A maddening, essential study in misinformation, jingoism, bad intelligence, and other hallmarks of the recent American past.
A damning account of the federal government’s response to 9/11 and the two-decade war that ensued.
National security expert and commentator Arkin works from a vast, meticulously assembled, million-word dossier he has assembled on the 9/11 attackers and from the government record to deliver a chronicle that reveals several essential institutional breakdowns. One was the failure to honor “continuity of government” regulations that require those in the constitutional succession to the presidency to travel to safe locations in the event of attack. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert complied while, “when the condition presented itself for the government to take action to increase its survival, leaders brushed the apparatus aside.” Another failure was to communicate effectively with both the nation’s allies and Russia. American military movements following 9/11 were so sudden and inexplicable that Russia interpreted them as signaling the outbreak of war between the superpowers. Meanwhile, Arkin notes, Donald Rumsfeld scribbled a revealing note just hours after the attacks: “Best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Clearly, then, the Bush administration was looking for a pretext to go to war with Iraq. The war that ensued, under the larger rubric of the war on terror, was undeclared. Even the rules of engagement on the day of the attack and its aftermath were ambiguous and variously interpreted—though Arkin reveals that it was generally understood that U.S. military aircraft were free to fire on civilian airliners suspected of posing threats. Whatever the case, Arkin writes in this relentlessly revealing narrative, 9/11 ushered in a war that has not stopped since, “evidence of the overreaction of a frustrated and humiliated Washington.” Nothing has improved in the years since, and the author clearly shows how the government’s failures on 9/11 were only recapitulated with Covid-19 as an exercise in feckless action.
A maddening, essential study in misinformation, jingoism, bad intelligence, and other hallmarks of the recent American past.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0106-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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