The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military

by Tim Bakken

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020

A courageous and damning look at the destruction wrought by the arrogance, incompetence, and duplicity prevalent in the U.S. military―from the inside perspective of a West Point professor of law.

Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America’s collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military’s insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted.

Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another.

The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.

Genres: Nonfiction, Military Fiction, History, Politics

400 pages, Hardcover

Published February 18, 2020

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The US military has an unassailable reputation it does not deserve. From the inability to win a war to the worst schools and rampant criminal activity (drugs, rapes, bribes, massacres), the military sets the worst example in every sphere. In The Cost of Loyalty, Tim Bakken, a civilian law professor at West Point, has dug up and assembled a litany of failure, and failing with arrogance and pride. It reads like an Auditor General’s Report – endless examples of incompetence, bias, total disregard for the constitution, wasted money and unindicted criminal activity. Its actions lead to deaths in the millions. Its extravagance costs taxpayers trillions.

Lest you think I exaggerate, here’s what Bakken says right in the preface: “The conditions for individual and organizational failure are pervasive inside the military: loyalty over truth; isolation; censorship; control over everyone; manipulation of the media; narcissism; retaliation; and callousness.” And he hasn’t even started.

West Point, the army crown jewel since 1802, is far less than it appears. Bakken shows it fraudulently pumps up its stats to show how exclusive it is. It says only 9% get accepted. However, they include as applicants any kid who just asks for an information packet. The truth is West Point accepts well over 50% of actual applicants, because it has to.

Their quality continues to plunge. For one thig, the forbiddingly high rejection rate scares off many potential (decent) students. For another, they take on athletes with zero academic qualifications to help boost constantly failing sports teams. Third, they take large numbers of sub-marginal high schoolers and put them in prep, where they get paid $1000 a month, and still do not become academic bloomers, just more poor students when they become cadets. Fourth, more than a quarter of cadets have SAT scores in the 400s and 500s, putting them in the bottom 40% nationally. (SAT scores alone put the military academies outside the top 100, despite their self-promotion as top schools.) Fifth, when they graduate (debt-free) to guaranteed lifetime careers in the army, 50% have lower health/fitness scores in than when they were accepted. (In civilian society, this is called destroying value.) Bakken says many can’t even read. But they will spend billions, plan wars, lead others and make decisions affecting civilians’ lives and deaths as generals.

What they can do is go wild. Women face five times the rate of sexual assault in military academies (one woman in four) as they do in civilian schools. Getting caught committing a crime results in a wrist slap, if anything. The real punishment is saved for whistleblowers, who are fired, not renewed, reassigned, transferred out or hounded out as needed. There is no room for truth in military academies. Retaliation is endemic at all levels.

Military personnel cannot sue the military. Military academies are exempted from constitutional constraints. Academies are not even covered by Title IX regulations. “The system is specifically designed so that the victim, whether cadet, soldier, or officer, has no recourse,” Bakken says.

To get in, future-cadets’ parents bribe congressmen to nominate them. This was the top news story for months in the civilian sector, but it has gone on for years with zero controversy in the military. Instead, it’s a requirement.

The result, says Bakken, is that the military is run by C+ students. But that is only the beginning. They are taught by military professors without doctorates. Many don’t even have experience in their subject; it’s just an assignment for them. They are rotated through with no commitment to their subject, research or publishing. The curriculum is heavily weighted towards engineering. Not managing situations or people, not other cultures or even the history of war. Foreign languages are taught by non-speakers. Graduates are essentially completely unprepared for the military career ahead. And yet, soldiers maintain military experience is interchangeable with any level of other expertise, according to findings by Joan Johnson-Freese, US Naval War College, Annapolis.

Among the many needless ironies in the book, the basic one is that the military, charged with defending freedom of expression, prohibits it among its members and civilian instructors. This extends up to the highest ranks, where not disagreeing with the Defense Secretary on troop levels or the President on an invasion has led to endless unwinnable wars, thousands of American deaths, hundreds of thousands of locals’ deaths, and endless guilty consciences for not having spoken up at the time. It’s all about protecting your own career, at the expense of everyone else – millions worldwide. Say little to your peers and never disagree with a superior. That’s the military path to the top, Bakken says.

