The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
Published by Allen Lane, 2008

My review for Daily Xpress, published on June 8.

A curious egg in the much-scoured nest of anti-war journalism, “The Three Trillion Dollar War” is a well-intended study that grew into a 300-page hardcover book, bulked up even further by the use of airy, large-font text.

Former World Bank chief economist Stiglitz is generous with his syndicated newspaper columns, so it’s strange that this expanded column should become such a hefty weight for the home library shelf. The content, while solidly researched and compellingly presented, doesn’t justify the scale.

There are eight chapters, half of them a monetary accounting of America’s effort to secure itself a Middle Eastern oil supply by re-imposing Western authority in Iraq. The figures, when you tally up military hardware and personnel, rebuilding the infrastructure, maintaining the oil supply and especially caring for the armed-forces veterans into their old age, does indeed reach $3 trillion — easily.

While acknowledging their anti-war bias, the authors insist they have nevertheless been “excessively conservative”.

“At the beginning of the second Bush administration, the president talked about the seriousness of the [US] Social Security crisis,” they note. “But instead of paying for the war in Iraq, we could have fixed the Social Security situation for the next half century.”

The rest of the book is about the Iraq conflict’s ramifications at home and around the world and, finally, how the United States can get out of the mess if it overcomes its “departure delusions”, and the lessons that can be learned from it all, including a list of suggested legislative reforms.

TEXT BITE: There should be a presumption that the costs of any conflict lasting more than one year should be borne by current taxpayers, through the levying of a war surtax. War has become too easy for America.

“Opium Dream: An Asian Adventure”
By Jason Schoonover
Published by Asia Books, 2002

A Bangkok-based author makes a bold claim about his latest novel. My review for The Nation, published on October 15, 2004.

Author Jason Schoonover says the “debauched ways” of his character Lee Rivers “are a reflection of considerable research — and readers want to read about that too”. The readers of Schoonover’s books, “Opium Dream” and “Thai Gold”, are a curious demographic. “I can’t tell you how many men have written to say my books are the only things that kept them sane while forced to be stateside or in Oz,” the author says.

These guys enjoy Rivers’ sense of humour as he carries on a running conversation with his penis, Ol’ Thunder, which, Schoonover says, “Only plays a, uh, small role, but he’s a big crowd favourite, constantly brought up by my readers.” Heh heh.

Schoonover, who has bases in Thailand and Canada, travels about the world collecting primitive art and antiquities for museums, which puts him in a good position to write about “Khun Indiana” Rivers, who travels about the world collecting primitive art and antiquities for museums.

Among Bangkok’s boozy, billowing, expatriate novel-writing community, he claims to have been the first to “have a book go international”, his 1988 “Thai Gold” selling “a respectable 125,000″ copies.

“I wrote the kind of book I wanted to read about Thailand,” he says, “fast-paced, a real roller-coaster ride, with lots of twists and turns, and rich, fascinating characters. For those, I mined the local spook and Air America community.” There’s more!

A snapshot from the book, which Andrew describes as “Cat propping up an old relic at the Khao Phra Viharn Temple”.

My Thai Girl and I
By Andrew Hicks
Published by Konstrukt Books, 2008

Andrew Hicks is the only farang I know of who’s gone total immersion in Thailand and lived to tell about it — or in his case retained the wit to write well about it.

Hicks, a Briton who’s racked up a good few years “incountry”, as the GIs used to describe Vietnam, shares the adventure of moving “upcountry”, as the Thais refer to anywhere in Thailand that’s not actually Bangkok. It is indeed a whole different world beyond the capital, as Bangkokians discover to their delight the moment they wheel across the city limits and feel the weight lift from their psyches.

But of course, for every soothing rustic charm there’s a missing mod con. Suddenly, for example, you’re no longer automatically attached to the World Wide Web.

Having endured the day-long bus ride to a faraway village called Ban Sawai deep in the distant Northeast, and having met his in-laws-to-be, Hicks wishes to notify civilisation of his circumstances via email, and to do this he must first sit by the roadside out front for hours until a songtaew rambles past.

The public pickup truck, common but not as ubiquitous as one might like, jostles him into the nearest upwired town, where he finds the Internet cafe booked solid with youngsters working on their video-game theses. Finally he’s assigned a computer.

“It then takes half an hour to get into my Hotmail account as the Internet’s kind of slow, powered by buffaloes I guess. I’m dying of thirst and my mouth is dry as I sit staring fixedly at the screen for the 10 minutes it takes to open my inbox.”

Eventually he completes his dispatch.

“I’m just about to send my message when the computers in the shop crash and my screen goes blank, all my work lost. The Thais around me laugh out loud but the solitary farang utters a curse and starts weeping unconsolably …

“[Later], as I pour myself a stiff Song Sam, it strikes me that I could have left my London flat, walked to Arsenal, got on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow airport and landed in New York in the time it took me to go to Sangkha and fail to send an email message.” There’s more!

