Wastrels of Defense PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Wastrels of Defense PDF full book. Access full book title Wastrels of Defense by Winslow Wheeler. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Winslow Wheeler
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this damning expose, a veteran senate defense advisor argues that since Sept 11, 2001, the conduct of the U.S. Congress has sunk to new depths and endangered the nation's security. Winslow Wheeler draws on three decades of work with four prominent senators to tell in lively detail how members of Congress divert money from essential war-fighting accounts to pay for pork in their home states, cook the budget books to pursue personal agendas, and run for cover when confronted with tough defense issues. With meticulous documentation to support his claims, he contends that this behavior is not confined to one party or one political philosophy. He further contends that senators who sell themselves as reformers and journalists covering Capitol Hill are simply not doing their jobs. Pork is far from a new phenomenon in Washington, yet most Americans fail to understand its serious consequences. Wheeler knows the harm it does and challenges citizens to take action against lawmakers pretending to serve the public trust while sending home the bacon. Dubbed a "Hill Deep Throat" who participated in the game he now criticizes, he fills his book with evidence of Congressional wrongdoing, naming names and citing specific examples. Pointing to the extremes that have become routine in the legislative process, he focuses on defense appropriations and Congress's willingness to load down defense bills with pork, in some cases with the Pentagon's help. On the question of deciding war, he accuses today's members of Congress of lacking the character of their predecessors, often positioning themselves on both sides of the question of war against Iraq without probing the administration's justifications. Wheeler concludes with a model for reform that he calls twelve not-so-easy steps to a sober Congress.
Author: Winslow Wheeler
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this damning expose, a veteran senate defense advisor argues that since Sept 11, 2001, the conduct of the U.S. Congress has sunk to new depths and endangered the nation's security. Winslow Wheeler draws on three decades of work with four prominent senators to tell in lively detail how members of Congress divert money from essential war-fighting accounts to pay for pork in their home states, cook the budget books to pursue personal agendas, and run for cover when confronted with tough defense issues. With meticulous documentation to support his claims, he contends that this behavior is not confined to one party or one political philosophy. He further contends that senators who sell themselves as reformers and journalists covering Capitol Hill are simply not doing their jobs. Pork is far from a new phenomenon in Washington, yet most Americans fail to understand its serious consequences. Wheeler knows the harm it does and challenges citizens to take action against lawmakers pretending to serve the public trust while sending home the bacon. Dubbed a "Hill Deep Throat" who participated in the game he now criticizes, he fills his book with evidence of Congressional wrongdoing, naming names and citing specific examples. Pointing to the extremes that have become routine in the legislative process, he focuses on defense appropriations and Congress's willingness to load down defense bills with pork, in some cases with the Pentagon's help. On the question of deciding war, he accuses today's members of Congress of lacking the character of their predecessors, often positioning themselves on both sides of the question of war against Iraq without probing the administration's justifications. Wheeler concludes with a model for reform that he calls twelve not-so-easy steps to a sober Congress.
Author: Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429904682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Get Book Here
Book Description
The long-awaited final volume of Chalmers Johnson's bestselling Blowback trilogy confronts the overreaching of the American empire and the threat it poses to the republic In his prophetic book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson linked the CIA's clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism and the garrisoning of the planet have jeopardized our stability. Now, in Nemesis, he shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically. Delving into new areas—from plans to militarize outer space to Constitution-breaking presidential activities at home and the devastating corruption of a toothless Congress—Nemesis offers a striking description of the trap into which the dreams of America's leaders have taken us. Drawing comparisons to empires past, Johnson explores in vivid detail just what the unintended consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy are likely to be. What does it mean when a nation's main intelligence organization becomes the president's secret army? Or when the globe's sole "hyperpower," no longer capable of paying for the vaulting ambitions of its leaders, becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all times? In his stunning conclusion, Johnson suggests that financial bankruptcy could herald the breakdown of constitutional government in America—a crisis that may ultimately prove to be the only path to a renewed nation.
Author: Alexander Cockburn
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 9781904859031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Get Book Here
Book Description
For all who dare look, this timely book shows how voting for the lesser evil candidate still leaves the American people with evil. It calls on progressives to begin a new movement outside the death-embrace of the Democratic Party.
Author: Christopher A. Preble
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457912
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Get Book Here
Book Description
Numerous polls show that Americans want to reduce our military presence abroad, allowing our allies and other nations to assume greater responsibility both for their own defense and for enforcing security in their respective regions. In The Power Problem, Christopher A. Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of this nation's military power; throughout, he makes the case that the majority of Americans are right, and the foreign policy experts who disdain the public's perspective are wrong. Preble is a keen and skeptical observer of recent U.S. foreign policy experiences, which have been marked by the promiscuous use of armed intervention. He documents how the possession of vast military strength runs contrary to the original intent of the Founders, and has, as they feared, shifted the balance of power away from individual citizens and toward the central government, and from the legislative and judicial branches of government to the executive. In Preble's estimate, if policymakers in Washington have at their disposal immense military might, they will constantly be tempted to overreach, and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest." Preble holds that the core national interest—preserving American security—is easily defined and largely immutable. Possessing vast military power in order to further other objectives is, he asserts, illicit and to be resisted. Preble views military power as purely instrumental: if it advances U.S. security, then it is fulfilling its essential role. If it does not—if it undermines our security, imposes unnecessary costs, and forces all Americans to incur additional risks—then our military power is a problem, one that only we can solve. As it stands today, Washington's eagerness to maintain and use an enormous and expensive military is corrosive to contemporary American democracy.
