The American Way of War or The Prize

The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril

Author: Eugene Jarecki

In the sobering aftermath of America's invasion of Iraq, Eugene Jarecki, the creator of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight, launches a penetrating and revelatory inquiry into how forces within the American political, economic, and military systems have come to undermine the carefully crafted structure of our republic—upsetting its balance of powers, vastly strengthening the hand of the president in taking the nation to war, and imperiling the workings of American democracy. This is a story not of simple corruption but of the unexpected origins of a more subtle and, in many ways, more worrisome disfiguring of our political system and society.

While in no way absolving George W. Bush and his inner circle of their accountability for misguiding the country into a disastrous war—in fact, Jarecki sheds new light on the deepest underpinnings of how and why they did so—he reveals that the forty-third president's predisposition toward war and Congress's acquiescence to his wishes must be understood as part of a longer story. This corrupting of our system was predicted by some of America's leading military and political minds.

In his now legendary 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" that could result from the increasing influence of what he called the "military industrial complex." Nearly two centuries earlier, another general turned president, George Washington, had warned that "overgrown military establishments" were antithetical to republican liberties. Today, with an exploding defense budget, millions of Americans employed in the defense sector, and more than eight hundred U.S. militarybases in 130 countries, the worst fears of Washington and Eisenhower have come to pass.

Surveying a scorched landscape of America's military adventures and misadventures, Jarecki's groundbreaking account includes interviews with a who's who of leading figures in the Bush administration, Congress, the military, academia, and the defense industry, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and longtime Pentagon reformer Franklin "Chuck" Spinney. Their insights expose the deepest roots of American war making, revealing how the "Arsenal of Democracy" that crucially secured American victory in WWII also unleashed the tangled web of corruption America now faces. From the republic's earliest episodes of war to the use of the atom bomb against Japan to the passage of the 1947 National Security Act to the Cold War's creation of an elaborate system of military-industrial-congressional collusion, American democracy has drifted perilously from the intent of its founders. As Jarecki powerfully argues, only concerted action by the American people can, and must, compel the nation back on course.

The American Way of War is a deeply thoughtprovoking study of how America reached a historic crossroads and of how recent excesses of militarism and executive power may provide an opening for the redirection of national priorities.

Publishers Weekly

A scholar and documentary film maker (Why We Fight), Jarecki presents a succinct explanation of why modern presidents can make war whenever they feel like it. Jarecki writes that America's founders worried about presidential belligerence, so the Constitution gave war-making authority to Congress, which declared all our foreign wars through WWII-and none afterward. Drawing on historical research and interviews, he emphasizes that the young America was less isolationist than histories proclaim, invading Canada and Mexico several times and taking great interest in international affairs. But war fever really arose only with the start of the Cold War. Suddenly presidents commanded an enormous peacetime force and wielded the immense powers Roosevelt had acquired in WWII. Since then, Congress has gone along with presidential decisions to make war (then grumble if it doesn't go well). Today President Bush asserts that terrorism requires a perpetual state of emergency and that he will launch a pre-emptive war if he detects a threat to America's security. In this illuminating-and to some, perhaps, discouraging-book, Jarecki says there is only a modest groundswell of opinion to curb presidential powers. (Oct. 14)

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Edwin B. Burgess - Library Journal

Jarecki (founder, the Eisenhower Project), director of the documentary films Why We Fight and The Trials of Henry Kissinger, here traces the evolution of the military-industrial complex and its often troubling consequences, which include the concentration of power and secrecy in the Executive Branch. Using selective quotes and evidence, Jarecki argues that apparently reasonable defense policies have in fact led to such deleterious results as the creation of the Defense Department and the CIA after World War II. Much of the book rings true, but it's a hard read and the author imputes "imperial presidency" motives to every military policy decision in sight. A large part of the book attacks Bush and a prostrate Congress for mismanagement, proliferation of secrecy, lack of accountability, unconstitutional arrogation of power to the President, and perversion of such arcane military strategy theories as John Boyd's OODA loop (for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept. Not for the lay reader; dedicated military and political enthusiasts will be interested, but only libraries with extensive subject collections need consider.

