13 Hours

Benghazi, a port city in Libya, was site to a terrorist attack on American diplomatic and intelligence facilities in 2012.  Ever since that event hit the news, it has been the subject of much speculation and no less than ten U.S. Congressional inquiries.  Like many other events in today’s hyper-politicized world, the attack and the response have been politicized by both the Left and the Right.  Africa isn’t usually on my radar (although, with China’s activities there, it probably should be more of a concern to more people), but like the story told in Black Hawk Down, there are occasionally stories set on that giant continent that grab my attention.  The politics surrounding the U.S. response to the attack have been a bore, but the story of the people on the ground has made me take notice.

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (ISBN: 978-1-4555-8229-7) tells that story from the perspective of the contract security officers, referred to as “operators” in the book.  This small team of men was assigned to provide security to the diplomats and analysts working out of the small diplomatic facilities in Benghazi.  The book gives us a little background on each of them and then jumps right in to the fateful day when two of them, the ambassador, and a government computer specialist would die.  The security officers all had military backgrounds.  They would put that to the test when the facilities they were hired to protect came under attack.  The diplomatic compound came under attack first and was, sadly, overrun before the security officers could do much.  It was there that the U.S. ambassador and one of the IT specialists lost their lives.  As told by the security team, that may have been preventable given a quicker or a more powerful response, had more U.S. assets been able to respond in a timely fashion.  They got their truest test a little later, when the annex where they lived came under fire.  They repulsed three separate attacks, but since the third attack included mortars, two of the contractors were killed.  All, though, fought bravely, as did some of the other government employees involved.  The story presented by the author, who worked directly with the surviving team members as he wrote the book, is lively, action-packed, and keeps its distance from anything political.  The security team is presented as a few guys who were there to do their job, and like hard-working Americans everywhere, worked extremely hard and sacrificed to get the job done.

Overall, I enjoyed the book.  As mentioned above, it’s fast paced and tells an interesting story.  I appreciated that it steered clear of politics.  This was the story of the security team.  It certainly had their opinions in it, and since they are all self-assured people, the opinions are strong, but they also come off as genuine people, real patriots, guys who were just trying to do their jobs.  These were dangerous, somewhat thankless jobs that most people are unwilling to take despite the good pay.  It was a quick read thanks to being drawn into the story and being able to feel oneself there with smoke in the air and bullets flying.  The security team was decorated, although not very much compared to some of the others even though they likely did more than the others, but did come across as pretty humble about that and the fact that they were just doing their job, a job they had signed up for because they believed in their country and its ideals.  I sensed some bitterness about their downed comrades and their perceived shackling when it came to just how they would’ve responded, but it didn’t bother me, probably because most people feel that way at one time or another about a supervisor or some regulations they have to deal with.  The reported dialogue was salty, as one would expect from career military and security men.  My feeling at the end, though, was that they should be held up as people worth emulating given their hard work, sacrifice, and patriotism.

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Clinton Cash

Bill Clinton was president for two terms from 1993 to 2001, so for more than one-third of what I think of as my youth.  Clinton’s presidency was seminal (both definitions 1 and 4), and I got to watch a lot of it unfold.  Clinton’s time as president was filled with scandal, whether it be his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the Watergate real estate scandal, campaign finance controversy involving the Lincoln Bedroom, or allegations of sexual misconduct in his past.  Like Romania’s Communist dictator being overthrown, I got to watch as President Clinton was impeached.  It was interesting to watch the country split along the line of which side one was on regarding the impeachment.  As I watched, I detected a certain level of hypocrisy coming from the American Left and the media, who told Americans that much of Clinton’s conduct did not affect the job he was doing as president (which may have been true), but were then adamant that Republican politicians accused of similar or even lesser crimes resign, be impeached, or be prosecuted in court.  This approach to the way politicians conduct themselves in America changed the political landscape because the Right has often decided that fighting fire with fire has been more effective than rolling over.

Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich by Peter Schweizer (ISBN: 978-0-06-265943-9) talks more about Bill and Hillary Clinton after the Clinton presidency than during it, but the story told would not have been possible if it weren’t for Bill Clinton having held America’s highest office first.  After leaving office after eight years, the Clintons decided to stay intimately involved in politics.  Hillary was elected to the Senate, ran for president, and was secretary of state under Obama.  In the book, Schweizer chronicles how the Clintons leveraged their proximity to power to rake in piles and piles of money.  The author points out that there is nothing technically wrong about that fact.  What was so suspicious was the timing, amount, and source of much of that money.  The book carefully points out the machinations that often took place under the radar.  When certain shady businessmen wanted to get involved in the Kazakh mining business, big donations were made to the Clintons’ foundation, Bill made a high-profile visit to Kazakhstan, said some stuff that, in some ways, legitimized Kazakhstan’s dictator, and suddenly those same businessmen had a deal.  When Russia wanted in on buying American uranium and Hillary sat on a Senate committee that was involved in the approval of that plan, those involved in the deal were donating to the Clintons.  Similar actions took place when India wanted to get nuclear technology.  The Clintons had shadowy dealings in South America and in Africa.  When the Clintons were in a position to possibly affect the outcome of a decision, they and their friends seemed to benefit and America seemed to lose.  Schweizer ends his book with an appeal to those who have the legal authority to investigate these suspicious dealings.

