united states

Picked up this book yesterday because I'd read "Dereliction of Duty" by Colonel Patterson and loved it. This book's even better! Patterson artfully lays out the liberal problem with national defense while weaving in lively military narrative. He puts you in the cockpit of an F-117 during the first night of Gulf War I and with the special operations soldiers during our initial response to 9/11. It's an interesting combination of beautifully written narrative and hard-hitting factual dialogue. He helps the non-military reader understand the soul of the soldier while objectively arguing that the liberal party of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry simply cannot be trusted with the role of commander in chief in these difficult days of war on terror. Told with extreme passion and personal conviction, you can feel Patterson's angst. Some of the key points:
- Patterson details Kerry's treasonous behavior upon returning from Vietnam and his complete failure to support America's military in his 20 years in Congress
- He accuses the liberal Democrats, Hillary Clinton in particular, of committing treason by placing personal political gain ahead of our troops' welfare
- He point out that the roots of radical Islamic terrorism actually was born under the vacuous leadership of Jimmy Carter
- He outlines the many ways Richard Clarke failed in prosecuting a war on terror and, in fact, is a fraud

Beautifully written, a true page turner, this is the perfect antidote to President Clinton's tome. Buy one for yourself and one for your liberal friends. They'll never be the same.

This book will be an important element in the political discourse this summer. In fact, President Bush ought to rely on it for his talking points. Author Patterson meticulously presents his argument that, since the mid-1960s, liberal Democrats have been miserable failures when it comes to overseeing the US military and national defense. He outlines the liberal dilemma: born from the anti-war movement of Vietnam, libs cannot escape their own ideological shackles. As a result, and illustrated in the failed leadership of Carter, Clinton, and ergo Kerry, Dems are not qualified for the role of commander-in-chief. ESPECIALLY in these challenging days of terrorist threats.

Patterson makes some very bold statements. But coming from this former Air Force officer, pilot, and military aide to Clinton, he has the bona fides and the courage to do so...and does so very effectively.

Extremely well-written, Patterson uniquely blends factually-based argument with brilliant narrative. The reader is left understanding not only that liberals cannot be trusted with the stewardship of our military but, equally important, why that matters so much to our men and women in uniform. A definite must read!

Lt. Col. Patterson makes some good arguments, but his book has glaring factual errors and reads more in style like a Socialist Worker pamphlet than a serious work.

Patterson covers the severe budget cuts that undermined military preparedness in the 1990's, and accurately writes of the dismay that those in the military felt during that decade of base closings & general neglect of unit upkeep. He writes compellingly of a military that felt ignored and unappreciated by the Clinton Administration and the Democrats. And he's right on the mark when he says that a strong military is necessary to maintain the peace.

Unfortunately, this book is full of misrepresentations. Patterson blasts the Carter administration for not defending the Shah of Iran, and characterizes the Shah as "progressive" and moving towards representative government. The Shah was in fact a dictator who terrorized Iranians with a brutal intelligence agency called SAVAK, used oil money for weapons instead of schools & infrastructure, and threw lavish parties costing tens of millions of dollars while the poor starved on the streets of Tehran. The Shah was not worth defending - as a leader he was only marginally better than Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and he was certainly no better than the fundamentalists who replaced him. The fact that Patterson continually praises the Shah makes me question his objectivity.

Patterson also takes great pains to disparage John Kerry's service in Vietnam and praise the service of George W. Bush. He claims Kerry is a War Criminal for shooting a man who was running away with an RPG launcher after shooting at Kerry's boat. In a war zone, anyone who has shot at you and is carrying a weapon is a legitimate target - if you let them get away because they ran behind a shack, they'll shoot you the next chance they get. There are numerous examples of this in books like Black Hawk Down and Thunder Run. While Patterson has legitimate questions about Kerry's Purple Hearts, his overall characterization of Kerry's actions as including a War Crime are very inconsistent with what I have read about military policy.

And I have to wonder if Lt. Col. Patterson would still praise President George W. Bush if he knew that Bush bragged about his father's connections getting him out of Vietnam while he was at Harvard Business School (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503181).

Finally, Patterson talks about the "values" of "Middle America." And if one reads in between the lines, his ideal America is one that is White, Christian, and sweeps gays under the carpet.

I'd give the book 0 stars, but I strongly agree with Lt. Col. Patterson that Democrats have been weak on defense since the end of the Johnson administration. Patterson gets a star for a good argument that the Democratic party did not pay enough attention to the military during the Clinton years, but the rest of his book frankly reads like rubbish.