In this eye-opening work, the president of the ACLU takes a hard look at the human and social costs of the War on Terror. A decade after 9/11, it is far from clear that the government's hastily adopted antiterrorist tactics--such as the Patriot Act--are keeping us safe, but it is increasingly clear that these emergency measures in fact have the potential to ravage our lives--and have already done just that to countless Americans. From the Oregon lawyer falsely suspected of involvement with terrorism in Spain to the former University of Idaho football player arrested on the pretext that he was needed as a "material witness" (though he was never called to testify), this book is filled with unsettling stories of ordinary people caught in the government's dragnet. These are not just isolated mistakes in an otherwise sound program, but demonstrations of what can happen when our constitutional protections against government abuse are abandoned. Whether it's running a chat room, contributing to a charity, or even urging a terrorist group to forego its violent tactics, activities that should be protected by the First Amendment can now lead to prosecution. Blacklists and watchlists keep people grounded at airports and strand American citizens abroad, even though these lists are rife with errors--errors that cannot be challenged. National Security Letters allow the FBI to demand records about innocent people from libraries, financial institutions, and internet service providers without ever going to court. Government databanks now brim with information about every aspect of our private lives, while efforts to mount legal challenges to these measures have been stymied. Barack Obama, like George W. Bush, relies on secrecy and exaggerated claims of presidential prerogative to keep the courts and Congress from fully examining whether these laws and policies are constitutional, effective, or even counterproductive. Democracy itself is undermined. This book is a wake-up call for all Americans, who remain largely unaware of the post-9/11 surveillance regime's insidious and continuing growth.

Dispute over the determination of a defining American way of war is a product of the 1973 publication of Professor Russell Weigley's work of the same name. The Weigley thesis captivated a broad audience and created an entire subdivision of American military history, initiating a debate that continues to this day. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff entered the discussion in March of 2010 with a declaration that there is no defining way. This project examines the historic foundations of the annihilation versus attrition argument and contends that the United States of America has maintained a preferred American way of war the author terms "Comprehensive Erosion." The research demonstrates the United States of America has employed a strategy of comprehensive erosion as the 21st Century American way of war in the initial campaigns of the era. This 21st Century American way is codified in current joint doctrine and will likely continue as the American way for the foreseeable future.