Tag Archives: history

Big Plans, Big Questions

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The Kingdom – of Saudi Arabia, that is – illuminates MAGA ambitions.

BBC online had a valuable article yesterday* about retrenchment on some of the megaprojects previously announced by the Saudi government and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (MbS for ease).  Predictably, it has proven easier to commission breathtaking renderings, simulations and press releases than to execute incredible (literally, as it turns out) projects that challenge the limits of environment, resources, technology and economics.  Given that the USA’s current leadership so clearly aspires to emulate MbS and other autocrats down through history, this brought to mind their own Napoleonic building endeavors.

Mr. Trump likes to describe himself as a master developer, but considered on an international, or even a national scale, the projects his multiplicity of accounting entities have actualized are hardly ambitious.  Where others might develop an entire urban neighborhood (Hudson Yards, in New York for just one example of many) combining multiple uses, extensive civic infrastructure and multi-tiered approval processes open to public scrutiny, Trump branded properties seem to consist of single-tower condominiums (for the reliably lucrative luxury market), golf clubs (ditto) or hotels (ditto – and neither particularly large nor grand for today’s hospitality industry). Not to mention refurbishment and rebranding of existing properties or application of TRUMP identifiers to properties developed and/or managed by others.  Innovative solutions to thorny challenges; years of diligent project development and phased execution; navigating a complex mix of users, stakeholders, overseers and sophisticated lenders to meet the requirements of customers not predisposed to dispose of excess wealth?  Not so much.

All of which makes one wonder just how well thought out the current White House Ballroom project really is.  Aside from ballooning cost – $200 million at announcement, to $400 million supposedly raised at no taxpayer expense to now $1 billion discussed in a request for funding out of public pockets by his Republican congress – has his ever-changing design team really worked out the structural issues of spanning such a large space in a traditional architectural style and roof height clearly suited to short spans?  How about the issues of HVAC and acoustics for such a large space – with no evidence of supply pathways and registers, rooftop equipment/penthouse, cooling towers, boiler plant, exhaust and intake airways?  For that matter, is there adequate site space for parking, queuing, shipping and receiving to serve such a space, or trash and recycling for a top-quality food service operation of the magnitude described?  Site design, multi-discipline engineering and value engineering on a project such as this normally consumes months of work after selecting and assembling a large and well-coordinated team and nearly always requires adjustments to early visual design concepts.  Doing all that while earthwork and foundations are already being placed is a sure path to expensive over-design or even-more-expensive change orders during the procurement, construction and commissioning process. 

The projected 250 ft tall Arch de TRiUMPh is another very large question mark, regardless of what one thinks of its visual design or true promotional intent. 

Unlike a common hotel or condo building, such a behemoth will require bespoke geotech/structural engineering to support and stabilize its mass on the sedimentary soils likely present on such a riverine site.  The stated intent to have it designed and constructed by July of next year precludes proper attention to this and many other issues, leading one to anticipate significant changes, delays, overages or failure over time (‘Pisa’ comes to mind….).

All of which brings us to the ‘Trump Class Battleships’ announced with great fanfare earlier this year. 

Foregoing questions about the applicability of ‘Battleships’ to contemporary and future warfare (a really big forego according to commentators with insight into military matters) such a state-of-tomorrow’s-art weapon requires years of study and proof-of-concept testing, development of new technologies and systems and establishment of unique production facilities and supply chains.  Nothing in Mr. Trump’s behavior (or that of those serving his whims) suggests such an in-depth effort has been thought through. To the contrary, the public talk of how soon the first ship is to be built and commissioned suggests it has not. 

‘Waste fraud and abuse,’ the mantra of Mr. Trump’s now abandoned DOGE debacle, tends to be a self-actualizing cry – the louder one claims to be attacking that triumvirate of supposed sins, the more likely it is that one‘s own efforts will actually perpetrate them. The American public should thus be prepared to learn in future that these and other such grand projects are either cancelled, scaled back or revealed as boondoggles, their flaws predictably disowned by those who proposed and sold them. 

As Saudi megaprojects are going today, so shall this administration’s MAGAprojects go tomorrow.

