Rating: 
Summary: Key To World Supremacy: Build Up Your Military, Young Man!!!
Review:
This election year that's seen soullessly traitorous liberals degenerate into abominably more disparagingly insane, partisan venom segregatively against the president, it's comforting to have a tome produced by an author who neutrally doesn't take sides. Mann appreciably rejects vitriolic-motivated emotions for a sweeping, authoritatively cumulative approach at chronicling some of the Bush Admin.'s top policymakers, self-named after the Roman god of metalwork, proving even ex-LA Times correspondents are capable of fairness. To be sure, Mann's culpable of prejudices like opining Vietnam was a failure and taking the hardest stance in the Iraq war's aftermath, akin to squalid anti-war biases. Mann's aim is to scrutinize the six foreign policy advisers to inspect the influences their belief systems formed through experience have in shaping Bush's current policies. Thankfully, these six aren't suffering from liberals' "moral relativism", the notorious term that equivocally subordinates liberals to believe that hostile regimes will play fair, a side-effect from their refusal to judge anything.
While liberals are afflicted with an obsession of "balance of power"-cruelly unrighteous mentality whereby upright systems like America willfully overlook blatantly genocidal regimes like the former USSR and present-day Arab countries-these Vulcans nobly insist on intervention when a regime's oppressive, likely communistic and thus hostile. However, the contrast must be emphasized that before Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick theorized in Commentary magazine's article that America employed double-standards for regimes that were pro-US versus communist ones, neoconservatives weren't keen on pushing democratic reforms on governments that were aiding America despite their personal abuses. The discomfort for neoconservatives was the Shah of Iran's pitiful example of democracy-instillation, as American influence unintentionally equaled Islamofascist revolution. Later on, America would successfully invert this slight apprehension to encourage democracy in the Philippines in a non-pestilent manner. There, the Reagan Admin. subtly pressured Marcos to resign to preempt a potentially genocidal coup by the bastard Communist movement arising out of the leftist gutter because it was gaining additionally antagonistic incitement under Marcos' dictatorship.
The Vulcans believe in one overriding philosophy dictating their policy: American military power is unmatchable and used to advocate defense of America's national interests and democracy. This philosophy's most visible materialization is Iraq today, where Bush's policies are implanting the foothold in democracy, modernity there (Bush's policies ARE progressively successful, fearmonger liberals!!!!). If the stereotypical anti-war/liberal crowd schemes to chide neoconservatives for the American buildup in unequaled military dominance, this book provides the refutation to their scapegoating. America's unreachable military might is solely an effect of other countries' post-Cold-War retrenchment in military budgets, as the Soviet threat disappeared, except America's leaders were savvy enough to foresee likely menaces emerging from areas beyond mere Soviet domination, such as the Middle East. Wolfowitz, particularly, was the author of a foreshadowing paper-Limited Contingency Study-that predicted precisely the shift of critical attention to the Middle East as the newly perilous zone where to expect invasion because of its vital oil supplies. While exorbitant-liberal felons like Teddy "Alcoholics Anonymous" Kennedy were misjudging to direct the suppositionally available funds from the reduced Soviet danger to unpromisingly sweeping, social-spending programs, Bush I's Admin.-Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell-were maintaining that America required a steadfast level of military spending.
RotV is covertly useful in murderously derogating the iniquitous brand scheming liberals cast on Bush-that he's "unilateral". Mann orderly tabulates the times throughout the nineties where America was already qualifying itself to take more "unilateral", more independent, positions in the post-Cold-war world and thus solidification of lone superpower status under BILL CLINTON!!!! That's right, obstinately discriminatory liberals-CLINTON initiated American "unilateralism" by, while not declaring North Korea, Iraq and Iran as the proverbial "axis of evil", grouping those dictatorships as the "three thoughest challenges faced" in nuclear weaponry and missile containment. Mann recounts how CLINTON also "defied" UN "authority" by conducting the Kosovo intervention!!!! CLINTON was accused of "unilateralism" first, when he, judiciously, spurned signing a treaty banning land mines' use, opposed joining the UN-tyrannical, unauthorized "International Criminal Court" (ignobly relapsing by "signing" the treaty immediately before leaving office doesn't count; Clinton still fought sending the treaty to the Senate, and didn't recommend Bush's incoming Admin. to have it ratified), and prohibited submitting the Kyoto treaty to Congress. Also noteworthy is some policies shadily attributed to Bush-arming Taiwan and zero exclusive talks with North Korea before multilateral talks about its nukes program-that have been vilely misconstrued by liberals are actually updated extensions of Dole's platforms in his 1996 election bid.
