An ambassador orders his staff into the lawless interior of a civil war-torn country as guerrillas are targeting foreigners for assassination. Hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S.-bought weaponry are channeled to Afghan religious fanatics, the future Taliban. White House players leak classified information to the media, then blame the leaks on career civil servants. Diplomats succumb to the temptations of exotic overseas sexual playgrounds. Political hacks and campaign money bundlers are rewarded with ambassadorships in a diplomatic spoils system that hearkens back to the Robber Baron age. Computer nerds Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning steal a veritable Croesus of sensitive national security information and give it away free to our adversaries.
What's wrong with this picture? Everything. Our foreign policy is in the hands of the clueless, the self-serving and the politically corrupt. Read this book first. Then fill out papers to emigrate. The author provides a first-hand view from inside the belly of the beast of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. His insights are so spot-on that government censors have blocked out whole sections of text. The Foreign Circus will have you alternatively laughing and shaking your head. And when you read tomorrow's headlines, you'll have a better appreciation why Washington screws up.