The result has long been insane strategies promulgated by incompetent generals who have no realistic vision of the game before them. Bakken says they have prepared the military for a war with Transformers, not with guerillas, religious radicals, local insurgents or millions affected by the ruthless, bloody and cruel US soldiers. The ultimate gaffe is to hand all decision-making to the military itself. The founders were so fearful of the military they made it subservient to the civilian administration on purpose. Ultimate decisions must come from civilians. But Donald Trump handed Defense Secretary General James Mattis carte blanche to do whatever he wanted in Afghanistan, with the predictable outcome of total failure at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Not only is Afghanistan still majority-held by the Taliban, but the military has turned the whole country against the USA for its hatred, brutality and ignorance. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the military lies all day long about its victories, achievements and successes in subduing the enemy and implanting democratic freedoms throughout Afghanistan. Where there were hundreds of terrorists before, today there are hundreds of thousands, anxious to take revenge. The US military makes the world far more unsafe with every campaign it mounts.

Bakken says American soldiers consider themselves warrior kings, able and free to destroy others at will. And the military will protect them and hide their deeds as best it can, by lying and avoiding. If word does get out, the military relies on the tiresome, inexcusable excuse that it was not intentional, and therefore not a war crime. Bakken show the US all but completely ignores international treaties and human rights agreements, including, if not especially, the US constitution. It sets up multiple future conflicts for each one it wages, worst of all on US soil. For which Americans continually express eternal gratitude.

All this might be okay if the military was competent at its main job – winning wars. But it isn’t. The most damning charge in The Cost of Loyalty is that the generals are incompetent grandees with giant private planes and unlimited privileges. They rely on their own gut instinct without consultation, and they fail, every time. The last general to win a war graduated West Point in 1915. That was Dwight Eisenhower. The rest seem to have learned nothing.

Even in their own war games, the opposition crushes the USA, nailing its planes on the ground, overcoming control centers, and causing leaders to end the games early because there’s nothing left of the US team to overrun. The Taliban are more nimble, al-Qaeda more resourceful. Everywhere, natives hate the Americans supposedly defending them, because the Americans slaughter the natives at will and en masse. Meanwhile at West Point, they teach cadets marching songs about torturing and wiping out hadjis - the military slang for arabs.

Worse perhaps, the military continues to usurp power from the government. In both Korea and Vietnam, generals (McArthur, Westmoreland) secretly moved to use nuclear bombs to wipe out the enemy, but were caught and prevented from doing so. Today, the military simply disregards the civilian world and operates separately, under its own system, totally incompatible with American values and laws. This is precisely what the founders feared and why they refused to have a standing army at all.

As for Tim Bakken, the only reason he can write such a book and not be fired is because he continues to work at West Point under court order. The military already tried to harass him out as a whistleblower, and it resulted in an order to keep its hands off him. This book could not have been written otherwise.

David Wineberg

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Bakken, a former civilian professor at West Point and confirmed whistle blower, offers an eye-opening account of corruption, arrogance, and incompetence at the US premier military academies, in particular at West Point, that has had a devastating impact on the US military's ability to respond to contemporary challenges. Given so many Americans today hold the US military in high esteem, the author's conclusions about the quality of US military leadership will come as a shock to many readers and they may be tempted to write off his conclusions as sour grapes. This would be a huge mistake and grave disservice to the men and women who serve in the military. and whose lives are often senselessly lost due to the poor decisions and lies of high-ranking military officers. After all, as Bakken pointedly observes, the US military has not won a single war in 75 years. Its last victory was under Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1945. This dismal record certainly is not because the US military lacks in funding, given the US military receives over 20 percent of every dollar the US government spends. So why since World War II has the United States lost every subsequent military engagement, e.g. the Korean War, the Vietnam War, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Bakken makes a strong case that the reason for these repeated failures is a decline in the performance of US military officers since WWII. Increasingly because of a military educational system that increasingly rewards mediocrity and loyalty, over intelligence and analytical thinking skills, the US military is ill-prepared to fight the civil and ideological wars that now plague the world. These wars require generals to "rely more on their intellect and less on weaponry" and sadly the rigor of intellectual selection process at West Point and the other military academies has deteriorated dramatically since World War II. This deterioration is the product of the growing insularity of the US military from the civilian society that is supposed to exercise control over its deployment. This insularity has been reinforced by US supreme court decisions such as Parker v. Levy (1974) and Roestker v. Goldberg (1981) which effectively placed the US military outside the constitution.

