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In While America Sleeps, Russ Feingold details our nation’s collective failure to respond properly to the challenges posed by the post-9/11 era. Oversimplification of complicated new problems as well as the
cynical exploitation of the fears generated by 9/11 have undermined our ability to adjust effectively to America’s new place in the world. This has weakened our efforts to protect American lives, our national security, and our constitutional values. Ranging from institutional failures to “get it right” by Congress, the executive branch, and the media to the way we have spoken of the war on terror, the nature of Islam, and American exceptionalism, too often we have not made the best choices in confronting, in Churchill’s words, the “new conditions under which we now have
to dwell.”
Senator Feingold explores the way in which the American public has been fed inadequate information
or mere slogans to explain 9/11, Al Qaeda, and related events. This compares unfavorably with the candor often associated with, for example, FDR’s fireside chats during World War II. Lumping Al Qaeda into a catch-all category known as “bad guys,” failing to make it clear that Islam itself is not a threat to our way of life, and underestimating the extreme difficulty of fully invading individual countries as a way to root out international terrorism are examples of this misdirection. Moreover, our general inability to keep our eyes on the international ball seems to have grown
even worse in the years following 9/11.
More than ten years after one of the greatest wake-up calls in human history, our nation seems to have again grown complacent about the issues that suddenly seemed so urgent immediately after 9/11. While America Sleeps suggests ways in which we can awaken a new national commitment to engage with
the rest of the world and one another in a less simplistic and more thoughtful way. Feingold’s hope is that when the history of this era is written, it will be said that our country was taken off guard at the height of its power at the turn of the century and stumbled for a decade in an unfamiliar environment, but in the following decade America found a new national commitment of unity and resolve to adapt to its new status and leadership in the world.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 21, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307952547
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307952547
- File size: 8468 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 5, 2011
In this incisive political memoir, former Wisconsin senator Feingold analyzes political and military events since September 11, 2001, and provides fascinating glimpses into a senator’s daily life and decision-making process, from cloakroom wheeling and dealing and congressional delegations to Iraq, Asia, and Africa to town hall meetings and confrontations with constituents throughout Wisconsin. Citing Winston Churchill’s While England Slept, Feingold writes: “Negligent and willful oversimplification of complicated new problems, as well as a cynical exploitation of the fears generated by 9/11, have undermined our ability effectively to adjust to a new paradigm for America’s place in the world.” Feingold depicts the increasing perceptual rift between inside-the-beltway politicians and Wisconsinites, exacerbated by a Washington bunker mentality as the anthrax attacks forced senators and their staffs out of their offices and into crowded basements; the Bush administration’s machinations to invade Iraq; and Tea Partiers disrupting his Wisconsin town hall meetings to the point where other constituents stopped showing up. His shockingly reasonable and carefully considered responses, as well as his respect for, and collaboration with, such Republican colleagues as John McCain and John Ashcroft, will make progressives, Wisconsinites, and other frustrated Americans nostalgic for the days of a more thoughtful, productive Congress. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. -
December 15, 2011
Former Senator Feingold shares his progressive foreign-policy vision. Defeated for reelection by a Republican in 2010, the author served 18 years in the Senate, making his mark most notably with the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 and by challenging the Bush administration on the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. In this straightforward, clear-eyed look at the fallout after 9/11, Feingold revisits the U.S. reaction in the wake of the attacks, which set off an "unfortunate trend" in soured international relations that is only presently being arrested under President Obama. While Feingold graciously allows former President Bush accolades for his initial words of resolve and restraint after 9/11, he grew increasingly alarmed by the hysterical fear gripping Washington, and cast the lone vote against the Patriot Act. He was disturbed by Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech and refused to buy the administration's justification for war, despite Joe Biden's extensive hearings and endorsement of it. (Curiously, meeting former President Nixon, his nemesis, helped Feingold come to doubt the reasoning behind the Saddam-bin Laden conspiracy.) In the post-9/11 Risk game, as he calls it, Feingold urged the government not to lose sight of other important strategic spots like Yemen, Indonesia and Somalia, and he traveled widely with Hilary Clinton and others; he first urged the troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2005 and was gratified to see it finally occurring under Obama. He has been a vocal proponent for "restoring the rule of law" to the presidency and of Obama's health-care legislation, which essentially invited the Tea Partiers to organize his defeat in the anti-incumbent fever of 2010. Sage, sensible words by a leader who can now point to how he right he was.(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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October 1, 2011
A former senator from Wisconsin following in the footsteps of great Midwest progressives from LaFollette to Humphrey and beyond, Feinfold offers his take on what has gone wrong in the decade after 9/11. In particular, he discusses how our whirlwind response to 9/11 has weakened both constitutional guarantees and national security. Bound to raise both cheers and hackles.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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January 1, 2012
While serving as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin for nearly two decades, most notably as a member of the prestigious Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, Feingold, knowledgeable and influential, enjoyed an ideal vantage point from which to analyze the nation's approach to both global and domestic affairs. As a private citizen, Feingold now reflects on his tenure in office, focusing specifically on years following the attacks of 9/11, and looks ahead. He warns of a growing complacency regarding international politics and terrorism and bemoans the fact that Americans are myopically more willing to focus on the trivialities of popular culture and media-fueled controversies than matters of long-term substance. With precise recommendations in areas as diverse as citizen-advocacy programs and foreign-language education, Feingold offers a thoughtful prescription for elected officials and voters alike, and he invokes a passionate plea for every American to realize the momentous connections between ourselves and others around the world so that our nation is better able to proactively meet future challenges.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
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