Favorite book in Tom Clancy's Ryanverse.

[Rackhir]

Sorry to take so long to get back to you. It took a while to locate a copy of the book and then track the quote down.

If you're referring to his plan in The Sum of All Fears to stabalize Israel and Palastine, that didn't stop the United Islamic Republic from launching a war against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, did it? So you can hardly say that Jack Ryan brought peace to the middle east.

You don't consider getting the Palestinians and Israelies to live together in peace to be miracle enough? I haven't read Executive Orders, or wait is that the one with the "Bombing the One Bad Guy Leader and Ending the War" fantasy? After all it was soooo easy when we tried to do that to Sadam or Milosovich. You know if it wasn't for books left behind at vacation houses, I wouldn't have read anything past "The Sum of All Fears". I guess it's one of those things where you read something horrible, swear you'll never read anything like it/by that author and then several years later in a fit of optimisim and forgotten pain you read something again. I was shocked I must admit to realize how many of his books I'd read over the years.

No, he didn't.

I'll grant it's probably not directly stated in those terms, but given that Clancy is a very right wing conservative, I would be surprised that Jack would follow any other sort of economic policy. Also, Jack can do no wrong and the only time I recall any problems with the US economy was when "Bad People" were making things go wrong. I definitely saw references to tax cuts helping the economy, a pecular fetish of the right wing (especially when running a war and with massive deficits being run up). But that was kind of a cheap shot I'll admit.

No, he didn't.
No, he didn't.

Okay, I was stretching things a liiiitttleee bit here, but it did seem (to me) to be a side effect of Jack's overwhelming aura of purity and goodness. You know how the cardboard cutout bad guys always get foiled and crushed, while only good things happen to the good guys?

Jack Ryan's most prominent traits are his honesty and integrety (as well as his intelligence), he obeys the law and always tries to do the right thing. This is not an uncommon character archaetype in literature.

This is true, but he is also supposed to be a human being. Plaster saints might be that pure and without fault, but people are not. Especially for someone in office, since politics is driven by compromise and campaign donations. I realize that Jack is of course independently wealthy since he's never wrong and this makes raking it in on the stock market trivial. But even real life wealthy candidates still take campaign contributions.

Speaking of wealth, another bit that really cracked me up in "The Bear and The Dragon" was when Clancy was describing how all of his cabinet heads were free of corruption since they were all independently wealthy and (of course) had earned it all through the sweat of their brows. Of course wealthy people would never get that way through doing anything less than the upright moral thing, nor abuse their power to get more money. Just like the heads of Enron, Global Crossing, Bill Gates and many other already wealthy heads of large corporations didn't.

I must not have been paying very close attention to the book on my last reading of it, because I don't recall any such scene.

Well, I can understand missing it. It is about a half page in an 1100 page monstrosity. In the standard sized paperback edition it's on page 209, about 2/3rds of the way down the page. I did misremember it slightly, Jack was thinking to himself not chewing out somebody. So here's the quote in full.

"After all, congress made the law. Congress made government policy, and those things couldn't be wrong could they? Yet another proof that the drafters of the constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They'd assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they'd been. One could almost hear the "Ooops!" emanating from all those old graves. The people who'd drafted the consistution had sat in a room dominated by George Washington Himself, and whatever honor they'd lacked he'd probably provided from his own abundant supply."

While it's difficult to knock George, that paragraph displays a total ignorance of the history of our government and how it came to be. Or possibly it is another manifestation of Clancy's severely biased view of politics. Most likely both.

Now I will grant that Clancy can write a rollicking good action tale, when he gets around to it, but his characters are almost never more than carboard cutouts. The good guys are always pure good, ultra competent at anything they need to do and (essentially) never make any mistakes, The bad guys are without any redeeming qualities and usually blind to any faults or mistakes they might be making. Also anyone who isn't in Jack's court, is almost invariably liberal, wrong, shortsighted, cowardly, pigheaded, malicious, selfish and hoplessly naive. There is little I find to be more obnoxious that when a writer is using their story to club you over the head with their point of view, especially when it's an extremely simplistic, biased and unrealistic view.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Hunt for Red October, easily. And there has been a precipitous decline since Sum of All Fears. I don't think anyone even bothers to look at his manuscripts, much less actually edit them, before publication anymore.

