I am sure I will lose all credibility in the eyes of anyone reading this if I admit I originally picked it up due to my giant and long-standing crush on Rachel Maddow. Let's not say that, then, shall we?Drift is, basically, a book about how come it's so easy for the US to go to war these days, which I have to admit is something that I have occasionally wondered. It's well-written, well-supported, and Maddow's style is extremely fun and makes the book as a whole pleasant to read.Highlights for me included the explanation of the entire Iran-Contra affair (I was, um, too young to be aware of it at the time, so I have always wondered what was going on) and the best (or at least most horrifying) chapter, a list of all the inadvertent and horrifying things that have happened with the US nuclear missile stockpile, including accidentally flying live nukes across the country in 2007. Oh, and dirty-bombing Spain and Greenland. It's a lot like Dr. Strangelove, actually, and I would happily read an entire book about Boneheaded Nuclear Program Decisions. But only if Rachel Maddow writes it.Overall, well done, and I would definitely recommend it.

My dream Democratic presidential ticket for 2016 would include Rachel Maddow. Im thinking if Joe Biden doesnt want to do it (and I dont think he does) then Al Franken, John Stewart or Stephen Colbert should be the other half. That would be an entertaining and smart duo to run the country. Maybe Colbert would be the smartest pick since his satire is so genius it might fool a few on the right to vote for him.Everyone should read this book. Its a non partisan commentary, it takes to task the presidency itself and how it has changed from what the founders envisioned it to be. And its really fucking scary.Lets start off with the invasion of Granada, Operation Urgent Fury, (good God, does that mean Im in a big damn hurry to be angry) in 1983. At that time I was way too deep in a fog of Aqua Net to be politically aware. I have a vague memory of it happening but the details were fuzzy. Apparently Ronald Reagan, during World War II, was in the military but was too near sighted to actually fight in it. He was given the job of playing a soldier in training films (produced by the military) and never left the studio back lot he had been working on since before he joined. He played a gung-ho-rata-tat-tat-shoot-em-up-bang-bang-gotcha soldier, and he liked it. When he got to the White House (early Alzheimers sadly was likely affecting him) he had that deep seeded need to be that macho cowboy soldier and wanted to get those Commies. In Granada he saw some Commies (possible-maybe-someday Commies) a military coup ousted a revolutionary government and became a bit touchy and unstable, ripe for Commies. Regan new that he would never get congress to Ok a strike on Granada (because it was nutty) , so he did an end run around congress, went ahead with it, and told them it was happening when it was too late. Tip ONeal was rightly pissed. From the very start of this nation no one person could declare war on another country. Congress has to OK such actions. But Regan didnt think the president should bow down to congress, so he basically gave them the middle finger. This set a dangerous precedent.Then there was Iran-Contra, where Reagan tried to get the ok from congress to take action to free hostages in Iran. Congress cut funding to the operation. Unable to take no for an answer, Regan decided to solicit other countries for money. One way of getting cash was by selling weapons, which he did to any country (no matter how sketchy) that would pay, like Saudi Arabia and Iran. WTF? He got caught and communicated his way out of the mess. Shocking.Since, all of the following presidents have used their executive power to make war, against the founding fathers express instructions that no one person should be able to take the country into war. All (the current president does love his drones). Its just too easy and no president wanted to give up that ability. War sucks.Currently the way we go to war (and its been perpetual for some time now) is insulated from the general public, unless you are a family member of a soldier. Troops are re deployed over and over, this has been devastating on their emotional health. In the first five years of the Iraq war the suicide rate of military personnel doubled. In the last ten years we have lost more troops to suicide then in combat. Something is wrong here. The Reserves are not used as reserves anymore, they are no longer civilian soldiers, and they are called up to war just as often as the regular military. We use contractors extensively. There are currently more contractors in Afghanistan then US military. They are not bound by the military for their conduct, they are paid better then the troops and we never hear of their deaths. It doesnt affect us, so we dont yell about it much.Nuclear Bombsyou do not want to go into that particular stinky restroom, peeeeuuuuu.-We have lost track of 11 nuclear bombs, and we keep track better than most countries. Yikes. Currently there is a nuclear bomb buried in a swampy field in Goldsboro North Carolina, it was too swampy to dig it out so they just left it there. Yay. Currently we have aging bombs in silos that we no longer remember how to fix properly, some have wing fungus. Its amazing to me each day we get through without becoming a giant smoking crater. Here is the end of the epilogue which sums the whole thing up nicely.And finally theres the Gordian knot of executive power. It needs a sword something fierce. The glory of war success will always attach itself to the president, so presidents are always be prey to the temptation to make war. Thats a generic truth of power, and all the more reason to take the decision making about war out of the hands of the executive. It is not one mans responsibility. The Imperial Presidency malarkey that was invented to save Ronald Reagans neck in Iran-Contra, and that has played as high art throughout the career of Richard Cheney, is a radical departure from previous views of presidential power, and should be taught and understood that way. This is not a partisan thing. Constitutionalists left and right have equal reason to worry over the lost constraint of the executive. Republicans and Democrats alike have options to vote people into congress who are determined to stop with the chickenshitery and assert the legislators constitutional purgatives on war and peace. It would make a difference, and help reel us back towards balance and normalcy. None of this is impossible. This isnt bigger than us. Decisions about national security are ours to make. And the good news is this isnt rocket science, we dont have to reinvent fogbank here, we just have to revive that old idea of America is a deliberately peaceable nation. Thats not simply our inheritance, its our responsibility.

