6 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2020
A President’s MemoryTO THE EDITOR:
After having read Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie’s review of Barack
Obama’s new memoir, “A Prom-
ised Land” (Nov. 29), I have a
slightly different take on the
former president’s motives.
My read is that he is respond-
ing to President Trump’s policies
— that is, the past is discussed
with an eye toward challenging
Trump. It seems less than a
completely honest or full expla-
nation of Obama’s years in the
White House since he seems to
be getting even with Trump.
My best example is President
Obama’s interaction with De-
fense Secretary Robert Gates
about foreign policy. There is an
extended discussion of why our
commitment to treaties, alliances
and the like is so crucial to our
national interests. It is gratu-
itous, but it does seem like an
implicit slap at Trump and his
disregard for America’s global
relationships.
GARY HOROWITZ
SAN FRANCISCO
TO THE EDITOR:
It is revealing that in his memoir,
Barack Obama admits that there
was an element of “self-interest,”
as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
characterizes it in her review,
when he thought that the pro-
tests outside the White House on
George W. Bush’s last day in
office were “graceless and un-
necessary.” Perhaps that ex-
plains why Obama decided not to
investigate, let alone prosecute,Bush on charges of authorizing
torture and other violations of
the law during his war on terror.
Obama betrayed his campaign
promise to ask his attorney gen-
eral to “immediately review the
information” regarding Bush and
determine if an inquiry were
warranted. Instead, once he was
president, he chose, in his words,
to “look forward as opposed to
looking backwards.”
Hopefully, President-elect Joe
Biden won’t make the same
mistake. Biden made a compara-
ble promise to the American
people that while he would not
direct his attorney general to
investigate and prosecute
Trump, if “that was the judgment
that he violated the law and
should be in fact criminally pros-
ecuted, then so be it.”
That’s what Obama should
have done and that’s what Biden
should do.
STEPHEN ROHDE
LOS ANGELESNot So SpecialTO THE EDITOR:
If you wanted a predictable
reviewer of two books on Saudi
Arabia — “Vision or Mirage,” by
David H. Rundell, and “Blood
and Oil,” by Bradley Hope and
Justin Scheck (Nov. 22) — you
got it with Kenneth M. Pollack, a
reliable advocate of the “special
relationship” with the House of
Saud. I spent my childhood in
Arabia, the son of a Foreign
Service officer, and know well the
C.I.A. and State Department line
about the Sauds. What Pollack
omits in his kid-gloves treatmentof the “foibles of M.B.S.,” the
nickname for Mohammed bin
Salman, the crown prince, is that
the “brash young autocrat” has
not only been accused of person-
ally directing the killing of a
Washington Post columnist (and
of murder, torture and impris-
onment of many other Saudis)
but he has obliterated the royal
family’s claim to legitimacy —
that they rule by consensus
among the leading princes.
Instead, M.B.S. has arbitrarily
arrested any princely rivals and
confiscated their property. He
has made powerful enemies
within his own family. And yet,
Pollack writes that M.B.S. is
“exactly the right answer” for
Arabia and the United States. Of
the two books under review, he
gives short shrift to “Blood and
Oil” because the “eye-popping
tales” unearthed by the muck-
raking journalists “often appear
plausible but it’s impossible to be
sure.” I trust the journalists any
day over the age-old naïveté of
those foreign policy “experts”
peddling nonsense about the
Sauds. The “special relationship”
is a failed relationship, and the
Biden administration would do
well to distance themselves from
this embarrassing alliance.
KAI BIRD
WASHINGTON
The writer is a Pulitzer Prize-
winning historian, author of two
books on the Middle East and a
forthcoming biography of Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter.CORRECTIONSBecause of a production error, a
portion of the review of Barack
Obama’s memoir “A Promised
Land” on Nov. 29 included col-
umns of type that were misor-
dered. The review, headlined
“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on
Barack Obama’s ‘A Promised
Land,’ ” can be read online at
nytimes.com.A review on Nov. 29 about “The
National Road,” by Tom Zoellner,
misidentified the city where the
first highway built by the federal
government ended. It stretched
from Cumberland, Md., to Van-
dalia, Ill., not Joliet, Ill.[email protected]Letters
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