Here’s a 700-Page Summary of Our Discussion of Command Authority

Our discussion of Command Authority, by Tom Clancy, was impressive! Thanks to Cindy for nominating the book and guiding us through it. I felt like we covered the book and the questions well. The notes I took during the discussion had a lot of missing parts, so I used the recording of the meeting and created a loose transcription. It seemed the blog post would be very long, so to to keep it within bounds, only 2 of the questions will be considered here. I hope you were able to attend the Zoom, especially if you read the book! There were 10 of us there, at least 6 having read the whole book and more who read or listened to part of the book. Joyce’s cat added a peaceful presence, sitting on the top of Joyce’s chair.

Question 4: What did you find to be unbelievable in the book and/or most authentic?

During the weeks before the meeting, Shirl asked a question about the President’s children, and Cindy mentioned it as least believable at the meeting: Jack Ryan Senior was born in 1950 and had children Sally and then Jack Ryan Jr. with wife Cathy. That is believable, but the same parents, Jack Sr. and Cathy, also had the children, Katie, age 10 in Command Authority and Kyle, age 8 in Command Authority. Assuming Command Authority was happening in approximately 2012, Cathy would have been approximately 50 years of age when she had Katie and soon Kyle. There is no mention of the Ryans adopting any children.

Ken had the most possible answer, which was that Jack Sr. might have had a very young wife when Sally and Jack Jr. were born. Do the math or read lots of old Tom Clancy books and figure it out that way.

Dennis: At the beginning of the book, if Russia attacked Estonia, NATO would have helped in a big way. Abandoning Estonia after the attack was unrealistic.

Even more odd was that the president’s son would be allowed into such dangers. In WWII, everyone was at war, so relatives of high-ups went to battle.

Pat didn’t find it unbelievable, because Jack Sr. said he was treating Jack Jr. as his own man, making his own choices. Jr. didn’t like the Secret Service staying with him, so he could have been allowed to be on his own without Secret Service assigned to stay with him.

Ken: The book does say that Jack Sr. treats Jack Jr. as an adult, which somewhat indicates that Jack Jr. called the shots. However, in real life, Jack Jr. wouldn’t have been out without Secret Service. Even Jack Jr.’s thinking that someone shadowing him could have been SS that he thought were not assigned to him was unrealistic, as he would know they were with him.

Cindy: Jr. was superhuman, reminded her of James Bond.

Joyce: Not a fan of this type of book. In the shootout in the Swiss Chalet, among automatic weapons, multiple people going into the door, and Jack Jr. gets them all one by one with a pistol, all in the forehead. In Joyce’s words…”Really!”

Cindy: It would make a good movie, though.

Claudia: Often books seem to be written in hopes of a movie.

Dennis: It’s easier to suspend disbelief in a movie than a book.

Pat: Nothing surprises me now as far as what happens in the news. The president’s son could be in dangerous fights.

Question 8: Was anything about this book particularly scary or anxiety-producing (other than the general TV news each night)?

Cindy: What scared you in Command Authority more than the daily news?

Shirl: The part where the pilot took the guys on the side of the plane, and one guy says, “Is the pilot insane, or is he trying to give me a heart attack?” That was scary but funny!

Cindy found the poisoning to be uncomfortable to read about. That’s part of why she recommended that everyone read about Navalny being poisoned. That poisoning and the one in the book were both terrible,

Joyce: The thing that scares me is that I realize how much I don’t know about what’s going on.

Cindy: There’s a lot, and if you think about it and how you can’t solve the world’s problems, it will cause you anxiety!

Shirl: On page 247, if this were true, it would show that the Russians want to cause chaos and civil strife. This brought to mind the American problems today of lots of groups diametrically opposed to each other on issues, plus misinformation and disinformation causing hate and strife. Is Russia causing all this? Who knows?

Ken: Russia might be contributing to it, but I think we’re capable of doing it all by ourselves! 

Pat: The anger even shows on the road. Everyone’s angry! It is scary that there’s so much disinformation & misinformation.

Dennis: Different people listen to different media sources, and the news is 100% different between, for example, MSNBC and FOX News. They aren’t broadcasting anything in common! 

Shirl: News isn’t based on facts any more but on what the news station wants you to know (or think).

Pat: The media want to sensationalize things. What I have found since COVID started is that on social media, people have become more angry and more negative. It’s as if there’s also a pandemic of stupidity! People are believing all the disinformation and misinformation without thinking or researching for themselves.

Cindy: Alex Jones spread false information on TV to manipulate people into believing that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012 never happened, and his lies resulted in people whose children had died at Sandy Hook receiving death threats. Fortunately, Jones backed down. (How many of Jones’s believers even heard the part of the news where Jones admitted he had lied?)

Cindy recommended a book: Between East and West. Across the Borderlands of Europe, by Anne Applebaum. Europe doesn’t have many natural borders, and there has always been conflict. The book touches on the question as to what a nation is, which is relevant to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Dennis recommended a book: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk. The author was a war correspondent, who was present during all the conflicts covered in the book.

Further discussion was about Putin putting the whole world at risk, some personal stories about refugees and helping them, the meaning and significance of “Command Authority” (the book’s title) in the armed forces and the contrasts among how it is used in different countries, e.g., the USA and Russia and in various sections of the military.

Just another day of solving the world’s problems for the Round Rock New Neighbors Book Discussion Group!