Kirkus Reviews

A pithy historical exploration of why it's so easy for American presidents to make war. Today's neoconservatives who assert that America is a force for good in the world and should use its armies to spread this goodness insist they follow a hallowed American tradition. They are only partly wrong, concedes international-affairs scholar and documentary filmmaker Jarecki. Isolation was never a U.S. policy. From the beginning, America took an interest in European affairs and went to war whenever it seemed advantageous. Yet despite attacks on Canada in 1814, Mexico in 1845 and 1914 and Spain in 1898, pugnacious presidents were inhibited by a minuscule standing army and a citizenry that never felt threatened. This changed after 1945, when most Americans accepted that the Soviet Union was a deadly menace. For the first time, Congress approved a massive peacetime military force and allowed the president to retain vastly expanded executive powers. Today the Defense Department spends 93 percent of America's money devoted to foreign affairs; the State Department gets the other seven. Jarecki makes a convincing case that immense peacetime military procurement has corrupted Congress. All legislators, however liberal, fight fiercely to bring contracts into their districts and oppose cuts. The collapse of communism threatened this system, but 9/11 reopened the floodgates to another avalanche of defense appropriations, almost all irrelevant to fighting terrorists. When President Bush discusses military action against another country (e.g., Iran), editorials debate the pros and cons but take for granted that the decision is his alone. Jarecki points out that the president enjoyed almost universal supportwhen he invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. He lost it when they turned into quagmires, but few voices advocate restricting his powers. Disturbing and depressing.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Mission Creep 1

Ch. 1 The Tip of the Spear 7

Ch. 2 The Arsenal of Democracy 39

Ch. 3 Fear in the Night 73

Ch. 4 Big White Men 119

Ch. 5 John Boyd, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Meaning of Transformation 161

Ch. 6 The Missing "C": An Insider's Guide to the Complex 189

Ch. 7 Shock and Awe at Home 223

Conclusion: If I Ran the Zoo 271

Notes 291

Acknowledgments 305

Index 309

Book about: Wine Food and Friends or Slow Cookers

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

Author: Daniel Yergin

Pulitzer Prize Winner -- and Now an Epic PBS Series

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm.

The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.

Publishers Weekly

Yergin ( Shattered Peace ), a much-quoted energy consultant, here offers a timely, information-packed, authoritative history of the petroleum industry, tracing its ramifications, national and geopolitical, to the present day. Oil, ``the world's biggest and most pervasive business,'' he shows, has played a central role in most of the major wars and many of the critical international situations of the 20th century, has changed the lives of virtually everyone on the planet and is currently at the heart of the first post-Cold War crisis of the 1990s. Yergin describes how, after an oil glut replaced the panic at the pump of the early 1980s, ``Hydrocarbon Man'' once again took petroleum for granted--only to be shattered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait this past August. Whatever the evolution of the international order, oil will remain the ultimate strategic prize, predicts the author in a book that will be widely discussed. He points out, however, that the environmental movement is gaining significant strength as more and more citizens of the world express a willingness to trade off energy production for environmental protection. Photos. Major ad/promo. (Jan.)

Library Journal

This book does not require recent events in the Persian Gulf to make it an essential addition for most public libraries as well as all college libraries. Written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on energy, it is a major work in the field, replete with enough insight to satisfy the scholar and sufficient concern with the drama and colorful personalities in the history of oil to capture the interest of the general public. Though lengthy, the book never drags in developing its themes: the relationship of oil to the rise of modern capitalism; the intertwining relations between oil, politics, and international power; and the relationship between oil and society in what Yergin calls today's age of ``Hydrocarbon Man.'' Parts of the story have been told as authoritatively before, e.g., in Irvine Anderson's Aramco: The United States and Saudi Arabia ( LJ 7/81), but never in as comprehensive a fashion as here.-- Joseph R. Rudolph Jr., Towson State Univ., Md.