This Week In Books: #16
Jan. 30th, 2007 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanIt's Monday, but better late than never, non?
1) The Assassins' Gate - George Packer
This book is subtitled "America In Iraq." A better subtitle would have been "George Packer Is Part Of The Problem." Ostensibly a volume about the Iraq war, it is in fact eerily similar to America's conduct in the war: unfocused, with no clear aim or objective, lacking any historical sense or understanding of current events and regional culture, and no ultimate idea of what it wants to prove or where it would like to end up. About the clearest point Packer makes is that the war itself is justified and that those opposed to it are weak and self-centered. He fails, however, to draw the inevitable conclusion from his stance: namely, that if a war to unseat Saddam is inherently justifiable because he was a despot, then America is duty-bound to prosecute such wars against all nations ruled by despots. Culpability is also strangely absent from his text. One would never know, reading The Assassins' Gate, that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld had anything to do with the war at all. Neither does George Packer deign to discuss the obscene levels of fiscal corruption and nepotism surrounding the debacle. He also suggests that the war has failed because--get ready for this--Iraqis are, and I am quoting, incapable of dealing with freedom. He recounts a coversation in which he suggested that an Iraqi stage a play about the occupation. "[The Iraqi] brushed the notion aside. 'We can't find a sadder story than the street to put on as a play,' he said. 'The play is out on the street. All Baghdad is a theater. We are the audience. We don't need to do a play.'" Packer counters: In the end I was unable to persuade [him]...I sensed that my idea made him uneasy for deeper reasons. It would demand an act of imaginative courage that was beyond his power." Bitch, are you for real? If Packer's mindset is at all indicative of that of this country's leadership, I cannot think of a better example to illustrate in a nutshell why this war is failing so miserably.
2) Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
This book is an interesting read which unfortunately suffers from several flaws, not the least of which is a salient point raised by the authors themselves: that "experts" often manipulate information in underhanded, leading ways. Take for instance the book's most controversial argument--that the lower crime rate in America is due to the legalizing of abortion. The authors contend that unwanted children are at a higher risk for neglect or abuse and that these factors predispose them to lives of crime. There may be something to this, but the evidence the authors provide (the high crime rates in Communist Romania) as their argument's lynchpin is misleading at best. Yes, abortion and birth control were illegal in said country, and yes, crime did rise precipitously after Ceausecu's regime took power, but the authors ignore one vital point: unless they can prove that the crime was solely or even mostly due to the fact that abortion was illegal, and not in any way to the fact that, oh, I don't know...Romania was an impoverished third world hellhole where everyone struggled to survive, their argument doesn't hold water. Similar dissentions can be made for all of the authors' sweeping pronouncements, from their discussion of cheating in sumo to gun control laws to drug crime. So read this book for its interesting subject matter, but take the authors' arguments with a large grain of salt.
That will be all.
1) The Assassins' Gate - George Packer
This book is subtitled "America In Iraq." A better subtitle would have been "George Packer Is Part Of The Problem." Ostensibly a volume about the Iraq war, it is in fact eerily similar to America's conduct in the war: unfocused, with no clear aim or objective, lacking any historical sense or understanding of current events and regional culture, and no ultimate idea of what it wants to prove or where it would like to end up. About the clearest point Packer makes is that the war itself is justified and that those opposed to it are weak and self-centered. He fails, however, to draw the inevitable conclusion from his stance: namely, that if a war to unseat Saddam is inherently justifiable because he was a despot, then America is duty-bound to prosecute such wars against all nations ruled by despots. Culpability is also strangely absent from his text. One would never know, reading The Assassins' Gate, that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld had anything to do with the war at all. Neither does George Packer deign to discuss the obscene levels of fiscal corruption and nepotism surrounding the debacle. He also suggests that the war has failed because--get ready for this--Iraqis are, and I am quoting, incapable of dealing with freedom. He recounts a coversation in which he suggested that an Iraqi stage a play about the occupation. "[The Iraqi] brushed the notion aside. 'We can't find a sadder story than the street to put on as a play,' he said. 'The play is out on the street. All Baghdad is a theater. We are the audience. We don't need to do a play.'" Packer counters: In the end I was unable to persuade [him]...I sensed that my idea made him uneasy for deeper reasons. It would demand an act of imaginative courage that was beyond his power." Bitch, are you for real? If Packer's mindset is at all indicative of that of this country's leadership, I cannot think of a better example to illustrate in a nutshell why this war is failing so miserably.
2) Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
This book is an interesting read which unfortunately suffers from several flaws, not the least of which is a salient point raised by the authors themselves: that "experts" often manipulate information in underhanded, leading ways. Take for instance the book's most controversial argument--that the lower crime rate in America is due to the legalizing of abortion. The authors contend that unwanted children are at a higher risk for neglect or abuse and that these factors predispose them to lives of crime. There may be something to this, but the evidence the authors provide (the high crime rates in Communist Romania) as their argument's lynchpin is misleading at best. Yes, abortion and birth control were illegal in said country, and yes, crime did rise precipitously after Ceausecu's regime took power, but the authors ignore one vital point: unless they can prove that the crime was solely or even mostly due to the fact that abortion was illegal, and not in any way to the fact that, oh, I don't know...Romania was an impoverished third world hellhole where everyone struggled to survive, their argument doesn't hold water. Similar dissentions can be made for all of the authors' sweeping pronouncements, from their discussion of cheating in sumo to gun control laws to drug crime. So read this book for its interesting subject matter, but take the authors' arguments with a large grain of salt.
That will be all.