P. S. – E Unum Pluribus is a speculative fiction exploring one way in which the parallel political overreach of our current leadership may bring an end to the U. S. A., and what might come in its wake.  With a thrilling plot driven by politics and economics (as well as gender, class, language and even the origins of faith) the novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, at no cost, by navigating to the website robinandrew.net and selecting E Unum Pluribus from the home page’s top menu, or via this link: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

*‘How Saudi Arabia’s spending spree reached the end of the line,’ Sebastian Usher, BBC Global affairs correspondent, BBC online, 2026-05-24.

The Beardless Warriors, by Richard Matheson

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Didn’t recognize the author by name when I saw this paperback on the ‘Free’ shelf, only later learned he was the author of ‘I Am Legend,’ ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ and ‘What Dreams May Come;’ all successful popular novels also turned into movies.  No, what drew me in was that Matheson had been among the many eighteen-year-old reinforcement troops sent to join U. S. infantry units as they moved into German territory in December of 1945 – which puts him in spitting distance and time of my father, who was also eighteen when he reported for duty, was trained, shipped over and served in combat until being seriously injured on April 11,1945, less than a month before the end of fighting in Europe.  Matheson took fifteen years to get this ‘memoir in the form of a novel’ (my characterization) written and published, so nearly as many years as those reinforcements were granted before being committed to the battlefield, and the time was well spent.  Despite my having previously read several other battlefield memoir/history/fictions, this one elevated by an order of magnitude my attempts to imagine what that experience must have felt like. 

From the first sentence, Matheson tells his story almost breathlessly, plunging the reader directly into the experiences of one Everett Hackermeyer, a motherless child and nearly fatherless too, with little to live for and few tools to do so.  We see the confusion and futility of war from his perspective and feel the importance of his developing relationship with a much older (all of thirty-eight years-old!) Sergeant, a no-nonsense nuts and bolts leader who has learned and accepted the hard truth that no matter how well he performs, many men will die under his command.  As is often prominent in memoirs of Vietnam, we see how senseless the orders from on high appear to those who must follow them – war, for an infantryman, is not geopolitical or strategic, it is only struggle. At times it seems the only thing that changes from day to day is the rolling succession of squad members, as one after another are injured or killed, replaced (though not in the same numbers at this late stage) and their replacements in turn are inducted and ground up by the coincidence and accident of chaotic violence.

The novel’s action covers only a couple of weeks, all centered on moving a few short miles to take seemingly one unimportant town, which could have made for monotony, but Matheson is a champ at finding new and creative words to describe similar battle scenes and the dull and dyspeptic interludes between them.  Hackermeyer’s evolving knowledge and emotions also give each skirmish the specificity to feel new. Approaching novel’s end the author gives us a skirmish only slightly more significant than the preceding ones, but with personal incidents that make it satisfyingly climactic, even as the reader understands that the hell these men have been living will go on and on until the day that awful war ends, even if they are lucky enough to live to see it.

It has been said that the experience of being in combat cannot be communicated to those who have not lived it, and I don’t doubt that that is true. The Bearded Warriors though, makes more progress in that direction than anything else I’ve encountered, helping me to understand (now that it is years too late) what my father must have experienced and how it probably transformed the bright-eyed young man he had been into the tightly controlled and deeply insulated veteran I knew as I was growing up.

Surviving battle is not the same thing as coming through unscathed.

This novel is a definite keeper and deserves to be read by anyone who claims that fighting for even the most just cause is a path to glory.

P. S. – As America’s leaders seek drama and ‘glory’ in wars of their own creation, the thrilling speculative fiction E Unum Pluribus explores one way in which their winner-take-all governance may bring about the end of the USA – and how very much we stand to lose if we allow that. The novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, for free, starting at https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

(Those who are wary of unfamiliar links can access it just by going to robinandrew.net and clicking on E Unum Pluribus in the menu at top of the home page.) 

We don’t need no stinking election!

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Where this administration – and our nation – may be headed.

Thomas B. Edsall has a column in today’s N Y Times titled ‘When you think of it, We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election’ – a direct quote from a recent Reuters interview of Mr. Trump.  The piece goes on to summarize all the ways in which Mr. Trump and his enablers in the Executive branch, Congress and the highest courts are working to either swing the upcoming elections their way or, if that is not successful, to justify invalidating the results so that they may hold onto power indefinitely. 