To illustrate this argument, the author focuses primarily on the anti-intellectual and insular culture of West Point. For example, he notes that at West Point, the positions of superintendent, dean, and department head are closed to civilian applicants. At first glance, the limiting of the pool of applicants might not seem that bad, After all, surely the military applicants who hold these positions have comparable educational qualifications as the excluded civilian applicants. Sadly, they do not. The vast majority of officers who teach at the military's premier academies, unlike their civilian counterparts, do not possess terminal decrees (a doctorate) "nor do they have any experience "teaching, researching, or practicing in their disciplines prior to being assigned to teach at the academies." In short, the future leaders of our military are not learning from the best in the field nor do they benefit from the latest pedagogy. And the applicants? They are not of the same quality as earlier applicants because of the adoption of lower academic standards and false reporting about acceptance rates that discourages many young people from applying. Quoting Bruce Fleming, a civilian professor of English at the Naval Academy for 24 years, Bakken shows just how bad the situation has become: "My best student at West Point would be the worst student in my classes" at the university where he also taught. Fleming also states that one quarter of those accepted to the US Naval Academy have SAT scores (math and verbal) in the 400s and 500s. This means that those who lead the US military today may not be the best and brightest. Even more disturbing, the moral compass of these officers may not be very finely tuned, This assertion is borne out by statistics. For example, the likelihood that a female student will be raped is five times higher than at a civilian university. The examples given here are only a small fraction of those provided by the author to demonstrate the insularity, arrogance, and incompetence of the academies tasked with training the next generation of top military officers. And what happens at West Point has tragic practical consequences that impact not only the rank and file, but the safety of all Americans. US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has not reduced the risk of terrorism, but rather led to the emergence of such groups as ISIS and contributed to the destabilization of the Middle East region. The military academies' inculcation of loyalty as the ultimate value has also discourages junior officers from questioning the decisions of their superiors, since promotion depends on silence and speaking out constitutes a death knoll for advancement.

Bakken ends his monograph with a call for reform. Real civilian control over the military must be reestablished; a federal law should be established requiring generals and admirals formally and publicly to register dissent when they believe a military action is ill-advised or when a war should not be fought or should be abandoned. For those who do speak up, they should be safeguarded from retaliation Administrators and instructors at military academies should be solely selected based on academic ability and professorial competence and the mission of military academies should be "repurposed and renamed" to reflect broader missions. The new focus should not be on military training, but rather service to the nation -- both in civilian government positions and in military service. The military training would be given separately, once academic training was completed to those students who want to pursue military careers. In short, he recommends a model similar to that used in the United Kingdom, in which completion of academic training is required before officer training can begin.

My one critique of this book is that in detailing the academic woes of the military academies, he fails to mention that many of the same woes plague our higher education system as a whole. For example, many universities have lowered their admission standards and because of financial struggles rely on adjunct faculty, rather than tenured faculty, to instruct students. While adjunct faculty do usually have terminal decrees in the field in which they teach, the substandard pay (20,000-25,000 per year, versus the six-digit income of tenured faculty) means that these individuals must hold down another job to make ends meet. To give an example, in 2017, the SEIU found that an adjunct professor in Boston would have to teach 17 to 24 classes per year to afford a home and utilities in Boston! That means the time that they can devote to students is significantly less than that of tenured faculty. And like military faculty at West Point, adjuncts are less likely to speak their minds, because they lack basic job protection. Given that almost 70 percent of all teaching positions at American colleges and universities are now filled by adjuncts, this is a real economic and educational problem that is affecting the quality of education that all American students receive. In addition, the selection of tenured faculty at civilian universities is not always based on merit; any professor will tell you that academic politics and personal connections often plays a larger role in determining who gets the job than the qualifications of the candidate. The value of a broad liberal arts education has also come under attack in recent years and cash-strapped universities have responded by placing more emphasis on job-specific training and less on providing students with a broad liberal arts education. In short, the demise of a broad liberal arts education is no longer peculiar to military institutions. The same holds true for corruption, as evidenced by the recent admission scandal that involved many top universities. Parents with financial means were able to buy admission for their less qualified children -- a phenomenon that is far from new, as one need look no further than the names of university buildings on any campus in the United States to see which alumni guaranteed their children admission through hefty donations. Finally, as most administrators will tell you, a high SAT score is not necessarily an indicator of who will do well at a university. So, while I applaud the author for exposing the dismal conditions at military universities, I find his failure to situate this crisis within the broader crisis in higher education somewhat disingenuous, as it gives the impression that simply adopting a civilian model will fix the problem.

