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The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Scheer
Publisher: Twelve
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $12.25
You Save: $12.74 (51%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 7625
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0446505277
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
EAN: 9780446505277
ASIN: 0446505277
Publication Date: June 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In the course of his forty-year-career as one of America's most admired journalists, Robert Scheer's work has been praised by Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion, who deems him "one of the best reporters of our time." Now, Scheer brings a lifetime of wisdom and experience to one of the most overlooked and dangerous issues of our time - the destructive influence of America's military-industrial complex.
Scheer examines the expansion of our military presence throughout the world, our insane nuclear strategy, the immorality of corporations profiting in Iraq, and the arrogance of our foreign policy. Although Scheer is a liberal, his view echoes that of former Republican president General Dwight Eisenhower, who, in his farewell speech to the American people, spoke prophetically about need to guard against the growing influence of the military-industrial complex. In George W. Bush's America, politicians like Ike and Richard Nixon seem like prudent centrists.
The views of libertarians, liberals, and pacifists are often overlooked or ignored by America's mainstream media. The Pornography of Power is the culmination of a respected journalist's efforts to change the terms of debate. At a time when many are exploiting fears of terrorist attacks and only a few national leaders are willing to advocate cuts in defense spending, nuclear disarmament, and restrained use of American force, Robert Scheer has written a manifesto for enlightened reform.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
It's Alive and It's Not Boris Karloff September 4, 2008
So why does Boeing insist on making the wasteful and unneccessary C-17 military transport when not even the Pentagon wants it. Why not, for example, build civilian transports instead. Well, it's really a no-brainer, as they say. The C-17 pumps out a profit margin of 13 %, while the most profitable of airliners, the 747, earns less than 5% (p. 97). Think what that profit differential does for Boeing on Wall Street or for executive stock bonuses. And though Scheer doesn't mention it, military contractors don't have to claw as hard for the same buck as civilian outfits.
Then too, it's not like the C-17 is an isolated case. Think super-sophisticated jet fighters and cutting-edge submarines, all the billions being spent to defeat guys with razor blades and cell phones. There's a disconnect somewhere, but then maybe we're missing the dots. The book zeroes in on our now notorious military-industrial (& congressional) complex, showing how it's become all stomach and no brain, feasting like Frankenstein on the national treasury with no comparable enemy in sight. No wonder that despite our forefathers, we go in search of dragons to slay and where there are only toads, we make them into dragons. In short, our Frankenstein creation is running amok and feeds only on cash dollars.
Scheer's book reads more like an longer version of his late, lamented op-ed's in the LA Times, i.e. before the Tribune Co. decided he'd become bad for business and put a nice safe centrist in his place. Nonetheless, the story can't be told often enough. Of all discretionary spending (non-entitlement), 59% goes for the Pentagon, while the other 41% is for everything else, like health, transportation, education, and so on (p. 169). No wonder levees break, bridges fall down, and we rank somewhere behind Luxembourg in math and science.
Of course, the budget-gobbling monster couldn't continue without its shills in congress, the Pentagon, and corporate- sponsored think tanks. It's the Richard Perle, Barbara Boxer-type stories that the book also tells-- these little Igor's that keep the creature's pulse going. However, the author really doesn't face up to the problem of how we get out of this unsustainable war-making economy. Just where are the comparable civilian jobs when Corporate America is moving overseas and leaving us Walmart instead. No, we're in a pickle that's been building for some time and we best face up to it. The era of American exceptionalism is over. The empire we've built of which the military-industrial Frankenstein is the over-sized muscle is beginning to feast on us too. And only an aroused citizenry with pitchforks can turn up the heat to corral the monster in our midst.
 All hail! (the storm of efforts to boost defense spending) August 29, 2008
Not one to mince words, President Calvin Coolidge declared: "The business of America is business." Deftly, Robert Scheer lays out
a chilling indictment of the military-industrial complex, getting
right to the point. Exposing the moral bankruptcy of the curious
cabal called neoconservatives, the author spotlights decades of a methodical looting of our national treasury. Blurring the divide
between the public and the private sectors, neocons introduced us
to a corollary to Coolidge's dictum: The business of business is
war.
I am reminded of William Randolph Hearst's reply to a telegram he received from the reporter he had dispatched to Cuba to cover the
threat of hostilities there, in the late 1890s. "No war, here, I
am coming home." Tersely, Hearst is reported to have said: "You
do the reporting; I'll supply the war."
Scrolling down to World War II, we see Senator (later, President)
Harry Truman addressing what he called the "jangles and jumbles"
in military appropriations, the needless duplication in military facilities, the boondoggles and cost-overruns in the ongoing war
efort.
This is an important book.
You dropped a bomb on me July 7, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER serves as an update to the World War I-era book WAR IS A RACKET. The former expands on the latter's theme of money, not security, as the reason for both military action and peacetime armed forces spending. (You can read WAR IS A RACKET for free on-line with a web search of the title.)
A sensible response to box cutters and poorly-constructed cockpit doors should cost taxpayers less than billions of dollars for F-22 Raptor fighter planes. Yet as THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER details, the Bush Administration and Congress used the September 11, 2001, hijackings as an excuse to place orders for those and many other expensive, unnecessary killing machines beneath the Christmas trees of their weapons manufacturer campaign contributors.
Oh, and don't forget jobs. As if it were a contest to see if people will accept the stupidest rationale for spending tax dollars on overpriced, needless weapons, public officials cite jobs, THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER recounts. Imagine the community improvement were the government to use all that money on hospitals, schools or infrastructure instead of superfluous military stuff - while creating as many and probably a lot more paychecks. Perhaps school children should lobby Congress.
Nearly 100 years since World War I, war still proves the greatest racket. Read THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER.
 Defense Policy Not Trashed July 4, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is disappointing for a writer of Robert Scheer's eminence. It is mostly a rehash of newspaper articles. It provides nothing new despite that there is so much new material that could have been used.
Ed Spievack
Down With The Military-Industrial Complex ! July 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In a scathing examination of the bloated defense contracting industry, journalist Scheer exposes how the military-industrial complex manufactures and acquires advanced weaponry that has nothing to do with America's defense needs. Not only does the bloated "defense" budget entail untold waste and opportunity cost -- about 60% of each tax dollar goes for "defense," while more easily funded domestic priorities go unaddressed -- but the acquisition of this unnecessary military hardware, originally intended to defeat a Cold War foe that no longer exists, even drives our military and foreign policy decisionmaking. Scheer shows that this waste often takes the form of "pork" that Congress members are loath to relinquish. Scheer has fittingly dedicated this book to a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, whose warnings about the "military-industrial complex" have proven prescient. An excellent, in-depth examination of an important issue that neither party seems to want to tackle.
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