Mann demonstrates how neoconservatism rose individually in the Democratic Party-callously sinking today's liberals' misconstructions that neoconservatism's a movement from the "radical right" of the Republicans. Many, once proud Democrats like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Jackson and Hubert Humphrey were LOTS more regenerate than today's counterculture wackjobs infesting Democrats nowadays, like Dean, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore and Byrd. These Democrats of old were so regenerate they joined with Republicans in voting for measures that helped America, unlike the five extremists aforementioned, like opposition to the left-wing-errant détente which imposed a "balance of power" tolerance liberals are irredeemably preoccupied with for hostile regimes, as long as they didn't overtly hurt America.
The Vulcans'-especially Wolfowitz-neoconservatism embraced the breakthrough philosophy of Leo Strauss, who patronized denouncing liberalism's moral relativism, since that'd mislead into the gullible subterfuge of believing adverse regimes are equal with democracies-that'd in turn misdirect into getting duped by said regimes' clandestineness. Cheney's a prominent torchbearer for this mentality, while Mann offers that Rice is more of a "peacemaker" in the Admin., playing liaison between the hawks and more dovish-leaning members. Rumsfeld, curiously enough, was dovish during Vietnam, yet graduated into hawkish stands while administering Afghanistan and Iraq. Though conservative, Powell and Armitage may be segregated finely from hawks of the Admin.. The only ones with on-the-ground combat experience, they fishily espouse the most caution concerning committing Americans to war before a definitive plan, though firmly share the hawks' idealism of indomitable American power. As a bonus, Mann includes personal and professional photographs of the Vulcans from their early years onwards.
Rating:
Summary: A solid account of the past administration
Review: As the sub-title of this book indicates, this is not a Star Trek pastiche novel! It is a look at the careers of part of the Bush White House-Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Condolezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz. The goal of the book is to examine how their careers in government have shaped their views on foreign policy and the role of the US military.
Mann's assertion is that the Vulcans have made a break from the previous post-WWII foreign policy which stressed pragmatism and detente, to a foreign policy which stresses: 1) the centrality and domination of the American military; 2) the reluctance to enter into treaties and alliances; 3) the idea that democracy and free markets should be spread around the world; and 4) an extraordinary sense of optimism.
How they formed these views over the years is the focus of the bulk of the book; only a small portion of the book deals with the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.
Mann's study seems well argued (and referenced), but I come away a bit dissatisfied with his lumping of Powell and Armitage with the other four. While they both have both been major figures in the first term of Bush's presidency, they come off in Mann's account as being much more pragmatic, down-to-earth types, instead of the other four who focus much more on ideas and don't seem to worry about the details.
While many will think this is a "liberal" attack on part of Bush's cabinet; Mann manages to stay objective and keeps his opinions to himself throughout most of the book. There are a few cases in the last quarter of the book where he has a few strong opinions against the actions of the Bush administration, but he also proffers some for the Clinton administration and Chirac.
And if you are curious as to why they are dubbed "Vulcans," it all has to do with a statue in Birmingham, Alabama (the hometown of Rice).
Rating:
Summary: AN INTERESTING OVERVIEW OF THE BIG PLAYERS
Review: ''Rise of the Vulcans'' is an astute group biography of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage. These officials (Except for Rice) began their careers during Vietnam: Powell and Armitage served, while the rest, as Cheney once said of himself, ''had other priorities'' and worked in government. All constructed lessons from Vietnam that informed their critiques, and later their practice, of American foreign policy.
One of the many pleasures here is Mann's gift for making tangible the intellectual disputes of the militarily inclined faction through juicy tales of infighting. The main rift has been between those who served in Vietnam and those who didn't. Powell and Armitage experienced firsthand ''the intense frustration of fighting a war America hadn't won, the agony of having watched Americans be killed,'' and have thus hesitated to use force without a guarantee of victory. Their colleagues have grown ever bolder about an aggressive American role overseas -- especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Surprisingly, though, Mann finds more harmony than dissonance among the Vulcans. He argues, for instance, that the supposedly moderate Powell is at heart a militarist, as the 1989 invasion of Panama shows.
Rather interesting and worth a look.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting career paths
Review: Although this book's main purpose is to show how Bush's advisors led us to our country's current foreign policy, I found the stories of paths of their careers to be most interesting and memorable. I have recommended it to my teenage son who is considering government as a career.
