Book Review: Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman

Spencer Ackerman covered the War on Terror over the past 20 years for The Guardian and other outlets. In Reign of Terror, he argues the post 9/11 era accelerated America's descent into political chaos. The forces of xenophobia and white supremacy reared their head and were mainstreamed into the popular discourse. The aftermath of 9/11 fomented a blowback first felt though interventions abroad and eventually into a deeper reckoning on the home front (or "homeland" to cite the era's rhetorical changes). Reign of Terror is consistently grim but well argued.

The narrative begins with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the day a white supremacist blew up the city's Federal Building with a truck bomb. In the immediate aftermath the media suspected Middle Eastern terrorists, but when the bomber turned out to be an average looking white guy Gulf War veteran with ties to the militia movements, indicating dark forces alive and well in the heartland. White supremacy fueled the militia movement, and the bombing was an attempt to make their fantasy of igniting a civil war come to pass. The bomber was allowed to stand trial and enjoy his time in prison with full privileges. Non-white terror suspects would receive far different treatment from the authorities (with the exception of Obama era whistle blower Chelsea Manning)

In the post-9/11 era suspected terrorists were rounded up and sent to Guantanamo Bay, held as enemy combatants, and often denied basic human rights. Torture became standard policy and Ackmerman describes in graphic detail the methods pursued by the CIA and the military. While President Bush was careful (except for a few thinking out loud moments) not to implicate all Muslims as jihadists, the era fueled anti-Islamic attitudes of an increasingly xenophobic voting bloc already enraged over the Mexican border and changing demographics in America. Islamophobia would manifest itself in accusations President Obama was an imposter born in Kenya.

No one gets off free. Conservatives quickly figured out how the war could be used to further their political agendas. Liberals barely put up a defense to the new militarism. Out of fear from looking weak in the face of existential threats, most Democrats supported the Iraq War. The author also criticizes President Obama for missing valuable opportunities to reshape foreign policy and end the War on Terror, but the machinery set by the Bush administration was too entrenched for substantial change. Instead, Obama streamlined and widened the war by stepping up surveillance and the use of drones.

In 2016, candidate Trump condemned America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even prompting some gullible pundits to declare him the "peace candidate" opposite Hillary Clinton (generally considered a hawkish liberal). Trump reveled in violent rhetoric and implied the War on Terror needed to be waged with no constraints whatsoever. He spoke of "secret plans" to defeat Isis and labeled all Muslims as the enemy by calling for a ban on all from entering the country. Even more predictable and disturbing was the new populist talking point: liberals must be considered just as dangerous as Isis, or even worse. 

I recall the unrest in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri in response to the police killing Michael Brown. It was an early example of a militarized police force being unleashed on protestors who were demanding racial justice. It was the first sign the War on Terror tactics would be waged on American citizens. During the 2020 protests after of George Floyd's murder, Trump and many Republicans wanted to use the military to jail and brutalize protestors. Homeland Security and ICE agents made their presence known and showed little restraint despite being filmed on I-Phones. Meanwhile, the War on Terror rolled on endlessly.

Reign of Terror is bleak, but well-argued and impassioned. The key to Ackerman's main argument goes back to Susan Sontag's reflection on 9/11 that was published in the New Yorker the week after. Instead of calling for retribution and offering banal statements about American perseverance during challenging times, she called out the country's foreign policy in the Middle East as the main cause of the attacks. Pundits on the left and right denounced Sontag. The Bush administration, with bi-partisan and popular support, chose to pursue vengeance and conflict on the Middle East. Any hint of soul searching or a reconsideration of America's relationship with the world that Sontag advocated for were either ignored or silenced. 

Ackerman offers no alternate paths or solutions, and while I try to avoid criticizing a book for what it's not, considering alternate paths or counterfactuals have their use. No one escapes unscathed. Dissenters to the War on Terror are portrayed as ineffectual. The acidic critique of Obama may be warranted at times, but the political realities the administration faced in 2009 made a total halt to all conflicts untenable. As Obama advisor Ben Rhodes pointed out to Ackerman, what if Obama had ended the War on Terror and it was followed by a cataclysmic terror attack - and then what?

Ackerman's also in the complicated place of being critical towards the National Security State and the populist forces Trump unleashed, who see themselves in opposition to the nefarious "deep state."  The subtext was they wished to take over the deep state and install their own loyalists - and according to a recent article they have a plan in place. The distinction should be spelled out more clearly: one is a dangerous, violent, antidemocratic political movement - the other needs institutional reform and more accountability. 

Ultimately, Reign of Terror provides a coherent and passionate perspective on how the War on Terror damaged the world. The level of destruction wrought by American military power wrought on Asia and Africa left a trail of death and suffering in the millions. The militarization of the police and armed insurgency movements pose serious existential threats to democracy's survival. I would recommend Reign of Terror as a must read for some critical insight on the past 20 years. 

Book Review: Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet by James Mann

The tragic consequences of post-9/11 foreign policy on American institutions and international relations that came in the wake of the attacks continues to loom as an indicator of what led to the current moment. Rise of the Vulcans, published in 2004, tells the origin story of how post- 9/11 foreign policy was shaped and articulated by its framers long before the event that spurred it. The author James Mann was a longtime foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and later a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced General Studies at Johns Hopkins. Mann's engaging writing style deals eloquently with the biographical details of the key figures and the ideological battles within the foreign policy establishment, making it an essential read dealing with recent history.

