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Summary: The Birth of Dick Cheney's Whack-A-Mole Doctrine
Comment: In the early days of the United States, James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine which told Europe to keep its hands off nations in the Americas. In the early days of the 21st century, according to author Ron Suskind, we have the Whack-A-Mole Doctrine by Dick Cheney.
If you have ever been to a carnival sideshow or to an old-time arcade, chances are you have seen Whack-A-Mole. Rodents pop up through holes and you get points if you bash them on the head fast enough with a mallet. While those rodents are literal moles, Mr. Cheney apparently sees almost everyone as a terrorist mole who deserves to be whacked until proven to be innocent. It's a strange policy for a nation that's supposed to be governed by laws, not men.
Why is Mr. Cheney relevant? Well, it seems as if terrorism is one of those black areas where you want deniability for the president. So Mr. Cheney runs things. Mr. Bush apparently is happy to be kept in ignorance so he can say whatever he wants in public about how we are winning the War on Terror, even when he knows differently.
It's difficult to write history accurately until many decades have passed. But the live-witness accounts that are captured while the blood is hot ultimately form most of the case for the eventual conclusions.
This book will live or fall on two premises that Mr. Suskind develops from disaffected members of the Bush II administration and those who oppose that group:
1. The invasion of Iraq wasn't about stopping terror directly. It was a desire to send a message to any dictators that don't cooperate with the U.S. that we'll go in and kick them out. It's a bully's message that apparently has been heeded by many eager despots who now arrest and torture innocent and not-so-innocent suspects at our request.
2. Any law can be ignored if any member of the administration believes there's a one percent chance that a terrorist attack will occur. In other words, hit first . . . and ask questions later. That might be a good idea if we knew who to hit . . . but we seem to be more paranoid than prescient.
In the background, you'll find out a lot about how the War on Terror is actually being conducted. It's clear from the sources here that the CIA thinks that Bush II has set the conduct of intelligence back to Stone Age levels. The purpose of the CIA is to provide support for whatever Mr. Cheney wants to do . . . and not to develop an effective program for stopping terrorism.
As I read this book, I was reminded of Michael Moore's description in Stupid White Men of how President Bush conducted the 2000 election, observing and wishing to know no limits in what he would do to win. It sounds like that "King of the Mountain" has since been carried over to foreign policy and terrorism.
Perhaps the most chilling views in the book are that Osama bin-Laden and his fellow terrorists count on Bush-Cheney being in office to gain funds and publicity to further al-Qaeda while running little risk of actually being deterred. As a result, attacks on the U.S. are probably being avoided to make Bush-Cheney look good while sapping U.S. influence with freely elected governments.
Whether you agree with this book or not, you owe it to yourself and your family to read what some insiders are saying about what's happened with foreign policy and the War on Terror since 2000.
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Summary: Useful study of the 'war on terror'
Comment: Ron Suskind is an experienced American writer who used to be the Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs reporter. He has written a very informative account of the US state's `war on terror'.
He describes "the Cheney Doctrine - where a one percent chance of catastrophe must be treated `as a certainty', where firm evidence, of either intent or capability, is too high a threshold; where the doctrine is, in essence, prevention based on suspicion." He writes, "fear and faith fused in a fact-starved environment."
Richard Clarke, Bush's counter-terrorism chief, described how Bush ignored the Al Qa'ida threat before 9/11, even though Al Qa'ida had killed more Americans than any other adversary in the eight Clinton years. After 9/11, the US aim should have been to decapitate Al Qa'ida in its Afghan refuge, then withdraw. Yet when US forces cornered Osama bin Laden and his 800 closest followers in the Tora Bora caves, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld rejected the CIA's urgent advice to surround Tora Bora. Instead, they let all 800 escape to Pakistan. Why? Incompetence? Or because if they'd got bin Laden, the overt rationale for their worldwide oil wars would have gone?
Suskind shows that the US government knew in early 2005 that Mohammed Siddique Khan, a British citizen, was planning violence in the USA. The FBI warned, "this is a very dangerous character. We and the Brits should be all over this guy." The US government put him on their `no-fly' list. US officials told British officials all they knew about Khan's plans and why they had banned him from flying to the USA. When he arrived at Heathrow in February 2005 to fly to the USA, he was told that he was not allowed to fly, which of course warned him that he was under suspicion.
