David Halberstam's breathless, deathless prose.
Dear Ted,
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StumbleUponMuddled is a good word for this book, and I've been trying to figure out what exactly constitutes its particular muddlement. (That's probably not a real word, but since Halberstam occasionally uses creative English--at one point, he describes Clinton as having been "dewimped" by a particular development--so can I.) I think you're absolutely right that Halberstam tried to take on too much and found himself overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of material. As sprawling as The Best and the Brightest was, it had a coherent, unifying subject--American engagement in Vietnam--at its center. Maybe Halberstam thought he could attempt something similar with War in a Time of Peace but was tripped up by how many long, winding (and sometimes extraneous) side trips he necessarily had to take to fulfill his goal of writing a definitive account of American foreign policy in the 1990s. Inside this fat book, as you suggest, are a number of thin books dying to get out.
I think you're being too hard on Halberstam, though, to dismiss him as a complacent literary celebrity. Sure, he gets his phone calls returned and has access to the top policymakers and hobnobs with the A-list at dinner parties. He must feel like he's a player, too--if not by any stretch a Joe Alsop, then hardly a neophyte correspondent with no sources except the wires and the State Department press office. But however much a brand name he is in his own right, he still seems at heart a dogged reporter who tries (as far as I can tell) to get to the bottom of things and to investigate all the angles, rather than to simply advance his own agenda or try to influence the policy debate. Of course I can't know for sure, having never been at a dinner party with him, but the impression he gives from the book is that he mostly removes himself from the equation, preferring, as much as he can, to sit with his tape recorder on and his notebook out. (The only time he uses the first person, in fact, is in the plural. Sometimes, he uses "we" and "us" to mean the United States, so that its foreign policy becomes "our" foreign policy. Did this bug you as much as it bugged me? We--meaning those of us in my sixth-grade history class--were taught not to do this many years ago, for reasons I would think were obvious.)
But of course the potentially worrisome flaw in any book that relies so heavily on firsthand accounts--and that is so concerned with characters and personalities--is that it is naturally biased toward people who gave interviews to the author (not to mention those he considers bona fide friends). I wouldn't blame Halberstam if he felt grateful to the people who spoke to him at length. I wonder, though, if that led him to treat them more sympathetically, at least in personal terms, in his writing. A lot of people here are described as talented, as young and bright, as brilliant, as distinguished, as experienced, often in superlatives--and many of them are listed in the back as having been among those Halberstam interviewed. I'm sure this works both ways: I'm sure that one of the reasons Halberstam sought out Christiane Amanpour of CNN as a source was that he genuinely believed that she was a reporter of "exceptional sensitivity" with a "powerful voice" who "had the good fortune, in a profession where cosmetics were so important, to be as attractive as she was talented." But I'm not so sure he would have devoted several paragraphs to her talent and journalistic philosophy if she'd blown him off when he called. (Roy Gutman of Newsday, who also talked to Halberstam, gets similar extra-credit treatment; other reporters, who didn't, don't).
One person who did blow him off was Clinton. As he describes in his source notes in the back of the book, Halberstam received from Clinton, just out of office, "a pleasant handwritten note commenting on an essay I had written about him earlier, and suggesting we get together soon to talk over the issues I had raised." But he never heard from Clinton again, even though he called his office repeatedly over the next six weeks. (Maybe Clinton was busy with other things, like the fallout from the Marc Rich affair? Just a guess.) Halberstam is very admiring of Clinton's brilliance and political acumen, and I don't think he's being unfair when he discusses some of Clinton's flaws--they're hardly news. But I wonder: Would he have included all the sniping commentary from Clinton's former staff members, in which they groused about his bad temper, his bouts of self-pity, and other unsavory aspects of the Clintonian psyche, if the former president had actually sat down with him and flattered him and given him good inside stuff?
I've saved my biggest complaint for next time. Meanwhile, here's a question for you as a former staff member yourself: Is Halberstam a good judge of character? Did he get the personalities right?
All best,
Sarah
This week, Slate's Book Clubbers tackle War in a Time of Peace, David Halberstam's examination of America's post-Vietnam military actions. Click here for an explanation of our format and here to buy the book. 
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: Both posts below are part of an interesting, and continuing, thread.]
The only reason Vietnam has cast a shadow over all other 'engagements' since then is that the war in Southeast Asia was so poorly managed and executed by the Yale and Harvard grads who occupied Washington during that time. We should never confuse war with politics ever again lest this country wants another civil war. If America finds herself at the brink of war ever again, it's all the way or nothing, there is no "in between."
I'm just afraid that Washington is still populated by Yale and Harvard grads, who have been coddled and supported by their own parents for so long, that their only motivation is power and prestige, whose perspective has been warped by wealth and privilege, and who really no nothing about sacrifice and courage.
--Forward Observer
(To reply, click here.)
I was there, too, FO. I don't draw the same conclusions as you do.
Warfare goes through ages and stages. Vietnam was the last of the era of wars that started with the American Civil War. They were characterized by heavy industry technology and civilian conscription. They tended to be ideological wars, because ideology and propaganda are how you motivate populations to sacrifice. Because of this characteristic, they tended also to become total wars, i.e., virtually all weapons and tactics available were employed and the distinction between military and civilians was blurred or ignored.
In our lifetimes a new type of warfare has emerged. Not just new technologically, but psychological and politically as well. Its levels of violence are relatively lower than in the old mass-levy wars, but its violence can be in certain ways more shocking because it is inflicted suddenly while an illusion of peace is still preserved, and can end just as suddenly. The violence of this style of warfare is, in theory at least, much more precisely calibrated to make political statements.
I was initially skeptical of this type of war, but it has grown and developed and is being employed or prepared for by a number of countries besides the U.S. Israel is an obvious example; but the Palestinians are also a less obvious one. They can't employ Israel's high technology, but they have found a fairly effective low-tech substitute: the suicide bomber, the ultimate smart bomb. The suicide bomber is, obviously, a political statement. If the Palestinians ever get what they want (and exactly what they want remains elusive to me), it will not be because they killed more Israelis, but because they mastered the military grammar of their particular conflict.
--Yukon
(To reply, click here.)
(9/5)