Red Rabbit was a piece of dreck, easily one of the worst things I've ever read. I don't think I would have finished it except I was housesitting for the weekend and didn't have anything else to do. Not only was it full of historical revisionism and inaccuracies, it was full of repeated text, as if Clancy had decided to move a paragraph to a different part of the book and forgot to delete the original passage.

 

[Rackhir]

Of the choices presented, I have to go with my first Clancy book: Hunt for Red October.

But as others have said, my all-time favorite is Red Storm Rising.

On a hill in Iceland:
"We safe, Sergeant?"
"Sure, Lieutenant, I haven't felt this safe since Beirut."

On a military plane headed to the US:
"The plane's crew had objected to the civilian until a two-star general of Marines explained to them over the radio that the Corps would take it as a personal matter..."


Now you've done it - gotta read this one again.

I believe that Red Storm Rising was losely based on a series of wargames that Larry Bond (of Harpoon fame) held. If you enjoyed RSR, I would highly recomend reading "Cauldron" (US vs France!!!), "Red Phoenix" (korea) and "Vortex" (South Africa) by Larry Bond. They are probably the best novels of the military variety that I've read.

 

[buzzard]

Rahkir, you know what I don't get?
Why the heck do you keep reading the books? It's more than evident that you :
A) Don't like Clancy
B) Don't like his books
C) Don't like his characters.

Do you just read the books so you can complain? You list off a whole series of books you despise.

When I find an author which I abhor, I stop reading him. Did this concept never occur to you?

buzzard

 

[Rackhir]

Rahkir, you know what I don't get?
Why the heck do you keep reading the books? It's more than evident that you :
A) Don't like Clancy
B) Don't like his books
C) Don't like his characters.

Do you just read the books so you can complain? You list off a whole series of books you despise.

When I find an author which I abhor, I stop reading him. Did this concept never occur to you?

buzzard

Well like I said, the last 2 books I read were on vacation and were the only things readable available. That plus the amnesia that sets in after not reading someone for a couple of years, the "He couldn't still be that bad" sort of effect. Mostly I stopped reading clancy novels after the Sum of All Fears. The last two clancy novels were so bad, that yes it is quite fun to complain about them. It's a bit like MST3k.

 

[buzzard]

I must be odd. When I read a bad book it marks me. I make damn sure I remember who the author is and avoid him like the plague. Of course when I find a bad enough book, I simply don't finish it. Of course if there is nothing else to read, I might see your point. Then again I'd probably go out of my way to find something, but I would hate to have a vacation ruined by a bad book.

buzzard

 

[Rackhir]

I must be odd. When I read a bad book it marks me. I make damn sure I remember who the author is and avoid him like the plague. Of course when I find a bad enough book, I simply don't finish it. Of course if there is nothing else to read, I might see your point. Then again I'd probably go out of my way to find something, but I would hate to have a vacation ruined by a bad book.

buzzard

It did take two or three days before I became desparate enough to read TB&TD and I have not read any Clancy books since then which was about 4 years ago.

Tom Clancy isn't bad in the sense of just being poorly written or dull, like a bad textbook. He's outragously bad in the way that a particularly silly movie is. It's like Highlander II, that was a movie that was so monumentally stupid, illogical and confused that it is actually worth viewing once just so you can experience the whole train wreck. It's that whole "Can it possibly get any worse?" kind of thing. Besides as I said originally, when you get to the actual action sequences, Clancy is an enjoyable writer.

