equations, etc.) that delves fairly deep into each topic he covers but there are moments of humor that keep the book moving. Ultimately, I liken Energy Victory to the famous 1776 book, Common Sense, by Thomas Paine. Paine authored the first book on freedom from British rule, and Zubrin has authored the book on freedom from foreign oil.
   
   For more reviews like this go to [...]



5. A serious book calls for a serious review and I will try to provide that. Zubrin covers a lot of ground so I will take this by chapter. First, the author has a PhD in nuclear engineering so he knows the science. The first two chapters provide the rationale for his campaign to replace petroleum with methanol, and to a lesser degree ethanol. The book was written a year ago and the effects of food crop diversion to ethanol have now emphasized the negatives of ethanol. Methanol is made from non-food, non-sugar, sources and is a better compound for fuel. The first five chapters provide his argument that Saudi Arabia is an enemy funding terrorism and the Wahhabi heresy of Islam. He makes good points but is a bit more excited than I would be. Another review makes the point that China will still be buying oil from the Saudis no matter what we do. Still, the price will fall as methanol, nuclear fission and fusion technology provide alternatives.
   
   Chapter 6 tells the story of flex-fuel technology and the remarkable life story of Roberta Nichols, a woman engineer who succeeded in adapting alcohol to motor fuel and doing it cheaply. She was a great pioneer and died too young to see her accomplishments recognized. Chapter 7 tells the story of several politically supported alternatives and explains why they are not practical. One section of this chapter tells the story of a professor whose poorly done research survives as a major argument against ethanol as a practical alternative to petroleum. There is a good deal of technology in this chapter but it is well explained.
   
   Chapter 8 discusses the potential for under-developed countries to benefit from a change to alcohol-based energy production. Methanol can be made from agricultural waste products and offers these societies a future that cannot occur if poor countries are beholden to the OPEC oil cartel. There is some economics and politics in this chapter but I agree with it all. Chapter 9 discusses the Brazilian experience, in which Brazil has freed itself from dependence on OPEC oil. An issue of Time magazine from this spring has a feature story that misrepresents the Brazilian experience so it would be good for those interested to read this as an antidote to the lies of what Zubrin calls the "Malthusians," those who do not want us to solve the problem. They prefer a smaller population, no matter how that goal is achieved. Al Gore is the most prominent member of this group.
   
   Chapter 10 is almost the best part of the book as he describes the true role of CO2 and global warming. He shows the present levels of CO2 are actually rather low when compared to previous epochs, such as the Holocene Maximum, a warm period when humans emerged from Africa and spread across the globe. He does warn that CO2 will become a problem as other societies move to an economic model similar to ours. As they prosper, their CO2 production will rise and that does constitute a risk for the planet. That risk will be reduced and eliminated by the suggestions made in the book.
   
   Chapter 11 goes on to discus other forms of energy, especially the promise of nuclear fusion which, once harnessed, will ensure the future of the human race for millions of years. This is his field and he knows it thoroughly.
   
   Chapter 12 is a well-done discussion of the role of the petroleum engine in the history of the 20th century, from the "Miracle of the Marne" in 1914, when a French division was rushed into battle in a thousand Parisian taxicabs, to the origins of World War II. Chapter 13 finishes up with a summary of the history of Islam and the plans of the Wahhabis to conquer the world and establish a new caliphate to replace the Ottoman Empire.
   
   This is a serious book with a lot of information, some of it rather technical for someone who never studied chemistry. His opinions on political issues are strong and, at times, a bit intemperate. The fusion program has been mishandled. The ethanol lobby has distorted the market, for example maintaining tariffs on Brazilian ethanol that would otherwise lower the price for American drivers.
   
   He is absolutely right on the big issues. We need to get off our addiction to middle eastern oil. He does not get into the production of oil in our own territory and I want to know more about that. I have ordered another book to do so. Bacterial engineering to produce oil and other carbon compounds, as Craig Venter and others plan to do, is not covered. This is a big field and there is a lot of misinformation. This book is a big help and should be read by anyone seeking information on alternatives. I'm not sure methanol is the only answer but it is a big piece of it and this is the place to learn about it.