Scary stuff that, and very credible to anyone whose been following the news. Our aspiring monarch, it seems, will stop at nothing to protect his power and secure himself a place atop Mt. Rushmore. All the more reason for every patriot to vote this November for candidates of any party with the courage to stand up to demagoguery and reestablish the role of Congress in making law, policy and appropriations of the public’s funds.*

P. S. – E Unum Pluribus is a speculative fiction exploring one way such subversion might lead to the end of the U. S. A. as we know it, and what sort of a world might take its place.  With a thrilling plot driven by politics and economics as well as gender, class, language and even the origins of faith, the novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, at no cost, by navigating to the home page of this website and selecting E Unum Pluribus from the top menu, or via this link: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

*for one more small step each of us can take to resist polarization, see also: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/11/change-your-party-change-the-future/

The Last Debate, Jim Lehrer

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Lehrer, the late PBS anchorman, skewers his own profession in a tale of journalists run amok which, despite being over 30 years old, in many ways seems to reflect our current moment.

At opening, David Donald Meredith, a populist politician of little relevant qualifications or experience has just been polled as leading the Presidential election race on the strength of his racist, authoritarian, anti-elite, pro-religious and contra-constitutional rabble-rousing (sounds familiar…).  When several journalists are selected to question the two leading candidates during the one and only debate to which their respective campaign managers have agreed, they find themselves in an ethical dilemma: whether to act in a clinically objective manner and hope against all indications that the voters will recognize and select the one qualified candidate, or to use their position as moderators to skewer Meredith on a raft of unconfirmed accusations of bad and violent behavior and so ensure that a truly dangerous demagogue does not reach the White House.

Since the novel is told in the past tense, it is no spoiler to say the panel soon chooses the latter approach and so swings the election to Meredith’s oppponent. The remaining two thirds of the novel is spent recounting how they made that decision and the diligent effort it takes the narrator (an alt-universe tabloid-journalist version of Lehrer himself?), to document it for the narrative non-fiction book which The Last Debate pretends to be.  (Fwiw, with Meredith defeated, his opponent, the previously unimpressive Paul L. Green, turns out to be a pretty good Chief Executive, perhaps validating their risky choice and leaving only the credibility of the journalistic profession to die for what Lehrer clearly considers their sins.)

A few quibbles – since the outcome is disclosed so early, most of the book is occupied with details of the tabloid journalist’s work, unfortunately showing the reader just how tedious that can be.  Rather banal conversations are recounted line by line with neither enough individuality nor amusing detail to justify their length, especially since the plot structure has already taken much real drama out of them.  There are also troubling issues around names and pronouns.  Between the large cast of political characters and the questionable choice of having two women named Barbara interacting (and even sharing an apartment!), as well as a candidate whose last name invites confusion when used by itself (since Meredith is more familiar as a female first name) Lehrer is constantly identifying people by full first and last names to a degree that feels artificially formal and further impedes dramatic flow. 

A similar effect happens when the fictional first-person narrator must protecting the identity of a very famous informant, To avoid giving the clue of this persons sex/gender, Lehrer chooses to use “he/she,” “his/her”’ and similar clunky work-arounds which make the section feel more a bureaucratic document than the climax of a political thriller. (An excellent argument, BTW, for writers and speakers of the English language to adopt non-gendered pronouns as argued in the post ‘e is an Enabler’ which is available via this link:   https://robinandrew.net/2026/03/01/e-is-an-enabler/  or simply by going to robinandrew.net and scrolling down to the 03/01/26 post of that title.)

Overall, an imperfect but worthwhile read that today raises a very large question its author could not possibly have intended back when it was written and published: If Jim Lehrer could see the danger of a character like Meredith all the way back in 1995, how did so many of our fellow Americans end up falling for his doppelgänger in 2016 and 2024 and perhaps even thereafter…?