In general I read so quickly, that I will usually finish a book no matter how bad, unless it commits the far worse sin of being dull. Bad I can deal with, dull is a far greater sin. However silly some of Clancy's stuff may be, dull is not generally one of his flaws.

 

[Dark Jezter]

You don't consider getting the Palestinians and Israelies to live together in peace to be miracle enough? I haven't read Executive Orders, or wait is that the one with the "Bombing the One Bad Guy Leader and Ending the War" fantasy? After all it was soooo easy when we tried to do that to Sadam or Milosovich. You know if it wasn't for books left behind at vacation houses, I wouldn't have read anything past "The Sum of All Fears". I guess it's one of those things where you read something horrible, swear you'll never read anything like it/by that author and then several years later in a fit of optimisim and forgotten pain you read something again. I was shocked I must admit to realize how many of his books I'd read over the years.

The war was ended after the UIR armored divisions were thuroughly whipped by a combination of US, Saudi, and Kuwaiti armed forces. The bombing of the Ayatollah who started the war was accomplished with the aid of Russian intelligence services, who gave the United States the location of where he was staying. According to you, though, we should find this concept completely implausable because Hussein and Milosovic (who had the good sense to keep hidden) were more difficult to nab.

As buzzard pointed out, you'd think that if you found Clancy's books so horrible you'd simply stop reading them. I simply can't comprehend the "I hate this author/actor/director/music artist, but I'm going to keep monitoring what they produce so I can keep ranting about them" mindset.

I'll grant it's probably not directly stated in those terms, but given that Clancy is a very right wing conservative, I would be surprised that Jack would follow any other sort of economic policy. Also, Jack can do no wrong and the only time I recall any problems with the US economy was when "Bad People" were making things go wrong. I definitely saw references to tax cuts helping the economy, a pecular fetish of the right wing (especially when running a war and with massive deficits being run up). But that was kind of a cheap shot I'll admit.

Now wait just a minute: Didn't you just say that you hadn't read Executive Orders? If so, you probably just have second-hand knowledge of the storyline, which explains your total ignorance on this subject.

Okay, I was stretching things a liiiitttleee bit here, but it did seem (to me) to be a side effect of Jack's overwhelming aura of purity and goodness. You know how the cardboard cutout bad guys always get foiled and crushed, while only good things happen to the good guys?

Only good things happen to the good guys, eh? So I guess that John Clark's (John Kelly at the time) girlfriend being brutally raped and murdered, or Sally Ryan being seriously wounded by an attempted assassination, or Jack Ryan's marriage being nearly destroyed by a smear campaign, or most of the US government heads being killed by a mad JAL pilot don't count?

This is true, but he is also supposed to be a human being. Plaster saints might be that pure and without fault, but people are not. Especially for someone in office, since politics is driven by compromise and campaign donations. I realize that Jack is of course independently wealthy since he's never wrong and this makes raking it in on the stock market trivial. But even real life wealthy candidates still take campaign contributions.

What campaign? Jack Ryan wasn't elected when he assumed the presidency, and ran unopposed in the following election because the presidential candidates of the two major political parties were killed when the 747 crashed into the Senate. Not much need for campaign contributions when you don't need to run a campaign to get elected.

Speaking of wealth, another bit that really cracked me up in "The Bear and The Dragon" was when Clancy was describing how all of his cabinet heads were free of corruption since they were all independently wealthy and (of course) had earned it all through the sweat of their brows. Of course wealthy people would never get that way through doing anything less than the upright moral thing, nor abuse their power to get more money. Just like the heads of Enron, Global Crossing, Bill Gates and many other already wealthy heads of large corporations didn't.

And the Oscar for most nonsensical leftist rant about how rich people are evil and corrupt goes to...

No, the reason his staff are stated as being incorrupt is because they have no political ambition. None of them wanted to work for the government, but Jack pressured them into it because he needed people who knew how to get things done. Tom Clancy never states that wealthy people are incorruptable, not once.

