So here are the books I bought at the Strand. there’s a rationale for many of the the choices (three of the books don’t belong to the set), and the first correct guess wins something (to be determined).Carew, Jihad!
Ewans, Afghanistan, A Short history of Its People and Politics
Fraser, Flashman
Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East
Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist
Hodes and Sedra, The Search for Security in Post-Taliban Afghanistan
McIntyre, The Man Who Would Be King
Meyer, The Dust of Empire
Rashid, Taliban (yes, I appear to have won the used-book lotto on this one…)
Renault, Fire From Heaven
Rushdie, The Best American Short Stories 2008
West, No True Glory
Is the common thread “flagitiousness?”:https://depravityscale.org/depscale/ ‘Cause, you know, that seems like a word Flashman would have cottoned to. As a Winds Marshal, perhaps I ought to recuse myself from the competition. 🙂
Um, books made into movies starring Sean Connery? (Eleven to go…)
Books with authors whose last names start with the letters G through W?
The very mention of the Strand elevates my spirit to rapture!
Hmm… Three that differ: Renault, Rushdie, and Fraser are fiction. Four that differ: Renault, Rushdie, Gerber, and West aren’t about Central Asia. I suppose they could also be broken down by war and empire.
I am guessing BG has gotten deployment orders.
BZZZT!!
Dang, dude, was it Evelyn Wood who taught you how to read so quickly?
I do read pretty fast as “others have noted”:http://patterico.net/2007/06/03/winterreisethe-sorrows-of-young-werther-at-long-beach-opera-today-plus-new-michael-connelly-book-out/ it’s a kind of a mixed blessing, in that I can get a lot of info in, but it can be a kind of a spendy problem…
A.L.
I am a little worried the Fraser one might belong on that list, and I don’t think that is a good thing for BG.
What, you don’t like Flashman?
A.L.
Being a fast reader can be a problem. I usually end of rereading my favorite books four or five or ten times. I sometimes get so I think I can tell what happens on a page of one of my favorite books if some reads me the first line.
AL: It may be less a matter of liking Flashman (or not), and more a concern that a Flashman-type understanding of the military might be demoralizing, esp. as they blend with “this sort of piece”:http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/10/afghanistan-british-taliban on Afghanistan.
I liked Flashman, myself. I think the cynicism towards the officers’ corps, so long as it is not carried too far, is reasonably healthy. Flashman does carry it too far, but only for the purpose of humor, which a wise reader can distinguish.
Besides, to be frank, I have grave doubts about Afghanistan myself. I’m not at all sure about it. Iraq was always a good proposition — an educated class; an infrastructure that (while needing repair) connected it to the world; natural resources both in oil and in the fertile river valleys. COIN tactics can bring a lot to this area, because they focus on building wealth and connections to the wider world.
Afghanistan is a different picture. I frankly don’t expect the West to win in Afghanistan; I hope the loss will be confined to embarrassment, and will not lend itself to a wider destabilization.
I don’t know that I feel bad about that potential. An Australian gentlemen I knew in China used to say that Afghanistan was a place where, if you hated everything that was going on in the rest of the world, you could go there and get away from it. It’s probably good that places like that exist. We may need to trap there sometimes, to keep groups like AQ from having safe havens; and we need to run intel operations in them consistently.
If they are otherwise a little wild, that may be for the better.
Take that with your readings, for what it’s worth.
Grim – I see Fraser as someone who paints a pretty damn accurate picture of Afghanistan and its people. And, sadly, I think that his picture of the military is exaggerated – but that at core, surprise, incompetence and narrow vision are as much a part of the military as they are of any other huge organization.
I’m also wrestling with what we’re trying to do there. I think I’ll do a piece trying to work through some of my concerns and confusion.
A.L.
#11 – I just don’t think Flashman is the role model a father should want for his son.
Maybe I need to read more of him.
OMG, no! I do not see him as any kind of a role model, except as a bad example…but I do think that Fraser’s insights into human nature and the ways organizations work is damn valuable.
A.L.
andrewdb, Flashman is a dreadful creep, but Fraser isn’t. Instead of any of the Flashman books, for you I would recommend Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II (link).
I think George MacDonald Fraser’s copious up close and personal experience of the war against the Japanese in Burma stood him in good stead in all his writing.
I find it understandable that Fraser had a very harsh attitude to bad officers, which comes through in the Flashman books. In Burma, Fraser fought under Bill Slim, one of the greatest generals of all time; but the first lot of British (and allied) generals that were knocked over in the Far East were among the worst leaders of all time, including Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival (British) and Major-General Gordon Bennett (Australia) at Singapore. The reversal of Great Britain’s fortunes had a lot to do with replacing people who should never have been in charge with the men who should have been in charge all along. For an intelligent man in Fraser’s position, it would be hard not to draw the conclusion that officers, especially senior officers, bear a vast, personal and moral responsibility for the fate of their troops.
I think that’s right too. (Which is the reason I have sympathy for Lieutenant-Colonel West: regardless of what you think of what he did – and I’m not saying that officers can be allowed to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice with impunity – he was trying to protect his men, and taking responsibility for results, not just for having managed his men in a proficient and orderly fashion.)
I don’t think that Elphinstone deserves a better portrait than Fraser gives him. His place among the most infamous military bunglers is secure for good reason. The worst of his numerous faults was his consistently crediting the false assurances and empty promises of his Muslim enemies. Given the culture and way or war of his enemies, there was no chance that these assurances could have been anything but ploys to take advantage of a sucker.
And it’s the same today of course, and the same kinds of people still get away with it. They’re con artists with the most implacably hostile intentions possible, and to our gullibility against them there is apparently no end.
PS: That is not intended as a partisan point. Ronald Reagan’s justly infamous “arms for hostages” deal with Iran is a prize example of what I’m talking about.
See also: “Fallujah Brigade”.
David Blue #17 – “it would be hard not to draw the conclusion that officers, especially senior officers, bear a vast, personal and moral responsibility for the fate of their troops.
I think that’s right too.”
Does that include the Commander-in-Chief? And if so, has that responsibility always been responsibly exercised?
Sometimes, commanders have to spend their troops’ lives for some worthwhile objective. That is known and accepted by all in the military, and by many outside it. What is accepted by _nobody_ is *wasting* them.
#20 from Fletcher Christian”
bq. _”Does that include the Commander-in-Chief? And if so, has that responsibility always been responsibly exercised?”_
Yes, commander-in-chiefs too, and the responsibility has not always been responsibly exercised.
#20 from Fletcher Christian”
bq. _”Sometimes, commanders have to spend their troops’ lives for some worthwhile objective. That is known and accepted by all in the military, and by many outside it. What is accepted by nobody is wasting them.”_
Nope. That’s setting the standard too high. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you do your best but blow it, and sometimes you roll the dice and the outcome is bad. War is chancy, and the hostiles get a vote. It takes more than a bunch of casualties for no ultimate gain to put you in the class of Elphy BeyÂ’.
Alright, Mr. Blue. Yes, I do realise that sometimes the gamble that is war is lost, and that in such a case the loss might be thought to be a waste, and that it is not fair to expect perfection in a commander. As you say, the enemy gets a vote.
Perhaps I ought to have said something like “spend them for a gain not worth the price”. Spending anything in that manner is a waste, and not excusable when the price is other people’s lives. If you choose to waste your own life – well, that’s your affair.