Shek

I just finished reading Amazon.com: The Ugly American: Books: William J. Lederer,Eugene Burdick a few days ago and found it to be a great book that I'd recommend to others out there.

It was written in 1958 by a pair of foreign service officers who had seen their fair share of blunders in our approach to SE Asia in the effort to counter the communist tide. While there is always a danger is historical analogy, I found it strikingly familiar to much of what we face today: an inept information operations apparatus that when it is in action doesn't have its message reach the appropriate target audience, a lack of language skills, a lack of depth in reading about the ideological threat that we face and the playbook that they will use, and an ethnocentric approach based on American exceptionalism. It even appealed to the economist in me with its vignettes on development policy.

My thanks to Brigadier Ray for recommending this book to me and others many moons ago.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Albany Rifles

As I recall, I had to read it my senior year of high school for my foreign policy class (1974)...and no, it was not some bastion of liberalism. It was a Catholic military prep school, with a mixed Jesuit/Christian Brother faculty! Read it again in college. May need to pull it out again.

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"Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves." TSGT Oddball, Tank Commander

JAD_333

I saw the movie with Marlon Brando. I recall it pissed me off. I couldn't believe at the time that Americans behaved so badly abroad. Unfortunately, the book tainted a lot of good diplomats and caring aid workers. But it also stirred up State and USAID to take a harder look at who they sent abroad to SE asia and elsewhere. If I recall, the actual ugly American was a good guy. Don't know if I'll read the book. It'll probably piss me off all over again.

__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

Shek

JAD,

I haven't seen the movie, so I don't what spin Hollywood put on the book, if any. However, I'd urge you to read the book and see what the authors state in the prologue - any unfair tainting of diplomats and aid workers is not the result of the book, whose vignettes I think are quite clear and distinct. If you do choose to read it, stew over these questions/statements and what the book would have to say about them:

1. The following excerpt is from page 60 of the Iraq Study Group report:

2. The composition of the CPA in Iraq? The exclusion of some Iraq experts from the CPA because the were State and not DoD?

3. Here's an excerpt from "Soldiering in Sadr City", an article from the Nov-Dec 2004 copy of Infantry Magazine:

4. MG Chiarelli wondered aloud in the spring of 2005 why we didn't have USDA employees canvassing the land between the two rivers - Iraq had been a food exporter and the breadbasket of the Middle East a few decades earlier.

5. The composition of the reconstruction money spent during the first 12-18 months in Iraq, which went almost entirely to big projects using US technology?

6. The appointment of Paul Bremer over Khalizhad or Crocker or some other qualified ME expert/Arabist?

7. How many federal employees that should be read on Qutb, Banna, ibn Tamiyah, etc., don't even know the basics of our stated #1 public enemy?

S-2

The frustration exhibited in your comments is evident. So? You saw the results of the recent "town-hall" meeting between State functionaries and the SecState. What else do you need to know for the near-term?

More business-as-usual, I'd think.

If it'll help, our allies seemingly suffer from similar ignorance-arrogance. Witness the Bundeswehr beer-halls at their cantonments within Afghanistan.

A real nice touch.

The best diplomats that our nation currently possesses are our junior officers and N.C.O.s down on the deck. I firmly believe that. Anecdotally, I doubt any group of foreign-service professionals are better-read or more nuanced in the peculiarities of Iraq and Afghanistan as these young warriors.

They arrive relative novices, even with all we've accumulated in the previous four years. They leave with Iraq and Afghanistan all over them. Proven time and again in their blogs and observations, at least to my satisfaction.

Doesn't take much time. Just a first-class high-intensity immersion program...with body armor.

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

Ray

Shek,

I really enjoyed the book.

It was so popular amongst my friends that some flicked my book!

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

S-2

Seems I recall in the book that one of the early vignettes included a scene where wheat/rice provided as "A Gift From the American People" became akin to the example rendered by Shek-

"'The improvements to this hospital are being paid for by the Sadr Bureau for the better health and prosperity of the supporters of Moqtada al Sadr. Allah Akbar!'

The Sadr Bureau, run by the Iraq Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had neatly taken credit for what the coalition forces were doing, and it didn't cost $10 million, just a half can of paint. The Civil Affairs guys suggest that signs go up, set high so they couldn't be defaced, announcing the sponsorship of each project. Another lesson learned."

We seem to continue learning our lessons on the information battlefield the hard way. Perhaps each generation begins anew regardless of the past clues. It would be a shame were science, technology, and medicine so ignorant of the ground previously covered.

Ray

S2

That is the book.

Just rang up my brother in the US and asked him to ship me the book.

