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Visiting author speaks on war, debt and the end of American Exceptionalism
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"The impulses that have landed us in a war of no exits and no deadlines come from within. Foreign policy has, for decades, provided an outward manifestation of American domestic ambitions, urges, and fears. In our own time, it has increasingly become an expression of domestic dysfunction — an attempt to manage or defer coming to terms with contradictions besetting the American way of life. Those contradictions have found their ultimate expression in the perpetual state of war afflicting the United States today."
So says retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich in his recent best-seller The Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism. The impulses he refers to are those of hubris, selfishness and sanctimony- those which grow out of admirable American qualities and values like optimism, freedom and liberty, but, which untempered by realism and responsibility, have become toxic. Bacevich, a West Point graduate, 23-year veteran of the US military and current professor of US History and International Relations at Boston University, will be speaking and signing The Limits of Power this Thursday at the Tattered Cover bookstore in LoDo (map) at 7:30 pm.
While the self-described conservative’s new book focuses primarily on the Bush-era wars conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the protracted, nebulous "Long War" on Terror that encompasses them, the author does not hold any illusions that the problem lies with one man, administration, or party (since writing the book Bacevich has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee to caution against President Obama’s escalation of operations in Afghanistan.) Rather, he details and describes a shift in post-World War II American foreign policy toward an imperial executive branch obsessed with "national security" above all other priorities, and with military power as a means of achieving its objectives.
This shift has occurred in such a way as to keep most Americans largely unaware of the costs of these policies, says Bacevich, at least for the time being. Through deficits, borrowing, and the distant fronts on which our battles our fought, the "wise men and women" of the military establishment have been free to pursue perpetual war in pursuit of perpetual peace without effecting the day-to-day lives of the citizens who will, eventually, be faced with the aftermath in both blood and treasure. Instead, we are asked, when faced with crises to "go shopping," and government and private citizen alike finance their exploits with massive debt. The end result, argues the author, is not one of liberty, security, or dominance, but of dependency and delusions.
For more info: Visit the Tattered Cover events listings
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