The central figures in the book are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice. Powell and Armitage were both Vietnam veterans and career military men in charge of the State Department during the first Bush administration. Cheney and Rumsfeld were two professional politicians with lifelong ambitions for the presidency who built their reputations during the Nixon-Ford years. Rice and Wolfowitz were both academics, intellectual advocates of American hegemony across the globe. All came together during the 2000 Bush campaign, jokingly and eventually with seriousness referred themselves as Vulcans in honor of the Roman god of fire, in honor of the sense of "toughness" and "durability" it conveyed. Mann summarized their approach to foreign policy as such: 

The vision was that of an unchallengeable America, a United States whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries (xii).

Mann also contends that there's far more overlap between cold war and post-cold war history. The "end of history" narrative that took hold after 1989-1991 was wishful thinking above at best. In fact, it was Cold War triumphalism and the rhetoric of victory surrounding it that led to the disasters to come in the 21st Century. Colin Powell was an outlier, his experiences in Vietnam led him to believe military force should only be used when absolutely necessary, and if used, with overwhelming magnitude to ensure a quick conflict (The Powell Doctrine). His experience as Head of the Joint Chiefs during the First Persian Gulf War (and the December 1989 invasion of Panama) vindicated his defense philosophy, but others thought differently. 

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz developed their philosophy during the debates over détente during the 1970s. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued a lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union and China in pursuit of a balance of power to stabilize foreign relations after the Vietnam War. While Kissinger remains a pariah, despised by the political left for his disregard of human rights and by the right who viewed détente as weak, emboldening the USSR. Cheney (Chief of Staff) and Rumsfeld (Defense Secretary) both rose quickly in the Ford administration and worked to undercut Kissinger's realist approach. They pushed for more military spending and aggressive defense postures, both anti-communist and willing to ally with authoritarians when it served their purposes. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Vulcans were against the so called "peace dividend" of lower defense spending/more social services spending and envisioned a newer and sleeker military no power on the planet would ever consider challenging (once again a misreading of history on their part). 

Only the last 50 or 60 pages is devoted to the response to 9/11, which the Vulcans used to reconfigure foreign policy in their own image. As time would tell the new approach would entail pre-emptive wars, small scale interventions in various hotspots, and eventually torture and violating international law and norms. Neoconservatives like Wolfowitz (liberals who were hawkish on defense) viewed the military as instrument to spread democracy even if it met partnering with tyrannical regimes, a dilemma that confronted policymakers during and after the Cold War.

The invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks overthrew the Taliban by December but failed to capture Osama Bin Laden who escaped into the mountains of Pakistan until his demise in 2011. Instead, the U.S. stumbled into a 20-year occupation, maintaining control of the major cities but facing relentless guerilla war in the countryside and eventual retreat in 2021.

Saddam Hussein was viewed as a longtime nemesis by the Vulcans for many reasons. Even though Iraq had nothing to so with 9/11, Bush's war cabinet used the attacks as pretext to overthrow the regime. Powell convinced the President Bush (41) to end the first Persian Gulf War after four days of ground combat, allowing Hussein to remain in power, the reasoning being an American occupation of Iraq would be too costly and disruptive to the region. Cheney and Rumsfeld saw it differently, they were concerned about Iraq obtaining nuclear weapons and in a grand strategic sense believed a democracy taking root in Iraq would spread throughout the region. Of course, access to oil figured greatly into the calculation. Mann makes clear that losing access to Persian Gulf oil reserves terrified the defense establishment and dominated their thinking.  

The character sketches are astute. Rice grew up in segregated Alabama and went to college on a music scholarship and was welcomed into the foreign policy establishment. A Russian specialist, Ms. Rice became Bush's most trusted adviser, often serving as a mediator between warring factions in his administration. Cheney was a ruthless bureaucrat able to neutralize anyone who crossed him, a believer in a strong Presidency and using the military as a blunt instrument (he got five deferments during the Vietnam era draft earning him the "chickenhawk" sobriquet). The book reveals Cheney oversaw "continuity of power" exercises as a Congressional representative during the 1980s, managing nuclear attack drills with the purpose of saving the government's leadership, a fact he never mentioned while he was Vice President (he famously took over the government on 9/11 for at least a few hours).

Rumsfeld also mastered bureaucratic warfare and was mentored by Nixon. As Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr. he was a media darling for a time due to his pithy press conferences (later tarnished over his torture memos). Wolfowitz, an academic well versed on nuclear and energy policy, became the face of pre-emptive war as a legit policy. During the 1970s he was ahead of the curve, writing academic papers arguing the Persian Gulf should have priority over Western Europe because oil was the key to global dominance (the not so hidden agenda of the Bush years.) Armitage and Powell were both ambivalent about preemptive war, they pushed for a diplomatic solution with Iraq but were undercut by Cheney, Powell would later disgrace himself at the United Nations for his mawkish plea to invade Iraq on faulty evidence. 

The post 9/11 foreign policies relied less on alliances and diplomacy and more on a misguided and tragic belief that America was best to go it alone. As the Iraq War turned into a bloody insurgency, hubris became the most used word to describe the Bush administration. Decisions to wield the full force of the surveillance state in the name of preventing terrorist attacks, detain suspected terrorists without regard for basic human rights, and encourage American citizens to keep shopping as an act of patriotism while requiring members of the armed services to serve endless tours overseas did not leave these leaders in good stead. Rise of the Vulcans does an excellent job of telling the why and how, ultimately becoming a story of how entrenched beliefs serve as limitation rather than a strength, especially with individuals in charge of national security.

I next plan to review Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by journalist Spencer Ackerman. Ackerman spent 20 years covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reign of Terror looks at how Bush era policies mutated domestic politics, the "War on Terror" rhetoric would be weaponized by the Trump movement against fellow Americans they came to view as the real enemy. 

Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. New York: Penguin, 2004.