Our Book of the Month: The New American Militarism

Tonight at Books and Books we are going to be discussing Andrew Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. Mr. Bacevich, as all the reviews attest, is a graduate of West Point, Viet Vet and eventually ended up at the Center for International Relations at Boston University. You can find a moderate left critique of the book here and a loony left one here. A review from the moderate right can be read here. The one completely fawning review is by paleo-conservative Paul Craig Roberts. This makes sense since as even the review from the mod right noted Bacevich's ideas seem rooted in the old right. A great deal of what Bacevich writes reminds me of Robert Nisbet and his remarkable bookform essay The Present Age. Writing in 1988 the rabid anti-Communist Nisbet bemoaned the fact that starting with WWI the US had essentially been at war for 75 years. He deplored militarism and shared Bacevich's aversion to Woodrow Wilson and his ideas. Further evidence of the paleo-con love for Bacevich can be found at LewRockwell.com.

You can find an interviews with Bacevich here and here. You can read an article wrote about "the living room war" for The American Conservative here and a piece on Tommy Franks for the New Left Review here.