National. Security. Miasma.

I just finished reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. It was well-written, gripping and mind-bogglingly thorough, despite ranging across the Middle East, the United States, Pakistan, various governments, tribes, terrorist cells, coups, government agencies, budgets, technologies, and interwoven timelines.

I've been thinking about why this book, about the origins of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, has been on my list of books to read. After all, we already live in a dense miasma of news about national security (such as, I never want to hear the phrase "Dubai Ports World" again). Every day, every channel, radio program, and magazine has inexhaustible streams of news about developments abroad, about too many places and people, including Palestine, Pakistan, Pashtuns, Predators, ports, plutonium, and so on.

Reading the book was actually rather empowering at first -- because here is a well-written book that puts all of these people, events and places in context -- and then exhausting towards the end, if only because reading it made me realize how much of our collective thought and energy is wrapped up in fears of things, places, and events that we can't possibly understand yet, without time and space for reflection. For example, I picked up the New Yorker this week, and read an article about government lawyers opposing the administration's desire to torture detainees, and then an hour or so later, I forgot if it was part of the book -- my brain just can't resolve the historical events leading to terrorism with what is happening now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Washington D.C., and so on.

The book is terrific, but I'm not sure if I can recommend it as relaxing or escapist in any way. One of the best paragraphs, though, comes in the afterword:

"In any event, it seems too early to radically reinterpret such a recent history, or to reallocate proportions of blame and responsibility.... In such a tempestuous present, an examination of the past seems a relative luxury. It is for now far easier for a researcher to explain how and why September 11 happened than it is to explain the aftermath."