John F. Kennedy famously observed that "Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan." Roy Gutman demonstrates that JFK had it backwards.
Many of us are old enough to remember the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. We're old enough too to remember the Reagan years when plucky bands of raggamuffin fighters, supplied with weapons by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, drove the world's most feared fighting force, the Red Army, out of their homeland and back across the "Friendship Bridge" from whence they'd come. Back then, new words enriched our vocabulary. We spoke of "Mujaheddin" as men of courage and considered their "Jihad" as righteous and good. And even if you don't remember this, even if your only exposure to these events is that you saw "Charlie Wilson's War" down at the local Multi-plex Movie House, it's hard to consider the history of Afghanistan in the 80s and conclude that our involvment there made us anything other than comrades in arms with the Mujaheddin, and friends of the Afghan people.
So explain to me how 9/11 happened?
This is the job that Roy Gutman undertakes in "How We Missed the Story."
From page to page you are reminded of vaguely familiar events and long-forgotten names from the war years and you think, retrospectively, how so little effort on our part was needed to break the chain of events that led to 9/11. So why didn't we do it?
Was it an intelligence failure? Sure. The CIA dropped the ball. Was it a political failure? Absolutely. The Clinton Administration was so mesmerized by the notion of the "Peace Dividend" that they quit paying attention to what was going on in distant lands with hard-to-pronouce names. But there is another group of people who should have done better but let us down as well: Journalists. The result of these myriad failures and oversights was that Osama bin Laden hijacked the Afghan government, unnoticed and without challenge.
Gutman explains the message of his book in this way:
"...The message is that in the world we live in, insularity will get us in trouble. Journalists who think inside the box drawn by government -- and who don't go where they aren't wanted -- are bound to miss the story and lose their franchise; government which ignores its primary function of assuring the country's security will open the way to calamity; and government which operates blindly, without reference to facts on the ground -- as journalists should be providing -- will only make bad problems a good deal worse..."
So, why should you read this book? Let me offer two reasons:
The first comes from something my professors taught me in engineering school. We learn best not from our successes but from our faiures. It's only because the bridge fell down, or the train went off the rails, or truck crashed or the wing broke off that we leared to build stronger, better, faster, taller and lighter things. Afghanistan represents a failure, but one we can learn from if we take the time and make the effort to learn what went wrong.
The second reason comes from something the late New York Times Science Reporter, James Gleick, wrote in his wonderful book, "Chaos." In there he coined the phrase "The Butterfly Effect" to describe the notion of how a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon River basin could set off a cascade of meteorological events culminating in a tornado sweeping through Kansas.
Long-range weather forecasting, said Gleick, can never happen because there are not enough reporting stations to know about every rising air current or gust of wind. And yet there are enough reports, from various sources - professional and amateur - so that we have sufficient information to accurately predict blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes and to give adequate warning to those in the path of harm.
Today we live in a world where a meeting of a few men on a snowy mountain-top in the Hindu Kush, or in a dusty village in the Horn of Africa, or a in crowded city in South Asia can cause a cascade of events that result in the death of thousands, continents away. We need sufficient reporting stations to predict and prepare for this kind of trouble as well.
So from where do we need reports? Gutman suggests that the best place to look for trouble is in the places where goverments either restrict reporters activities or deny journalists access completely. We need to know more about what's happening in places like Somalia, or Burma, or the Congo, or, maybe, the failed-state Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. Just like weather data, some information can come from satellites, some from government employees stationed at embassies around the world, but maybe the best source is from the legion of journalists combing the globe for a good story to tell.
It is a cliche to say, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." But it is the phrase's self-evident truthfulness that makes it trite. You should read this book to remind yourself there's a price to be paid for letting down your guard in a troubled world.
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