But what happened next? Did MI5 act on the FBI warning? No, they did nothing. Khan's name and telephone number had also emerged in the investigation into an earlier plot to bomb London, but MI5 failed to follow up this lead as well. They ignored the FBI's warning and failed to put Khan under surveillance. Now aware that he was under suspicion, he kept a very low profile until on 7/7 he led three other murderers into killing 52 Londoners. After the bombings, the Blair government at once lied that the bombings `came out of the blue' and that `Everything that could have been done had been done'.
Suskind points out that, as a result of the US-British attack on Iraq, terrorist recruitment is rising across the world. "There was, finally, a connection between Iraq and the broader `war on terror'. It was a catalytic relationship, like gasoline on a fire." In sum, the US state's actions "give true comfort to our enemies, graced with more recruitment tools than they could have hoped for." Four days before the US election in October 2004, bin Laden made a broadcast which the CIA assessed as `clearly designed to assist the President's re-election'. What does this say about Bush's leadership?
The British state's actions also give comfort to our enemies, witness its failure to keep tabs on Mohammed Siddique Khan. And why does the British state let Saudi Arabia fund madrassas here to recruit yet more jihadist murderers? Suskind rightly says that we should fight the terrorists with justice and morality, but basic competence would be good too.
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Summary: A scary book
Comment: I was expecting an anti-Bush polemic, but instead I got this rational, essentially fair volume, which is much more scary. The world's superpower, it seems, is in the hands of screwballs. At the top, a President who doesn't read much, who is more interested in loyalty than facts and who goes with his gut. Underneath him is a bunch of guys, the neocons, who do his thinking for him, according to their agenda. The "one percent" of the title comes from the Prince of Darkness itself, Dick Cheney - if there is only a one percent chance that a country will attack America, that country must be attacked. Evidence? Don't be silly, that's old-fashioned and not for the world's superpower and regent of Heaven on earth. Suspicion (real or imagined) is sufficient. Some of the revelations are quite startling. There's an Australian expression that someone is unfit to manage a country dunnee (outside toilet). The USA has become one giant dunnee - read this book and find out how it happened, and why the USA is flushed, but not with success.
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Summary: The Birth of Dick Cheney's Whack-A-Mole Doctrine
Comment: In the early days of the United States, James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine which told Europe to keep its hands off nations in the Americas. In the early days of the 21st century, according to author Ron Suskind, we have the Whack-A-Mole Doctrine by Dick Cheney.
If you have ever been to a carnival sideshow or to an old-time arcade, chances are you have seen Whack-A-Mole. Rodents pop up through holes and you get points if you bash them on the head fast enough with a mallet. While those rodents are literal moles, Mr. Cheney apparently sees almost everyone as a terrorist mole who deserves to be whacked until proven to be innocent. It's a strange policy for a nation that's supposed to be governed by laws, not men.
Why is Mr. Cheney relevant? Well, it seems as if terrorism is one of those black areas where you want deniability for the president. So Mr. Cheney runs things. Mr. Bush apparently is happy to be kept in ignorance so he can say whatever he wants in public about how we are winning the War on Terror, even when he knows differently.
It's difficult to write history accurately until many decades have passed. But the live-witness accounts that are captured while the blood is hot ultimately form most of the case for the eventual conclusions.
This book will live or fall on two premises that Mr. Suskind develops from disaffected members of the Bush II administration and those who oppose that group:
1. The invasion of Iraq wasn't about stopping terror directly. It was a desire to send a message to any dictators that don't cooperate with the U.S. that we'll go in and kick them out. It's a bully's message that apparently has been heeded by many eager despots who now arrest and torture innocent and not-so-innocent suspects at our request.
2. Any law can be ignored if any member of the administration believes there's a one percent chance that a terrorist attack will occur. In other words, hit first . . . and ask questions later. That might be a good idea if we knew who to hit . . . but we seem to be more paranoid than prescient.
In the background, you'll find out a lot about how the War on Terror is actually being conducted. It's clear from the sources here that the CIA thinks that Bush II has set the conduct of intelligence back to Stone Age levels. The purpose of the CIA is to provide support for whatever Mr. Cheney wants to do . . . and not to develop an effective program for stopping terrorism.
As I read this book, I was reminded of Michael Moore's description in Stupid White Men of how President Bush conducted the 2000 election, observing and wishing to know no limits in what he would do to win. It sounds like that "King of the Mountain" has since been carried over to foreign policy and terrorism.
Perhaps the most chilling views in the book are that Osama bin-Laden and his fellow terrorists count on Bush-Cheney being in office to gain funds and publicity to further al-Qaeda while running little risk of actually being deterred. As a result, attacks on the U.S. are probably being avoided to make Bush-Cheney look good while sapping U.S. influence with freely elected governments.
