Book Review: Rachel Maddow’s “Drift”

I was lucky enough to carve out some time over the last week to read Rachel Maddow’s Drift. The book main thesis is about how the Executive Branch’s penchant for secrecy around military adventures – okay, let’s call them wars – is a real, real bad thing. And, more importantly, how the United States has found itself in a perpetual state of war. She opens with a quote from James Madison:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

These truths are well established. They are read in every page which records the progression from a less arbitrary to a more arbitrary government, or the transition from a popular government to an aristocracy or a monarchy.

Maddow begins her story in Vietnam, how Johnson refused to call up the reserves, how the draft just was able to recruit the unlucky, and the lessons we learned from Vietnam – lessons that we would soon forget. She goes into detail about the War Powers Act and the Abrams Doctrine, which, in her opinion, had more teeth than the War Powers Act. And then starting with Reagan Administration’s venture into Granada, how the Reagan and his cabal began to rip apart the War Powers Act and the Abrams Doctrine. Maddow guides us through Grenada, Iraq (pre and post 9/11), Central America and Bosnia. She slowly details how we have war after war, the Executive Branch got back into control over our war-making machine with the use of a private army of contractors – Hessians, if you will. Maddow’s chapter on drones and the CIA is also extremely important with come good criticism of our current President. Though, I felt that Maddow did gloss over our George W. Bush’s presidency. Her chapter on the slow demise and erosion of our nuclear stock pile was a bit misplaced probably would be better served as a separate book as she mentioned in the Acknowledgments.

If your a fan of Maddow’s show, you’ll notice the same writing style in the book as she does in her nightly show. You can almost hear her voice speaking the words to you as you read along.

Rachel Maddow’s “Drift” is a strong book with some good ideas that will make you think in the weeks, months and years to come.