Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

by Fred Kaplan and Fred Kaplan

Book Overview

America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past few years is well known. Why it happened... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470121181
• ISBN13: 9780470121184
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Together with a Few Other Books, All You Need to Know

The author is kinder to the protagonists than they merit. I give the author high marks for making the case early on in the book that the world did NOT change after 9-11, and that what really happened was that the coincidence of neo-conservative back-stabbing and Bush's well-intentioned evangelical village idiot view of freedom and democracy. The author does a fine job of reviewing how after 9-11 we were faced with two choices, the first, going for empire ("we make our own reality") or revitalizing alliances. The neocons in their ignorance called for regime changes, but the author fails us here by not understanding that both political parties love 42 of the 44 dictators, those that "our" dictators. The author has many gifted turns of phrase. One talks about how their "vision" turned into a "dream" that then met "reality" and was instantly converted into a "nightmare." The author adds to our knowledge of how Rumsfeld empowered Andy Marshall, and how the inner circle quickly grew enamored of the delusion that they could achieve total situational awareness with total accuracy in a system of systems no intelligent person would ever believe in. The author highlights two major intelligence failures that contributed to the policy bubble: 1. Soviet Union was way behind the US during the Cold War, not ahead. 2. Soviet economy was vastly worse and more vulnerable that CIA ever understood. The author helps us understand that the 1989 collapse of the Berlin War created a furor over the "peace dividend" and the "end of history" that were mistaken, but sufficient to bury with noise any concerns about Bin Laden and Saudi Arabian spread of virulent anti-Shi'ite Wahabibism from 1988 onwards. By 1997 Marshall and Andy Krepinevich were staking everything on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), high speed communications and computing (still not real today), and precision munitions. The author provides a super discussion of Col John Warden's "five rings" in priority order: 1) leadership and C4I; 2) infrastructure; 3) transportation; 4) population (again, war crimes); and finally, 5) the enemy. The author is brutal in scoring the campaign designed by Col Warden a complete failure. It...did...not...work (in Gulf I). I cannot summarize everything, so a few highlights: + Taliban quickly learned how to defeat US overhead (satellite) surveillance--remember, we do not do "no-notice" air breather imagery any more, except for easily detected UAVs, with mud as well as cover and concealment. . + Excellent account of the influence on Rumsfeld of George Tenet's failure to satisfy him during a missile defense review. It became obvious to all that the U.S. Intelligence Community a) no longer had a very high level of technical mastery on the topic; and b) was so fragmented as to make the varied analytic elements deaf, dumb, and blind--not sharing with each other, using contradictory data sets, the list goes on. Page 187 is the page to read if you are just bro

Powerful and eloquent

Kaplan, not to be confused with another interesting writer about the world stage, Robert Kaplan, is, in a way, a modern Thucydides, gravely documenting the follies of his time. He's a little less restrained and formal than Thucydides and his English is much easier to make sense of than Thucydides' Greek, but the parallel remains. Kaplan's book details how the odd post-modern approach ("reality is a construct") to foreign policy of the Bush administration created horrible results in Iraq (uncounted gazillions of dollars squandered, thousands of US soldiers, an unknown number of mercenaries, and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, many times those numbers wounded), in our dealings with North Korea, in the foolish attempt to revive the Reagan-era "Star Wars" missile defense, in enfranchising mobs in the name of democracy, and in spinning the sorry results of the above policies into Orwellian news releases. Kaplan has access to sources deep within the military and civilian structures of government and has gathered and presented his information well. All of that said, some may say that this book is like the Library of Alexandria after the Muslim conquest: redundant to those who already believe and heretical to those who don't, thus useless in either event. I disagree. The big story of our time has been the shameful abdication of the news media of their role in presenting an adequately objective and skeptical examination of what government has been doing. Kaplan's book, showing the sheer foolishness of the planning for the Iraq war, of the approach to negotiations with North Korea, of the "moral clarity" of supporting "democracy" that led to the Hamas victory in Palestine, is a step toward reporting what should have been in the newsmedia for the past seven years. The discussion of the sorry progress of anti-missile weapons from their baseless origin through the phony tests designed to "prove" their effectiveness is an eye-opener as well. Kaplan also documents the effects of these simple-minded approaches to policy on how the rest of the world perceives America. Not a pleasant tale. Some may argue that the situation in Iraq is better now in the post-Surge world and that North Korea appears to be returning to the de-nuclearization that it was allegedly heading toward in the Clinton administration. We don't yet know what the long-term effects of the new policy in Iraq will be. Our presence there still remains a tremendous recruiting incentive for those willing to kill and die for their vision of Islam and may have revived the al Qaeda brand after the devastation of the organism in the wake of our intervention in Afghanistan. What North Korea is actually up to will be revealed only with time. Meanwhile, our standing with the rest of the world is at an all-time low. This book is a powerful indictment of ignorance and arrogance. It will doubtless be read and studies carefully when future generations look back on our times and wonder what the people in this cou

