Below the fold is a list of historical sources on the internet, this includes both primary and secondary source collections. I am constantly updating this list when I run across useful sites. Please point me at sites I miss in the comments section.
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]
Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA by Randall B. Woods is one of the best all around biographies I have read in a good long while. It tells the story of one of the most interesting figures of the past century in a very readable and enjoyable style.
The book is 478 pages of text separated into 21 chapters with extensive notes and a very good index. The chapters are organized chronologically and chronicle Bill Colby’s life from his birth in 1920 to his mysterious death in 1996.
Bill Colby is an interesting figure to say the least. He led an adventurous life from start to finish and was involved with most of the cataclysmic events of the middle years of the 20th century from WWII to Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli Wars. The only major event during his long career in which he was not deeply involved was the Korean War because he was stationed in Italy at the time.
In WWII he was a member of the OSS Jedburgh teams and fought in both France and Norway. After the war he spent a short hiatus on Civvie Street finishing Law School and working for a Washington D.C. law firm. With the creation of the CIA in 1949 he reentered government service and would stay at the CIA for the next 27 years eventually retiring in 1976 after a three year tenure as Director of Central Intelligence. He passed away in 1996 under somewhat opaque circumstances in a freak boating accident.
I personally found the descriptions of the way in which Colby’s personal and professional lives interacted to be extremely interesting. Also illuminating were the descriptions of the rivalries and competition for what the correct strategy in Vietnam should be. The wonder is not that we failed in Vietnam, it is that we managed to hold on so long with so many agencies working at cross-purposes to each other.
Dr. Woods has put together a strong biography of an interesting character. He does an outstanding job of piercing the veil of the intelligence world and the figures that inhabit it. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding not only Bill Colby but the way in which the US intelligence community was formed and has operated in the wake of World War II.
Too late for Syria: Radicals now rule the rebellion is the latest Piece from Ralph Peters in the New York Post and this one deals with the wisdom or folly of US intervention in Syria. I generally agree with Col. Peters as he is one of the few national security commentators that seems to have a realistic grasp of what America can and should do in the world. His ultimate take here is that the US should not touch the Civil War aspect of Syria with a ten foot pole and we should only act to secure chemical weapons stockpiles if that becomes necessary. I disagree with him that we should have been involved from the outset in an effort to shape post-Civil War Syrian politics.
We (the US and wider West) have no strategic interests in Syria except to see that WMD are not proliferated as a result of the fighting. We can do that by promising and then executing a devastating strike on any party that incontrovertibly makes use of such weapons. Of course, that begs the question of whether the current Western leaders can even credibly issue such a threat. I have no doubt that Russia or China could make such a threat and have it be credible, I am not so sure about the West. At this point we can only hope that the West stays out of Syria and all the R2Pers keep their traps shut before before they put more brave young men and women’s lives at risk for their liberal ideals instead of national interests.
Video shows Islamist rebels executing 11 Syrian soldiers: Yet for some unfathomable reason the Administration is talking about providing support to the rebel groups in Syria. The video is below (Warning, it is graphic).
After watching just contemplate that these are the folks some in the West want us to help. How they differ from the regime thugs I have no idea.
Compare the picture in the linked article with the video. Notice there is no mention of the cries of Allahu Akbar in the article although they do mention in passing that the group is Islamist. Now also remember the constant refrain about Islam being a Religion of Peace, which Muslim’s give the lie to almost every day by their barbarities and savageries.
Comments?
The latest month’s wackiness in the world of international relations, politics, and brinkmanship.
North Korea demands US withdrawal from peninsula before resuming talks: Now we know that the North is just posturing and has no stomach to start a hot war with the South. The bad part from their perspective is that if they are dumb enough to try and ;pull off even a limited attack the days when they could expect a proportional or even no response from the South are probably over as the South would probably retaliate all out of proportion to the scale of any provocation from the DPRK.
Boston Marathon bombings: No doubt more information about this will come out as the investigation proceeds. I have linked the Wikipedia article as it gets updated very quickly with developments and the editors do a pretty good job of keeping it objective. One thing seems pretty clear now, the bombings were motivated by Islamism of some sort although exact details are unknown. A disturbing development is the idea proposed by some Republicans that the surviving attacker be denied his rights as a US citizen and be treated as an “enemy combatant.” I don’t expect that to go anywhere in this case but the idea has been proposed and that it is seriously proposed by members of the US government is scary in the extreme.
Some lawmakers told last week about Syria, sarin, U.S.: Intelligence points to small-scale use of sarin in Syria: There have been several reports of Syrian use of Chemical Weapons over the last few weeks first from the Israelis and now coming out of Congress. I simply cannot believe there is any corroboration or confirmation of their use or this story would be all over the news since the Boston Bombings are starting to fade. I tend to discount these reports until we get confirmation of their veracity. The next question is what the response will be? It has been longstanding US policy that they will not tolerate the use of such weapons but I would guess that we will do noting unless and until US personnel are impacted. The US stood by as Saddam gassed the Kurds in the 80′s why would it be any different now?