Whether you agree with this book or not, you owe it to yourself and your family to read what some insiders are saying about what's happened with foreign policy and the War on Terror since 2000.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dense and fascinating, but a little scattered
Comment: What I mean by "scattered" is that the book could use a sharper focus. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind waded through mountains of documents and transcripts and notes from interviews and then published this as quickly as he could. He wanted to include all the important details he uncovered while they were topical, but he didn't really have the time to properly meld them into the narrative. The result is the book is a little less readable and engaging than it might have been.
Nonetheless, this is a fascinating account of how the Bush administration operates.
The "One Percent Doctrine" that forms the centerpiece and focal point is from Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's an example of how Cheney articulated it: "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney added, "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence... It's about our response." (p. 62)
Looked at carefully this doctrine is really just a rationale for the Bush administration to do what it wants to do. The key point is the "one percent." If "it's not about...a preponderance of evidence," how do we know that there's a one percent chance? How do we know that it's not one tenth of one percent or one thousandth of one percent or a googleplex of one percent? We don't. And that is exactly the point of the Cheney Doctrine. As Suskind puts it, "A key feature of the Cheney Doctrine was to quietly liberate action from such accepted standards of proof... Suspicion...became the threshold for action." (p. 163)
Looked at in terms of our invasion of Iraq, the utility of the Cheney Doctrine to the Bush administration becomes clear. Was there a one percent chance that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction? Psychologically, since WMD are so scary, the answer was yes. But as far as evidence goes, the answer was no. Suskind writes: "...Cheney's doctrine was an audacious challenge to international legalities. Where once a discernible act of aggression against America or its national interest was the threshold for a US military response, now even proof of a threat is too constraining a standard." (p. 214)
I just wish the Cheney Doctrine had been applied to such things as global warming or stem cell research. Is there a one percent chance that the US will fall woefully behind the rest of the world in developing disease prevention and cure because we will not fund stem cell research? Is there a one percent chance that global warming is caused by human activities? In terms of the invasion of Iraq, perhaps Cheney and Bush ought to have asked, is there a one percent chance that invading Iraq will increase jihadist recruitment and will turn world opinion so against the US that we will lose effectiveness in our ability to fight terrorism?
It could also be said that by the logic of the one percent doctrine we really ought to have invaded North Korea and Iran.
Although Ron Suskind's assault on the Bush administration is not frontal, make no mistake about it, this book is yet another indictment. Much of the barrage comes from the experience of professionals in the intelligence community, most particularly from the experience of George Tenet who was director of the CIA until Bush allowed him to resign in June of 2004. The main thrust of Suskind's intent is to show that the Cheney Doctrine allowed the Bush administration to accept "as a guiding principle...that suspicion was an adequate threshold for preventative action" and thereby justify the invasion of Iraq.
Along the way, Suskind shows how the Bush administration also justified torture of detainees, how it lied to the American people and the world about the "evidence" for WMD in Iraq, how it made a phony connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and how in general secrecy and mendacity became hallmarks of the Bush administration.
There is a lot of insider knowledge in this book that could only have been gotten from people in the know whom Suskind does not identify. (Too bad.) He remarks in an "Author's Note" toward the end of the book that he'd like to mention their names and offer public thanks, but--to a one--I think they'd rather I not." (p. 350) Clearly this is the strength of this book, the sort of horse's mouth type of veracity that comes only from actually talking to those "deep inside."
One point that I found particularly interesting is the evidence here that Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax mailings that killed several people shortly after 9/11. (See pages 70-72 and 251-252.) We have not been made aware of this apparently because the Bush administration considers such knowledge too scary for consumption by the general public.
I also appreciated Suskind's statement that the neocons in the White House, led by Wolfowitz and Feith, thought that Saddam Hussein "was an easy mark...a demonstration model to show the new resolve of the United States and its postmodern rules of international behavior" (p. 214)--that is, to show that preemptive strikes were now policy, and aggressive wars might be in the offing from here on out. Actually this is the main reason for invading Iraq, that is, to flex new muscle and show the world that we will actually use our military strength.
One final observation from Suskind: "Cheney's nickname inside CIA was 'Edgar.' As in Bergen. The President would, by implication, be in the Charlie McCarthy role [that is, in the role of the puppet]. This isn't fair, but it is at least half true." (p. 213)
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