Author: Benjamin Franklin Cooling
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 162190587X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505
Get Book Here
Book Description
While many associate the concept commonly referred to as the “military-industrial complex” with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, the roots of it existed two hundred years earlier. This concept, as Benjamin Franklin Cooling writes, was “part of historical lore” as a burgeoning American nation discovered the inextricable relationship between arms and the State. In Arming America through the Centuries, Cooling examines the origins and development of the military-industrial complex (MIC) over the course of American history. He argues that the evolution of America’s military-industrial-business-political experience is the basis for a contemporary American Sparta. Cooling explores the influence of industry on security, the increasing prevalence of outsourcing, ever-present economic and political influence, and the evolving nature of modern warfare. He connects the budding military-industrial relations of the colonial era and Industrial Revolution to their formal interdependence during the Cold War down to the present-day resurrection of Great Power competition. Across eight chronological chapters, Cooling weaves together threads of industry, finance, privatization, appropriations, and technology to create a rich historical tapestry of US national defense in one comprehensive volume. Integrating information from both recent works as well as canonical, older sources, Cooling’s ambitious single-volume synthesis is a uniquely accessible and illuminating survey not only for scholars and policymakers but for students and general readers as well.
Author: Robert F. Durant
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589011538
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Get Book Here
Book Description
Through over 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents, reports, and trade newsletter accounts, he offers a telling tale of political, bureaucratic, and intergovernmental combat over the pace, scope, and methods of applying environmental and natural resource laws while ensuring military readiness. He then discerns from these clashes over principle, competing values, and narrow self-interest a theoretical framework for studying and understanding organizational change in public organizations. - See more at: http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/greening-us-military#sthash.e4BZonoU.dpuf From Dick Cheney's days as Defense Secretary under President George H. W. Bush to William Cohen's Clinton-era-tenure and on to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, the battle over "greening" the military has been one with high-stakes consequences for both national defense and public health, safety, and the environment.
Author: Hal Sundt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493078577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
Book Description
The A-10 is the Air Force's unlikely success story, an airplane designed to support the Army, and one that ground troops came to venerate. Originally conceived with the express purpose of destroying Soviet tanks, the Air Force only developed it to keep funding away from the Army’s response to the mission, the AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter. Inspired by the biography of a tank-busting German pilot in World War II, the engineering and design of the A-10 fell to Pierre Sprey, a precocious civilian who'd enrolled at Yale when he was just 15-years-old, and now, barely 30, wasexiled to a Pentagon backwater with little, if any, supervision. The end result was one of the finest military aircraft ever built, a plane essentially constructed around a 19.5-foot, 4,000-pound cannon that fired 30mm depleted uranium bullets at a blistering rate. Looking like it was built from discarded airplane parts, it was probably the ugliest combat aircraft ever built, thus the “Warthog” appellation. But it was also an incredibly reliable ground attack aircraft, beloved by ground troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Despite repeated attempts to replace it with stealth aircraft and drones,over 280 A-10s remain in service today, serviced by dedicated and imaginative engineers and maintainers, and defended by a fervent cohort of advocates descended from the Military Reform movement. This is the story of intra-service rivalries, Pentagon obsessions with speed and stealth over tactical simplicity, and an aircraft that shows no sign of obsolescence as it nears fifty years in service.
Author: Lewis Gould
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465027798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this sweeping narrative, acclaimed political historian Lewis L. Gould chronicles over one hundred years of Senate history, from the Progressive Era to the war in Iraq. Over the course of the twentieth century, the most powerful legislative body in the world grappled with great questions of empire and democracy, war and peace, capital and labor, fascism and communism, race relations, women's rights, and terrorism. In addition to towering figures such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., William E. Borah, and Lyndon Johnson, Gould also highlights the stories of lesser-known Senate leaders who have played vital roles in America's upper house. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, controversy surrounding the Senate is intensifying-as is its political power. Lewis L. Gould's masterful history is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future of American politics.
Author: Mark J. Rozell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200413
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collaboration of distinguished presidential scholars offers one of the first book-length post-presidency analyses of President George W. Bush and his policies. Mark J. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney have assembled a varied list of contributors from both ends of the political spectrum, bringing together academics and professionals to provide a glimpse into the politics and policies that defined President George W. Bush's presidency. Testing the Limits discusses all aspects of the Bush policy and administration, from staff appointments to foreign and domestic policy to budgetary politics. Several contributors focus their energy on the expansion of presidential powers during Bush presidency, assessing the increased influence of the Vice-President, the politicization of federal court appointments, and the development of executive privilege and presidential secrecy.
Author: Louis Kriesberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190228679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this book, author Louis Kriesberg draws on the constructive conflict approach to assess American involvements in foreign conflicts since the onset of the Cold War. He looks at what went well and what went poorly in order to derive ideas for engaging in conflicts more constructively in the future.
