Andrew J Bacevich

A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich,...

Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Rather than something for "other people" to do, Bacevich argues that national defense should become the business of "we the people."

"Here, in a sweeping gathering of 45 essential conservative writers, editor Andrew Bacevich surveys the core currents of conservative thought in the United States since 1900: the importance of tradition, the value of familial and local ties, the mounting of resistance to an ever-expanding state, the opposition to collectivist utopias and other forms of tyranny abroad, and the necessity of free markets and economic growth to sustain individual liberties...