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The cost of loyalty : dishonesty, hubris, and failure in the U.S. military / Tim Bakken.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Description: xi, 386 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781632868985
  • 1632868989
Subject(s):
Contents:
Preface: the collapse -- Introduction: breaking the myth -- The origins of the separate world -- Unfounded hubris -- Conformity and cronyism -- one and the same -- Supreme values -- how loyalty creates dishonesty -- A culture of silence -- censorship and retaliation -- Criminality, abuse, and corruption -- Violence, torture, and war crimes -- The consequences of separation.
Summary: Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America's collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. Bakken makes the case that the culture has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 306.27 B168 Available 33111009602489
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020

A courageous and damning look at the destruction wrought by the arrogance, incompetence, and duplicity prevalent in the U.S. military--from the inside perspective of a West Point professor of law.

Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America's collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably grim: failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted.

Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another.

The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-368) and index.

Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America's collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. Bakken makes the case that the culture has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them.

Preface: the collapse -- Introduction: breaking the myth -- The origins of the separate world -- Unfounded hubris -- Conformity and cronyism -- one and the same -- Supreme values -- how loyalty creates dishonesty -- A culture of silence -- censorship and retaliation -- Criminality, abuse, and corruption -- Violence, torture, and war crimes -- The consequences of separation.

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