The hardest part of a policy book has to be the last chapter.
Having diagnosed an important problem and traced its evolution, the
author is expected to sketch out a solution at the end. Books about
important, tough problems frequently end with weak closing
chapters. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's Drift is no
exception.
Maddow promises a lot but unfortunately can't deliver. In the introduction, she puts her thesis starkly: American military policy "isn't much related to its stated justifications anymore....We're not directing that policy anymore; it just follows its own course." Fortunately, though, it "is fixable."
Don't get your hopes up on that last part.
Maddow opens by sneering—rightly—at the absurd militarization of her western Massachussetts town in the Homeland Security era. (In her tiny town, only seven houses were on public water, but just to be safe, after 9/11 the government paid to wrap the pump house in chain-link fence and barbed wire. But they neglected to cut the grass there, turning it into an overgrown—but Homeland Secure!—eyesore.) From there on, the chapters are stapled-together polemics about the foibles and screwups in American defense policy. They are decent polemics, readably written. They are not, unfortunately, a coherent explanation for why America has drifted away from small-R republicanism and toward empire, much less an explanation for how to turn the tide.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/19/rachel-maddow-abbreviates-history
Maddow promises a lot but unfortunately can't deliver. In the introduction, she puts her thesis starkly: American military policy "isn't much related to its stated justifications anymore....We're not directing that policy anymore; it just follows its own course." Fortunately, though, it "is fixable."
Don't get your hopes up on that last part.
Maddow opens by sneering—rightly—at the absurd militarization of her western Massachussetts town in the Homeland Security era. (In her tiny town, only seven houses were on public water, but just to be safe, after 9/11 the government paid to wrap the pump house in chain-link fence and barbed wire. But they neglected to cut the grass there, turning it into an overgrown—but Homeland Secure!—eyesore.) From there on, the chapters are stapled-together polemics about the foibles and screwups in American defense policy. They are decent polemics, readably written. They are not, unfortunately, a coherent explanation for why America has drifted away from small-R republicanism and toward empire, much less an explanation for how to turn the tide.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/19/rachel-maddow-abbreviates-history
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