Review: The Divider by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

The Divider

It has become fashionable to criticize Trump and get away with it. Most of the book covers about Trump (and Putin and Xi / China) have a blazing red or blood red cover. This one, for a change, has a more classy white with a sliver of black. This book is hefty, and will take a good amount of time for one to cover, because it is so detailed as to literally have statements in double-quotes on almost every page.

When Trump won in 2016, I was quite happy and still sort of support him because he was an outsider in the sense of being a non-politician. Politicians have milked the system for too long for their own benefits, and hence an outsider, an entrepreneur at that, was a good thing. Of course Trump has an abrasive personality and he did not tone it down when he became the most powerful man on earth. I first saw Trump in the Apprentice show back in 2000s. I loved his style and his signature line “you are fired”. I remember reading in New Yorker in 2015 how paid actors were asked to appear at a Trump rally and the author was sort of happy that they (or whoever) had exposed it. Am sure New Yorker was stunned at the election results.

The book covers the entire period of Trump in White House and does manage to show that there was lot of infighting and chaos behind the scenes. To top it, Trump’s habit of tweeting to the world and then his team getting to know of his decision did not help one bit. But he surely did take lot of strong decisions and rankled up the leftist ecosystem who had led the country astray with their stupid policies. The most powerful nation cannot stop illegal immigrants from crossing over the border? Trump promised the wall, but of course could not complete it because of obvious lack of support in the House.

However, the focus of this book and its authors (they wrote for NYT itself should be a clear indicator) is to show that Trump and his White House never did even one thing correctly. No wonder I don’t take these kinds of books too seriously lest they cloud my thinking. Obama and his administration lied about how Osama bin Laden was killed and then even supplanted their fake theory in Zero Dark Thirty. Whereas Trump got Baghdadi and Soleimani killed, yet never got any credit in NYT or WaPo. Am not getting into the merits or demerits of killing Soleimani, but just bringing forth the point that when you read only NYT and WaPo, you will never read one thing positive about Trump or Republicans. That Trump ordered the pull out from Afghanistan did not merit praise, that he did not start any new military operations anywhere did not merit praise, that he cornered China did not merit praise, that he did as best as could to combat Covid pandemic and the economic fallout did not merit praise.

So with that in mind, you should definitely read this book for understanding how Trump operated and his antics upset many leaders like Merkel and Trudeau.

Review: America and Iran by John Ghazvinian

America and Iran

Most books or documentaries start with the year 1979 when writing about Iran. And obviously so because they want to vilify Iran. 1979 saw the revolution which overthrew the dyasty and brought in conservative rule. And since then Iran has been consistently portrayed as the ‘bad boy’. But John goes back hundreds of years to write how did Iran really came to be seen as a villian and was it really so since ever? The answer is an emphatic no. As you may have read about my rants against mainstream media and the media cabal in some of my previous posts, reading this book reinforces that view even further.

John writes how Persia (that’s how the West referred to them, until many years later in 1935 the Iranian governenment asked itself to be referred to as Iran and not Persia) was considered a friendly, welcoming country and a land of enchantment. John’s deep research by going into newspapers, books, and even pamphlets show that people and media was smitten by the Persians and their rugs and culture. There is also how Christian missionaries went about converting and even propogating their kind of Christianity (the ‘right kind’) versus the ‘wrong kind’ which was being followed by Assyrians there. However, Persia was also treated as the ‘good one’ because it was Shia and the Turks and Afghans were Sunni. The Turks were especially despised because the Crusade Wars and the Afghans were being supported by the Turks to fight agains the Shias of Persia. And anybody against the Sunnis was good, and hence Persia became the good one. On top of it, the southern region of Persia was controlled by the British and the northern by the Soviets and the rulers of Qajar / Shah dynasty were more than happy to be subservient and let them plunder away the wealth of the country. America was out of such demeaning politicking, however could stay away for long when Reza Shah and his son took an American tilt and the Americans too had their eyes set on oil, the exploration rights of which had been handed over to the British on a platter for the sake of a loan by the Shahs.

I wouldn’t go into the whole political history of what happened after Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, the coup against him orchestrated by the British and supported by Americans, and finally the 1979 Islamic Revolution which made Iran the ultimate, eternal arch-enemy of US and for Israel too.

This is a book so important that it should be made mandatory for anybody interested in international politics and diplomacy. John consistently shows how the mainstream media (I can’t stop my rants agains them) just parroted whatever the government wanted them to write about Iran and its various political leaders. John exposes how Israel has hyped up Iran as that one country which is an existential threat for the Jews despite of there being no evidence of it. Even the nuclear capabilities of Iran have been blown out of proportion to create an aura of fear so that the politicians like Netanyahu can rake up votes to be in power. This is one of those books which will leave you stunned and astounded at how the whole group of Western countries came together to crush Iran to its knees, making millions of people suffer and reducing their economy to a fraction of what it was earlier. Endless sanctions, American-backstabbing while gaining concessions from Iranian politicians, European malfeasance, and Russian selfishness, have all drained a country which was once vibrant and emerging and a cultural hub in the middle-eastern region.

I cannot recommend this book enough.