Tom Paine's legacy.

• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

Amitabh Pal's useful review of Andrew J. Bacevich's Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War conveys the importance of that remarkable book ("The Toll of Overreaching," Books, November issue). Pal's discussion of what he regards as the book's shortcomings, however, is misleading, because it focuses on a book Bacevich didn't pretend to write.

Washington Rules is not an academic treatise on American history since 1950, but a wake-up call. Tom Paine would be...