12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hunt Should Be The Secretary of Defense, September 13, 2006
This review is from: They Just Don't Get It: How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It (Paperback)
Col. David Hunt has written a superb plan for fighting the war on terror. It is bold, decisive, and politically incorrect. It is also far better than what we are doing or anyone else is talking about.
The author traces the history of terrorism from the 1972 Munich Olympics through 9/11 and beyond. He shows how our leaders have been ineffective in responding. He is not partisan. He reviews botches by Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.
He also critiques many problems with our current approach to dealing with terrorists. Some of those include the following: Failing to use the best troops (special ops.) effectively and fully, allowing Pakistan to harbor bin Laden, failing to secure the Iraqi borders allowing the Syrians and Iranians to continue to supply terrorists, continuing to be cozy with the Saudis in spite of their financing of terror, having too much bureaucracy interfering with decision making, and many more.
Along with the problems, the author also presents numerous solutions. Some of those are politically incorrect; Some may seem outrageous. Most are worthwhile and should be pondered and discussed. Some of his ideas (including some highly controversial ones) are as follows: a total reorganization of intelligence with unity of command, de-bureaucratizing the defense and intelligence arenas, creation of a 'Terrorist Killing Agency', mandatory national service (not necessarily military) as a way to overcome personnel shortages, and the elimination of the ill conceived and nonsensical color coding system that the Homeland Security Dept. created. There are many more as well.
While I certainly don't agree with all of his ideas, I do think that every American elected official and voter should read this book. Its ideas should be debated and considered. If several of these were implemented, we would all be much safer.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Read To Understand Winning The War On Terror, August 26, 2006
This review is from: They Just Don't Get It: How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It (Paperback)
In his mundane, conversational style, Colonel Hunt cites many of the terrorist attacks which have killed innocent citizens, profiles the killers responsible for these atrocities and offers political as well as logistical solutions to combat terrorists in this insurgent style of war.
Detractors will hurl insults at the messenger and his message to complicate his clearly stated, basic premise: This is not a traditional war. We must retaliate against these killers using our special forces, trained to defeat terrorist aggression without bureaucratic interference from politicians and the military hierarchy.
This book is must read for all who understandably feel confused by the doublespeak of our politicians, military leaders and journalists.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good no-nonsense book about defeating terrorism, August 13, 2006
This review is from: They Just Don't Get It: How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It (Paperback)
I'm reviewing the 2006 paperback edition of this book, and it has an extra dozen pages of material. If you want to get this book, I recommend the paperback edition.
I think all of us ought to read this book. It has some practical advice for how to deal with those who are at war with us. I don't agree with everything David Hunt says here, but it is all sincere and straightforward.
The author, a retired U.S. army colonel, shows us how badly the war on terrorism has been going. And he starts with the bungled efforts to save the hostages during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, followed by the absurd release of the three captured terrorists. This failure to deal with murderers has become part of a pattern that we all need to do something about.
After reading this book, it dawned on me that the first hint I had that terrorists were simply going to start getting away with murder systematically was in 1974, when Arafat, a horrible thug, was allowed to address the United Nations. Arafat was not arrested, put on trial, and executed. Instead, he was applauded at the UN! And after some thought, I realized that this was more than a blunder. It was a blow to human civilization. Yes, it was a minor blow. But the precedent was scary. And given what happened, I had to hold all of human society at least partially responsible for this outrage.
Hunt explains part of the reason why nobody killed Arafat decades ago. It turns out that in a very serious sense, "the United States does not want Israel to defeat its enemies." There really is a "small but powerful" lobby inside the United States State Department that wrongly regards Israel as the major problem in the region. And it "managed to convince five American administrations that it was not in our best interests to kill Yasser `the Rat Man' Arafat." Hunt asks how ending the daily slaughter of innocents could not be in our best interests.
There is more sound advice on our response to terrorism. Clearly, some responses put some of our rights at risk, and they could lead to trouble for, say, loyal American Muslims. Hunt warns us that "stripping away the rights of our citizens doesn't make us safer; it puts us in a different kind of danger." And he warns us not to turn against our own (Muslim) citizens in this fight. Such acts of bigotry would simply create unnecessary divisiveness and lose us assets in our fight.
In addition, we see some advice to counter the enormous amount of anti-American propaganda. Not silence it. Just counter it, so that it does not stand unchallenged.
Throughout the book, we see advice to do something useful as opposed to creating more bureaucracy. One example is the rather dubious looking "color codes" which supposedly alert us to the severity of a terrorist threat. Hunt wisely calls this idea "amazingly stupid." And the author tells us how, in 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy was kept off a plane flight that he had taken regularly for forty-two years because a suspected terrorist used "Edward Kennedy" as an alias. That may sound funny, but Hunt points out that it isn't. If even Kennedy can't avoid such problems at the airport, we're making a serious error somewhere.
I highly recommend this book.
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