P. S. – ‘E Unum Pluribus’ is speculative fiction about a very different way in which America’s current political dramas may play out. With a thrilling plot driven by politics and economics as well as gender, class, language and even the origins of faith, the novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, at no cost, by navigating to the home page of this website and selecting E Unum Pluribus from the top menu, or via this link: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

‘Down and Out in Paris and London,’ George Orwell’s 1933 Social Realism

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Variously described as a novel and as a memoir presented as a novel, this brief volume certainly has the feel of hard-won experience.  With little preamble Orwell throws the reader into a squalid neighborhood of Paris circa 1930 where we experience the scramble for enough food to avoid starvation and a place to sleep – if one dare drift off while in intimate proximity to any number of strangers, swindlers, thieves, the deranged, the pious and the police. 

Visions of filth, sweat and stink dance in our heads as the narrator (who is in no way distinguished from what we know of the author himself) finds job, loses job, finds room, loses room, earns a few francs and spends all of them on barely enough bread, margarine, tea and tobacco to keep his body upright.  Along the way we are treated to character sketches of many sketchy characters, a few of whom have preserved hearts of something better than lead, another few of whom possess remarkably bright minds despite the grinding effects of their poverty and hopeless circumstances.

Despairing of his ‘opportunities’ in Paris, our guide is thrilled when an old acquaintance in London proffers a job as caretaker to an elderly invalid.  Loaned funds just sufficient for travel and a few days subsistence, he is soon in that great city, only to find the promised position has evaporated as the ‘tame imbecile’ and company have themselves left for the same continent he just abandoned. Now we follow our guide into the bowels of British social services and charities as he learns to navigate ‘the spike’ (a sort of municipal homeless shelter offering prison-like rules and conditions in exchange for horrible food and worse sleep abetted by a tracking system that keeps its customers constantly walking from town to town and so unavailable for any sort of work or betterment), church-run shelters (considered worse than the spike for their insistence on performative piety and the hypocrisy of their tenders), the Embankment (among the few places in London where one is allowed to sleep outdoors, but its benches, noise and Bobbies make sleep next to impossible) and commercial lodging houses (better accommodations, but prices out of reach for the truly destitute).

Given Orwell’s known Socialist leanings, it’s no surprise there’s a certain class consciousness to all this.  His conviction that nearly all the ‘idle’ poor would readily choose to work for their keep if there were jobs available seems a bit broad and naïve ( not to mention the number whose physical, intellectual or/and emotional disabilities and dis-aptitudes might make the unsuitable for hiring).  His modest proposal – group homes where the residents tend gardens which provide a portion of their food, thus requiring a lesser subsidy than the current system wherein they are virtually prohibited from working and earning because the feeble accommodations available will only accept the absolutely penniless – is probably even less likely of enactment today than it would have been in his time.

A painful read, reflecting what the least favored among us must endure simply to survive – but well worth revisiting as the current U. S. administration works to slice open our own social safety net and condemn millions of immigrants and citizens alike to conditions little better than what Orwell describes. (And sometimes worse, incarcerating non-citizens of no significant criminal history without legal process or recourse and even banishing some of them to whatever cutthroat minor state will take our tax money in exchange for receiving and disposing of them). 

P. S. – E Unum Pluribus is a speculative fiction shaped by the economic consequences of the USA’s present partisan divide.  It is currently being serialized online, for free, and you can read its first installment at: 

E Unum Pluribus

Stronger Together (a thought for this morning..).

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Ezra Klein‘s recent interview with Fareed Zakaria questioned what guiding principle progressives could possibly forward to compete with the divisive and belligerently-reactionary nationalism of the MAGA movement.

One simple answer is ‘Stronger Together.’ Ever since thirteen disparate Colonies chose to work together(and even sought French assistance) to win independence from the reigning world hegemon, right up through Allies defeat of the Axis in WWII and establishing the now-defunct post-war order, it has been unity with others which enabled us to succeed and thrive.

With a little luck and grace, DJT’s narcissistic recoil at any hint of cooperation will die with his political career and allow the US to begin rebuilding our credibility as a coalition member and even – in a few decades – as once again a leader.

