Hehe, you've made this same point in another comment before, which prompted me to read this and subsequently this, since I liked the author so much. I was going to cite your comment if the discussion went that way, but figured not to drop too much information, since on the whole I don't normally know what I'm talking about on these things. PNAC would fall under that category of topics that I don't know the half bit about. Not sure if Baker didn't mention it, or if I just wasn't paying attention when he did...
You like the FBI book? My position on the PNAC has softened somewhat. Back when the neocons were ruling the roost it struck me as straight-up Doctor Evil stuff but with a little more immersion into political history, I see it as nothing more than a continuation of The Great Game. If you presume that geopolitics is a zero-sum game, conquest of the Middle East to secure what oil is left and prevent it from aiding China, Europe or Russia makes a lot of sense. The problem is in presuming that geopolitics is a zero-sum game.
It's not a particularly moral reason why, but I enjoyed the CIA book more because of how over the top ridiculously unprofessional our officials were in it. It at least gave more stories, even if those ended in dictators in power and hundreds of thousands dead. Enemies is much more focused on J. Edgar Hoover and is almost completely a biography of him, since he ran the FBI for so many (48!!!) years. He's worth the read, imo, but other than him, it's primarily government appointees doing government appointee tasks mostly within the boundaries of the law. Past that, it has history on where it came from, the thinking behind spying on Americans (I think it was the FBI that went through pushes and pulls with the DOJ over spying, but it's late and my memory of the two books has blurred together), and times when the FBI tried pulling strings abroad. Other than that, there's some interesting tidbits, like the FBI subverting the KKK, but really the TL;DR is: "Came for the FBI, stayed for the Hoover" Given the trillions of dollars wars cost, I can't help but wonder how much more effective it is to just invest in more expensive forms of energy closer to home. That's a lot of tar sands, deep water rigs, and green initiatives...You like the FBI book?
If you presume that geopolitics is a zero-sum game, conquest of the Middle East to secure what oil is left and prevent it from aiding China, Europe or Russia makes a lot of sense. The problem is in presuming that geopolitics is a zero-sum game.
Yeah, you're thinking about economics the wrong way, though. - You get money for mining the copper and nickel, and money for formulating the smokeless. - You get money for manufacturing the bullets and putting them in boxes, and for shipping them to the armory. - You get money for transporting the troops and their bullets across the ocean, and money for feeding them when they're there. - You get money for shooting the brown people and razing their homes. Now repeat with the bulldozers to demolish, the construction equipment to rebuild, the lumber and drywall and Romex and roofing tile, the asphalt on the street... “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world, is either a madman or an economist.” - Kenneth Boulding