Well, I can understand missing it. It is about a half page in an 1100 page monstrosity. In the standard sized paperback edition it's on page 209, about 2/3rds of the way down the page. I did misremember it slightly, Jack was thinking to himself not chewing out somebody. So here's the quote in full.

"After all, congress made the law. Congress made government policy, and those things couldn't be wrong could they? Yet another proof that the drafters of the constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They'd assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they'd been. One could almost hear the "Ooops!" emanating from all those old graves. The people who'd drafted the consistution had sat in a room dominated by George Washington Himself, and whatever honor they'd lacked he'd probably provided from his own abundant supply."

While it's difficult to knock George, that paragraph displays a total ignorance of the history of our government and how it came to be. Or possibly it is another manifestation of Clancy's severely biased view of politics. Most likely both.

I don't think that passage is as horribly inaccurate as you make it out to be, at least from my own studies in American history. It is over-simplified, but not something I would dwell on.

Now I will grant that Clancy can write a rollicking good action tale, when he gets around to it, but his characters are almost never more than carboard cutouts. The good guys are always pure good, ultra competent at anything they need to do and (essentially) never make any mistakes, The bad guys are without any redeeming qualities and usually blind to any faults or mistakes they might be making. Also anyone who isn't in Jack's court, is almost invariably liberal, wrong, shortsighted, cowardly, pigheaded, malicious, selfish and hoplessly naive. There is little I find to be more obnoxious that when a writer is using their story to club you over the head with their point of view, especially when it's an extremely simplistic, biased and unrealistic view.

Yeah, and Aaron Sorkin can write snappy dialogue, if you can ignore the fact that The American President and The West Wing are full of Marvel supervillain-like evil Republicans and fine, upstanding, good-natured Democrats who know what's best for everyone.

It's quite obvious that a lot of your venom for Mr. Clancy is coming from the fact that you disagree with his politics, which brings us back to the question: Why keep reading Tom Clancy if you find his books so horrible?

 

[Rackhir]

The war was ended after the UIR armored divisions were thuroughly whipped by a combination of US, Saudi, and Kuwaiti armed forces. The bombing of the Ayatollah who started the war was accomplished with the aid of Russian intelligence services, who gave the United States the location of where he was staying. According to you, though, we should find this concept completely implausable because Hussein and Milosovic (who had the good sense to keep hidden) were more difficult to nab.

Yes, we should find that bombing implausible, remember the bombing of that that kicked off Desert Storm II and several other attempts to "get" Saddam which included bombing a "command bunker" that didn't even exist. They were based on "intelligence information" as well. My point is that while it makes for a nice fantasy it's never that easy in the real world.

While the US might not have an offical policy of trying to kill enemy leaders, anyone who is running a country that's involved in a shooting war with the US would have to be pretty stupid not to make some serious efforts to hide their location.

As buzzard pointed out, you'd think that if you found Clancy's books so horrible you'd simply stop reading them. I simply can't comprehend the "I hate this author/actor/director/music artist, but I'm going to keep monitoring what they produce so I can keep ranting about them" mindset.
....
It's quite obvious that a lot of your venom for Mr. Clancy is coming from the fact that you disagree with his politics, which brings us back to the question: Why keep reading Tom Clancy if you find his books so horrible?

See my post just above.

Now wait just a minute: Didn't you just say that you hadn't read Executive Orders? If so, you probably just have second-hand knowledge of the storyline, which explains your total ignorance on this subject.

Actually, I said " ...Wait was that the one with the "Bomb the Evil Leader fantasy". It had slipped my mind that I had read the book and I was unsure of the title.

Only good things happen to the good guys, eh? So I guess that John Clark's (John Kelly at the time) girlfriend being brutally raped and murdered, or Sally Ryan being seriously wounded by an attempted assassination, or Jack Ryan's marriage being nearly destroyed by a smear campaign, or most of the US government heads being killed by a mad JAL pilot don't count?

