What is it?
In the Sum of All Fears, there is a scene where
when they catch the perpetrators and want to learn of their backers. So there is a discussion off how they despise torture, but it is sometimes necessary, with an implied “yeah liberals don’t get it, of course torture works etc etc”.
It later transpires that the information revealed was fabricated
Maybe Clancy threw in a few counterfactuals once in a while. But there’s really no denying what view of the world he was pushing.
ETA: In fact, I recommended his books to my dad, who couldn’t get through them because the biases shown through so clearly.
It became more extreme in his later books (and he was none too found of India in some of his books, so I am not surprised your dad disliked them;)). Sum of All Fears was his last good book.
In later books, his world view became more and more obvious and his opinions, senarios and claims more ridiculous. He did little research on anything that was outside his sphere.
It did get monotonous that every American shot, volley, launch kept hitting every-time. I am not certain that any American was actually killed in the Bear and the Dragon, while Chinese casualties seemed to be about 250,00000. The most ridiculous point in that novel were i) the raid to knock out most of the Chinese ICBM arsenal and ii)the fact that Su-27 were supposed to have limited range…Su-27 could escort IRL bombers from Moscow to London.
Heh, actually, he didn’t like the super pro US biases in the first book I recommended - Hunt for red october - and never read another one. I’d thought it was a fairly balanced book, and a good read, so that surprised me. Which books does Clancy mention India? I don’t recall him doing that at all, and I’ve read most of his work upto Rainbow six, which I liked a lot.
Yeah, all true.
Planning, execution, effectiveness, response, after effects and long range consequences. Besides that I can’t think of a thing.
After Clancy lost his remaining marbles, there’s a sort of loose anti-US coalition between “Iran”, India and China. I don’t recall India being the main adversary though. The last one I read thoroughly was Debt of Honor, the few I read after that I skipped large chunks of text, so say from Executive Orders onwards?
Anyway, The Hunt for Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin are very good thrillers, where Clancy was writing about things within his comfort zone. Outside submarines/ the Cold War, he seems to have made no effort to do any research at all.
The Brits, in the form of Sir Basil and the Prince of Wales, are allies, but all he can ever think to describe of Britain is, err, nice bread and good beer.
Anyone know why he never served, incidentally? He was certainly young enough to have gone to Vietnam after he finished college.
Planning and execution matter not at all. What matters is the effectiveness, after effects and consequences. How many people have died in your mass shootings ? India lost 160 people in one, but it has also had only one. IMO, there is as much grief, anger and terror generated by the lone gunman that crops up again and again as there is by one incident that was planned better and executed better.
I remember the whole India as part of his proto-axis of evil thing struck me as odd at the time. Hindu dominated India in an alliance with Muslim Iran and the people they fought a rather bloody border war with, which still hadn’t settled the Indo-Chinese border.
I thought the USA and India had a rather decent relationship, fellow democracies, lots of exchang students, that sort of thing. I wonder what Clancy’s problem with them was.
I’m not so surprised. There was a great deal of antagonism in the relationship at one time, which was probably around when Clancy’s attitudes were formed. During the cold war, the US and Pakistan were allies, India was closer to the Soviet Union though nominally non-aligned, and itself implemented a (disastrous) version of semi-socialism. My sense is most of the older American establishment had an “Indians = bad” worldview, a particularly powerful example of which is detailed in an American foreign policy thread I started in IMHO. Most of the older Indian establishment of course was similarly jaundiced.
I think the turning point was then president Bill Clinton’s visit to India in 2000. He charmed the entire country in the six days he spent here. Now everybody says the two countries are natural partners, and they probably are, but I think quite a lot of credit for that goes to Bill Clinton.
I’m pretty sure it was his near-sightedness that disqualified him.
I once heard him give a college commencement speech over 20 years ago, but I can’t really recall what he said besides the generic go out and make your mark type of advice (aside that it was at Hopkins and his alma mater Loyola had just beaten them in lacrosse for like the first time in memory–maybe ever).
This was it. My grandfather (a career officer) asked him when they met about 15 years ago. Clancy didn’t say anything - just handed him what granddad described as “the thickest and heaviest pair of glasses I’d ever imagined.”
Ha, I can relate to that, thank you science for modern lens technology.
There’s a Jack Ryan reboot move coming out later this year, directed by Kenneth Branagh of all people:
Any evidence that Clancy’s later novels were computer generated? They all seemed to follow a pretty hackneyed theme. and the military jargon got old, pretty quickly.
It was Debt of Honor and Executive Orders. In Debt of Honor India has its carriers threatening Sri Lanka, so the US’s carrier battle group in the Indian Ocean can’t leave and try to attack the Japanese in the Marianas. In Executive Orders the Indians are supposed to prevent the US from resupplying Saudi Arabia from Diego Garcia (the US carriers having been lured to Pacific Ocean when the Chinese provoke a small air battle with Taiwan), but they fold pretty much the second that Jack Ryan antes.