the disconnect

A Necessary Book about Inconvenient Truths

Andrew Cockburn's forthcoming book, Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins (Henry Holt and Company) challenges every American to rethink the structure of our defense establishment and the way we allocate public funds. In fact, Cockburn addresses far more than the evolution of drones into the controversial “targeted killing” programs.

What makes Cockburn's book so compelling is his dispassionate laying out of facts and figures beside the inflated claims made by the defense industry and the carefully crafted statements and reports from uniformed and civilian security officials. Although his title and subtitle imply he will tell the story of military drones, Cockburn investigates and exposes broader issues, chiefly our military's reliance on expensive, complex technologies not capable or robust enough to play a consistently useful role in warfare; the connections between high ranking military and civilian officials and the defense contractors; and the efficacy, or more accurately the lack of efficacy, of contemporary U.S. command and control regimes.

This book would be a must-read on these grounds alone, but there is more. Ever since William Greider published Fortress America in 1998, the extent of what President Eisenhower famously described as the military-industrial complex has been public knowledge; Greider and now Cockburn have made it abundantly clear that Eisenhower should have left the draft phrasing, “military-congressional-industrial complex”, in his delivered speech. Defense contractors carefully scatter bits and pieces of each project across many Congressional districts to insure that a large number of Senators and Representatives will support funding for weapons and command and control systems that bring jobs to their constituents. If that were not enough, Cockburn describes the sordid practice of defense contractors hiring family members of elected officials as consultants and advisers; this on top of the revolving door for senior military and civilian officials who can retire and soon turn up in civilian clothes to lobby Congress and the Defense Department for funding for their new employers, defense industry firms whose products they know because, as Defense Department managers, they worked on specifications, development, testing and deployment of those products. This is corruption by any standard.

As the ad pitchmen say, “and there's more!” Cockburn details the way overpriced and expensive weapons, surveillance and communication systems have displaced cheaper, more effective alternatives. Technologies supposed to give field commanders comprehensive real time information about conflicts actually increase the fog of war and remove control from commanders on the spot. Our government is spending a lot of our money for defense technologies that do not work very well. In fact, the use of drones for surveillance and targeting, given the limited capabilities these machines actually possess (as opposed to the claims made by their manufacturers and their purchasers in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency), is immoral. Drone strikes have repeatedly been ordered on human beings without any clear evidence that the “targets” are in fact terrorists or any threat at all to the United States and its interests.

 In short, Kill Chain documents the failures of our military and surveillance programs to achieve the goals set for them, and the consequences: taxpayer money wasted on Pentagon programs that cost lives instead of on domestic programs that help people live dignified lives; corruption in our military and political establishments; and arrogant, senseless assassinations around the world. This is something we should all read, and then hold our civilian and military leaders and ourselves accountable.  

Reading

Okay, it's been about twelve months since my last post.  Now for something completely different:

Recently, one of my daughters-in-law called my attention to the BBC's list of best loved novels, now some years old. What interests me about this list are the similarities and differences between what is “best-loved” in Britain and the U.S. I have been looking at “Top 100 Novel” lists to compare, but no one has done a similar survey in the U.S. Still, I think it's fair to say Stephen King would have a few of his other novels on the U.S. list, and might be joined by Dean Koontz and one or more of the techno-thriller writers, like Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler. I doubt Americans would list so many Terry Pratchett and Roald Dahl books, though both writers are popular enough here. I'm pretty sure a number of the more contemporary British novels would not make an American list.

On the other hand, many of the BBC 100 seem sure to rank high in the U.S., especially most of the top ten—Philip Pullman's trilogy would probably not make the top ten in this country, for example. Serious novelists who I think might have novels on the U.S. list include Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth. (Perhaps John Updike would also make the American list.)

I'm also astounded that so many “kid's books” make the BBC list—okay, Harry Potter is a given, but Louisa May Alcott? She'd surely be on the U.S. list, though, so maybe I underestimate the appeal of Little Women. I don't think The Wind in the Willows would make the U.S. list, and wonder whether so many Roald Dahl books would appear on it. Jacqueline Wilson also writes popular children's books—I doubt many Americans have heard of her or read her. If children's books are on the U.S. list, Judy Blume would probably dominate.

Maybe someone should do a survey like the BBC one. Here's a list compiled by two critics from Time magazine: It looks pretty academic to me. There is a sort of American list here, but it does not limit itself to novels and excludes people like Dickens who would surely show up on a Best Loved Novels list. If anyone knows of such a survey done in the U.S., please tell me about it.