Rating: 
Summary: Fluff
Review: An amnesiacs guide to US foreign policy. Considering the author is from the Center For Strategic Studies, this should not come as a suprise. A fluffy, apologist and flag waving analysis, containing hardly a substantive critical murmur. James Mann manages time and again to gloss over some of the important national security and intelligence scandals of the last decades; presenting the reader with insites similar to the scrolling news headlines at the bottom of your television screen. Don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: Effective Insight, well restraint of authors own views.
Review: Despite his obvious dismay with the Bush administration, Mann produced a superbly well researched book regarding the development of the sextuplet with the self appointed nom de guerre of "The Vulcans". Overall, the personal impact that Bloom, Wohlstetter and Strauss had on the Bush Foreign Policy Superstars is fairly accurate, while Mann's interpretation of the aforementioned intellectuals insights regarding the world were only surface deep and not entirely accurate. This cadre of intellectuals that truly have assumed the entire responsibility for directing the Bush administrations foreign policy to establish a culturally applicable democracy to the Middle East and the Islamic world in general are an interesting mix of backgrounds and Mann does an affective job of covering the diversity. Whether or not you agree with this administrations foreign policy or ideology, this book does produce a fairly balanced and generally insightful introduction to the Bush 43 War Cabinet and the thinking behind their decision making.
Rating: 
Summary: A Revealing Look at Bush's War Leadership Team
Review: During the course of the George W. Bush Administration, it has become increasingly clear that the folks who run foreign policy do not reflect what most American think. As aurhor James Mann has brilliantly delineated his magisterial new book, "Rise of the Vulcans," American foreign policy is now in the hands of a small neoconservative clique who like to refer to themselves as "Vulcans." Almost none of these neoconservatives served in the armed forces and most of them sought out deferments with the zeal of antiwar activists, with Vice President Richard Cheney getting five of them because, "I had other priorities." Yet neoconservative foreign policy is devoted to using military force, in practically every scenario. These neoconservatives are war hawks who relish war even though they were draft dodgers themselves. For instance, before the '91 war with Iraq, then Defense Secretary Cheney and his chief aide Paul Wolfowitz immediately began devising their own war plan "without telling Powell or anyone else on the Joint Chiefs of Staff." James Mann's book is quite comparable to David Halberstam's classic "Best and Brightest" about the Kennedy/Johnson foreign policy team. It is this writer's belief that future generations of scholars will point to Mann's book as being the definitive work about the forces at work in Bush Administration foreign policy.
Rating:
Summary: Journalists, rather than academics, are providing the
Review: essential reading on the origins and course of President George W. Bush's "war on terror." Fortunately, their skill at getting original material and then telling a good story is-at least in the case of Mann, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, and Coll, of The Washington Post-matched by a keen sense of historical context.
For anyone interested in contemporary U.S. politics and foreign policy, Mann's book is a treat. He writes with great knowledge and facility about Bush's top foreign policy advisers, described as "the Vulcans." The collective noun will not likely stick, since neither intellectually nor personally do they cohere as a group. Yet Mann does point to some fascinating interactions in the careers of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice in their journeys through politics, bureaucracy, and, in the case of Powell and Armitage, war. As he tells their stories, Mann presents characters who are much more than cardboard cut-outs. He illuminates past controversies and traces the schools of thought they represent-from the skeptical prudence of Powell to the cerebral zeal of Wolfowitz-back to long before the end of the Cold War, thus demonstrating important continuities at work. It becomes apparent that, among Republicans, the case for multilateralism and caution never really recovered from the disappointing outcome of the 1991 Persian Gulf War-Saddam's survival.