I will confess I've never read any of the John Clark books. However if that's the sum total of the bad things that's happened to Jack Ryan over the course of 10 books. I'd say a serious wounding (with a full recovery) and a smear campaign are pretty much nothing.

The wiping out of the US gov put Jack Ryan in the President's office, which can't be a bad thing given that he has the strength of 10 men because his heart is pure. Besides they were all politicians who are corrupt, venial and self serving because they aren't Jack Ryan.

And getting on to nitpicking statement, the JAL pilot wasn't mad in any sense of the word. He was quite calm and followed a classicly japanese method of avenging a wrong (from their point of view).

What campaign? Jack Ryan wasn't elected when he assumed the presidency, and ran unopposed in the following election because the presidential candidates of the two major political parties were killed when the 747 crashed into the Senate. Not much need for campaign contributions when you don't need to run a campaign to get elected.

Ah, I had forgotten the details of his campaign. Of course Jack is so true and honorable, how could anyone oppose him.

And the Oscar for most nonsensical leftist rant about how rich people are evil and corrupt goes to...

No, the reason his staff are stated as being incorrupt is because they have no political ambition. None of them wanted to work for the government, but Jack pressured them into it because he needed people who knew how to get things done. Tom Clancy never states that wealthy people are incorruptable, not once.

I don't belive that being wealthy inherently makes people evil.

However, happy laid back people are rarely interested in doing the kinds of things that make people rich. Also getting rich is noticably easier if you are ruthless, corrupt and put your own interests ahead of anyone elses. So there is a strong tendency in that direction.

Very few people have gotten rich simply because they are a nice guy. Steve Wozniac is about the only one I can think of and he blew a lot of his money helping out other people.

My point was in any case that simply being wealthy hardly makes people immune to temptation or corruption. As Clancy was clearly stating it was one reason why they were immune to corruption. People who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, obviously are willing to do things that will earn vast amounts of wealth.

I don't think that passage is as horribly inaccurate as you make it out to be, at least from my own studies in American history. It is over-simplified, but not something I would dwell on.

You need to read some better books on the topic then. Our Founding Fathers, assumed that the people who followed them would be corrupt, self serving and power hungry. One of their main goals in crafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights was to contain and if possible neutralize these tendencies. It is specifically why our government is built around a division of powers. So that there would be other forces in government that could block or moderate the actions of the highly imperfect humans.

Yeah, and Aaron Sorkin can write snappy dialogue, if you can ignore the fact that The American President and The West Wing are full of Marvel supervillain-like evil Republicans and fine, upstanding, good-natured Democrats who know what's best for everyone.

Actually I don't like those shows either. I dislike simplistic one dimesional characters, knocking over cardboard villians. In fact it's gotten to be one of my major complaints with some of my favorite authors who have been getting rather sloppy in that area.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Yes, we should find that bombing implausible, remember the bombing of that that kicked off Desert Storm II and several other attempts to "get" Saddam which included bombing a "command bunker" that didn't even exist. They were based on "intelligence information" as well. My point is that while it makes for a nice fantasy it's never that easy in the real world.

Which is why it's fiction. Besides, I don't find it as implausable as you do that the US would actually be able to succeed in taking out a hostile leader. Leaders of organizations and nations are just as vulnerable to bullets and air strikes as everyone else. If they can be found (and yes, they can be found), they can be killed.

While the US might not have an offical policy of trying to kill enemy leaders, anyone who is running a country that's involved in a shooting war with the US would have to be pretty stupid not to make some serious efforts to hide their location.

In Executive Orders, the Ryan Doctorine changed the Executive Order created during the Ford Administration and made the killing the leaders of enemy nation states acceptable in times of war. The reasoning behind it being that if it's okay to kill the young private who is simply obeying orders, why can't it be acceptable to kill the leaders who sent him off to die?

