McLarenblog

Book Review: Marching Toward Hell
Author: Michael Scheurer

Analysis:

The book is all about the history of USA  war with radical Muslim warriors.

Patriotic to the core and is the author’s supreme measure for all things.
Brutal exploration of the subject giving no respect to anyone in and out of power.
Honest intent which is well delivered.
Insightful in a host of ways especially the author’s analysis of our problems fighting this war.
Compelling read because as one turns each page the reader might get the sense that it is now our tern to take action as things have gotten so bad.
Whining tone at times through the repeating over and over of the deficiencies of our political leadership.
Panders only to Reagan followers and seems to embrace a Republican view.
Simplistic at times.  The author presents a black and white analysis which most intelligent people will mark down because as we know complexity marks more intellectual skill and our current environments are complex.  Problem is, the subject is war and some times there are black and white issues and solutions.

This book comes to us in an outline form of writing spotted on occasionally with brief aside stories to support the bullet points the author is covering at that moment.  As the historical outline progresses, we are told about the incorrect decisions made by our political leaders.  Each foible our leaders make is explained to us as how it is an error with facts about Islam.  The author educates the reader about the sensitivities of the Muslim people and how these sensitivities have been violated over and over.  The author, toward the end of the book,  moves over to the side of the enemy telling us about ourselves from their point of view, a most clever approach.  The author, all the time, is giving the enemy very high scores for their actions and very low scores for our politicians and our military and for this he is brutal.

Have you ever been in a meeting where some manager is given a small bit of incorrect information in a report and thus dismisses the whole report?  I am thus concerned that if I put to you any perceived deficiencies, I see for this book, that you might condemn the book in total.  I, therefore, recommend this book as  being most important for all people in the United States to read.  But, to be honest, I did detect a few things that bothered me about his book.

One. The author just might have missed a much larger story, the dark side factors that are at play in American politics.  The author comes up with the following reasons, stupidity, historical ignorance and moral cowardliness as reasons why American policy has not met the challenge but has been a failure.  This might be true but could not there be another possibility?  Not to consider this is not surprising as the CIA could not detect moles in its organization for decades.  The author does a wonderful job of taking intelligence and turning it back upon us with the author’s analysis which serves us greatly.  This is what he was trained to do and now does it for us.  He seems incapable at going behind the elite politicians to see what scripts they were being handed and by who(m).  I hope another book covers this aspect because its telling just might reveal treason of the highest order and what a great read that would be.

Two.  The author does cover one more immense problem for the USA, the huge and mounting budget deficit.  Because this is toward the end of the book, and because it is wrapped into a seemingly larger issue of war, it takes a back seat.  Too bad because the deficit is so compelling and more upon us  that it may rival the war with Islam.

Three.   The writing style is most strident in its telling and for the sensitivities of many Americans, this book just might strike some as being way off base because it is an unhappy book and reads harsh, almost raspy.  This is a serious man’s and women’s  book, not for the pink dress and latte crowd which might diminish sales.

I recommend that the author read Elite Deviance as he just might get the message that there is a dark hand behind our politicians decisions which is the reason for us loosing this war.

We recommend this book.