Suskind goes cinematic in connecting post-9/11 players
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
By Ron Suskind, Harper, 2008, 432 pp.
In interviews supporting his new book, Ron Suskind let it be known he was shooting for something "cinematic."
It's a risk; shoot and miss, and the work would be overblown and breathless. Breathe easy, curious reader, The Way of the World comes off the page like it's ready for Steven Spielberg to roll the cameras.
Suskind has twice before chronicled the Bush administration's disjointed confrontation with terrorism, in The One Percent Doctrine and The Price of Loyalty.
The Way of the World lets an assorted cast of characters carry the story. We watch the struggles of a Pakistani native working as a research analyst in Washington, D.C. Usman Khosa's dilemma in balancing modernity and Islamic fundamentalism is mirrored by the exploits of Ibrahim Frotan, an Afghan exchange student spending a year in the United States.
The book is its most sympathetic when it shows how the pair walk a fine line between Western, post-enlightenment liberalism and their native culture's adherence to Islam and accompanying rigid theocratic tendencies.
The story moves along quickly, from a Gitmo detainee who can barely fathom that a U.S. attorney would petition the courts so that he, a lowly terrorist suspect, would have a day in court.
We follow Benazir Bhutto, who in the days before her assassination made what Suskind portrays as a fatal mistake: Believing the Bush administration's rhetoric about spreading democracy. In the end, Suskind writes, the administration — particularly Vice President Dick Cheney — chose the power of Pakistan dictator Pervez Musharraf over the democratic dreams of Bhutto.
Looming over the sweeping narrative — like the cliché from an episode of 24 — is a danger. Let unguarded uranium get to the wrong hands and the United States is vulnerable to a "dirty bomb." Suskind's intelligence community sources tell him a terrorists' nuclear explosion in a major U.S. city would be far worse than 9/11.
And so Suskind pushes and pulls readers. Our hearts are touched by the opening mind of an Afghan exchange student. Our hearts are broken when an innocent Usman Khosa is roughed up by members of the Secret Service for the sin of (a.) having south Asian features and (b.) standing in front of the White House while fiddling with his iPod. Our hearts are frightened when told of high level British and U.S. intelligence experts who lie awake at nights worrying over terrorists acquiring "The Bomb."
Along the way, Suskind works in headline-making the charges. We learn of CIA forged letters meant to trick the world about Saddam's non-WMDs. There's convincing evidence that the administration that the White House ignored credible intelligence that would have destroyed its case for war … before the Iraq invasion.
Call of this fine reporting by Suskind important journalism that advances a story most Americans already understand. The Way of the World's real power is how it connects its characters to shared humanity that is the best hope for defeating jihadists willing to spill innocent blood.