Still, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary politics, military culture, and the rise of the military-industrial complex.

I would like to thank Net Galley, the publisher, and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

[Joshua Bowen · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I am a tactical officer of which he writes about. I am an instructor with only a masters degree of which he writes about. I am a graduate, of which he laments over throughout.

I read this to see his perspective. I wanted to gain insight from a different lens and consider the arguments against our academy.

But it was hard to remain open to those when even his basic understandings if why we do certain things within the academy were flat wrong. He demonstrated no competency of why we do anything outside of the classroom here and their developmental purposes. He fails to acknowledge the role of junior rotating faculty to INSPIRE Cadets, one of our three primary tasks according to our mission (educate, train, inspire). And he writes as a victim of all his experiences.

One of my Cadet sophomores even read the book and claimed, “he is just wrong about some things in this book.”

When he fails to demonstrate mastery of the developmental concept and approach at the academy, I’m challenged to validate anything else he writes about. His references seem to scream confirmation bias. And I can see his personal emotion pouring out from his words.

Ultimately, I just hope he doesn’t teach any of the cadets assigned to my responsibility. He has a terrible view of them, especially prep school cadets. I don’t want someone with such a negative perception of cadets to educate them...certainly not try to inspire them.

Glad I saw his perspective. Not sure it was worth my time though.

[Frank A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Excuse me, sir...Your bias is showing"

I am not a West Pointer but I graduated from a similar type institution. Hearing about this book peaked my interest to see what Mr. Bakken has to say.

The book is well written; which is expected of an educated lawyer such as himself. However, what was concerning is Bakken's premise. Depending on which page you read, Bakken's target is either the military academies, the officer corps, or the flag officer population.

His distortion of history annoyed me to a degree. He was selective in some areas and generalized in other areas. By the time I got to the last third of the book, I forced myself to get through and see if Bakken would introduce new material.

One shining point I want to highlight is that Bakken remained apolitical...he didnt place blame on any presidential administration.

I'm glad I got through it so I cam spend time reading other books.

[Hana]

Note to self: a must read.

https://www.theamericanconservative.c...

[James D Browne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want my money back

I can’t finish the book. The author’s argument suffers from survival bias and a refusal to analyze the mentioned problems from any but a very narrow viewpoint. I’d say it comes off as naive, but some glaring inconsistencies make him come off as deceitful. For instance, the author describes how negative viewpoints and criticisms are not allowed, which keeps the Army from modernizing. Then describes how two Army Captains criticized an operation and pushed for more relevant weapons. This was two years ago. Why would Army Captains mention problems and potential solutions if such criticisms are not allowed? I wanted to like this book, but I can’t even finish it. Amazon I want my money back.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

