Here's the lead paragraph of a review of three newly-published books about American foreign policy, found in the New York Review of Books and titled Bush's Amazing Achievement:
One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve.
The three books are Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Statecraft and How to Restore America's Standing in the World by Dennis Ross.
Johnson's book is the third in a trilogy he's written about American Empire. I've got it on order.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 19, 2007 11:55 AM | TrackBack