American troops bogged down in Iraq, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, an overstretched military and National Guard, simmering tensions with Iran and North Korea, and growing hostility toward the United States around the world: these are just some of the consequences of Bush administration foreign policy over the last seven years. To the Slate columnist Fred Kaplan, these woes all stem from two grand misconceptions held by the White House and its top advisers: that the world fundamentally changed after 9/11, when in fact “the way the world works — the nature of power, warfare and politics among nations — remained essentially the same”; and that in a post-cold-war era, the United States “had the power to set the terms of the new world order” and could therefore act unilaterally, without entangling alliances and without compromising “with competing concepts or interests.”

Skip to next paragraph

Will O'Leary

Fred Kaplan

DAYDREAM BELIEVERS

How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

By Fred Kaplan

246 pages. John Wiley & Sons Inc. $25.95.

Related

An Excerpt from "Daydream Believers"

The devastating consequences of the administration’s embrace of such idées fixes (along with its cavalier dismissal of facts and arguments that did not support its big theories) has been examined before, of course, most notably by the New Yorker writers Seymour M. Hersh and George Packer in their groundbreaking books, “Chain of Command” (2004) and “The Assassins’ Gate” (2005), respectively.

What sets Mr. Kaplan’s “Daydream Believers” apart is his emphasis on the Bush administration’s failure to come to terms with a post-cold-war paradigm, which, he argues, left America’s power diminished, rather than enhanced, as former allies, liberated from the specter of the Soviet Union, felt increasingly free to depart from Washington’s directives.

Also illuminating is his close analysis of the impact that the White House’s idées fixes had, not just on the Iraq war but also on other foreign policy problems like North Korea, and his detailed examination of the formative role that the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky played in shaping President Bush’s determination to try to export democracy around the world.

Parts of “Daydream Believers” will seem terribly familiar to readers of books about the administration and the war in Iraq. For instance, Mr. Kaplan’s discussion of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s stubborn determination to wage the war in Iraq with a small, fast force — a decision that was meant to illustrate his theory of military transformation, but that in fact had crippling consequences on the United States military’s ability to restore law and order in Iraq and to manage the occupation — pales next to the Washington Post reporter Thomas E. Ricks’s detailed account of this monumental miscalculation in his seminal 2006 book, “Fiasco.”

Still, Mr. Kaplan (who has also written for The New York Times) does a lucid job of providing an overview of the fallout that the administration’s love of big ideas would have on foreign policy. He also sheds new light on the important part played by certain advisers within the Bush White House, while explicating several pivotal and perplexing matters concerning the administration’s decision-making process.

He underscores the crucial role the speechwriter Michael Gerson, a self-described evangelical, played in linking the president’s religious and moral imperatives with his expansionist foreign policy. And he argues that Elliott Abrams, a member of Mr. Bush’s National Security Council (and a former Reagan administration official who was involved in the Iran-contra scandal), “embodied both factions behind the administration’s new policies — the moral crusaders and the power-centric nationalists.”

Of the momentous and highly controversial May 2003 decree made by L. Paul Bremer III, the United States envoy in Iraq, to dissolve the Iraqi Army formally (a move, critics say, that contributed to the security vacuum, put several hundred thousand armed Iraqis on the street with no jobs and no salaries, and fatally fueled the insurgency), Mr. Kaplan writes that it took most of President Bush’s senior advisers by surprise. He says that top administration officials had decided unanimously at a March 12 meeting to disband the Republican Guard (Saddam Hussein’s elite corps) but to call the regular Army soldiers back to duty and to reconstitute their units after a proper vetting of their loyalty to a new regime; and that Mr. Bremer’s order thus “violated decisions made at the highest level of the U.S. government — and not routine decisions, but decisions of staggering importance that would shape the future of Iraq’s security, society and politics.”

Mr. Bremer has said that his decision was made in consultation with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, and was authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld. Although President Bush would tell his biographer Robert Draper that “the policy was to keep the Army intact,” The Times reported on Monday that Mr. Bremer and others who attended a May 22 video conference during which he outlined his plan said the president had seemed satisfied with what he heard. In December 2004 he would award Mr. Bremer the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Like so many earlier books about the Bush administration and its conduct of the war in Iraq, “Daydream Believers” leaves the reader with a portrait of a White House that circumvented traditional policy-making channels to implement its big ideas, and that often chose willfully to ignore history and the advice of experts — from the Army chief of staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki’s preinvasion recommendation that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq successfully, to warnings from the State Department that elections in the Middle East “could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements,” as they in fact were by Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Mr. Bush similarly emerges from this book as a naïve, impulsive and stubborn leader, whose moral certitude and penchant for denial have made him more inclined to double down on a bad bet than ever to admit a mistake, a president whose post-9/11 search for a bold new approach to the world made him susceptible to neoconservative ideas of pre-emption and unilateralism that had gained little traction with his father or Bill Clinton.

President Bush’s strategies, Mr. Kaplan writes near the end of this incisive book, failed “because they did not fit the realities of his era”: “They were based not on a grasp of technology, history or foreign cultures but rather on fantasy, faith and willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences.”

