The Cost of Loyalty
Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military
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Narrated by:
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Lance C. Fuller
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By:
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Tim Bakken
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents The Cost of Loyalty by Tim Bakken, read by Lance C Fuller.
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 grim: 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.
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The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.
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History not Politics
- By Scott on 08-10-06
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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Breach of Trust
- How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In Breach of Trust, Andrew Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Among the collateral casualties are values once considered central to democratic practice, including the principle that responsibility for defending the country should rest with its citizens.
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Volunteer Mil+Disengaged Pop = Perpetual War Baby
- By Darwin8u on 10-23-13
By: Andrew Bacevich
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The New Nobility
- The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB
- By: Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogin
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse.
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A little difficult to follow
- By Jairus on 12-10-10
By: Andrei Soldatov, and others
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Why We Fight
- Defeating America's Enemies - with No Apologies
- By: Sebastian Gorka
- Narrated by: Sebastian Gorka
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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WAR. It will happen again. We must be ready. Sober words from Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a man who has made the unvarnished truth his specialty. And there’s one eternal truth that Americans are in danger of forgetting: the most important weapon in any geopolitical conflict is the will to win. And we must win. In this powerful manifesto, Dr. Gorka explains the basic principles that have guided strategists since Sun Tzu penned The Art of War in the sixth century BC. To defeat your enemy, you must know him. But that’s the last thing liberal elites are interested in.
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Extremely informative and educational
- By Kami on 10-16-18
By: Sebastian Gorka
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The Insurgents
- David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War
- By: Fred Kaplan
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on previously unavailable documents and interviews with more than 100 key players, including General David Petraeus, The Insurgents unfolds against the backdrop of two wars waged against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one led at home by a new generation of officers - including Petraeus, John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and H. R. McMaster - who were seized with an idea on how to fight these kinds of "small wars" and who adapted their enemies' techniques to overhaul their own army.
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How to fight a war and win
- By Chupuk on 05-03-16
By: Fred Kaplan
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The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A widening gulf between performance and accountability has caused history to be kinder to the American generals of World War II than to those of later wars. In The Generals we meet leaders from World War II to the present who rose to the occasion - and those who failed.
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Provocative
- By Jean on 04-30-15
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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Directorate S
- The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 28 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, best-selling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.
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Slow At Times But Always Horrifying And Engaging
- By Gillian on 02-20-18
By: Steve Coll
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The Longest War
- America and Al-Qaeda Since 9/11
- By: Peter L. Bergen
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Longest War, Peter Bergen offers a comprehensive history of this war and its evolution, from the strategies devised in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to the fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond. Weaving together internal documents from al-Qaeda and the U.S. offices of counterterrorism, first-person interviews with top-level jihadists and senior Washington officials, along with his own experiences on the ground in the Middle East, Bergen balances the accounts of each side.
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More Bush bashing..yes, but still worth reading.
- By Dennis on 01-18-11
By: Peter L. Bergen
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Black Site
- The CIA in the Post-9/11 World
- By: Philip Mudd
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the towers fell on September 11, 2001, nowhere were the reverberations more powerfully felt than at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Almost overnight, the intelligence organization evolved into a warfighting intelligence service, constructing what was known internally as "the Program": a web of top-secret detention facilities intended to help prevent future attacks on American soil and around the world. With Black Site, former deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center Philip Mudd presents a full, never-before-told story of this now-controversial program.
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A lot of insight and context
- By Syrus Tam on 05-16-22
By: Philip Mudd
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Dirty Wars
- The World Is a Battlefield
- By: Jeremy Scahill
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 24 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.
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Non political BUT very anti-violence
- By aaron on 05-11-13
By: Jeremy Scahill
What listeners say about The Cost of Loyalty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sandy
- 07-07-23
Axe to grind?
