Every American needs to read this book, and read it soon. Bacevich, a retired Army Colonel and now History Prof in Boston, puts forth the case that we, the American people, have allowed our present economic, military and political status to come about through our own non-involvement and obsession with consumption at any price. It is a convincing argument and although I was somewhat dismayed that the conclusion settled for hopelessness with a touch of condescension, the book as a whole is a grand charge for change....and not change from DC...but changing our ways of living before we drown in our own profligacy. ( )

Interesting take on American policy ( )

Bacevich argues that from Reagan through Bush (and probably Obama though he was only a candidate when this was written), a consistent sense of American exceptionalism coupled with the belief that military power can solve all problems has disguised the real source of all of our international crises, which is that we are a shallow and profligate people, willing to accept the most venal lies as long as we have secure access to lots of cheap oil. I rate books more on the ideas they conjure up rather than whether or not I agree with them and in those terms I rate this highly. But use Kagan's Of Paradise and Power (or something similar) as a counter-weight.

Bacevich's book, which is dedicated to his soldier son killed in Iraq, argues that the U.S. is no longer a true republic, and that it is now governed by an “imperial presidency” and is “a de facto one-party state” in which a Congress marked by pervasive “corruption” is ruled by “an Incumbents’ Party” and politics is theater.

The “national security state,” Bacevich believes, is marked by failures: 1) to avert 9/11; 2) to bring to justice its architects; 3) to respond appropriately to Islamic extremism; 4) in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Bacevich shows that George W. Bush did not break with past tradition, he has affirmed a long-standing ideology of national security informed by four convictions with deep roots in American history: 1) History has a purpose; 2) The U.S. embodies freedom; 3) American success is guaranteed by Providence; 4) Freedom must prevail everywhere for the American way of life to endure. This highly elastic ideology, now “hardwired into the American psyche,” serves chiefly to legitimate action of the American executive. The ideology serves the “self-selecting, self-perpetuating camarilla” [i.e. cabal]—a power élite of “hawks” in control of national security policy since WWII.

The gargantuan national security state shrouds itself in secrecy and lies. It has done “more harm than good.” The Bay of Pigs fiasco led Kennedy to realize that the system was out of control and he changed leadership, revamped institutions (McNamara, Bundy) and worked around the apparatus (e.g. did not use the NSC in the Cuban missile crisis, instead devising a small extra-constitutional group, an approach often replicated since). The actual institutions of the national security state undergo perpetual reform while those who hold power regard them as “not partners but competitors” and “the American people remain in the dark,” the apparatus remaining in place because it provides legitimacy for “political arrangements that are a source of status, influence, and considerable wealth.”

We should learn 1) “[T]he ideology of national security, American exceptionalism in its most baleful form, poses an insurmountable obstacle to sound policy”; 2) “Americans can no longer afford to underwrite a government that does not work”; 3) “To attend any longer to this elite would be madness . . . today’s Wise Men . . . have forfeited any further claim to trust." ( )

I read this book based on its title, and wish that I had not taken the time. The book is actually a collection of impressions that combine into an anti-war diatribe. Its subtitle the End of American Exceptionalism is also misleading. In Bacevich’s view, that exceptionalism was described by Reagan’s “City on a Hill” and if it existed it has vanished along with America’s status as a superpower.

He grabs pieces of history, some of Niebuhr’s views, and his own anti-war bitterness into an attack of the national security apparatus. Years ago, Eisenhower’s farewell warning about the military-industrial complex was a much shorter and more coherent statement of the same position.

My half-star rating is simply because there is no lower value. Unless you love attacks on America, avoid the book. ( )