Hazardous Duty: America's Most Decorated Living Soldier Reports from the Front and Tells It the Way It Is [Hardcover]

David H. Hackworth (Author), Tom Mathews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

Colonel David H. Hackworth, the maverick military hero and war correspondent, has earned over 70 awards for heroism as well as eight purple hearts. More than any other military commentator, he has earned the trust and confidence of the millions of soldiers--from foreign armies as well as our own -- who cheered every word of his widely acclaimed autobiography, About Face: The Odyssey of An American Warrior...

Hazardous Duty is a real-life, hard-hitting, nonfiction thriller set in the ruins of Bosnia and the sands of Saudi Arabia, the deadly alleys of Mogadishu and the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince. Colonel Hackworth returns from these new American battlefields to report that the Pentagon is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars gearing up to fight the wrong kind of wars, and offers a tough-love critique of American military leadership, interpreting the new post-Cold War conflicts.

"I don't want to bash the military," writes Hackworth, "but as an institution [the military] is not above criticism. It desperately needs honest critics who know what they are talking about, not ideologues or fools or people who have been co-opted, but tough minded patriots who will push for a lean, mean, invincible and affordable defense force."

Hazardous Duty highlights include: -- How Hackworth angered General Norman Schwarzkopf by predicting his strategy during Operation Desert Storm with uncanny accuracy
-- How he was nearly killed by friendly fire in the Gulf War
-- Revelations regarding the inefficiencies of both the SCUD and Patriot missiles, as well as other high-tech equipment, which have, for the most part, failed to perform to expectations
-- Why Desert Storm was a hollow triumph costing over $60 billion
-- How the Pentagon's efforts to media manage Operation Restore Hope in Haiti nearly resulted in casualties among the press corps
-- How a lucrative lobby is keeping the POW/MIA issue alive
-- How Army Rangers were needlessly killed as a result of being sent into combat without the armor that they needed to survive in Somalia
-- How U.S. leaders flirted with disaster during the most recent Korean crisis
-- Why U.S. forces presently stationed in South Korea are in jeopardy
-- How Raoul Cedras bluffed the White House into providing him with total amnesty and is now living the good life at U.S. taxpayers' expense
-- How the United States military are forced to wear full combat gear under tropical conditions just to look good on television
-- Why so-called OOTW (Operations Other Than War) are robbing the armed services of their combat readiness
-- The salaries of giant defense contractors' CEO's are disclosed and reveal this group to be among the highest paid executives in the country -- all at the expense of American taxpayers
-- How the armed forces are wallowing in redundancy
-- What steps we can realistically take to reform the military

Published to precede the presidential elections and provide a wake-up call for military reform, Hazardous Duty pulls no punches in calling America's top political and military leaders to account for selling out duty, honor, and country.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nobody can question Hackworth's credentials--he's America's most decorated living soldier, a military reporter forNewsweek, and author of the best-selling About Face. In Hazardous Duty, he travels to danger spots like Bosnia, Haiti, Korea, Somalia and the Persian Gulf to rate U.S. military performance. All too often, he sees it coming up short. "Our military machine is sputtering like a worn-out tank," he writes in the final chapter, where he also offers a practical agenda for reform that is sure to raise the hackles of what he calls the Pentagon's "Perfumed Princes and Propaganda Poets."