The reason the Ayatollah in Executive Orders didn't keep moving from location to location was because he had good reason to believe that there were no American stealth aircraft anywhere near the middle east. The American military bases in the United States and Europe were all quarantined because of the biological attack on the US. Unbenknownst to the Ayatollah, a flight of F-117s filled with uninfected pilots flew north of Europe and landed in Russia (because the Russians didn't want him to control the entire Middle East any more than we did). From the Russian air field, the bombing was staged, with Clark and Chavez on the ground guiding the bombs with laser designators.

By the time the bombing happened, however, the war was already decided. Killing off the leader of the UIR was just the finishing touch in the conflict.

I will confess I've never read any of the John Clark books. However if that's the sum total of the bad things that's happened to Jack Ryan over the course of 10 books. I'd say a serious wounding (with a full recovery) and a smear campaign are pretty much nothing.

So, what is an acceptable number of bad things to happen to Jack Ryan?

The wiping out of the US gov put Jack Ryan in the President's office, which can't be a bad thing given that he has the strength of 10 men because his heart is pure. Besides they were all politicians who are corrupt, venial and self serving because they aren't Jack Ryan.

Al Trent and Sam Fellows are only two of the good politicians from Tom Clancy's Ryanverse. Roger Durling, the guy who was President before Jack Ryan, was also a generally good guy. Arnie Van Damm is another career politician who is one of the good guys.

Of course, there are greedy, corrupt, and self-serving politicians in the Ryanverse as well. Edward Kealty being the most obvious example.

And getting on to nitpicking statement, the JAL pilot wasn't mad in any sense of the word. He was quite calm and followed a classicly japanese method of avenging a wrong (from their point of view).

After Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon, he calmly sat down and started reading Catcher in the Rye. I'd still call him mad.

The JAL pilot who ran his 747 into the Capitol building snapped after his brother and his son were both killed in the brief conflict between Japan and America. When he decided to attack America, he first killed his co-pilot (a man with whom he'd worked for years) to stop any possible interferance.

Ah, I had forgotten the details of his campaign. Of course Jack is so true and honorable, how could anyone oppose him.

The two major political parties couldn't add any new candidates to the ballot because their presidential candidates were killed after the primaries. So Jack was only running against third-party candidates and write-ins. His election (couldn't exactly call it reelection because he was never elected in the first place) was pretty much a guaranteed successs.

I don't belive that being wealthy inherently makes people evil.

However, happy laid back people are rarely interested in doing the kinds of things that make people rich. Also getting rich is noticably easier if you are ruthless, corrupt and put your own interests ahead of anyone elses. So there is a strong tendency in that direction.

Very few people have gotten rich simply because they are a nice guy. Steve Wozniac is about the only one I can think of and he blew a lot of his money helping out other people.

My point was in any case that simply being wealthy hardly makes people immune to temptation or corruption. As Clancy was clearly stating it was one reason why they were immune to corruption. People who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, obviously are willing to do things that will earn vast amounts of wealth.

The wealthy people I've worked with and known are quite different then the ones you've met, apparantly. Everybody I've met who has became rich did so by working harder and working smarter than most other people. They often started out working long hours with a low-paying position, working weekends, doing lots of research into different investments (and more often than not making a few bad investments at some point), carefully keeping track of how they spend their own money, coming into work early and not leaving until after it was time for them to leave, etc. Even after becoming wealthy, a high number of them still work 10 (or more) hour days and work weekends.

They did not spend hours a day surfing the internet, nor did they watch a few hours of TV or play video games every night after getting home from work. They did not get drunk on the weekends and come into work on Monday morning with a hangover.

Granted, there are a few people who become rich easily because of family connections , incredible luck, or shady dealings, but the vast majority got to where they did through lots of hard work, smart thinking, and sacrifice.

And I still don't get where you're coming up with the idea that Tom Clancy is saying that wealthy people are immune to corruption (more than a few corrupt, wealthy individuals have appeared in his stories). I've never seen any such claim in any of his books. If you can find one, though, I'll be happy to take this statement back.