E Unum Pluribus

How Style Reveals Character

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Heather Cox Richardson has a tasty piece this morning (see Letters From an American, on Substack) about the moment when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to U. S. Grant – Lee dressed in a brand new dress uniform, Grant in the worn and dirty private’s outfit he’d worn the day before, with scant insignia added to indicate his true rank. That instance of appearance as an indicator of the two men’s divergent characters, brought back to mind some thoughts I’d been working on not long ago, before they were (rightly) eclipsed by the chaos of our nation’s attack on Iran. Herewith:

Viewing the renderings of Mr. Trump’s replacement for the White House’s late East Wing, I’ve been surprised no one seems to be questioning the description of it as a “Ballroom.”

To these ears, the zeal and subterfuge with which The Donald is pursuing this particular bit of noncritical infrastructure suggests there is more at stake here than his enthusiasm for ballroom dancing and debutants (though the latter could be a factor…).

Administration PR pretends this cavern is vitally necessary for legitimate diplomatic events, but given Mr. Trump’s disdain for actual diplomats and his preference for small group strong-arming, that seems a stretch. More likely, the room’s programming will lean toward pseudo-events designed to flatter and reward loyal contributors to his continual fund-raising ventures (including, of course, the cost of this boondoggle itself) and to dangle the bait of future seating arrangements to extract still more contributions and concessions from others.

A means, in other words, for Mr. Trump and his chosen people to more-convincingly imitate the persons he obviously idolizes: the nation-owning monarchs and autocrats of the Middle East and elsewhere.

For that reason, I suggest we all just call this construction what it is – The Donald J. Trump Throne Room, at the Trump™ White House™.

On which note, does anyone really believe Mr. Trump will graciously depart what he is busily turning into the Presidential Palace – having finally gotten it redecorated to his taste – just because his current term expires? Having previously experienced the diminution of becoming an ‘ex-’ Chief Executive? Having in this term solidified his dominion over the rabble thanks to a compliant Supreme Court and supine Trumpublican Party? Having for his entire life scooted around every legal and moral constraint and gotten away with it all?

Note that Mr. Trump’s favorite head of state, Vladimir Putin, will have been in power for thirty years when his current term ends. The House of Saud has ruled its Kingdom for over ninety years (and a somewhat smaller realm for generations before that). China’s Xi Jinping is currently enjoying his third five-year term with no end in sight thanks to the 2018 elimination of the prior term limit on that office. Israel’s Netanyahu is over 18 years in control; Turkey’s Erdogan around 23 (Hungary’s Orban a mere 16). True, Napoleon Bonaparte lasted only 15, but Uncle Joe Stalin managed over 50…

On the turgid scale of those role models, a mere eight years in office would hardly rate inclusion. If, indeed, the style of Mr. Trump’s civic works is true indication of his character, we are in for a bumpy January 2029.

P. S. – E Unum Pluribus is a thrilling speculative fiction exploring one way in which a President’s attempt to overstay his welcome might affect our nation’s survival. It is currently being serialized online and you can read it, at no cost, starting at https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

The Winter Soldier, Daniel Mason

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A masterful work that rewards the stout-hearted reader.  Set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War, the narrative vividly evokes the cold, hunger, pain and desolation of a nearly-forgotten military aid station serving the Russian front.  Despite having trained in the academics of medicine, Lucius Krzelewski, son of Polish aristocrat industrialists relocated to Vienna after their nation was absorbed into the Empire, is totally unprepared to help the maimed, sick, starved and addled soldiers for whom he is suddenly responsible.  Only the patience and wisdom of the station’s one nurse, Sister Margarete, allows him to fake it till he can make it.  All the while, the front lines advance and retreat, supplies are unpredictable and violence can erupt at any moment. 

Thrown together under such circumstances, it seems ordained by the god of literature that Lucius and Margarete will become attracted to one another, though it is only after a tragic episode involving Horvath, a patient suffering extreme mental distress for which Lucius feels he is close to achieving a breakthrough, that they are drawn to act on their attraction. And, in true romantic fashion, are soon separated, leading Lucius to spend the next several years trying to reunite with Margarete among the chaos first of war, then its aftermath. 

As the novel’s end approaches, it seems Mason is steering Lucius toward a joyous reunion with his loved one but then, in literally the last three pages, he flips the table and crafts an ending which replaces conventional confection with a much superior concoction of wisdom, insight and generosity.