From Publishers Weekly

Hackworth (About Face) is the most highly decorated living U.S. soldier. He's also a take-no-prisoners critic of America's contemporary defense establishment. Here, he uses his experiences as a Newsweek correspondent in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Haiti, Korea and the Balkans to illustrate and denounce a military-industrial-political system that, he charges, gives rank and power to "Perfumed Princes" at the expense of "warrior studs." A chapter detailing Hackworth's controversial investigation of Admiral Jeremy Boorda's alleged misappropriation of combat decorations?a scandal that ended in Boorda's suicide?serves as a case study of what Hackworth sees as the armed forces' continued devotion to appearance rather than performance. Hackworth's attacks on log-rolling and careerism seem like justified responses to the bureaucratization endemic to any complex organization. His repeated indictments of "politics over tactics," however, appears to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the customary role of armed force in national policy. Traditionally, as in Clausewitz's famous dictum, war is the continuation of diplomacy and politics?not their focal point. Hackworth's definition of a warrior is narrow; great captains come in many forms besides outspoken, down-home types happiest in the field with their troops. The author isn't shy about voicing his opinions. Of President Clinton's decision to order paratroopers into Haiti under the dangerous light of a full moon, he writes, "[Clinton} was so inexperienced he would have us grab a rattlesnake by the tail because that was where the noise was coming from." In contrast, Hackworth presents himself as one savvy, tough soldier (dressing down an "arrogant" Haitian police captain, "I just tore into his ass backward and forward"). While the author's grit is entertaining (and credible), it also melodramatizes the entire book, undermining the gravity of his more serious points. But this is a feisty, heads-up brief nonetheless, told with spirit by a warrior who now wields a pen instead of a sword. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688147186
• ISBN-13: 978-0688147181
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,101,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pointed critique of our defense establishment., January 26, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hazardous Duty: America's Most Decorated Living Soldier Reports from the Front and Tells It the Way It Is (Hardcover)

Hackworth's Newsweek credentials and military experience have given him a unique ability to observe the operations of our armed forces over the past ten years in Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Korea, and Bosnia. His analysis is critical of many of the leaders and decision makers in our military establishment. His critisim centers on the leadership, equipment, and policy decisions which cause soldiers to be killed needlessly. He has a keen eye. Even though I detect some self-serving nature to his narrative, I find myself agreeing with his analysis and most of his conclusions. This book should be required reading for all military officers with a rank of Colonel or above, and any defense industry civilian working in a decision making position, and for government and Congressional leaders dealing with defense issues. Paul J. Kratz, US Army (retired).

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for soldiers and taxpaying civilians alike!, July 10, 2000

By 

"lockednloaded" (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hazardous Duty (Paperback)

I really, really enjoyed this book! As a former enlisted US Army soldier myself, this book added extraordinary insight to the confounding, herky-jerky decision making that came from every headquarters higher than Battalion level, regardless of unit.

Col. Hackworth's brilliant revelations on the self-serving motivations of O-5 and higher officers were invaluable and revealing of the top-heavy, job-preserving nature of not only the military, but of the federal government itself.

I must say that a few of Hackworth's "Perfumed Princes" seem to have read the book and given it a sour-grapes 1 star rating. Mainly because of the blunt writing style. God forbid that we should read the truth about self-serving flag officers in plain language!

Hackworth cuts through today's political doublespeak with a chainsaw. Part of what's wrong with America today is an unwillingness of high-level decision makers to speak plainly, in layman's terms.

Dissertation-dry military books are as full of misdirection and obfuscation as a US congressman. Truth and plain speaking are as rare as hen's teeth in the litigation-cowed tortocracy that is America today.

If you want hoity-toity, quasi-intellectual pabulum, read someone else. If you want the truth, from a warrior who's been there and is willing to stand up the slings and arrows of the entrenched status quo elite, then Col. Hackworth delivers in spades.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Documenting Results of the Military Industrial Complex, January 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hazardous Duty (Paperback)

When Ike left office, he warned of the emmergence of a military industrial complex. A union forged between high ranking officers in the military, defense contractors, and legislators. Each member of this triangle has a different goal, but a common road that leads to that goal. In this book, Hack documents the toll that the "triangle" is taking, on the soldiers of this country and on its' economy. Hack presents disturbing example after another of how neglected our troops are, from that "gem" of a weapon called the m-16 that cursed our boys in Vietnam, to the cavalier attitude u.n. commanders displayed in mis-using OUR troops in Somalia. When someone tells you that the sky is purple, you don't need to read the detailed report they put together explaining their conclusion, just look out the window and see for yourself. Hack has reported from the front by giving us a first hand look at what no "triangle" spin-doctor can justify, willfull neglect and mis-use of our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. This behaviour does not border on criminal, it goes way beyond that.