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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 9:40 pm Post subject: Clancy on Not Being Predictable in Foreign Policy |
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I think this represents the views of those in the W. Bush Administration who do not wish to rule out torture in interrogations...
I came across it in Executive Orders[1996], where Clancy's "Jack Ryan," the president in this novel, is speaking to his SecState.
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| Playing by a given set of rules is all well and good, as long as everybody plays by the same rules, but playing by a known set of rules when the other guy doesn't just makes us an easy mark. On the other hand, if somebody else breaks the rules and then we break them, too, maybe in a different way, but break them even so, it gives him something to think about. You want to be predictable to your friends, yes, but what your enemy needs to predict is that messing with you gets him hurt. How hurt he gets, that part we make unpredictable. (890) |
I think this mentality has bubbled up in U.S. politics since at least as early as the 1980s drug war, and is not necessarily a new way of thinking now that we're dealing with terrorists and insurgents. For example, didn't NYPD move in this direction a while back? I think this was how Fujimori defeated Sendero Luminoso in Peru, too. So other govts are also thinking along similar lines.
In any case, it's a controversial way of thinking and certainly raises ethical and human rights issues. But I think this quote summarizes the point of view quite well, without villifying, mischaracterizing, or otherwise distorting it. |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:10 am Post subject: |
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Try Warrior Politics...Why Lesdership Demands A Pagan Ethos
by Robert D. Kaplan
I read it every few months or so. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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I'm reading Kaplan's latest book:
"Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground."
Overall, it's good but it would be better if he didn't sound like he was sucking up to the US military and making the Special Forces and NCOs sound like gods. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| ...it would be better if he didn't sound like he was sucking up to the US military and making the Special Forces and NCOs sound like gods. |
Clancy has the same problem. He makes even an everyday Army cook look heroic and totally focused on his profession every minute he's on duty. In a sense, his books are almost like an extended recruiting ad. I cross-trained with a SEALs team once. And the real-life SEALs that I saw had little to do with the Spec Ops forces I've read about in Clancy's novels.
Saw Jarhead a couple weeks ago with a friend who is also a former Marine. We had to admit that it was not far off base, even if it was depressingly negative. Everything in that film was dead on. But it didn't deal with everything, if you know what I mean. The only other films that've come close to this realism are Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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People have been arguing about this kind of thing for at least the last thousand years or so. One of the oddest attempts to bring morality into warfare was the Church's declaration of the Peace of God and the Truce of God that 'outlawed' war on alternate days of the week or something equally silly.
Machiavelli earned perpetual criticism and condemnation for arguing that the highest morality of a 'prince' is to act to preserve his state, which over-rides conventional morality. It's better to be feared than loved.
In the excerpt you provided, it looks to me as if Clancy hasn't worked it out in his own mind what he means. The beginning and end of the quote are in conflict. It starts out with bravado about being willing to break the rules, then says, well, you don't want to confuse your friends, so in the end we'll play by the rules but make the reaction unpredictable. But who has challenged the right of response?
I do agree that that kind of thinking, challenging the idea of international rules, is under attack by the neo-cons. They seem to want the US to become a rogue state, openly flaunting international rules. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| ...it looks to me as if Clancy hasn't worked it out in his own mind what he means. |
This is a serious flaw in Clancy's works. He's extremely self-opinionated, sometimes smugly so. But he's also very popular in the U.S. So, apparently, he doesn't have too many people looking over his shoulder, editing his work.
I have a couple more Clancy novels to go through, to be sure I've seen the ones worth seeing. Then I'll move on to John le Carre, and I've got high expectations for him.
Here are the Clancy works worth reading, in order, and why:
No. 1: Cardinal of the Kremlin: this captures the flavor of the Cold War and is brilliant on espionage.
No. 2: Hunt for Red October: this, too, captures the flavor of the Cold War, and goes before Cardinal sequencially, just not as thrilling, I think.
No. 3: Without Remorse: brilliant psychothriller. Loved it.
Everything else, pretty much boring or overly patriotic and preachy or both. Particularly the latter ones: Rainbow Six, Bear and the Dragon, and Red Rabbit, and those that follow, impossible to read because of the preaching and diatribes.
On the neocons: I'm not so sure that they want the U.S. to become a rogue state. Maybe they want America's enemies to think it's a rogue state.
