Book Review. The Wounded Giant, Michael O'Hanlon, Penguin.
By courtesy one might call The Wounded Giant a "book." More accurately it is a pamphlet, or a position paper, intended to have some impact on the deliberations of last November's "supercommittee" absurdist theater. O'Hanlon argues for Sensible Defense Cuts, yet warns that we must maintain a Robust Military Strength. It is a Load of Crap.
His thesis makes sense, kind of. But only if you studiously ignore the real world -- by which I don't mean the world as a whole, but rather the world of American politics at the moment. (He rushed a book into e-print because of the idiotic "supercommittee"? What cretin and his editor took that garbage seriously?)
This is a major problem for O'Hanlon's argument, though not for his job, which hardly depends upon him ever being actually right about anything, which given his track record, is lucky for him.
To back up a bit.
O'Hanlon is an Extremely Serious Person, an Exalted Boohoo of the Brookings Institution for Interminable Peacocking, and someone I've long considered an asshole.
I have a lot of reasons for saying this. I will however let this sentence from Wikipedia rest my case, because it is, for Wikipedia, pithy:
Writing in the National Interest in May 2008, O’Hanlon gave himself 7 marks out of 10 for his predictions about Iraq, although he acknowledged that among his incorrect positions was his initial support for the war - given the Bush administration’s poor preparations for the post-Saddam period.
"I was right about most things except for the one that actually mattered -- you know, the one about going to war based on crap." Look it up.
I know, I know, get to the review. But this from that last link is germane, I promise:
Willingness to support war once that inspection record was revealed to be imperfect: incorrect, given how poor the Bush administration's preparation for the post-Saddam period turned out to be. It was very hard to realize how shoddy this preparation was, looking from the outside, but I wish I had dug deeper and pressed harder.
It was not hard at all to realize this. (Scroll down to the "Daniel Davies again" stuff.) The lies were very shoddy: but nobody is ever the first to get snookered. Fess up, wise up, don't get fooled again...
Or, alternatively, be Michael O'Hanlon.
How on earth are you going to pontificate about American foreign policy without caring about who will be in charge of it?
By being Michael O'Hanlon, who says of the Iraq disaster that "the United States invaded Iraq without desired levels of international support or legitimacy" (whoopsie!), but that this is cool, because "Iraq currently shows promise of building a better future for itself and its region." Which, well, it doesn't. And neither was the Taliban expelled from Afghanistan (do you need a link? Really?).
Look, I am hardly a Big Fan of Democrats and their foreign policy, but while I can see Gore invading Afghanistan post 9/11, he would not have gone into Iraq (he would have been fighting off impeachment charges for Betraying the Homeland). Likewise, McCain would not have left Iraq, and would have doubled down in Afghanistan.
And in the latter case, O'Hanlon would have provided enthusiastic support, even if it made no fucking sense to do so. "General Petraeus, the greatest general of his generation," he fanboy enthuses at one point.
Argh. This is the stuff from the pamphlet that kills me:
But make no mistake about it, today's US military is also the finest fighting force on the planet, beaten up by deployments and war wounds at one level, yet hardened and experienced and battle-tested in ways that make it better than it has ever been in our nation's history.
This is like saying, "Sure, that Captain Ahab was kind of misguided, but Ishmael, at the end of it, he was a HELL of a sailor!"
I do not as it happens support large military cuts. Defense spending is, it seems, the last refuge of the 21st-century Keynesian.
I do NOT support however any strategic thinking or care about any maunderings as regards defense spending proposed by Michael O'Hanlon, because, why? Because, of well, this.
I don't think O'Hanlon has the balls or the history to do anything else but say "yessir" to a President Romney. Or a President Obama, for that matter.
What astonishes most is the bit where O'Hanlon admits that military spending is not "optimal" stimulus, but you should not cut it in a bad economy... but then for the whole rest of the book accepts "deficit hawk" nonsense as Sacred Writ. His Strategy is Safe Insiderism.
I mean, The bloodless tit. Here. "Let the pawns in my fun global chess game suck it up some more, this brandy is pricey."
You ever met a vet returning from a pointless war? Let's try to cheat them!
Asshole.
This is a stop on a virtual book tour. I understand that Padre Steve is up next. There is some chance he will not say "asshole" as frequently as I did. Anyway, thanks Trish & Jordan!