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The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril
Audiobook12 hours

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

Written by Eugene Jarecki

Narrated by David Drummond

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this audiobook

In his famous farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower urgently warned Americans to guard against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" in the leviathan he dubbed the military-industrial complex. As Eugene Jarecki powerfully portrays in this piercing and necessary book, Eisenhower's worst fears have been realized. The complex has grown so large and powerful, with tendrils reaching so wide and deep into our political system, economy, and culture, that it is dramatically undermining our democracy, fueling an excessive militarism and an imperialist impulse that has propelled the United States into a series of horribly misguided military actions-culminating in the Iraq debacle.

Based on extensive interviews with a who's who of high-level insiders from the Beltway, the Pentagon, and the defense sector, as well as in-depth historical research, Jarecki traces the troubling story of the evolution of the complex and how it so forcefully exerts its corrupting influence. Vital listening at this crucial juncture as the nation grapples with the profound challenge of Iraq, Jarecki's penetrating examination is sure to generate wide acclaim and lively debate.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 11, 2008
ISBN9781400179800
Author

Eugene Jarecki

Eugene Jarecki is the acclaimed fimmaker of The Trials of Hnry Kissinger and Why We Fight, winner of the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and a 2006 Peabody Award. He has been a Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies and is the founder and director of The Eisenhower Project, an academic public policy group dedicated, in the spirit of Dwight D. Eisnehower, to studying U.S. foreign policy.

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For better or worse, it's obvious that this was written by a film-maker. For better, because he writes very clearly and has a good eye for anecdotes. For worse, because it's pretty disordered, sometimes overly polemical and other times overly credulous.

    The best of all is the way he contextualizes the Bush administration's use of executive power in the prosecution of the Iraq war, picking out the most important changes in America's attitude towards its role in global matters (e.g., FDR, Truman, Ike) and showing how they come together in recent presidencies. The worst of all is his apparent belief that ethical standards can be found mainly in the wise words of Our American Forefathers, (particularly Madison and Eisenhower, neither of whom exactly qualify as robust moral exemplars) or, even more perversely, military strategists who more or less get their military strategy from the self-help books of the later twentieth century (John Boyd).

    And you already know everything in the last two chapters: he goes through the Bush/Cheney/Perlites and their various turpitudes in an unenlightening, boring manner.

    Jarecki admits at the end that his own understanding of some of his heroes was changed by his research, and that's all for the better. Now if only he could recognize that The Federalist Papers are no more divine than FDR, he'd really be on to something.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an important book, one of a very few for a popular audience that attempts to chart the rise of the military-industrial complex and the evolution of our current political imbalance among the three branches. The book often feels clunky and padded, unfortunately. Still, it is one of a very few books out there that attempts seriously to explain how the U.S., that is, us, became a militarist imperium. Worth reading for that alone, but the final chapters, where he discusses John Yoo's arguments in favor of extraordinary presidential power and suggests some starting points for reform, are also quite thought-provoking.