{"id":542,"date":"2012-08-15T03:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/?p=542"},"modified":"2019-12-03T04:58:53","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T04:58:53","slug":"drift-the-unmooring-of-american-military-power-by-rachel-maddow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/drift-the-unmooring-of-american-military-power-by-rachel-maddow\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDRIFT \u2013 The Unmooring Of American Military Power\u201d by Rachel Maddow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Book Review by George Kennedy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u201cDRIFT-\u2013-The-Unmooring-Of-American-Military-Power\u201d-by-Rachel-Maddow\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Maddow\u2019s well-researched and illuminating analysis of our increasingly costly and bloated national security system is timely as we end our military occupation of Iraq and prepare to withdraw American combatants from Afghanistan in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maddow reminds us that since the end of World War 22, the United States has invested eight-trillion-dollars in its national security and in the absence of permanent conflict, she says, \u201cthat investment finds another reason to live.\u201d The reason to live is permanent war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The value I derived from Maddow\u201ds DRIFT is that she attempts to raise public consciousness regarding our attraction to war and how we have \u201cnormalized our national wartime.\u201d In the words of the New York Times media critic David Carr, Maddow writes we\u2019ve become a nation \u201cat peace with being at war.\u201d The indictment is startling to some but not to those who have invested careers in advocacy for increasingly larger and more powerful national security institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maddow examines how we have evolved from our Founders\u2019 original intent that decisions to take this country into war be \u201cdifficult, deliberate, wrenching, and collective\u201d to war making as an almost autonomous function of the American state. It never stops!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is why DRIFT is timely: Americans today are in the throes of a national debate about determining and funding our national priorities with an economy attempting to rebound from the worst recession since the Great Depression. One political party advocates draconian austerity measures for domestic programs while holding the defense\/national security budget sacrosanct. The other political party argues for balance between defense and domestic programs. Meanwhile, Maddow notes, the military\u2019s procurement budget doubled between 2000 and 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Epilogue, Maddow writes, \u201cWe all have an interest in America having an outstanding military, but that aim is not helped by exempting the military from the competition for resources. With no check on its growth and no rival for its political influence, the superfunded, superempowered national security state has become a leviathan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it\u2019s privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. Overall, we\u2019re weaker for it and at enormous cost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you accept the idea \u2013 or take the long view \u2013 that the U.S. will be involved in persistent conflict to justify the existence of, and to maintain, the world\u2019s most proficient and costly military machine, you need to read DRIFT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel Maddow has hosted the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC since 2008. Before that, she was at Air America Radio for the duration of that underappreciated enterprise. She has a doctorate in politics from Oxford and a bachelor\u2019s degree in public policy from Stanford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Review by George Kennedy Maddow\u2019s well-researched and illuminating analysis of our increasingly costly and bloated national security system is timely as we end our military occupation of Iraq and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bookshelf"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgealfredkennedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}