Book Review: All Fall Down
By Clayton M. McCleskey

It was a desperate, risky plan, an act of true desperation. On April 24, 1980, Operation Eagle Claw began its descent into Iranian airspace with the goal of rescuing the fifty-two hostages held at the American Embassy in Tehran. Despite meticulous attention to detail and carefully laid contingency plans, the mission went down in flames – literally – leaving 8 Americans dead and American military equipment smoldering in the desert. The tragic story of this embarrassing mission encapsulates the basic themes found Gary Sick’s All Fall Down. Operation Eagle Claw ended in failure for the same reasons that America’s diplomatic strategy proved futile. The lack of communication, reliance on complex and risky plans, devastating surprises, and general clumsiness proved fatal to both efforts.

Sick offers an intriguing look into the Carter administration’s zealous, but frustrated attempt to free the hostages. While he shies away from issuing blame for the hostage crisis, Sick does examine the “structural inadequacy of the system” in which wide-ranging failures in communication, intelligence, loyalty, and diplomacy plagued governments in both Washington and Tehran. Sick views the Iranian Hostage Crises as an overwhelming failure of diplomacy that while compounded by human error, ultimately fell victim to uncontrollable events. American efforts to end the crises encountered unrelenting political sand storms, much like the ones that doomed Eagle Claw.

After the British and U.S. backed Operation Ajax overthrew popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, the U.S. propped up the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to promote stability in the region. But the Shah’s resulting haphazard and military-driven economic expansion left many Iranians in dire shape. With the Shah growing increasingly obsessed with creating a large imperial army, and the United States consumed by foreign wars, a perfect storm began to gather in Iran. Unfortunately, it remained off the American radar screen.

Ambassador William H. Sullivan sent the first warning signal on November 2, 1978, in a dramatic message to Washington indicating that the Shah, America’s strongest ally in the region, was considering abdication. Within the next year, the Shah fled the country and radical revolutionaries over took the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The response to these actions proved futile and even humorous at times, as a chronic lack of sufficient information left many officials in the dark. A recurring theme from Sick’s point of view is the continuous break down in communication across the board, often fueled by the child-like bickering that characterizes relations between the branches of government.

Sick describes a situation in which Washington struggled to overcome division among policy makers about how to handle the deteriorating situation in Tehran. Meanwhile, a crippled Shah turned increasingly to the ill-informed Americans for guidance in how to quell the rising tide of revolutionary fervor. To compound the problem, communications between Washington and its Ambassador steadily broke down as Ambassador Sullivan began to ignore orders from his capital, thus undermining Washington’s statements of confidence in Pahlavi’s reign. Sick is quick to point out that Sullivan had no malicious intent, but nonetheless, Sullivan’s maverick disregard for messages from Washington symbolizes the general failure of the American government to maintain a unified voice.

Sick’s analysis of the hostage crises underscores the difficulties in negotiating with radical figures such as Ayatollah Khomeini, and he partially vindicates President Carter, who often bears undue burden for the hostage crises. According to Sick, Carter demonstrated a tireless devotion to freeing his citizens; however, his hands were tied by the policy reality. Yet, despite repeated setbacks, he maintained his devotion to diplomacy, which failed. He tried a military option - it also failed. Carter did the best he could with the tools at his disposal, but once the Iranian students stormed the embassy, the President’s policy options dwindled, leaving Washington crippled.

All Fall Down examines a tragic era in US foreign policy, which saw the greatest power in the Persian Gulf withdraw into itself because of a violent revolution, severely damaging America’s prestige and power in the region. Gary Sick’s book does not read like a condemnation of America’s failed policy, rather, he writes with a sense of resignation - despite all the energy poured into the Iranian crises, Carter and his colleagues failed to prevent the collapse of one of America’s greatest allies. Like Operation Eagle Claw, no one person bears the blame, a string of failures led to disaster.

Sick’s book carries an important message for today. As America stares down Iran over its nuclear ambitions, Sick’s words carry an added sense of urgency. He recognizes that the United States has a bad memory. During the revolution, Americans seemed to forget about the consequences of involvement in Operation Ajax. Likewise, Americans now run the risk of repeating the same mistake by ignoring the events of the 1970s. Gary Sick’s narrative telling of the fall of the Shah provides must-read background information needed to understand Tehran’s actions today. Americans may have a short memory, but Iranians remember America’s history of intervention in their affairs well, and America must understand yesterday in order to face the problems of today.

Book Review: Basic Economics
By Anthony Cartelli

Billions of men, women and children across the globe are adversely affected by a lack of basic economic knowledge. Soviet citizens have starved while food rotted in warehouses, developing nations wallow in poverty despite their vast resources and people sleep on cold New York sidewalks despite numerous boarded up housing units.

In Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell examines all of these conundrums and more, "thinking beyond the initial consequences of particular policies" and making "a distinction between the goals of these policies and institutions versus the incentives they create." For example, when governments keep rent rates artificially low, more people who would otherwise live with family or room mates (such as students or the elderly) rent their own apartments. Despite lower rents, building costs remain the same, making renting unprofitable for landlords. What follows is a decrease in the quality of maintenance and an eventual decline of housing units. The very people government officials sought to help, the inner city poor, are left out on cold winter sidewalks while apartments sit boarded up.

This is just one instance of many where a government's misguided notions and lack of basic economic knowledge directly affects the lives of many people. Promising catchwords and empty rhetoric may be sufficient to garner enough votes for the next election, but all too often a neglect of economic reality produces terrible repercussions which last long after the politician's term expires.

Many economic fallacies result from the aforementioned "not thinking beyond the initial consequences of particular policies" and ignoring the incentives these policies will create. For example, restricting importation of foreign steel will indeed save jobs in the domestic steel industry, but higher prices of products made with the higher-priced steel can easily cost far more jobs than the amount saved. Likewise, minimum wage laws force employers to either cut staffs or to raise prices in order to maintain a profit. The fact that only two percent of workers over 25 earn the minimum wage and that high minimum wages almost always coincide with high unemployment are often ignored. It would be nice if the government could decree a higher pay, but labor is not exempt the basic economic principle that artificially high prices cause surpluses.

Sowell explains and examines numerous economic situations with clarity and thoughtful insight. By using a mixture of real life and hypothetical examples, the reader walks away from this book with a new perspective on the world.

Throughout his writing, free market capitalism is proven again and again to be the only system in which men can prosper freely and independently as mutual traders, not as masters nor as slaves. A government which respects property rights and individual liberty results in a society where wealth is created, not redistributed in a zero-sum game.

A true scholar, Sowell objectively scrutinizes empirical evidence and cites countless historical examples when formulating his conclusions. This book is essential not just for politicians and economics majors, but all citizens. An informed citizen is a powerful one and "Basic Economics" leaves its readers with the ability to evaluate "policies and proposals in terms of their logical implications and empirical consequences."