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The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America

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Robert Scheer's powerful new book, The Pornography of Power (How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America), examines what happened after an inattentive and largely apolitical public, led by a poorly prepared, intellectually insecure, and petulant president was confronted by deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It's a frightening story, but it is crisply told, well researched, and convincing. After decades of incisive investigative reporting, including extensive interviews with five presidents, Scheer is unrivaled in his ability to explain the complex interactions that have created this perfect (political) storm.

As Scheer tells it, the Cold War probably began to unravel with Richard Nixon's policy of détente, but the definitive end had to wait until the disappearance of the Soviet enemy. Unfortunately, what was seen as an opportunity for most was perceived as a disaster by others, especially defense executives and neocon ideologues. No Cold War meant no superpower enemy and that meant the end of unlimited military spending. Then came 9/11 and, as Scheer observes, unlimited military spending was back stronger than ever. Thus the focus of the book: the unlikely and illogical linkage between terrorist attacks accomplished by hijacking commercial airliners with box-cutters and annual military spending that has exceeded that spent during the Cold War.

In the aftermath of 9/11 the neocons were ready with a fully developed theory for a 21st century Pax Americana. They had a fully developed answer for whatever problems Bush saw emerging in the wake of 9/11. Scheer meticulously lays out how Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle "went to work on an untutored president." Their agenda had clearly been laid out in the 1997 founding statement of the Project for a New American Century which, as Scheer illustrates, was to boost military spending to create a world "favorable to American interests." At its center were plans for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Never mind that there was no connection between Hussein and al Qaeda.

Scheer's convincing evidence demonstrates that little attempt was made, by Bush and company, to identify the nature of the problem presented by the attacks on 9/11. Instead, the President and his neocon advisors used 9/11 as justification for "solutions" that featured expensive weapons originally meant to counteract technical advances by the old Soviet Union. If you wonder why the United States continues to build the F-22 Raptor (at $65 billion) or the F-35 joint fighter (at $300 billion) Scheer explains in precise detail. Never mind that the terrorists have no air force. Never mind that the F-16 flys perfectly well. If you wonder why the Congress has funded new Virginia class submarines (at $2.5 billion each) to fight terrorists who don't have a navy Scheer makes it distressingly clear.

But the executive branch cannot spend all this money without congressional approval and, from the beginning, congress was cooperative. A critical mass of Republicans and Democrats alike are shown to be open to the influence of the likes of Lockheed, Halliburton and Boeing. Such influence, Scheer shows, does not stem from campaign contributions alone, but from the promise of jobs. It is not for nothing that the various facets of military production are spread into as many congressional districts as possible. All of this, the author concludes, is "proof that when it comes to the defense budget, there is bipartisan support for endless waste."

Gore Vidal once observed that the United States is no longer a "serious country." What he meant is that we have become a nation with little sense of our own past and with little commitment to political discourse. What one learns from The Pornography of Power is that such apathy comes at a price. That price is an American foreign policy that has become little more than the search for new enemies.

The Pornography of Power is a compelling investigation into senseless war, greed, congressional pork, neocons, neoliberals, and seemingly limitless debt. It is the story of a republic turned empire. But underlying Scheer's reporting is a conviction that it doesn't have to be this way. Understanding is the first step and he clearly lays out, for all willing to read, what is driving trillions of dollars in illogical and unnecessary spending for Bush's global war on terror.

This is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future, or who wonders why we can't take care of our sick, repair our bridges, or fix our schools. Buy this book, read it, and find a way to discuss it with your friends and neighbors.

Being a big fan of NPR's Left, Right and Center, this book was something I was quite eager to read. Possibly the biggest compliment I can pay is that despite my political views tending somewhat towards the right of Mr. Scheer, I found the book to be an engaging, thoughtful treatise, one that offers a wide critique on the geopolitical situation instead of just another anti-Bush diatribe. Some of the most pointed barbs are aptly directed at Democrats, including Barbara Boxer. This is not partisan hackery; no one is immune from Scheer's critique. What's more, the book is anything but dry. It's written with an enjoyable, conversational tone, but backed by strong scholarship.

Though I often disagree with Mr. Scheer's positions, I regard this book as the work of a fiercely intelligent thinker, a patriot who clearly believes in this country's ability to do better. A must-read.

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.

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.

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.

Give this man a medal. I could not put this book down even though I have read my share of sometimes tepid post 9-11 books. Bob has been bringing us the truth for years and in this book has presented a clear case of the betrayal by those who we have entrusted to lead. His past experience on the political scene has given him a unique ability to weave a unique perspective brimming with clarity.
When Wall Street and K street are the primary architects and beneficiaries of a governmental welfare policy guess who pays for this? Our children and future generations will be paying for this massive rip-off. It is time to close the revolving door of government officials to the military industrial complex and back. Canada has proposed a 5 year freeze on all government top employees to work for private business in the field they were responsible or had policy input for. Some would disagree on such a measure as an infringement of their right to steal from us. Who will be the first candidate to express a truly revolutionary idea such as banning corporate participation and ban all corporate financial input in the electoral process? '' We have met the enemy and he is us'' Walt Kelly never rang truer.

War profiteers used to be shot. Over thousands of years, from the ancient Greece through the age of Louis IV and WWI,profiteering from war has been equivalent to treason. Not in the GW Bush era. Scheer shows how milking the taxpayer has become modus operandi of the 43rd Administration...to the tune of $ trillions!

