A Nation Unmade by War: A ‘TomDispatch’ Book

Engelhardt (Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single Superpower World) compiles edited 2016 and 2017 posts from his website, TomDispatch, in a cynical and pessimistic analysis of the U.S. government that’s convincing and peppered with interesting insights, but repetitive. His main thesis, on a topic that has largely been left out of recent popular political discourse given the all-powerful vortex of the Trump media vacuum, is that the nonstop wars America has waged since 9/11 have “crippled not just other nations but ourselves.” All the chapters are variations on that theme: one is a meditation on the decline of America since 9/11, another reviews the 2016 presidential election, and a third explores the preponderance of generals in the Trump Administration. The repetition of ideas makes sense in periodic posts but works less well in a book, and his failure to anticipate potential rebuttals to his arguments saps the work of complexity and persuasiveness. Engelhardt has some interesting and important points to make—such as his observation “that even with a significant set of anti-Trump groups taking to the streets in protest, none are focused on America’s wars”—but those points risk getting lost in the monotonous anger of his prose. Those seeking nuanced analysis will want to look elsewhere. (May)