Too late for Syria-Radicals now rule the rebellion: Ralph Peters has a pretty interesting take on Syria and a pretty good argument for why the West and particularly the US should stay out of it.
Israel Targeted Iranian Missiles in Syria Attack: I think we are supposed to be shocked and dismayed that Israel is being pre-emptive about the Syrian Civil War and countering threats before they kill Israeli civilians. I don’t know why we should be though. What I am surprised about is the level of restraint Israel has thus far shown. Then again, I am not one of those that automatically assume anything Israel does is evil and anything their enemies do is virtuous either.
UN accuses Syrian rebels of carrying out sarin gas attacks which had been blamed on Assad’s troops: Well, what is it? Is it the Syria government or the Rebels using Chemical Weapons? If someone were willing to bet, I would bet that IF such weapons are being used, both sides are using them. If that is the case who will the Western Powers attack and will rebel use affect the aid they are receiving from the West? I would guess the Western powers will wink at rebel use because they have convinced themselves that the rebels are as pure as the driven snow and only do what they do out of necessity.
Lijian stealth drone prepares for test flight: Is it just me or does it increasingly look like there is a Cold War shaping up between China and the US and our Allies? This article reminds me of the Soviet roll-outs of new weapon systems as it seems designed to intimidate. The difference this time around is I don’t think the US is prepared economically or politically to confront China for global dominance. The US wasted whatever peace dividend we got from the demise of the Soviets in the fruitless wars of the past decade.
Hezbollah says Syria to supply ‘game-changing arms’: Just to make things even more interesting it is increasingly starting to look as though the Middle East is getting ready for a do-over of the Arab-Israeli wars of the 50′s & 60′s with a side order of civil war thrown in. We live in interesting times indeed.
I have probably read 30-40 books exploring the origins of World War I in the past 5-6 years and I thought that just about everything relevant there was to be known about the events of the month leading up to the war were known and historians have just been stirring the ashes and finding trivia in trying to determine a more accurate chain of causation. July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin disabused of that notion. This work has made me aware of several things about the critical month between the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I that I am amazed have not gotten wider notice in the literature on World War I’s origins. This book is superb diplomatic history that through tight, focused prose and in depth research manages to untangle the tangled web of events in July 1914.
The book itself has 406 pages of text separated into two sections of 25 chapters including an Author’s Note, prologue, and epilogue. There are extensive endnotes for each chapter with relevant footnotes inserted into the text where appropriate and a 10 page bibliography. The two sections of the book cover the immediate reactions of the Great Powers of the day to the assassination and the subsequent diplomatic maneuvering leading up to the war.
There are several revelations in the book and no time is wasted in introducing the first, which I thought was a bombshell. This is that the relevant Russian and French archives have almost no records of the activities of their respective ambassadors for the month of July. What records for their activities that do exist are all secondary sources from the other great powers such as Germany, Austria, and Britain. I find it amazing that this lack of records has not been more highly touted in books on the origins of the war as it was these ambassadors, Paléologue for the French in St. Petersburg and Izvolsky for the Russians in France that played a pivotal role in relations of the two countries during the period leading up to Russian mobilization and the coordination between the two Allies. Another interesting fact that has gotten short shrift in the literature thus far is the sequence of events and timelines surrounding Russian mobilization. It is widely known that Russia began mobilization before any other power, what is not so widely known is that Russia had apparently decided on war at the time she declared the pre-mobilization “Period Preparatory to War” which was just mobilization by another name to begin with.
I have thought for years that the ultimate responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914 lay with Russia. McMeekin’s work tends to confirm me in that belief. The final decision for war lay with the Tsar and more importantly with Sazonov his Foreign Minister and Yanushkevitch the Chief of the General Staff, both of whom pushed for war. .As you read the narrative it becomes increasingly clear that Russia wanted war. Why is not perfectly clear although it is certainly plausible that Russia felt they needed to be assertive because they had been humbled so often in the decade prior to the war and that Russia was at risk of losing its status as a great power. There is also the element of Russian lust for control of the outlet on the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which would give the Russians a warm water port and was something they had wanted at least as far back as the Crimean War. Russia wanted war and right up until the last minute they had the ability to avoid one, all they had to do was stand down and allow the Austrians to punish Serbia for their support of regicide. That, the Russians would not do and in the end they dragged the rest of Europe into a war that was unnecessary.
Sean McMeekin has taken an opaque subject like diplomatic history and shed light on the manner in which diplomacy was conducted in the month prior to World War I. He masterfully weaves together the various actions of all the powers of Europe and makes a very complex series of events clear and easy to understand. July 1914: Countdown to War is the best diplomatic history of the period I have ever run across and is certain to become a classic and the standard work on the subject. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in why and how World War I broke out. A very clear look at a very muddy subject.