It's like that early Bronson film where he's a cop going after a serial rapist and murderer. The rapist is a pretty brutal guy. Anyway, when Bronson catches him, naked in the street, if I recall, he taunts Bronson: go ahead and arrest me. They'll say I'm sick, and then I'll get out, and then I'll just have some more fun, or something like that. Bronson says "wrong" and blows him away right there, no Miranda, no nothing. And I think a lot of people in American theaters were probably very sympathetic with that fantasy... |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| ...it looks to me as if Clancy hasn't worked it out in his own mind what he means. |
This is a serious flaw in Clancy's works. He's extremely self-opinionated, sometimes smugly so. But he's also very popular in the U.S. So, apparently, he doesn't have too many people looking over his shoulder, editing his work.
I have a couple more Clancy novels to go through, to be sure I've seen the ones worth seeing. Then I'll move on to John le Carre, and I've got high expectations for him.
Here are the Clancy works worth reading, in order, and why:
No. 1: Cardinal of the Kremlin: this captures the flavor of the Cold War and is brilliant on espionage.
No. 2: Hunt for Red October: this, too, captures the flavor of the Cold War, and goes before Cardinal sequencially, just not as thrilling, I think.
No. 3: Without Remorse: brilliant psychothriller. Loved it.
Everything else, pretty much boring or overly patriotic and preachy or both. Particularly the latter ones: Rainbow Six, Bear and the Dragon, and Red Rabbit, and those that follow, impossible to read because of the preaching and diatribes.
On the neocons: I'm not so sure that they want the U.S. to become a rogue state. Maybe they want America's enemies to think it's a rogue state.
It's like that early Bronson film where he's a cop going after a serial rapist and murderer. The rapist is a pretty brutal guy. Anyway, when Bronson catches him, naked in the street, if I recall, he taunts Bronson: go ahead and arrest me. They'll say I'm sick, and then I'll get out, and then I'll just have some more fun, or something like that. Bronson says "wrong" and blows him away right there, no Miranda, no nothing. And I think a lot of people in American theaters were probably very sympathetic with that fantasy... |
although it has been years since I read it, clear and present danger wasn't so bad, nor was Patriot Games.
Bear and the Dragon was so awful I stopped reading it after 50 pages.
And the bronson movie is called Death Wish |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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And the bronson movie is called Death Wish
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In the Death Wish films, Bronson played an architect, not a cop.
I think this might be the film that Gopher was referring to.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085121/ |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Leslie Cheswyck wrote: |
Try Warrior Politics...Why Lesdership Demands A Pagan Ethos
by Robert D. Kaplan
I read it every few months or so. |
Luciferian deception, spooks, inspirational literature, and global skull-duggery?
Why not try Aleister Crowley's "BOOK OF LIES".
http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib333.html |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
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And the bronson movie is called Death Wish
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In the Death Wish films, Bronson played an architect, not a cop.
I think this might be the film that Gopher was referring to.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085121/ |
That's the one. Thanks for the ref. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Leslie Cheswyck wrote:
Try Warrior Politics...Why Lesdership Demands A Pagan Ethos
by Robert D. Kaplan
I read it every few months or so.
Luciferian deception, spooks, inspirational literature, and global skull-duggery?
Why not try Aleister Crowley's "BOOK OF LIES".
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IGTG, how can you compare Crowley to Robert Kaplan? Crowley was a pretentious middle-brow hack who penned potboiler travelogues promoting his own sensationalistic pop philosophy aimed at gullible pseudointellectuals. And Kaplan is...uh, well... never mind.
(Sorry to any Kaplan fans out there, but his essays in The Atlantic always seemed to have a real "stoned undergraduate" quality about them. "Aww dude, what if democracy is just a passing phase? Our teachers were WRONG, man!!") |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| yeah, today I finished the book I mentioned above. His chapter on Iraq was the best because he didn't hype the soldiers as much as elsewhere and I thought his analysis wasn't so bad. Overall, 3 out of 5. The guy is intelligent, but he's a snob. Irony is he views his peers (ie journalists and upper middle class in general) to be that way. It's like HELLO, look in the mirror man. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: |
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| I just finished Kaplan's "Eastward to Tartary". The section on Romania was useful. I feel like I learned something. Maybe a bit about Bulgaria. After that, it was useless in my opinion. Very disappointing. |
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