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 | | The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind ISBN-10: 9780743271103 ISBN-10: 0-7432-7110-6 ISBN-13: 9780743271103 ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7110-3 Paperback 2007-05-15 Simon & Schuster Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi. | ||
Reviews | ||
A thoughtful analysis that reads like a thriller This book covers the period from 9/11 to the 2004 election, ground that is by now pretty well-trodden. But reading it now, after the 2008 election passed the country's judgment on the flaws of the Bush administration, one is still struck by the gap between the government professionals in the CIA, FBI and State Dept, and the ideologues in the White House with their sweeping certainties. By the desire of the professionals to present a balanced view, and by the demand of the administration only for data that supported their theses. The president's lack of interest in written analysis, and his reliance on his gut reaction to personalities, is particularly well described. Most pernicious, according to Suskind, was Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" - the notion that the US should act as if a 1% chance of a terrorist attack with WMD were tantamount to a certainty. This justified the 'Bush doctrine' of preemptive attack on possible enemies with only the scantiest of evidence. The book reads like a thriller, with reconstructed dialog, shady characters, international locales, and grisly details like the delivery of a terrorist's head in a box to an agent in Dulles airport. But underlying it is solid reportage, and a thoughtful analysis on the nature of the checks and balances provided by the US constitution, and of the meaning of the 'informed consent' of an electorate in the waging of a war that is necessarily secret, but that relies for its legitimacy on that consent, and on the moral acceptability of how it is pursued. The closing biblical quote on justice in means and ends is entirely apposite. This is essential reading. | ||
The One Percent Solution This is a disappointing book on many levels. I read the book during research for my Ph.D. dissertation but concluded it lacks the academic rigor to be a credible source. The author's documentation of sources consisted of a short paragraph in the back, stating his book was based on substantial interviews and documents, but fails to reveal them. Hence, readers cannot scrutinize his evidence or the basis for his conclusions. One might conclude that the book is based on one percent research. I was surprised to learn from the book that the United States supplies Israel with tanks, tanks which kill women and children. Had the author bothered to check, he would have discovered that the Merkava tank is Israeli-manufactured. The emotive reference to inadvertent deaths of noncombatants is callow at best. The error may be minor, but if the author is wrong on basic knowledge, how dependable is the rest of the book? One might conclude that the book is based on one percent facts. The book purports one assertion after another using weak evidence and weaker logic. The author claims that the failure of al Qaeda to launch subsequent attacks on the United States is not due to American vigilance or counter-actions, but because al Qaeda chose not to. The author suggests that Vice President Cheney is running the war effort, not President Bush, and that all national security decisions are based on the slight possibility of a threat materializing, hence the One Percent Doctrine. One might conclude the book is based on one percent logic. Many of the author's accounts regarding the run up to the Iraq War are simply a regurgitation of Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, but not as detailed. Perhaps Mr. Hersh was one of the author's sources. One might conclude the book is one percent personal effort. The reader must endure numerous platitudes of the President not being a reader or the Director of the CIA being a back-slapper, and other attempts by the author to appear clever. Rather than attempt to analyze why certain national security decisions were made or the constraints placed on the Administration regarding the prosecution of the War on Terror, the author chose to sensationalize events using one percent hindsight. In short, this book was one hundred percent a waste of my valuable research time. Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen (Ret). | ||
overall, very good book I know this book has been out there for a couple of years, but I just read it a week or so ago. I especially was intrigued by the author's argument the decision to invade Iraq was made in late 2001, if not before. I suspect the invasion of Iraq would have occurred even if 9/11 had not happened. The administration seized upon 9/11, disingenuously conflating it with Iraq. Such was the obsession within this administration, especially its neocons, on having the United States in a unipolar world assume a far more aggressive role in remaking Muslim societies to more nearly comport with our notions of what is proper. Iraq was to be merely the first installment on this process. Arrogance? I'll say. | ||
Interesting behind the scenes read I bought this book for a read on a long flight and found it very engaging. If you've ever been curious to get a better sense of what was happening behind the veil of government secrecy during the time after 9/11, this will go pretty far in satisfying that curiousity. | ||
Insider Info Interesting look at the "cheney doctrine". If interetsed in the 9/11 story give this a listen. | ||