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Crown
March 2012
On Sale: February 21, 2012
320 pages
ISBN: 0307952525
EAN: 9780307952523
Kindle: B00540PA4C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Political
Former senator Russ Feingold looks at institutional
failures, both domestic and abroad, since the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and proposes steps to be taken—by the government and
by individuals—to ensure that the next ten years are focused
on solving the international problems that threaten America. 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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