As a retired (female) military officer myself, I’m familiar with much of what the author had to say. On many occasions I found myself thinking “so true!” However, in many other moments I felt the author just hates Westpoint (WP) and military officers. It didn’t help that he tells us straight out that WP senior officers didn’t listen to him and he felt wronged by WP. He makes gross generalizations about officers and characterizes military personnel as incompetent monsters. He was also very very partisan which for me lowers the veracity of one’s analysis. Overall, I felt like the author was forming an obviously biased brief about an organization he is hell bent on taking down. He drew conclusions to a lot of matters that he couldn’t possibly know the complexity of as authoritative and absolute. Because of this, I found myself questioning the legitimacy of his references and wondered if he broad brushed other media to find other authors whose views matched his own. Finally, a drinking game could be made with the number times the author used “penchant,” “hubris,” and “Westpoint.”
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- Hahnjob
- 11-11-20
At last, the truth!!!
Fantastic, refreshing, gratifying...and horrifying. We need more people like Tim to help make our world a better place.
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- Galvatron
- 07-02-20
Trust is What Makes Armies Function
I completed this book a few weeks ago. However, in the environment of COVID, George Floyd and Vanessa Guillen, its premises on flaws within the military deserve inspection and review. While I dismissed some of the hyperbole from his time at West Point based on my perspective as a non-Academy grad instructor, I could appreciate Bakken's perspective. His critique of the services, to include combat performance, management of criminal justice (to include sexual assault / harassment and drugs), and the aftermath of conflict (Tillman, Gallagher, and Lorance) are worth reflection. While many of his recommmendations appear unsuitable, infeasible, or impractical, they may be under consideration by the national politic if we fail to act. In an era where our “dissociation from civilian society,” and perception of prioritizing loyalty over truth can have long lasting effects on civil-military relations, this book is a reminder to not let the hubris of our past impact leading our military formations of tomorrow.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Efrain
- 02-17-21
Interesting, realistic take weakened by tone
I enjoyed the book and are very familiar with the material discussed. My real complain is that the author sabotaged himself with the overall tone he applied to the book: he sounds like an extremely grieved person venting. The facts he focused so much on the Academies, specifically west point adds to that notion. He could have made this a more profound, objective book by focusing less on west point, and more on the experience in the actual force. That would have required more research than just citing readily available material like he did. I understand it most be difficult, but it would have added effectiveness to his argument.
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- Valdez
- 07-06-22
Must Read
If you were ever in the military you must read this book. The author tell you all about the military academies.
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- Angry Infidel
- 04-13-20
Biased, Inconsistent, & Incoherent Rant
I struggled to get through this audiobook. From the very onset, it was clear that the author was extremely biased. I ended up doing some research on him and discovered that he still works at West Point. Protected under Federal Whistleblower laws, the author is clearly using his protected status to poke West Point, the Army, and greater Department of Defense in the eye with this smear. The information appears largely inaccurate and inconsistent as the author goes on ranting for hours upon hour. Only in the final 20 minutes does he actually present any recommendations, which essentially boil down to getting rid of the military academies, replacing all military leaders, and essentially getting rid of the military.
Personally, I think the author is simply upset by his life choices. Never having served in the military, I think he feels inadequate compared to his military and veteran colleagues at West Point. Despite his continuous claims of military hubris, I think the author is the one that has some serious issues. Somehow, he thinks, despite lacking any military experience, should be the Dean or Superintendent at West Point.
I also question his “facts.” He made several mistakes throughout, such as talking about “M5” assault rifles (really talking about M4) and staring that retired Colonels collect over $200,000 a year in pensions ( a retired Colonel with 28 years service receives just $108,000 a year). The blatant errors and falsehoods make me question the authors other claims. Overall, his clear lack of knowledge with regard to the military suggested to me that the last place this guy should be working is the United States Military Academy.
I ended up returning the book after I finished listening.... I hardly ever do that.
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- Thomas Gower
- 12-22-20
Interesting discussion
Definitely highlights troubling issues that face the American military and nation as a whole. A little too focused on West Point being the center of the Army universe, which it is not, and comes across as myopic.
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- Ben
- 01-02-24
Trash
This was filled with so many factual falsehoods I couldn’t finish. Utter waste of money.
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