(Spoiler alert:  Lucius himself christens the patient Horvath a “winter soldier,” but later, as his own troubling memories and nightmares – what we today might label PTSD – plague him and isolate him from the comfortable society to which he has returned, it seems he could as well be the titular character.  By story’s end though, one wonders if Margarete is not the true ‘winter soldier,’ the one who has campaigned longest, hardest, most courageously and most selflessly to ameliorate the damage war can do.  In fact, one can even frame this as a feminist novel; all those boastful arrogant males waging war for to salve their egos while, nearly unnoticed, women care endlessly for children, husbands, fathers, rulers, nations.  When we learn Margarete has birthed a child after the war, we are reminded that through all the deadly deprivation of that wilderness aid station, she was also managing her own monthly cycle – discretely, without modern ‘products,’ complaint, days off or even allowing her discomfort to show.  ‘The weaker sex,’ indeed.)

Throughout, Mason demonstrates an exhaustive knowledge of the period, its medicine (he is a physician himself, but a modern one….), warfare in a far-away corner of northeastern Europe, intricacies of the era’s railway network and more.  At times verging near to distraction, this detail ultimately gives his narrative the authenticity and credentials to hold the reader’s attention while he builds our emotional connection to Lucius and Margarete.

Again, masterful.  This is not a book for every reader, but for those willing to weather its painful realties, ample rewards await.  I’m holding on tightly to my copy of Daniel Mason’s The Winter Soldier.

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new speculative fiction about a very different time and place and another government serving its own interests rather than those of its people.   The novel is currently being serialized digitally at no charge and you can be among the first to read it by navigating to this site’s home page and scrolling down to the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus’ or just select the item of that same name in the top menu.  Any way you get there, it’s totally free!

If you like what you read here at robinandrew.net, feel free to share any posts as widely as possible. And consider subscribing, it’s totally free!

The Fort Bragg Cartel, by Seth Harp

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Having recently read The Mission, Tim Weiner’s history of the 21st Century CIA, which naturally contains many references to our nation’s Special Forces, it felt appropriate to check out this more populist look at one aspect of those forces.

Based on his own reporting for Rolling Stone magazine and other outlets, Harp gives us an abundance of anecdote; the parade of murders, suicides and drug- and alcohol-fueled behaviors on or adjacent to the Fort is head-spinning.  He provides a substantial ‘Notes’ section as well, though, oddly, these notes are not called out in the text; one has to read them at the back of the book and then, if interested in a particular one, go to the page indicated and search for a key phrase to find the relevant text.  Then too, many of these notes are not attributions. Better than no back-up at all, but less than totally convincing and perilously like the growth pattern of social-media conspiracy theories; a self-referential circle of fingers all pointing to one another with no object at its center.  Regardless there is plenty of evidence here that things are not copasetic.

As its title suggests, the book contends that there has existed for many years some sort of organized smuggling operation centered on the Fort Bragg premises and that this operation is at least tolerated – if not actually headed – by unknown persons higher up in the chain of command than the various Special Forces operatives, support personnel and hangers-on who are directly involved in the book’s incidents.  The argument in favor of this contention is largely of the ‘it seems too likely to not be true’ variety.  At several dramatic points we hear about a thumb drive left behind by one of the murdered smugglers who claimed it documented crimes and criminals significant enough to act as his insurance policy – or to get him killed.  Supposedly still held in evidence by one of several law enforcement agencies which have themselves been repeatedly painted as shielding military miscreants out of ‘blue line’ solidarity with the ‘green line,’ the closest we get to a big reveal of the drive’s contents is when one source tells Harp it actually contains no data, though whether that is because the crucial data was erased by some double- or triple-agent in the ranks or because it never existed at all is left unresolved. In other words, a big nothing-burger.

