Entry details

Younghusband
Author

Younghusband

Date

September 30th, 2005

Tags

Comments

9 Comments so far.
Add yours.

Economist pans Kaplan

This week’s Economist has a very unflattering review of Imperial Grunts by Robert D. Kaplan. I pulled out a few choice quotes for those that don’t have a subscription:

He seeks to describe this empire through the experiences of the American servicemen defending it. It is a bold case, and he fails to make it.
He writes fairly about their [the soldiers] strengths: the controlled ferocity of marines; the more patient skills of Green Berets. And he is incisive in describing overall failings, including “Big Army”Â? bureaucracy. At the same time he displays so much ignorance about the rest of the world, despite his extensive reading and travels, that it seems almost wilful.
Mr Kaplan’s analysis is unsophisticated and unoriginal. Brave soldiers are often let down by malign politicians, diplomats and journalists. Soldiers, he suggests, may in their plain-speaking way understand the world better than those villains. He admires a bullish marine general who was “not interested in what was interesting, only in what mattered”Â?.

I have not read the book yet, having only recieved my signed copy on Tuesday, and thus cannot make any counter arguments. But for those that have, (J.Kende) please tell us what you think.

Comments to this entry

RichL
October 1, 2005
12:45 am
The book is not a policy book at all, but rather a snapshot of the more dedicated people in the military at this time. It should be no surprise that the attitudes of a dedicated person who is putting his life on the line is that the decision he made is valid. No surprise that Special Forces thinks the rest of the Army is not very good. That is just being human.

The book is more of a travelogue, and will be very useful to Special Forces and Navy SEALS in recruiting. It's a pretty fast read, and Ok as far as it goes. I don't see the point of the bitter criticism by Tom Barnett about Kaplan; this book (IMHO) isn't a competing point of view.
werner
October 2, 2005
7:54 pm
I have not read the book either, but I have read the review. As an Economist reader of some 15 years, I find its "unsophisticated Americans" line utterly predictable. The Economist is today best described as The Guardian for Businessmen. There is no way they will praise a book that finds something good to say about the US military´s role in the world. Certainly not in the book section. But they will rave about Seymour Hersh.
snow
October 3, 2005
3:21 am
'The Guardian for Bussinessman'? Ouch. I don't know if I agree on that one, werner. I don't always agree with everything in the Economist (they often seem to bend over backwards to be supposedly 'neutral' and don't seem favorable to Israel), but I thought they supported Bush's push into Iraq. The best thing about the mag is that it really is a strong supporter of capitalism and often ridicules the idiotic positions of anti-globalization and enviro fanatics. I certainly wouldn't call it left leaning, if that's what you're implying. At the same time, I find it a bit dissappointing that they trash Kaplan's book, though I haven't read it myself.
Mike
October 3, 2005
8:46 am
Of course the Economist is Capitalistic but as far as being complementary to the Iraqi venture or American servicemen... come on please get real..... they may not hoe the Guardian mentality there but if they're different its only going to be a few shades right of that if at all.... they're 'Americanism' is going to end at Capitalist economic theory...... in the end they are Brits.
Mike
October 3, 2005
8:49 am
And but of course (per your citings) he takes particular humbrage at the thought or mere suggestion that journalists are less than informed and a problem in comparison to the soldier... lol!!

Perish the thought of the 'excellent reporting' from Iraq....
snow
October 4, 2005
8:41 am
Well, I know the Economist can be quite critical of Bush, but I remember that they did support him when he went in to Iraq. It seems to me that they bend over backwards to be 'balanced,' which sometimes means a point of view I don't always agree with, but if I want more partisan viewpoints, they are easy to find. I prefer the Economist to be relatively impartial, as so many others are obviously one way or the other eg. New York Times, Newsmax, BBC, FrontPage Magazine, etc.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Kaplan: Blogs v.s. Magazines
October 5, 2005
1:49 pm
[...] The Economist, the Nation, the New Republic, and now the Asia Times have all given no-holds barred thumbs-down reviews of Imperial Grunts. Kaplan’s gung-ho approach to Empire is too tough for the mainstream press, but the blogs aren’t so lilly-livered. Check out the following: [...]
werner
October 16, 2005
9:21 am
Look at the current issue (Oct 15). The Economist raves about a book by Greg Packer of the New Yorker. A book that even in this glowing review does not really come off as more objective than Mr Kaplan´s - the author travels, interviews people and opinionates. But he also reaffirms all the prejudices about "the mess in Iraq", so the Economist love sit. Obviously, any liberal journalist could have done a better job of handling the occupation and any country could have done it better if only they had an army, and a plan (you need a PLAN!) and the political will to do anything about Iraq in the first place.

But it is the long review of Robert Fisk´s new book which would convince me to let my subscription lapse if I had not already decided to do so. Robert Fisk, for Heaven´s sake. I have read quite enough of him. I wonder why they choose to review him at all (I guess all the London newspapers recruit from the same pool). The review is critical but in a subtle, must-tread-carefully way. Read it and compare with the aggressive review of Imperial Grunts.

Some quotes:

"IN THE course of 30 years as Middle East correspondent for two London newspapers, the Times and the Independent, Robert Fisk has filled a lot of notebooks with a lot of stories. Many of them are excellent. His new book begins with a ripping yarn about his summons in 1996 to interview Osama bin Laden. Setting up the encounter takes many months. The process opens with an intermediary's call to "Mr Robert's"Â? office in Beirut. It continues with a mysterious meeting in London's Belgravia Sheraton hotel, moves via New Delhi to a flight into Jalalabad's old Soviet military airstrip, pauses for a sweaty interlude in the Afghan city's Spinghar hotel and culminates, after an edgy night drive with machine-gun-toting escorts, in an interview with Mr bin Laden at a remote mountain hideaway.
Mr Fisk is a gifted writer and an accomplished storyteller, so those who have not read him before will enjoy the famous correspondent's colourful narrative. Mr Fisk tries to tell the story of the Middle East, but he does not flinch from telling the story of Mr Fisk. So here is not only a record of what he has seen and reported since 1976 in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and many other dusty and violent places, but also a tale of how he got the lead, wangled the flight, bribed the guard and brought home the scoop. The Times offered Mr Fisk the Middle East when he was only 29, and his love affair with the region and the glamorous profession of being a foreign correspondent finds expression on every page."
(...)
"The trouble with reading the reporter and ignoring the polemicist is that only some of this book consists of reporting. Mr Fisk interleaves his first-hand accounts with much material of more doubtful quality: potted histories (of the Palestine conflict, the Suez crisis of 1956, the Armenian genocide) and warmed-up off-cuts from old columns (denouncing the George Bushes junior and senior, Tony Blair and the supposedly supine reporting of CNN, the New York Times and sundry other media that happen not to subscribe to the full Fisk world view). As a result, the whole is worth rather less than the sum of the parts."
(...)
"The extent to which Arabs have been the authors of their own misfortune is not given adequate consideration in this dogged, powerful and often infuriating polemic against the West."
Curzon
October 16, 2005
2:24 pm
Obviously, any liberal journalist could have done a better job of handling the occupation

HA-hahahahaha
And yeah, Fisk is revolting -- knowledgable about the Middle East, but his pespective is off the wall.