I came across this book today
Many of the points in the excerpt resonate with me and I am thinking of getting a copy from Audible (that way I can listen to it as I walk or drive.)
Here's part of the summary from Amazon:
Has anyone read this?
if so, I'd really be interested in comments before I spend the coin to get it.
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
by Andrew Bacevich
and the writeup intrigues me. The author is a retired military man.by Andrew Bacevich
Many of the points in the excerpt resonate with me and I am thinking of getting a copy from Audible (that way I can listen to it as I walk or drive.)
Here's part of the summary from Amazon:
Bacevich describes an America beset by three crises: a crisis of profligacy, a crisis in politics and a crisis in the military. The profligacy is easily described: What was, even in the author's youth several decades ago, a thrifty society whose exports far outdistanced its imports has become a nation of debtors by every measure. Consumption has become the great American preoccupation, and consumption of imported oil the great chink in our national armor. When on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States suffered the most serious attack on its soil since 1812, our government responded by cutting taxes and urging citizens onward to more consumption. Bacevich quotes President Bush: "I encourage you all to go shopping more."
...
Bacevich's political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush's failed presidency, though "his policies have done untold damage." Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. "No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good," he writes. "The chief . . . function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members."
In Bacevich's view, the modern American government is dominated by an "ideology of national security" that perverts the Constitution and common sense. It is based on presumptions about the universal appeal of democracy and America's role as democracy's great defender and promoter that just aren't true. And we ignore the ideology whenever it suits the government of the day, by supporting anti-democratic tyrants in important countries like Pakistan and Egypt, for example. The ideology "imposes no specific obligations" nor "mandates action in support of the ideals it celebrates," but can be used by an American president "to legitimate the exercise of American power."
...
The heart of the matter, Bacevich argues, is that war can never be considered a useful political tool, because wars invariably produce unintended consequences: "War's essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War's constant companions are uncertainty and risk." New inventions cannot alter these facts, Bacevich writes. "Any notion that innovative techniques and new technologies will subject war to definitive human direction is simply whimsical," he writes, quoting Churchill approvingly: "The statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
...
Bacevich's political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush's failed presidency, though "his policies have done untold damage." Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. "No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good," he writes. "The chief . . . function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members."
In Bacevich's view, the modern American government is dominated by an "ideology of national security" that perverts the Constitution and common sense. It is based on presumptions about the universal appeal of democracy and America's role as democracy's great defender and promoter that just aren't true. And we ignore the ideology whenever it suits the government of the day, by supporting anti-democratic tyrants in important countries like Pakistan and Egypt, for example. The ideology "imposes no specific obligations" nor "mandates action in support of the ideals it celebrates," but can be used by an American president "to legitimate the exercise of American power."
...
The heart of the matter, Bacevich argues, is that war can never be considered a useful political tool, because wars invariably produce unintended consequences: "War's essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War's constant companions are uncertainty and risk." New inventions cannot alter these facts, Bacevich writes. "Any notion that innovative techniques and new technologies will subject war to definitive human direction is simply whimsical," he writes, quoting Churchill approvingly: "The statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
Has anyone read this?
if so, I'd really be interested in comments before I spend the coin to get it.