Regardless whether or not the actual Cartel exists, it seems undeniable that armed forces by their profession accustom some of their members to use of force and violence.  That they groom some personnel, especially strength-proud young males, to believe themselves unbound by the moral and legal codes that constrain civilian life, and that these tendencies are strongest at the ‘tip of the spear,’ units like Rangers, Green Berets, Seals and Delta Force who are increasingly deployed to do the dirtiest ‘wet work’ of our national defense.  Over the decades those ranks have shifted from short term citizen-soldiers to longer-serving career professionals at the same time their assignments have moved farther from ‘regular’ infantry tactics to special operations – small scale infiltrations, espionage, resistance support, sabotage, assassinations and other covert acts sometimes difficult to distinguish from the tactics of the terrorists they now spend much of their time hunting – or from those of hard core criminality.  When soldiers are intensively selected and schooled for the attitudes required by that work, and that training is reinforced by months/years of ultra-high stress and pressure while surrounded by a culture that reveres and rewards self-reliance, cold-calculation and tolerance for brutality (while loosely dispensing powerful and addictive drugs to deal with the fallout), it should not surprise that some of those reflexes continue to direct behavior after their deployments are over or even after their careers have ended.

On the evidence in this book, military leadership cannot be trusted to thwart drug activity and the violence that accompanies it.  Nor can they be relied upon to care for those service persons affected by it, much less to protect service families and the rest of us from the dangers which a few operators – even some who served honorably and heroically – present.  As in so much lately, it is law enforcement agencies and the courts we must rely upon but unfortunately, if Harp’s reporting is accurate, the fraternal bond between military and the law sometimes precludes that, so we are left with a continuing tragedy of broken and deceased servicepersons, wives, families and communities. 

As if that were not enough, The Fort Bragg Cartel’s greatest revelation, to these eyes, is not about drug activities in the U. S. but in Afghanistan.  According to Harp’s reporting, prior to the U. S. invasion there the Taliban had, out of religious convictions, reduced poppy cultivation to near zero with corresponding impact on the flood of heroin and other drugs to users in ‘more developed’ nations.  By itself, a clearly desirable outcome.  Once the U. S. and its War on Terror allies took control though, cultivation began again due both to inattention (by U. S. leadership) and financial incentive (of those allied forces and perhaps also some of ‘our’ people).   Once the U. S. pulled out and the Taliban resumed control, the production of poppies and heroin was again shut down!  In Latin America as well, Harp reports, U. S. political objectives have sometimes led to cooperation and even support of narco-traffickers in exchange for their cooperation with U. S. political goals.  Not a pretty picture, and one further negative consequence of how the War on Terror has been prosecuted and profited off of.

Despite trending more toward the true crime genre than the academic history line, The Fort Bragg Cartel is a useful summary of events worth considering.  It raises worthwhile questions about our government’s role in the drug trade, and that makes it, at the end of the day, a Book Worth Keeping. 

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new speculative fiction about another time, another place and another government serving its own interests rather than those of its people.   A draft of the novel is currently being serialized here at robinandrew.net and you can be among the first to read it, beginning with the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus’ or by clicking on that same title in the home page’s Top Menu.

If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible – and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!

The Mission – The CIA in the 21st Century

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Read this book!

Version 1.0.0

Admirably demonstrating the value of professional journalism, The Mission is factual, detailed, incisive and – despite being a nearly 400-page history of a government agency – thrilling. With more than one hundred participants interviewed, many verifiable sources and its most critical opinions credited to persons who clearly have both the knowledge and the background to deserve being heard, this is an authoritative accounting of a very complex subject. 

Having previously written Legacy of Ashes to chronicle the first 53 years of ‘The Agency,’ as the CIA is colloquially known, Weiner begins the new millennium on a downbeat, depicting an Agency whose capabilities were sadly ignored and unmaintained once the Soviet Union collapsed.  Deprived of the purpose and challenges which had pushed it to excellence (and sometimes overreach…) ever since it sprung from the seeds of WWII espionage to meet the needs of the old War, the CIA in 2000 was not held in great respect either inside the government or among the public. So little respected, we learn, that the shiny new Bush2 administration refused to listen when Director George Tenant presented substantial indications that Al Qaeda had something big planned, soon, and pleaded for authority to eliminate him before it could happen. To his great frustration, and the even greater losses of others, that plea was ignored – in early 2001!

Like a speed bump beneath all the smoke, dust and debris of the 9/11 attacks, political leadership quickly passed over their own failure to comprehend, instantly deciding The Agency was a great tool for what they conceived as their own brainstorm – the War on Terror.  That effort, which had already been one of the Agency’s areas of focus for decades, would become the public reason for much of its activity over the next 25 years. 