While the funds spent on education, health care, transportation and job creation were slashed, the Republicans orchestrated one of the greatest scams in the history of mankind (in terms of funds steered from the public to private hands). GWB tore up arms control treaties and spent hundreds of billions on needless weapons to the levels EXCEEDING the highest level of Cold War spending. Scheer documents how these weapon's programs were pursued solely to benefit specific defense contractors. Conventional military received 89% even though the enemies defined by 9/11 attacks have no conventional army and certainly no air force. The spending for homeland security, on the other hand, increased by seven (7) percent and let us not forget the pinnacle of this pathetic presidency, when GWB, the - ahem - compassionate conservative - vetoed $7 billion for expansion of federal children health care insurance plan as too costly.

What staggers is the sheer magnitude of greed and brazeness involved, especially the neoconservatives who gloated in shameless promotion of their agenda that had as their target the perceived enemy of Yisrael. It is perhaps not coincidental that the Hebrew word for weapon and penis is the same, 'za'in'. The neocons - Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Elliot Abrams, Wolfowitz, Kissinger - hit the trifecta: they became part of GW Bushes government (many sitting on the infamous Defense Policy Board and JINSA) while associating with defense companies (sitting on THEIR boards) and cultivating close ties with Israel's Netanyahu's clicque and their corrupt American supporters a la Conrad Black and Abramowitz. No lie was big enough for these people.... the public was forced to go along with it because of massive indoctrination, fear of being called unpatriotic ... and because of Democrat support. Here is what Thomas Friedman, an early and enthusiastic proponent of the war, wrote in NYT:

"...The only way to puncture that bubble [[of terrorism]] was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could."

"we"? "our"? i don't see Friedman or Kristol or Podhoretz paying the price of war. Their kids went to Harvard, unlike the thousands of maimed American soldiers from small hamlets in Nevada or Pennsylvania and hundreds of thousands of killed Iraqis. After things started to go awry, Friedman morphed into a critic of GWB and the war and Ari Fleishman promptly resigned in order to get a well-paying job before the house of cards collapsed. Shameless and opportunistic. ...while neocons tend to be associated with Israel's Likud interests (as opposed to Clintonista neoliberals who are tied to Israel's Labour party), Scheer suggests that the link is not always straightforward. Some neocon activities - such as championing the military interests of Saudi Arabia and Jordan - were opposed to Israel's wishes while massively fattening neocon pockets. Even for Perle, ideology only goes so far.

The war profiteers made sure they will not be sent to jail by enlisting the Clinton machine on the Dem side. Perhaps one of the most illuminating - and scary - part of the book reveals the role these "neoliberals" as Scheer calls them, supported the orgy of war profiteering. Joe Liebermann, California's Feinstein and Boxer, John Kerry and above all, the Clintons have colluded from the outset with the warmongers. The same names floated to the top in Obama Admin: Richard Holbrooke, Kenneth Pollack (on Clinton's National Security Council), Martin Indyk (Clinton's Ambassador to Israel), Hillary, Allbright, Dennis Ross, Mike O'Hanlon.... Nothing if not alarming.

American Foreign policy can be seen as tension between two very different traditions: a relatively sophisticated and enlightened one represented by Eisenhower and his "disciples" (Nixon, George Bush senior) who see the world as multipolar and foreign policy based on the art of negotiation and their slightly nutty counterparts (Reagan, GWB) who see the world as black and white. The war profiteers thrived because they were able to fan an uneducated president's simplistic worldview. Is this going to change?

War profiteers used to be shot. Or jailed. Is Obama going to break the corrupt links between the defense contractors, policy think-tanks and the government? Is he going to cut the lobbyists out of the pork game? Is he going to rein in the senators who champion parochial interests over those of the country? Rein in AIPAC's stranglehold on US foreign policy? Or will it be ... business as usual?

Robert Scheer's The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America, takes as its thesis President Eisenhower's warning against the "military-industrial complex" on his retirement from the presidency and provides succinct analyses of how, particularly in the eight presidential years of Bush II, Eisenhower's worst fears have been realized. Scheer generously acknowledges that Bush, Cheney and the defense hawks may believe otherwise, but he leaves no doubt that America's war in Iraq, like so much of its foreign relations, is motivated not by the nation's defense, the spread of democracy or resistance to tyranny, but by the desire for power and profit.

Scheer has documented how the close relationship between the defense industry and the Defense Department has resulted in many billions of dollars in contracts to build weapons for which there can be no rationale use in a war against terrorist forces that do not control large armies or navies. He spells out how individuals move from high positions in private weapons corporations to high positions in government that contract to buy those weapons, and then move back to higher positions, and back again to the highest government posts, making ever greater profits for the weapons makers and themselves. The Pornography of Power is a frighteningly persuasive account of their success in creating a wartime environment without end and without real war, but at a terrible cost to America's ability to respond to crises in economic opportunity, health care, education, and infrastructure repair, none of which can be confronted as long as literally trillions of dollars are wasted in a false pursuit of national security.

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.

Scheer's new book reads like a well-documented lecture against a country that has lost its way. Upon eviscerating the usual suspects of bloated defense budgets - the Pentagon, the neocons and defense equipment companies - Scheer turns to those in Congress, even the darlings of the Democratic Party (Barbara Boxer), and unleashes an exacting critique that demonstrates a problem with our government that goes past individuals, administrations and day-to-day business practices. Scheer exposes a systemic imbalance that gives too much power to corporate and moneyed interests and too little to those who really need it.

From the billions we pour into these industries of death, the elections of military-industrial complex lackeys based on the specter of terrorism and threats to national security, and the overall gross wastes of tax-payer money deserve not just our collective scorn but also calls for immediate action to stop this disaster and prevent it from happening again. With The Pornography of Power we see a laundry list of complaints but never a sign of giving up hope, an unflinchingly optimistic move that those who work to resist empire and corporate dominion must necessarily take note.