BuzzFlash Reviews
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Hardcover)
By Andrew Bacevich
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
We've carried Bacevich books before. He's one of those big-picture thinkers and writers like Chalmers Johnson. In fact, they are both published as part of the Metropolitan Books the "American Empire Project": "today’s leading thinkers and writers – grapple with the escalating tensions and pitfalls of America’s expanding global political and military reach."
The concept of American Exceptionalism means that we are endowed with a unique and "chosen" destiny to lead the world. The emphasis of people like John Aschroft claming that Jesus is our king is another way of positing that Americans are a "chosen" people by birthright. This is a theory that is tied into many strains of American history, including the "manifest destiny" of the conquest of the West.
But "American Exceptionalism" reached its pinnacle as a foreign policy after WW II, when the U.S. emerged as the sole rival superpower to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it left the Neo-Cons looking for excuses to assert American power in the name of American Exceptionalism, when it was really the material well-being, wealth (financed now by loans to the U.S. from other nations, including China), and natural resources of other countries that -- as in ancient history -- motivated military action to secure the empire's survival, only to lead to its likely collapse as the sole superpower. China is well on its way to rivaling the U.S., along with a revived Russia, and a surging India a decade or so behind.
We BuzzFlash wrote sardonically in a recent satirical entry in "Cheney's daily diary" that he thinks that he is doing all these horrible illegal things on behalf of the American consumer. Why? Because as far as Cheney, Bush and their corporate pals see it, you are either a winner or a loser when it comes to material resources. If Americans love driving their cars to faraway jobs or a block or two to a neighbor, you got to secure the oil to allow that. Cheney is "crucifying himself" in the thornbook for our comfy lifestyle, didn't you know that?
But indeed the American consumer appetite, fed by endless marketing to sell us things that we don't need by imbuing them with the aura of making us more exciting and satiated people, is the fuel that feeds our most recent wars for empire.
This is what Bacevich has to tell us, and much more.
And he pretty much pins the tail on the donkey.
After all, think about Russia. We are not fighting the "Godless Soviet Union" anymore. We are fighting a corrupt capitalist trading partner who is now gearing up to extend its control over energy resource rich terrritories, which conflicts with the Bush/Cheney goal to dominate these areas through military force.
Military conflict is not about ideology: it is about the great game for economic dominance throught the acquisition of quasi-colonial oil and mineral rich nations. China is playing this game quite ruthlessly in Africa right now, most notably the Sudan.
Americans are either going to have to modify their lifestyles of excessive consumption and the "perfect Visa Card Vacation," or be prepared for a lot more wars to preserve 24% of the world's oil consumption, when we have only about 4.5% of the world's population.
How much is that battle worth for a few more cars, I-pods, and big screen televisions?
-- BuzzFlash
“In this utterly original book, Andrew Bacevich explains how our ‘empire of consumption’ contains the seeds of its own destruction and why our foreign policy establishment in Washington is totally incapable of coming to grips with it. Indispensable reading for every citizen.”
—Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback Trilogy
"A clear-eyed look into the abyss of America's failed wars, and the analysis needed to climb out. In Andrew Bacevich, realism and moral vision meet."
—James Carroll, author of House of War
“In The Limits of Power, Andrew Bacevich takes aim at America’s culture of exceptionalism and scores a bulls eye. He reminds us that we can destroy all that we cherish by pursuing an illusion of indestructibility.”—Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor USMC (Ret.), co-author of The General’s War and Cobra II
“Andrew Bacevich has written a razor sharp dissection of the national myths which befuddle U.S. approaches to the outside world and fuel the Washington establishment’s dangerous delusions of omnipotence. His book should be read by every concerned US citizen.”
—Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism
“In The Limits of Power, Andrew Bacevich delivers precisely what the Republic has so desperately needed: an analysis of America's woes that goes beyond the villain of the moment, George W. Bush, and gets at the heart of the delusions that have crippled the country's foreign policy for decades. Bacevich writes with a passionate eloquence and moral urgency that makes this book absolutely compelling. Everyone should read it.”
—Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror
From Publishers Weekly:
In this caustic critique of the growing American penchant for empire and sense of entitlement, Bacevich (The New American Militarism) examines the citizenry's complicity in the current economic, political, and military crisis. A retired army colonel, the author efficiently pillories the recent performance of the armed forces, decrying it as an expression of domestic dysfunction, with leaders and misguided strategies ushering the nation into a global war of no exits and no deadlines. Arguing that the tendency to blame solely the military or the Bush administration is as illogical as blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, Bacevich demonstrates how the civilian population is ultimately culpable; in citizens' appetite for unfettered access to resources, they have tacitly condoned the change of military service from a civic function into an economic enterprise. Crisp prose, sweeping historical analysis and searing observations on the roots of American decadence elevate this book from mere scolding to an urgent call for rational thinking and measured action, for citizens to wise up and put their house in order.
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