Using sourced quotations for section titles such as “We were all making it up as we went along,” “The U.S. didn’t want peace.  We wanted the war on terror,” and “We have to say Iraq has WMD,” Weiner quickly arrives at one of this central themes: a continual conflict between The Agency’s focus on providing the most useful and reliable information it can glean out of hostile environments versus politicians’ desire for sound bites to serve their pre-determined policies (at best) and (not infrequently) their emotional needs.  Unsurprisingly, CIA staffers from that era are harshly critical of the Bush2 administration and Weiner is cogent in describing how intelligence was ignored or actively misused in order to justify a doomed Iraq invasion to which the President and his team appear to have been fully committed from at least November 2001, if not earlier.

Even as The Agency is bent to serve debatable ends, Weiner gives us many tales of dedicated agents serving honorably; one standout being that of Tom Sylvester, who led a ten-person team into northern Iraq to prepare the ground for the Bush/Cheney invasion. An Arabic-speaking ex-Naval special forces operator, he took great personal risks to forge links with Kurdish forces, Sufi mystics and others, produced intelligence direct from Saddam’s highest ranks and closest advisors to guide invasion planning.  Sylvester would go on to lead the Agency’s clandestine services two decades later, under very different challenges.

Another eye-opening episode is related in Chapter Ten, ‘A Beautiful Operation.’  Having heard over many years that Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan was known to have shopped nuclear weapons secrets around the world, I’d always been curious how he got away with it. Answer: he didn’t; at least not for long.  Weiner describes how, learning from a 1920’s sting played by the Soviet ‘Cheka’ spy agency against Russians who had fled the USSR, the CIA created their own front companies to do fake business with Khan, eventually penetrating his facilities and dealings sufficiently to have him arrested, tried and convicted. Moreover, where a quick drone strike could have eliminated Khan sooner but allowed his proliferation efforts to continue, their smart and patient approach allowed them to also roll up associates and customers, completely destroying his operation and drastically diminishing the danger of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of people like Muamar Gaddafi, and Osama Bin Laden.  A service to humanity that required the Agency’s characteristic willingness to use dishonest means in order to further admirable ends which, Weiner notes, is a fundamental and unavoidable characteristic of all espionage.  

The successful pursuit and eventual killing of Bin Laden is treated in detail of course, as are the waterboarding scandal and other episodes not so laudable.  As we approach 2016 though, the tone of this history changes considerably, from one of challenges and ambitions to one of dread and despair.  In both his narration and in the quotes he includes from various agency sources, Weiner makes clear just how little Mr. Trump understands or values the proper purposes of The Agency, and how far he and his allies have by now penetrated our nation’s intelligence agencies (and the FBI, as well).  Acting more like double agents than principled overseers, they are now focusing those resources to protect not the nation but their own political and financial interests.  With extensive attrition of experienced and qualified personnel and heavy thumbs laid on those who remain, every page increases the premonition that we are in for some oncoming catastrophe on the scale of 9/11 – or even greater.

The CIA has never been entirely a hero, nor an utter villain, but an institution of fallible human beings who are willing to serve as tool for those who make policy and direct its execution – the President, the Cabinet and, ultimately, the votes who put those officials in office.  Its many characters have included some cads but are mostly honorable patriots, willing to compromise their own safety, morality and maybe even a part of their souls in service of a greater public good – protecting us all from the worst of the world.

At times a tale of ignorance and human weaknesses, at others a triumph of courage and will, The Mission is important information for every American.  Please read it and share it with others!  (If you can’t buy the book, check a copy out from your local library; if you can’t read it all, just start at Chapter Twenty-One, which carries the catchy title ‘Face-eating baboons.’)  Democracy depends on informed voters!

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel with its own take on where the pursuit of power for power’s sake may be leading our nation, and how even tragic events can spawn new possibilities for the future. It is currently being serialized digitally at no charge and you can be among the first to read its opening pages via this link:

E Unum Pluribus

If you prefer not to open links from unknown sources, just navigate to this site’s home page and scroll down to the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus’ or select the item of that same name in the top menu.  Any way you get there, it’s totally free!