Verso
Review by Brian Tanguay
Andrew Cockburn opens this timely collection by recounting the exploits of his distinguished relative, Admiral Sir George Cockburn of the Royal Navy, during the War of 1812. Admiral Cockburn fought his way to the White House at the head of an army composed of slaves he had freed, armed and trained; upon arriving at America’s seat of power they torched the place. Most Americans have likely forgotten why the British attacked in the first place. President James Madison had launched a war against Britain’s Canadian colony, an effort that Thomas Jefferson cheered on with enthusiasm. As we might say today, it was thought that taking Montreal and Upper Canada would be a cake-walk. “As with more recent enterprises,” writes Cockburn, “things did not go as planned, especially since the military was woefully unprepared and led by incompetent commanders.”
The pieces featured make for an eclectic mix, ranging from US military procurement to the Election-Industrial Complex, Joe Biden’s checkered legislative legacy, AIPAC’s enormous influence, and the use of “qualified immunity” to shield police officers charged with brutality. Most of the pieces first appeared in Harper’s Magazine where Cockburn serves as Washington Editor, while others appeared in the London Review of Books, Responsible Statecraft and the Spectator. Cockburn is a trenchant observer who has cultivated many excellent sources over his long career. He writes with clarity and brings a historian’s sensibility to his journalism, giving his analysis depth and context.
Politics and corruption are hardly strange bedfellows, though the brazen corruption perpetrated by the Trump regime is of an entirely different order. Cockburn notes that, “The steady shredding of constitutional impediments to one-man rule from the Oval Office would not have been possible without congressional cooperation, usually in the form of determined inaction.” Determined inaction doesn’t describe the conservative majority of the Supreme Court which has consistently ruled to expand the powers of the Executive Branch. Given Donald Trump’s predilection for abuse of power, one of the most chilling pieces is titled, “The Enemies Briefcase: Secret Powers and the Presidency,” which describes what are known as Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs, which authorize a broad spectrum of presidential actions in times of emergency. As Cockburn notes, PEADs have been “silently proliferating since the dawn of the Cold War.” This collection of documents is one of Washington’s best kept secrets.
When it comes to national security issues and Pentagon spending Cockburn is particularly astute. It’s common knowledge that the US outspends most countries by an order of magnitude, yet the Trump regime recently requested $1.5 trillion from Congress. Despite decades of taxpayer largesse, the US isn’t in the business of “winning” wars, as made brutally evident in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the outcome of these wars of choice hardly matters to the Pentagon and the legion of parties who feed at its trough. Win or lose they achieve their objectives. About Afghanistan Cockburn writes, “For them, the whole adventure has been a thumping success, as measured in the trillions of taxpayer dollars that have flowed through their budgets and profits over the two decades in which they successfully maintained the operation.” When it comes to the Pentagon budget, elected representatives from both parties rarely ask the question always asked about any social spending: how are you going to pay for that?
Readers won’t find much uplift here. Cockburn is clear-eyed when it comes to the workings of power. The US remains a very powerful nation, but its tenure as the undisputed global hegemon is under serious challenge from without and within. In the Land of the Free, trust and truth have taken a battering.
