by Rachel Maddow.
This was the first book by Rachel Maddow, published in 2012, when the U.S. had fought in Afghanistan for about 11 years. I had read it shortly after it was published. Now, in the month of September, 2021, just after the U.S. officially ended it longest war on August 30, 2021, I thought it worthwhile to read the book again, to refresh my memory of what Rachel told us in her book about the “unmooring of American Military Power.” Rachel Maddow has hosted her show on MSNBC since 2008. Her show has, from time to time, been rated the most watched show on cable news, the most recent being the month of January 2021. Her opening monologue can be 20 minutes long, without commercial interruption, which is rare in cable news programs. She often opened with some historical event which had bearing on the news of the day. For example, in one of her recent broadcast, she told of the origin of the debt ceiling statue, which was enacted in 1917, near the end of World War I, for the purpose of exerting congressional control on the debt incurred by the US Federal Government. We are still living with the drama of waiting to see whether Congress will raise the debt ceiling every year. The book started by recounting the recognition by our founding fathers that, since time immemorial, the glory of winning a war was always tempting to individuals in power, and therefore the decision to make war should not rest with one person. In their wisdom, Article I of the U.S. Constitution states that the declaration of war resides in Congress and not the President. In Article II, it states that the President is the Commander-in-Chief. Up to and through the Korean War, the statement in the Constitution that engagement in a war has to be declared by Congress was abided by all U.S. Presidents. After the Korean War, although the U.S. was engaged in numerous wars, large and small, none of them was declared by Congress. The first of these was the Vietnam War, which began with President Kennedy, through Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and ended with President Ford. At the height of the Vietnam war, about 550,000 American soldiers were involved. President Nixon refrained from full mobilization of the reserves, as this would vastly interrupt civilian lives and substantially raised opposition to the war. Nixon believed that, “….. if the president approves something for national security…then the president’s decision is the one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating the law.” In a less brazen way, this viewpoint was also shared by President Reagan, who was supported by the legal opinion of his Attorney General Edwin Meese. Meese claimed that, not only President Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, but also his Iran-Contra arms for hostage deal were legal, even though a number of folks working under Reagan were indicted for their roles in the Iran-Contra affair (secretary of defense, two national security advisers, an assistant secretary of state, and three CIA officials). After the Vietnam War, Congress tried to reclaim its war-making power by enacting the War Powers Act in 1974. It also introduced the Abrams Doctrine and the Boland Amendment. The idea of Abrams Doctrine, also known as the Total Force Policy, is that, if we are going to war, we go to war as a nation. The Guard and Reserves would no longer be shelters to avoid service but rather integral parts of the nation’s fighting capacity. The Boland Amendment was enacted between 1982 and 1984. It prohibited the federal government from providing military support "for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua." It aimed to prevent CIA funding of rebels opposed to the revolutionary provisional junta. It sought to block Reagan administration support for the Contra rebels. However, Presidents Reagan, H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush and Obama were able to go around these by means of privatization of the military, by multiple tours of active duty, and by ingenious interpretation of the Boland amendment (per E. Meese). The cumulative evasive actions led to the result that only a tiny fraction of the population was affected by a war, making the country tolerant of perpetual wars, and increasing the difficulty of veterans integrating back into civilian lives. “We have become a nation ‘at peace with being at war’.” There is a chilling account on how the military lacks the expertise to maintain the nuclear stockpile because the present generation of engineers do not have the knowledge of the engineers of previous generations who designed these devices. There were accidents involving missing nukes, several of which still have not been recovered. One is presumably in the bottom of the ocean, too deep to be retrieved. Another fell in a marshy field in Faro, which was so muddy, so quick-sandy, that excavating equipment sunk into the crater before they could get the bomb out of the hole. After telling the story of the unmooring of American Military Power, the author makes a number of recommendations at the end of the book to undo the unmooring. There are eight items in her “to-do-list”. All of them make sense. Unfortunately, I doubt progress will be made of any of the items by our Congressional representatives anytime soon. If there is any hope of action on her recommendations, Rachel Maddow may need to run for the House of Representatives, or better yet, run to be the next Senator from California when the vacancy arises.
I will end with a remark about President Reagan, and a quiz question for the reader. Remark about President Reagan: “When Ronald Reagan spoke a thing aloud, he believed it forever and for always……..no amount of disproof would cause him to alter his belief in it………… Facts and contrary evidence did not get in the way of a good story” Quiz question: The following was spoken by a leader of congress about a former guy. “He only works three and a half hours a day. He doesn’t do his homework. He doesn’t read his briefing papers. It is sinful that this man is President of the United States. He lacks the knowledge that he should have, on every sphere, whether it’s the domestic or whether it’s the international sphere.” Which former guy was the statement referred to?
(Source: Wikipedia)
U.S. Military Spending/Defense Budget (Source: Wikipedia)
Comparison with other countries, 2019 (Source: Wikipedia)
Link to Amazon Review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2VENO9LVDVHWD/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B007OZVJMW
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