“But assuming that most academy students and soldiers are not genetically wired for malfeasance, the only place from which their crimes can originate is from within the military institution itself. The U.S. military is a world that accepts and encourages abusive behavior. Soldiers and officers learn to believe that they at beyond the control of basic rules, beyond law. It is no surprise that problems fester. Despite being responsible for defending their nation and fellow citizens, soldiers resort to what they know: violence.”
This is one of those books that could’ve been so good but instead was so awful. That’s not to say there was nothing of value in this book. I learned a lot and did quite a bit of research based on some of the information provided by Bakken. However, the way he went about writing this book made it one of the worst I’ve read (also it’s hard to believe he’s a professor with law degrees). I guess I need to state up front that I am a member of the military and so come with that bias and paradigm.
First off the bad…so much. This book seems to generate from his supposedly bad treatment as a West Point instructor. And with that he seems to have a grudge and too much of this book is an attack on West Point than the military in general. He comes off as a liberal democrat who believes anything he disagrees with is morally wrong (prayers at the academies for example). He doesn’t like that the military tends to be conservative republican. He doesn’t seem to understand that the military society is not civilian life. And he definitely leaves out information like Sam Koster being reprimanded after My Lai (this is one example and makes me distrust the accuracy of the entire book). His suggestions at the end are ludicrous to say the least (like getting rid of the UCMJ and having military personnel tried in civilian courts). He also supports the ICC which is one of the greatest attacks on American sovereignty out there. I could ramble on for ages but you get the point.
The good. He brought to my attention a lot of things I didn’t know about like the Fat Leonard investigation (not sure how I hadn’t heard of that). He also brings up good points about diminishing standards (especially for diversity’s sake) and the failures of top leadership (particularly over the past 20 years since 9/11). He also talks about the problems with the buddy system of generals looking out for each other and how it becomes more political than merit based.
Anyway I can’t recommend it and actually I would avoid it if at all possible.

[Wendy B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow where to start? As an enlisted combat veteran who left the Army (from Iraq, no less) and refused to reenlist, in large part due to absolutely terrible leadership, I so appreciate Bakken’s experience, courage, research, and documentation. I knew Army leadership was bad, based on lived experience but I didn’t know the conditions and pipelines that lead to failure after failure on the battlefield and countless deaths of my peers and civilians.

It’s particularly poignant that the caliber of leadership in the academies is…let’s say subpar. There is a large deficit of innovative and critical thinking in the Army for sure. It’s also telling that a particular demographics in these comments/reviews is taking personal issue w the arguments in the book but is failing utterly at refuting anything. “I don’t like it” and “it hurts my feelings” are not arguments boys. In fact it proves the points he’s making - an inability to take constructive criticism.

I need absolutely every single civilian and veteran to read this and have been recommending it to everyone who will listen. The military systems aren’t broken; they were made this way and they fail young people like me every day bc leadership has inflated egos, overestimates their intelligence and abilities, and sees themselves as beyond reproach and accountability.

Bakken does an incredible job of proving page after page the internal decay, cowardice, shameless corruption, and complete lack of strategic and tactical capacity and intelligence in military leadership. What could be more damning than the fact that the US military has not won a war in almost 80 years? And worse, in every conflict it has meddled in, the geopolitical situation has not improved but gotten worse.

I will continue my work of anti-recruitment among the youth and encourage everyone in their corner of the world to advocate for local demilitarization and vast defunding of the ineffective, bloated, useless, welfare queen that is the DoD/military academies/Pentagon, etc.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did, I just can't. There are many things wrong with the military, some of them the author correctly brings up. Where he often goes wrong is the "Why?" His analysis, if it can be called that, is not the objective kind (which you would expect from a lawyer), instead it seems to be heavily subjective to the author's own personal feelings and experiences. It is quite obvious where the author's political views lie, he makes no effort to disguise that in the book, however, he allows his political views to cloud his judgement when it comes to what ails the military. If he had found a way to be more objective, and presented a more accurate narrative of military history, I would give him higher marks.

Where does he get some things right? There is definitely institutional rot and corruption in the military industrial complex. One need not be an expert in government contracting processes and law to understand that it's completely a creation of lobbyists and military leadership to line their pockets. There is also an evident failure at the Service Academies but the author is incorrect in complaining at once about lack of diversity but then also criticizing the very policies put in place to promote diversity as dumbing down the academy, this is logically an incoherent argument.

I will not get into military history and tactics but it is quite evident the author knows little in those areas and relies throughout on a couple of books from former military members (as if that is supposed to somehow make them experts immediately, which he would complain about anyway if anyone made that claim).

All in all, this book was hard to read and I can't really recommend it to anyone. There was so much promise, as the title mentions issues that are very real. The author just was at a total loss for how to go about actually addressing these.