Coll also provides vital background with his detailed telling of the CIA's involvement in the tangled, vicious politics of Afghanistan. The complex story warns of how measures that make sense in the short term (in this case, arming the anti-Soviet mujahideen with advanced weaponry and acquiescing in the rise of the Taliban) can have dire long-term consequences (the rise of fervently anti-Western Islamic militancy). Coll is severe in his criticism of U.S. policy, which often failed simply by not paying enough attention to detail, and of the roles of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in creating a movement that eventually came to threaten them. As al Qaeda began to use Afghanistan to launch terrorist attacks, the Clinton administration (including counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who cultivated an air of "sinister mystery" but was right on the big issue of the danger posed by Osama bin Laden) found itself bereft of options. The book closes with the murder of one of the more promising anti-Taliban warlords, Ahmed Shah Massoud, just as final preparations for September 11 were being made.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive
Review: Every so often as I read this book, I would stop and gaze thoughtfully at the cover. You can see what it looks like here, with the six principal characters of the book drawn in a political cartoon style. That's not what I was looking at after awhile, though. I kept fixing my gaze on the picture hanging on the wall behind Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice. Since the six are sitting in some official looking Washington, D.C. type conference room, I assume the portrait on the wall must be a depiction of the American president. But which one? If you look closely, you will see the man in the picture has no face. Is it George W. Bush, the current chief executive? Or is it one of the other presidents-Nixon, Ford, or Bush the Elder-which several of these people worked for at various times in their lengthy public service careers? Perhaps the leader without a face is a subtle jab on the part of the author, a jab directed squarely at the men who sit in the Oval Office. After all, the six people examined in this book wield enormous power over American foreign policy, and have for nearly thirty years. Perhaps the president is merely a faceless, transient apparition when compared to such powerful personalities. "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet" is a history of America's new foreign policy as formulated by the above named individuals. James Mann emphasizes from the start that presidents play a small role in his book. Presidents come and go, but the six individuals in the book have played roles both major and minor in nearly every administration dating back to Nixon. Donald Rumsfeld worked for the Nixon White House as a staff advisor and in the Ford administration as Secretary of Defense. Paul Wolfowitz was a major policy wonk in Middle East and Asian affairs at the Pentagon. Richard Armitage and Colin Powell served their country in the Vietnam conflict before assuming greater and greater responsibilities in America's defense bureaucracies. Richard Cheney, the current vice-president, worked closely with Rumsfeld before his own stint as Bush the Elder's Defense Secretary. Condoleeza Rice became the current president's National Security Advisor after a career that carried her from Stanford University through several Pentagon assignments. If there's a recognizable theme in these short descriptions, it's no mistake. As Mann points out, all of these people rose to prominence through the Pentagon. The Vulcans (as these figures came to be known when Bush the Younger ran for president) worked together for years-though often at odds with one another on certain issues-to reformulate American foreign policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mann argues, the United States subscribed to Henry Kissinger's realpolitik as a means of dealing with the Soviet Union and other enemies. The foreign policy wonks believed that power, and the exercise of power, defined relationships between countries. America's disastrous experience in Vietnam convinced Kissinger and men like him that the United States had lost power and thus could not deal with enemies on an equal footing. The result was détente, or the idea that negotiation and compromise with America's foes was the prudent path in dealing with foreign powers. The Vulcans, first through Wolfowitz and eventually through others, rejected these ideas. They believed that America was a great country, a strong nation of boundless energy that could use its military power to cow any opposition. If the United States developed new weapons systems and spent vast sums on defense, no other country could ever hope to defeat-let alone match-our supremacy. The collapse of the Soviet Union only served to underscore this mode of thought. American might isn't the whole story, according to Mann. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest believed that the United States should, and could, use its military might to bring about democratic change in the world. The belief that an invasion of Iraq could not only overthrow a dictator and install a democratic government, but also serve as a means of changing the entire Middle East, was a belief articulated by the Vulcans long ago. Moreover, the Vulcans believe that we should conduct these types of operations unilaterally, as alliances tend to weaken American resolve. Not all of the six necessarily support these views. Colin Powell, for example, shares many of the core values of the other five figures, but believes that following these ideas to their logical conclusion will result in quagmires similar to Vietnam because such beliefs lead to open-ended conflicts with no exit strategies. Mann says that Powell's opposition to many of the Vulcan policies have led to significant discord within the Bush White House. The problems with such an aggressive foreign policy should be clear. Only an out of touch bureaucrat would think that a top down democracy, installed at the point of a bayonet, could succeed anywhere in the world. What happens if the Iraqis vote a tyrant into office in the forthcoming elections? Hey, that's democracy in action, isn't it? Something tells me that wouldn't satisfy the American government. I guess it is democracy as long as it is a certain type of democracy rubber stamped by Washington. At the same time, the left offers no adequate solutions to foreign policy, either. Turn over all our power to the United Nations and coalitions? No way. Taking that path will only lead to further quagmires. Mann's book offers no significant alternatives to the Vulcan worldview, but it does offer a fascinating read on a topic more relevant as the election nears. "Rise of the Vulcans" is an immensely readable book that's hard to put down, a mix of history, biography, and journalism that will entertain even as it informs.
Rating:
Summary: great read...
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