Are you too relaxed? Are you worryingly unworried, and sleeping far too easily? Do you labour under the belief that the checks and balances in the US system of government will prevent dangerous/idiotic presidents from invading countries willy-nilly and drone-striking you in retaliation for your critical facebook comments?If this sounds like you, then Rachel Maddow's Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power is the antidote to your serenity! Build a bunker, delete your social media accounts and prepare to lie awake at night - Maddow reveals how a system of government designed to prevent one person declaring war has largely failed, leaving decisions of life, death and international destruction in one (currently tiny) pair of hands.Seriously though, this is some scary stuff, and Maddow tells her story well.The founders of the US, and the authors of the Constitution, specifically designed the American system of government to avoid the concentration of war powers in the hands of the president. Congress was given the authority to declare war, forcing the executive branch of government to seek congressional approval before diving into conflicts. People like Thomas Jefferson were concerned that their new republic could get caught up in an unending spiral of war, with Americans dying at the whim of king-like presidents who used conflict as a political ploy to shore up their support. Hell, some of these guys fought against even having a standing army at all, and Jefferson himself cut the army by a third during his presidency.As you have no doubt guessed this hasn't quite worked out as the founding fathers planned (hello Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again). Over many decades the checks and balances between the executive and the legislature have atrophied, and the US president today has near complete power to wage war, to send soldiers overseas and to order drone strikes anywhere in the world. Even worse, El Presidente can do so in near complete secrecy if he/she desires. Naturally, this power has been abused by leaders both Republican and Democratic.Along the way to Imperial Presidency the military has become massively outsourced, allowing wars to be waged with minimal numbers of actual American soldiers (which makes it easier to sell to the public) and much more secretive. The CIA has also become massively more powerful, able to act in some senses as a secret military force that presidents can use and abuse with almost no oversight, even from Congress. On top of this, military spending, and near continual spending increases, has become near sacred, and it would be a brave government that dared to reverse this trajectory.Maddow's book is engrossing, important and something that should appeal to die-hard constitutionalists and peaceniks alike, even though it's conclusions are pretty damn grim. Maddow paints a picture of a situation that would seem difficult, if not near impossible to reverse. The military that has grown so large, so central to US policy, that is beyond effective oversight. The US defence budget is so stupendously massive, employs so vast a number of people, is linked to so numerous a list of private companies that its complexity is almost impossible to grasp, and it is near impregnable to oversight or trimming. The Presidents power has grown so large, and Congress has abdicated so many of its constitutional privileges, that challenging or changing the status quo would require a drawn out political fight that would no doubt damage both institutions.I hope for the sake of the long suffering US taxpayer, for the sake of the long-suffering US soldier and for the sake of the rest of here on earth who have to deal with the sometimes catastrophic missteps of the White House that the people of the USA are one day able to bring their president and their mighty military back under the sort of oversight that their founding fathers intended. Postscript: Maddow also details the terrifying realities of the US decaying nuclear arsenal, and the vast costs associated with maintaining it. Her book is a good companion piece for Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

I recently finished reading this book. The author is famous as a TV-talker, but she is a Rhodes Scholar and has a PhD in politics, so she's no airhead. Despite her academic credentials, the book is written in a casual, conversational tone. It's a great read, and I highly recommend it.The book's basic argument is that it has become entirely too easy for the United States to go to war. This is due to a couple of factors. First, the US military is large, at least by historical levels, and considered a professional organization. It's a lot easier to send volunteers to war as opposed to draft people off of the street. Second, due to various changes in our logistical structure (mostly contractors) we can fight a war with limited use of reserves. It's a lot more expensive to use a contractor in lieu of a reservist, but politically expedient. Third, Congress has largely stepped away from its historical role of declaring war.Maddow points out that Presidents, Democratic and Republican, have been cultivating this ability to fight without Congress's say-so, and that Congresses, Democratic and Republican, have been stepping away from their oversight role. She also reminds Americans that the Founding Fathers were very scared of an Executive with unlimited war-fighting capabilities. They had seen first-hand how that power led to political abuse.Where Maddow falls down a bit is in coming up with a solution. I think this is because the solution is both easy and hard - easy to say, hard to do. If you want to loose weight, you must eat less and exercise more. That's easy to say and hard to do. If you want to increase the Congressional oversight of wars, then Congress must take responsibility and action. Easy to say, hard to do.

So this is a book about how we've let military spending run amok and ushered in a new way of thinking, or more accurately, not thinking about our constant state of war. The last chapter, which feels like a bonus chapter as it seems somewhat tacked on, discusses our nuclear weapon stockpiles and is pretty terrifying. If the rest of the book was horrible, and it isn't, this chapter would make up for it. One of my favorite things about this book is that it is written by a talk show host, someone involved in the 24-hour news cycle and isn't a book of partisan bullshit. Has any other "personality" done so? There are some injections of Maddow's humor which may annoy those of the conservative bent. These instances are minor and should easily be swept aside by all but the most juvenile conservatives. so read this book, get an understanding of how we got here, and maybe we can work to change things.