More than meets the news

Reading this book reminded me of how little analysis one gets from the major news outlets. I learned quite a bit from this book all of which unsettles me. I was aware of the extent of the nuclear threats in the world as a general problem from having read Douglas Mattern's Looking for Square Two: Moving from War and Organized Violence to Global Community. But that book, although alarming in itself, didn't give me the "day by day" sense of how such threats may have seemed to our and other nations political and military leadership. That anti-ballistic efforts seemed highly unlikely to be feasible doesn't seem surprising: what does seem surprising was that so much was spent to confirm that. Perhaps it is understandable in light of the lack of alternatives. I hadn't been aware of the technological advances in the accuracy and cost of bombs that made the U.S. plans for invading Iraq seem plausible. It is appalling, however, to read (as one can see) just how unprepared the administration was for the days after "Mission Accomplished". That Germany, Japan and allies were enabled to rebuild after World War II yet the U.S. is still bogged down in "little" Iraq and spending so much seems unfathomable evidence of plans gone badly awry: this book gives good background and hypotheses as to why. Bush appears sharper (but not sharp enough) and more engaged in decision-making than I would have expected. Unfortunately more rigid. How could he not realize that elections might be won by one's enemies, including those who would eliminate future elections if at all possible? Does he himself really believe what he spouts about freedom and democracy while all the while the U.S. has needed (and financed) the support of countries lacking in such? After reading this book, the Bush effort to have the U.S. singlehandedly "right" the world might seem laughable if it will not be so painful for all Americans, as it already has been both painful and deadly for some. But the dangers present in the current world that any President will face comes through clearly. This is not anti-Bush propaganda but somber evidence and insights into just how challenging the world situation is at this time. Scares me to death. If anti-ballistic missiles don't offer a feasible solution and if the U.S. can't even control one other country, what possibility is there other than statesmanship? I recommend Mattern's Looking for Square Two: Moving from War and Organized Violence to Global Community because, although idealistic, it seems like its orientation toward world citizenship, however unlikely to succeed, offers more promising failures than the current approaches do. Whatever opinions I might have crumble quickly in the light of the fast-changing and complex world scenarios that Kaplan brings to life. Not a time for the uninformed or the naive. It can't be easy President or any adviser to one. But let's hope someone can do it much better...somehow having the good judgment and values to kno

Dreams and reality

Too often, today's political issues are couched in terms of Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal or right vs. left. It may be more practical to set aside these terms and focus on a different conflict: idealists vs. realists. No matter what belief they represent, idealists in their purest form are apt to be dangerous. That's not to say that ideals are bad things - they're actually necessary - but seeing issues in black-and-white can be quite risky. Although Fred Kaplan's book Daydream Believers is critical of George W. Bush and his administration, the criticism has less to do with Bush's ideals than his often uncompromising idealism, in particular with issues of foreign policy, even more particularly with the Middle East and North Korea. Kaplan lays out how Bush's refusal to accept pragmatic solutions has led to multiple problems including a quagmire in Iraq and a decline in America's standing in the world. Kaplan's book describes several failings of Bush and his administration. For example, ideology - especially the idea of being morally pure - led Bush to shun diplomacy with North Korea when he could have still contained its nuclear ambitions; only when the genie was out of the bottle did Bush start to pursue diplomatic solutions. Similarly, while Bush's heart may have been in the right place with trying to create anti-ballistic missiles (even at the price of breaking treaties to do so), his pursuit of this goal risked souring international relations and defied the many studies that showed that missile shields were technically infeasible. If there's a villain in this book, it's not Bush but rather Donald Rumsfeld (and his loyal followers), who Kaplan describes as the architect of the problems in Iraq due to his (intentionally?) poor planning and his willingness to even do end-runs around Bush to pursue his own goals. Overall, however, Kaplan is not looking for villains or heroes. In fact, as much as is possible in a book like this, he tries to remain objective. As stated before, Kaplan is not so much critical of Bush as the results of Bush's actions. The title Daydream Believers is completely fitting: only in daydreams can one be completely idealistic. When reality sets in, more pragmatic approaches are needed. Sticking to idealism will not succeed and often makes the idealist look foolish and hypocritical (after all, it can be hard for people to buy that Bush is acting from a moral high ground if he is believed to advocate torture, the suspension of civil rights and outright deceit). Although I am hardly a Bush fan myself, I was ready to not like Daydream Believers, thinking that it would just be another preaching-to-the-choir rant. Instead, I was pleased to find that Kaplan has written a solid demonstration as to why America has gone in a wrong direction militarily and that the actions of Bush's administration have actually only provided the illusion of security while in fact have made us less secure.

. . . And Homecoming Queens?

The Bush team planned the first phase of the Iraq war, and it went about as nearly according to plan as anyone could reasonably expect, but the second phase didn't go at all according to plan. Why not? Because there wasn't any plan beyond the first phase. The Bush term saw no need for a plan beyond capturing Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussain. Everything else was supposed to fall into place. With the completion of the first phase, order was supposed to establish itself. It didn't. Before the war started, Professor Kanan Makiya of Brandeis University had tried to warn the President of the vital importance of keeping in check the tensions between the Shiites and the Sunnis while a democratic government was established, but Bush obviously hadn't done his homework (he saw no need to) and had no idea of what Makiya was talking about. The existence of religious factions in Iraq didn't fit within Bush's framing of the situation, and as Dr. George Lakoff (Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think; . . Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea; . . Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision) has pointed out, when the facts don't fit the frame, the frame stays and the facts are ignored. For many, perhaps most, of the Bush team, the neocon frame has become so dominant that their reality-checking has become all or nearly all internal, with disastrous results. They are living in a daydream, and don't realize it. And they have apparently convinced themselves that as keepers of the neocon flame they are justified in any action they wish to take (see How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok by Glenn Greenwald) Every American should read this book, so that we can understand what is going on around us. watziznaym@gmail.com