[Brian Delrosario · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for veterans. 288 pages. Military and leadership.

America as a whole and both major political parties hold its military in high regard. Yet, we haven’t won a war since World War II, 75 years ago. Our military’s organization remains stuck in time two centuries ago, hierarchal and slow, in today’s fast and flat world. Consistent with the primary theme of this book, it values loyalty over integrity.

I had a boss one time who argued that Rule #1 is to do what your boss says. Blind obedience, of course, begs the question of what one should do when the boss says something incredibly dumb, or even harmful. A sensible person would argue that one owes a higher loyalty to doing the right thing. But suppose one lived in a world in which his livelihood depended on loyalty.

And what if that world also imposed civil and criminal action against speaking out? Might not the cost of integrity approach, or even exceed, that of loyalty?

[Erwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

One sided account of US military leadership failure with a particular bent against service academies. Contradictory and disjointed at times, the narrative repeats itself constantly. The author quotes Thomas Ricks so much that it makes more sense to read Ricks' books if you are interested in this topic.

[Bill Butler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations for the book and was disappointed.

While the author raises excellent points about the failures of our military and its most senior leaders, the civil-military divide, and the insular nature of the military he lacks a fundamental understanding of officer accessions and directives from numerous administrations to create a diverse officer corps. He also does not understand the pyramid of Officer requirements at the lieutenant level and then at captain, which coincidentally 50% of a year group is not required for the O3 positions in the army. This is the five year mark when about half of a year group from USMA and ROTC complete their active duty service obligation and resign their commissions.

West Point is not the Army, nor is it the only source of commissioned officers. If you look at promotion rates of officers from all commissioning sources, USMA, ROTC, and OCS officers have similar promotion rates compared to the relative population of officers from O1 through O9. The author raises issues with the “absurd trappings of generals and admirals” yet ironically complains that he had his teaching schedule changed one year, had to enroll in a night LLM program, and had to take mandatory anti-terrorism training before international travel.

The author makes too many generalizations, oversimplifies some arguments, references survey and research data that in one case was over 50 years old, and ignores the abdication of responsibility by congress in providing civilian oversight of and funding for the military. There is no mention about the significant role played by congress in the military-industrial complex. President Eisenhower originally included congress in the complex but omitted it in his final speech.

For full transparency, I did not attend West Point, received a Regular Army commission through a state school ROTC program, was assigned to USMA for a two year assignment as a field grade officer, and served on active duty for almost 27 years.

[Cole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very uneven. Some excellent and eye-popping points that are made - for example, the way West Point inflates its applicant count to seem more selective - are largely overshadowed by the collection of agreeing voices rather than data. Too often, instead of offering information to back an assertion, instead assertions are followed by several pages of "and so-and-so agrees!" This is not the same as persuasive argumentation.

[Darrell Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I have been led by many officers from each of these academies, I think there is a bias based on what happens at these schools. I do however have been a part of the blunder of senior military failures. It’s taken this long to realize, despite the recruiting efforts, as you gain tenure you start to realize there are mistakes that are made and unfortunately that is a part of being in the military.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. My biggest critiques are the uneven / lack of thorough editing. I can’t believe a book like this has issues with capitalization for ranks / the military branches. My other critique is that Bakken rarely, if ever, balances his writing with an examination of things from another side. He has very valid concerns and raised a lot of valuable points, but it feels biased at times. However, this is a very good read for current service members, especially officers.

[Patrick Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love my Army, but the only way we get better is to face our shortcomings. Tim at times loses sight of the military point of some customs and traditions, but lays out valid points against rampant cronyism in the military. Military folk, be open to discussion and don’t rush to defense out of a sense of pride. Humility goes a long way, and much of it will be needed to improve our profession.

[JC]

This guy drones on for what seems like forever on some pretty petty West Point bullshit. With that being said, you cannot read this book and still think the army is an admirable organization in any sense.

[Amy Connors · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought his overall points were valid, but often his evidence was misrepresented or misanalysed. This broke his line of reasoning towards his conclusion and led me to be wary of his other points he chose.

[Eugene Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A profoundly provocative, articulate, and sharp account of the harms that unconditional loyalty and veneration of the military has on society.