I found the book a very interesting read.  There were times when it seemed a little heavy on dollar amounts and obscure names (people described as things like “mining royalties expert[s]” are quoted in the book), but the picture painted was fascinating.  Politicians around the world of every political persuasion engage in this type of behavior.  This is not unique to the Clintons, so it was neat to see these types of concrete examples and see how power and position can be bought and how little one’s word seems to mean to many if they can achieve power or riches.  Given the track record established by Bill while in the White House, none of the things here seemed particularly surprising, but the in-depth nature of the book added to the gravity of the seriousness of what is going on.  I was also reminded that no matter how many rules, laws, regulations, and agreements are made to fight corruption in politics, if someone’s willing to pay the right price, there’s a politician ready to wheel and deal.  The book is as much an indictment of the Clintons as it is a call to everyday citizens to vote out career politicians and take their countries back.

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In Europe’s Shadow

As a kid, I knew little about Romania.  It was connected to the famous book Dracula, which I read in high school for English sophomore year and was left unimpressed.  During the 1980s, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comenici was all the rage when the Olympics were discussed.  I was born too late to see her groundbreaking performances in 1976.  Romania was part of the Soviet bloc, so I knew it was a Communist country and an enemy to the United States, but I felt no threat from the Romanians, unlike the Soviet Russians.  In 1989, the Communist world came tumbling down, and Romania was part of that world-changing spate of events.  I very clearly remember watching on TV as Romanians take to the street waving their flag with the Communist symbol cut out of the middle, leaving a large hole.  I had to be pulled away from the TV to go to a family Christmas party.  Even as a young boy, I realized I was witnessing history in the making.

In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-year Journey through Romania and Beyond by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-8129-8662-4) is a wide-ranging survey of Romanian history, focusing on the post-World War I XX century and the first decade or so of the XXI century.  Kaplan has written and traveled widely, but is somewhat of a Romanian expert.  He writes history as a travelogue, which provides an interesting narrative as he explains the history behind what is happening in modern-day Romania.  Romania’s history, long intertwined with that of the European empires and the Ottoman Empire, plays a large role in what is happening today, especially because, according to Kaplan and many of the people he interviews, the same players are in the game.  The European empires have been replaced by the European Union and Putin’s Russia.  Romanians seem to recognize that they are still a borderland between these powerful entities.  This is especially true because of Romania’s neighbors, Moldova, a place where there is a greater Russian influence and which is home to one of the many frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet sphere, and Ukraine, which recently became the latest casualty of Russia’s desire to keep things as unstable as possible on its periphery.  Kaplan paints (and “paints” is the right word as he is a masterful writer, helping the reader see themselves there with him in dingy Communist hotels or on bright, lively Central European town squares) a picture of a Romania that has progressed a long way since the exciting fall of Communism in 1989, but still recognizes that there is room for further improvement.  Kaplan’s Romania leans strongly to the West, but knows its past and is wary of the East, home to Russia, which is altogether too happy to meddle in Romanian affairs.

Although I had read Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, I didn’t realize he was such a Romaniaphile.  The Romnia-centric material in the book made it a little dry in places, but I found myself coming back to it again and again because I found it incredibly relevant to the current events of 2020, both in the U.S. and on the international stage.  Early in the book, it was about the American experience and Kaplan’s defense of the individual.  He had seen, up close and personal, how Communism destroys the individual in favor of a mass thinking alike.  There is not room for dissent.  As a borderland, Romania has long had struggles of an ethnic nature, and while that seems to be far from the case now, the lessons are worth learning: stifle the individual, enhance the groupthinking mass, and ethnic tension is almost a given.  I also found his commentary on global culture reducing the importance of everything to be accurate.  Finally, his take on Russia was brilliant: Putin seeks instability.  Where this is instability and shadiness, Putin thrives, usually at the expense of the West.  I have long posited that Russian foreign policy was simple: instability.  He noted that although Russia used military power in Georgia and Ukraine, its political use of energy and great willingness to meddle in elections and politics made it a much greater threat, especially because those methods of fighting are harder to deal with in open, democratic societies.  The book was well written and interesting, but one that is likely more appreciated by those interested in Romania first of all and Eastern Europe and Russia second.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.