Rachel Maddow - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

America is in urgent need of a real debate over its addiction to sprawling militarism and endless war. It affects, and degrades, every aspect of national life: political, cultural, and economic. Nobody is better positioned to trigger that debate than Rachel Maddow, and thats exactly what she does in this startlingly insightful and well-written book. By stripping away the propaganda that distorts national security policy and laying bare its reality, Maddow has written one of those rare political books that can transform Americans understanding of what their government is actually doing.

GLENN GREENWALD, columnist for Salon and
author of Liberty and Justice for Some

Written with the flair for scintillating satire that has endeared Rachel Maddow to liberals and moderates alikeand infuriated neoconservatives, evangelicals, and some tea partiersDriftis funny, rich, and right. But at its end, when you put it down, you will be troubled. We are losing our republic and Ms. Maddow tells you why.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON, professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell

Driftis a serious and carefully conceived piece of investigative reporting, illuminating a subjectthe vast and mostly secret militarization of our societythat most Americans have no idea of, thanks in large part to the failure of many high-profile journalists to discuss it. Rachel has once again broken the mold and she should be immensely proud of this book, which is written in the same bright, clear, engaging style she brings to broadcast television.

MATT TAIBBI, author of Griftopia

Rachel Maddows Drift is a long overdue and provocative examination of the abuses, excesses, and just plain foolish elements in our national security systems. These are issues that deserve our attention.

TOM BROKAW, NBC News special correspondent and bestselling author of The Greatest Generation

In Drift, people who love Rachel Maddow will discover that her gift for finding amazing anecdotes and funny, revealing details totally translates to the page. People who hate her may be surprised by how often in Drift she espouses some of the most conservative values: a suspicion of big government and unbridled federal power, a zeal to cut wasteful spending and a yearning to return to the intentions of the Founding Fathers.

IRA GLASS, host of public radios This American Life

Brilliant book. Drift will stun Americans with its portrait of a hyperventilating United States that has produced too many real-life Dr. Strangelove moments. Drawing from thoughtful, national-interest-driven conservatives and not just the liberal establishment, Maddow makes the case that what ought to be a strong nation is instead risking shipwreck, by letting war and military matters escape real political and economic gravitational forces. Every page informs and angers at the same time.

STEVE CLEMONS, Washington editor-at-large for The Atlantic

Copyright 2012 by Rachel Maddow

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maddow, Rachel.
Drift: the unmooring of American military power/Rachel Maddow.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. National securityUnited States. 2. United StatesMilitary policy.
3. United StatesArmed ForcesAppropriations and expenditures.
4. MilitarismUnited States. 5. Political cultureUnited States.
6. United StatesForeign relations1989 7. United StatesPolitics and government1989 I. Title.

UA23.M17 2012
306.270973dc23 2012000998

eISBN: 978-0-307-46100-1

Jacket design by Christopher Brand
Jacket photograph and interior illustration by Kevin Van Aelst

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To former vice president Dick Cheney.

Oh, please let me interview you.

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 reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Those 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.

James Madison, Political Observations, April 20, 1795

IN THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE I LIVE IN HAMPSHIRE COUNTY , Massachusetts, we now have a Public Safety Complex around the corner from what used to be our hokey Andy Griffithesque fire station. In the cascade of post-9/11 Homeland Security money in the first term of the George W. Bush administration, our towns share of the loot bought us a new fire truckone that turned out to be a few feet longer than the garage where the town kept our old fire truck. So then we got some more Homeland money to build something big enough to house the new truck. In homage to the origin of the funding, the local auto detailer airbrushed on the side of the new truck a patriotic tableau of a billowing flaglike banner, a really big bald eagle, and the burning World Trade Center towers.

The American taxpayers investment in my towns security didnt stop at the new safety complex. I can see further fruit of those Homeland dollars just beyond my neighbors back fence. While most of us in town depend on well water, there are a few houses that for the past decade or so have been hooked up to a municipal water supply. And when I say a few, I mean a few: I think there are seven houses on municipal water. Around the time we got our awesome giant new fire truck, we also got a serious security upgrade to that town water system. Its tiny pump house is about the size of two phone booths and accessible by a dirt driveway behind my neighbors back lot. Or at least it used to be. The entire half-acre parcel of land around that pump house is now ringed by an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, and fronted with a motion-sensitive electronically controlled motorized gate. On our side of town we call it Little Guantnamo. Mostly its funny, but there is some neighborly consternation over how frowsy Little Guantnamo gets every summer. Even though its town-owned land, access to Little Guantnamo is apparently above the security clearance of the guy paid to mow and brush-hog. Right up to the fence, its my neighbors land and they keep everything trim and tidy. But inside that fence, the grass gets eye-high. Its going feral in there.