It was so real life when I read it as a senior school student and was aghast that it was so real since I saw the same effect in India because of US diplomats not being on the ground and instead hobnobbing with the chattering class with their cocktails and diamonds instead, and allowing the Russians to have a field day!

However, the last US Consul General here in Kolkata was a real super chap. He mixed with all and believe it or not, his wife and he were the toast of the Communist govt in Bengal (my state)!

Now, that chap is what the US Foreign Service requires. but knowing the attitude, I am sure he will go no places! :sad:

S-2

Brigadier,

The "Ugly American" suggests why and how our foreign policy development and implementation must change.

I'd suggest reading another great late '50s novel to learn why it won't-ever. "Advise and Consent" by Allen Drury.

What's self-evident on the ground in X-stan becomes lost in the noise of Washington, D.C. upon arrival. More accurately, the message is usually D.O.A (dead-on-arrival) once in the hands of the politicians and "practiced-at-the-art-of-deception" bueraucrats.

I'm being a tad cryptic but it bears little fruit to engage in specifics on a topic this large. We're better served by sweeping generalizations.

snc128

shek,
when I saw the thread, I looked the book up.
today,one of my friends told me a little about the movie causally.she will bring me the movie tomorrow.

__________________
action speaks louder than words

Shek

As the saying goes (or at least some mangled version of the saying):

"Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it."

S-2

Awww...and here I thought we might have you on the edge of an honest-to-God rant.

Shek

If it had been a true rant, then I would have screwed up by skipping #s or something. However, it amazed me how much a book written about misguided SE Asia policy in 1958 could be "transported" 4 1/2 decades later to paint a similar broadbrush critique.

Plus, it's nice to test run thoughts and ideas - I'm trying to develop a list of ten books or so that I think cadets should try to read before getting commissioned or very soon afterwords. Given our history and culture of American exceptionalism (Manifest Destiny, "the beacon of liberty", etc.), I think this book is a great way to bring folks back to the reality that the "American Way" is not for everybody, and in fact, it can do great harm. It is an ironic title to the book in that the book's message is that the people abroad often make us look "ugly", while it is the ugly American that advances our interests (or the simple roaming farmer trying to boost egg production that is worshipped). So, it is important to learn the culture that you are operating in and then apply the levers that that culture sees as influential.

S-2

"It is an ironic title to the book in that the book's message is that the people abroad often make us look "ugly", while it is the ugly American that advances our interests (or the simple roaming farmer trying to boost egg production that is worshipped)."

"...people abroad..."? Our diplomats and public figures? Ummm... you mean, maybe, like Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, as example?

"...the ugly American that advances..."? Like a Dept. of Ag. wheat specialist or a young infantry N.C.O or civil affairs lieutenant? Baby-steps achieving quiet successes.

"...a book written about misguided SE Asia policy in 1958..."

Much less today, five decades later, it is remarkable how precient this book was about SVN at the time. I probably read the book about 1971-72. Considered passe' and trite by then. However, given the publishing date and JFK's interest in the Peace Corps and special forces, it's possible that this book may have been a topical guide into deeper conjecture by the future president.

JAD_333

I hope your list also includes books that tell of America's triumphs and of American men and women of high caliber who were responsible for great achievements. A book like the Ugly American can be easily blown out of proportion by a young, impressionable person. You've seen the result. The young, bright, well educated person, well versed in all the negatives about his country, to the point of anger, and seemingly oblivious to all the far more positive things.


I suppose it takes a close call like almost growing up in a NAZI dominated country or living in Spain under Franco to realize that America really is a "beacon of liberty." That isn't the American Way; that's the American reality, the Canadian reality and the reality in a few dozen other countries. The American Way is something else. It was and is a combination of altruistic and economic outreach by a properous and generous people whose sincere desire to help the less fortunate was, unfortunately, sometimes left in the hands of lousy stewards. So, you think it's good that we should now come back to a "reality" in which the good things count for little while the incompetence and insensitivity of some diplomats and aid workers is all that
really matters?

I am not saying we should put our head in the sand. Fix the problems when we find them, but we ought to know what we're about and keep our head high. When we wallow in problems, we lose our momentum. Show the kids the mountain top and then warn them where the pitfalls are.



What's also ironic is how the concept of exchanging ambassadors has evolved. Originally, it was simply to create a channel through which two sovereign countries could communicate. Of course, right from the beginning ambassadors did a little spying and chatted up the country's elite to see which way the political winds were blowing. But the idea that they would be czars over a multi-faceted, in-country organization tasked with dispensing aid, promoting cultural awareness, and so forth is fairly modern.