Failing to acknowledge the limits of American power, he writes, President Bush and his aides ended up trumpeting the country’s “reduced powers — and, as a result, they weakened their nation further.” They “set forth a new way of fighting battles — but withheld the tools for winning wars. They aimed to topple rogue regimes — with scant knowledge of the local culture and no plan for what to do after the tyrant fell. They dreamed of spreading democracy around the world — but did nothing to help build the democratic institutions without which mere elections were moot or worse. In their best-intentioned moments, they put forth ideas without strategies, policies without process, wishes without means.”

Dylan Jones on Dino: the true leader of the Rat Pack

Comments

Dylan Jones says Dean Martin's cool was born of sheer indifference

The ultimate lounge lizard, Dean Martin eclipses both Frank and Elvis if only because his cool was born of sheer indifference

Now, you might think you're cool. You might be standing there in front of your full-length, bulb-framed, lava-lamp-shaped mirror, in your one-button, peak-lapel, rope-shouldered mohair midnight-blue two-piece feeling enormously pleased with yourself.

You might be admiring your brand spanking new patent-leather loafers, high-collared Harry Hill/Dylan Jones-style shirt and skinny matt-black tie and feeling enormously smug.

You may have just been given a pair of Thomas Pink gold-bullion cuff-links by your significant girlfriend, managed to approximate a fairly convincing spotted pocket handkerchief (the right way up this time) and treated yourself to a new watch with a face the size of Belgium, and therefore be thinking all is well with the world.

But let me tell you, my friend ? you have nothing on Debonair Dino.

He might not have been The Voice (he was never as ambitious as Sinatra) and he might not have been The King (although Elvis copied his singing style wholesale), but he was the coolest man to ever wear a tux, and compared to him you look about as cool as Nick Clegg in a hoodie. Or a shell suit. Or anything worn by John McCririck.

Dean Martin invented cool. For 20 years, from the late Forties to the end of the Sixties, he was the epitome of louche sang-froid, a singer, actor and genuine star who conquered Hollywood, television and Tin Pan Alley.

He was the first man to ever enjoy stardom on all four fronts of stage, records, television and film.

He liked a drink ? indeed, towards the end of his career it was his defining characteristic, and he was rarely seen on television without a drink of some sort in his hand (his personalised numberplate read DRUNKY). And he liked his women.

But most of all, he liked breezing through life without a care in the world. He was a star not just because he could sing well or act appealingly, but also because he was the embodiment of relaxed, funny sexiness.

In a word that first came into vogue during his rise, he was Cool. With a capital C.

He dropped out of school because he thought he was smarter than the teachers. He delivered bootleg booze, served as a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as a welterweight.

And then he became one of the biggest stars in the world.

Other Italian-style singers of the time worked hard to seduce the women in the audience. To him, that came naturally ? sometimes too naturally.

He worked to seduce the men, winning them over, gaining their approval through the illusion of camaraderie.

Scratch his flip, insouciant exterior? and you found a flip, insouciant interior. Which is probably why he felt so at ease with the way he dressed.

His cool wasn't born out of arrogance; it was born out of indifference.

And his uncaring air of romance reflected the flash and breezy sweet seductions of a world in which everything came down to broads, booze and money, with plenty of Amarone and linguine on the side ? living high in the dirty business of dreams.

During the Sixties he refused to rehearse at all for his ridiculous TV show, instead showing up for the taping after a round of golf and winging his way through it, reading off cue cards and pretending to be drunk (sipping apple juice instead of JD). Happy days indeed.

I suppose my infatuation with Dino stems from the fact that I grew up in an environment in which he was rarely off the turntable.

From England's 1966 World Cup victory through to the first Moon landing, my early memories revolve around listening to Return To Me, Volare, Under The Bridges Of Paris, You Belong To Me and In Napoli on the American air force bases of East Anglia.

For me, these songs still define a certain kind of imported homespun sophistication, however ersatz it may be.

Also, while the whole Rat Pack ethos endures because it represents adolescence in perpetuity, Martin was more adolescent than most.

Among his Rat Pack buddies, Martin was always the joker, the Martini-drinking lounge lizard with the laissez-faire attitude and an ever-ready excuse.

What's more, he was the author of some of the best-remembered Hollywood bon mots. "I've got seven kids, and the three words you hear most around my house are 'Hello', 'Goodbye' and 'I'm pregnant'."

"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on."

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day."

"It was a woman who drove me to drink, and come to think of it, I never did hang around to thank her for that."

"Hey, lady! Do I look all blurry to you? 'Cause you sure look blurry to me."

So next time you go shooting your cuffs, rolling your shoulders or pumping out your chest, think again.

Don't get above yourself, buddy, because in the grand scheme of things you're about as 'hip' as a Kula Shaker tribute band.

And when you're next about to venture out on the town, be sure to do the decent thing and put on some Dino before you leave the house.

You might never look like Dino, you might never have his luck with wine, women and song, but at least you can brush up on your karaoke.

After all, if it was good enough for Elvis, then it's certainly good enough for you.

Dylan Jones is the editor of GQ