It was worse than you think. Disney hired ex-CIA operatives to set up a puppet government that they used to control land development. This why Disney still has its own fiefdom in Florida.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-cia-helped-disney-conquer-florida

You might be thinking of Frank Cushing who lived among the Zuni tribe in New Mexico.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, I have several recommendations.

1. Slate Slow Burn podcast on Iraq. This is a decent, nuanced history on the road to the invasion, more than I expected from Slate, honestly. Unfortunately, the last two episodes are behind a paywall so this will be a partial recommendation.

2. The Regime Change Consensus by Joseph Stieb: Think of this as a more academic version of the Slate podcast, specifically episodes four and five which dealt with liberal support for the invasion. This book places the Iraq War in the context of the 1990s in the wake of the Gulf War and the Soviet collapse, showing that the political conditions for regime change were set well before 9/11.

3. A Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper: I haven’t started this one yet but it tells the story of the surprisingly intimate relationship between Saddam Hussein and his American jailers in the months leading up to his execution. The author was on NPR a few years ago talking about it.

What was Karl Marx like as a person?

That makes me a saaad panda (not really)

I’m currently reading a study about the roots of the Iraq War in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the invasion next month. Also on the shelf is Michael Holt’s book on the 1860 election, Adrian Brettle’s Colossal Ambitions about Confederate dreams of empire, and Erica Dunbar’s Never Caught about Washington’s pursuit of Ona Judge.

You might also enjoy Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate Over Military Service in the Civil War by Brian Taylor. A study about the ambivalence that northern blacks felt when compelled to fight in the war.

Even worse than the MLK statue that looks like Mao.

I heard about G-Man. Apparently, Gage has been working on it for about a decade. How is it so far?

Currently reading Michael Holt’s By One Vote about the 1876 presidential election. The University of Kansas has a whole series on the presidential elections and so far I love it. I’ve found a new respect for Rutherford Hayes and I’ve already ordered Holt’s other book on the 1860 election.

I don’t know if I’ll ever publish my 2022 book reviews since I haven’t found the motivation to write lately. Maybe I’ll get around to it in the New Year. Question for the sub, what books did you get for the holidays?

Welcome to my yearly book review of all the books I’ve read in 2022. This is actually inaccurate, as I won’t be reviewing all the books I read this year. I’ve decided to only write about the books which made the biggest impression on me. This post will focus on the 9/11 related material I’ve been reading.

The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden by Peter Bergen: This look at Al Qaeda’s leader fills in a seeming drought of bin Laden biographies. Peter Bergen uses a trove of documents recovered during the 2011 raid to flesh out his subject’s life. Some will snicker at Bin Laden’s eccentricities, such as putting hair dye in his graying beard. More serious readers will grapple with the central contradiction of his life: That a man humble enough to sacrifice his life for god was also a narcissistic media whore. Many myths about bin Laden (some of which were self-perpetuated) are dispelled. His publicly stated strategic rationale for 9/11, to draw the US into an unwinnable war and bankrupt it, was just glossing over a gross miscalculation. Using the Beirut barracks bombing and Black Hawk Down incidents as models, bin Laden believed a large and dramatic atrocity would cause the United States to pull out of the Middle East altogether. Needless to say, it backfired. Bin Laden’s incompetence as a military leader is well documented but his personal bravery in the Soviet-Afghan war was well covered in Arab media and helped lead to a flood of donations to the mujahadeen.

If this book has a theme it’s the power of delusion. Bin Laden had many delusions but his unassailable belief in them enabled him to shape the course of history. He was not the only one. As bin Laden was escaping Tora Bora, General Tommy Franks was briefing Donald Rumsfeld on the Iraq War plans. One flaw of this book is Bergen’s tendency to lapse into the first person when discussing his encounter with bin Laden as part of CNN in the 90’s. It’s a jarring shift in perspective which makes one feel like you’re reading a different book. A single, dedicated chapter would have sufficed. Neither was I convinced by Bergen’s contention that bin Laden’s father influenced his path to Jihad. Bin Laden claimed that his father had said one of his sons would go on to wage Jihad, yet this was said during one of his many self-aggrandizing interviews in the 90s. Further, according to Bergen’s account the two had no real relationship before the elder bin Laden’s death in a plane crash in 1967. Given his penchant for inventing myths and post facto motives for himself this claim feels suspect. No doubt this and other details will be debated for decades to come but overall this is a great book for those looking for a detailed portrait of 9/11’s mastermind.

FBI 9/11 Operation Encore files: This isn’t a book but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about this. For those who don’t know, the FBI has released thousands of pages of documents about its investigation into Saudi links to 9/11. Most of what’s in them has been known for years but there are some new revelations. In the interest of staying purely historical, I’m going to avoid speculation and stick to what the files do definitively prove. I’m also going to be writing as if you’re already familiar with this topic to save time. Here’s a good primer to catch up.

There are three things these files do prove:

1. Bayoumi was in fact a Saudi spy. He received a stipend from the Saudi GIP.
2. Contrary to his assertions, Bayoumi was an extremist. A witness quotes him as saying the Muslim community needed to ”take action” and was ”at Jihad”. He also had connections to other terrorist elements besides the hijackers.
3. His meeting with the hijackers was not a coincidence. A witness variously named Caisin bin Don/Isamu Dyson/Clayton Morgan says Bayoumi drove to the restaurant, waited by the window for them to arrive, and approached them from such a distance where it would have been impossible for him to have overheard them i.e. it was a planned meeting.

The files go on to say “there’s a 50/50 chance” Bayoumi knew about 9/11 beforehand.

In many ways this is unsatisfying since it still doesn’t definitively answer the big question of if Saudi officials had foreknowledge of 9/11. On the other hand, it only adds to the suspicion and keeps interest in this case alive. I look forward to any new revelations.

Excellent essay, with particular praise on how you explained why socialism never took hold in Harlan. I often wondered why international socialism never made more of a splash in America.

When Woodrow Wilson was running for New Jersey governor, was there any suspicion/negativity of him because he was a Virginian?

I finished A Country of Vast Designs. This was the first book I listened to on audio so I couldn’t take notes which made it harder to absorb. I’m not even sure I’ll review this book at the end of the year for that very reason. Overall I liked it, though Polk’s seeming obliviousness to how the war exacerbated slavery tensions was puzzling to me.

Here’s a few things I’ve been reading these past few weeks:

Cynthia Niccoletti’s essay on “Transcendent Constitutionalism”. If you’ve heard someone say the Civil War killed states rights this essay will prove them wrong. In fact, throughout Reconstruction moderate Republicans and the Supreme Court worked to halt a slide toward “consolidation” of the Union and tried to preserve federalism and the existing constitutional order as much as possible, minus secession and slavery of course. More generally it explores how Americans understood the war itself, and not just the amendments passed in its wake, as having fundamentally changed American law.

The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor. I’ve come to conclude I don’t like Alan Taylor’s writing style even though I can’t fault his research. I do like how he shows the fissures which the War of 1812 exacerbated and the general fragility of the Union at that time. The divisive politics of it feel painfully relevant today.

Lastly, I’ve been listening to A Country of Vast Designs by Robert Merry. This one’s been on my list for a long time but with my slow reading speed I think the audio version is best. Polk is a such great protagonist. Coming off his defeat for Tennessee governor, he’s the political underdog in a struggle for the Democratic nomination for president. As of this writing, he’s edged out his rivals, secured the nomination, and been elected to office. I hope to get to the Mexican War stuff by tomorrow.

Any recommendations for books about the North during Reconstruction?