The Boys in Black: The Thahan Phran (Rangers), Thailand’s Para-military Border Guards
By Desmond Ball
Published by White Lotus, 2004

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, writes an Australian security expert, but Thailand’s Thahan Phran Rangers are too dangerous to keep around. My review for The Nation, published on November 14, 2004.

Thailand’s black-uniformed border guards, who Bangkokians know best for that nasty business outside MR Kukrit Pramoj’s house in 1987, come in for quite a bashing in this slim, scholarly evaluation.

A wall of cops stopped the 250 Rangers from breaking down the former premier’s gate. The Rangers wanted him to come outside and explain why he’d “insulted their father”. Kukrit had said Chavalit Yongchaiyudh was doing a lousy job as Army commander-in-chief.

Bangkokians never really got an explanation for the melee. The Rangers insisted that no one had ordered them to mass at Kukrit’s house that April dawn. Chavalit, who is now of course the fading deputy prime minister, apologised for the behaviour of the paramilitary force whose founding was his idea, but said, “How could we prevent them from being angry when someone abused their parents?”

The once-mighty oak might have something to say about this book on his little acorns.

Desmond Ball, professor of Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National University and author of 40 other books on regional security, including “Burma’s Military Secrets”; is described in the foreword as a “primary mentor” to several Thai Army officers who studied in Australia.

Here, he’s compiled newspaper clippings and NGO reports and trundled around the country inspecting Ranger stations, and come to the conclusion that the Boys in Black are so out of control that they ought to be disrobed.

“The thahan phran [literally, “hunter soldiers”] … has provided a relatively inexpensive means of border surveillance and defence, relieving the Army of front-line postings. However the cost in terms of unexplained massacres, random killings, gross violations of human rights, abuses of authority and ultimately the reputation of the Royal Thai Army has been enormous.”

Ball says the Rangers have been an anachronism ever since the disbanding of the Communist Party of Thailand, whose extermination was their raison d’etre in 1978. There’s more!

Thai Vignettes: Phuket and Beyond
Expat Days: Making a Life in Thailand
By Steve Rosse
Published by Bangkok Books, 2005-06

Thailand doesn’t have what you’d call a rich lode of expatriate writers. It’s got its core of reasonably skilled scribes who can turn a decent phrase. Among them is Christopher Moore, who’s just sold the film rights for one of his books to Keanu Reeves. I think Jason Schoonover may have reached that dubious book-sold-movie-possible stage as well. Another, Stephen Leather, makes a very comfortably living with tales like “Private Dancer”. (See my review of that one here; it’s not good.)

There isn’t a Tolstoy or Faulkner or even a Hemingway in the bunch, it’s almost needless to admit from the curious little backwater that Thailand remains. Some authors may score mass appeal, but their observations usually miss wide of the mark, and the creativity level is as pale as a thanpuying. For every newly released book that gets the Westerners in Thailand talking, there are five that make them wince.

There is one farang writer, though, who stands head and shoulders above the rest in painting tableaux of the Kingdom, and that’s Steve Rosse. I don’t say this at all because he used to be a columnist for the newspaper that employs me (and I only met him once, very briefly). It’s because he’s a genuine writer, as in someone who can transport the reader with a well-constructed story, elegantly paced with thoughtful pauses, and pregnant with possibilities. He writes with care about the country; he doesn’t rush around with mad escapades or contrived melodrama.

Unfortunately Rosse isn’t in Thailand anymore, having packed up his Phuket life in 1997 to return to America. He’s currently wrapping up a posting in Trinidad, teaching medical transcription for the government, whatever that is — and wrestling with writer’s block.

Rosse published two books after he left Thailand — “Thai Vignettes” and “Expat Days”. It’s at his invitation that I’ve just reread them both, and I was happily surprised to find that, since the first encounter, they’ve lost none of their deep and quiet pleasure.

The latter has its own distinct appeal, of which more in a moment, but the vignette is Rosse’s forte, and “Thai Vignettes” is by far the better book. The characters glimpsed in passing in and around Phuket are revealed in measured stages. The reader stands on a street corner and spots an interesting passer-by, or notices someone in a market, or is casually contemplating a fellow patron in a bar or restaurant.

Given snippets of information in an unfolding introduction, he gradually comes to understand the individual’s character and circumstances. Then there is the final, discreet revelation, and suddenly the person who has been holding his attention has found a place in the great jigsaw puzzle of life.

Often it comes as a complete surprise, like the snap of a zen koan, and more often than not the big puzzle picture turns out to be a portrait of the reader himself. There’s more!