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The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's [Paperback]

Tom Engelhardt
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Book Description

July 1, 2010
Tom Engelhardt, creator of the vital website TomDispatch.com, takes a scalpel to the American urge to dominate the globe. Tracing developments from 9/11 to late last night, this is an unforgettable anatomy of a disaster that is yet to end.

Since 2001, Tom Engelhardt has written regular reports for his popular site TomDispatch that have provided badly-needed insight into U.S. militarism and its effects, both at home and abroad. When others were celebrating the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he warned of the enormous dangers of both occupations.

In The American Way of War, Engelhardt documents Washington’s ongoing commitment to military bases to preserve—and extend—its empire; reveals damning information about the American reliance on airpower, at great cost to civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan; and shows that the US empire has deep historical roots that precede the Bush administration—and continue today into the presidency of Barack Obama.

"Tom Engelhardt provides a clear-eyed examination of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush and Obama years, and details unsparingly how Obama has inherited -- and in many cases exacerbated -- the ills of the Bush era.... an important book for anyone hoping to understand how the U.S. arrived at its current predicament during the Bush years, and how it remains in this predicament despite Obama's best efforts -- or perhaps because of them."
—Daniel Luban, Inter-Press Service

“Tom Engelhardt is among our most trenchant critics of American perpetual war. Like I. F. Stone in the 1960s, he has an uncanny ability to ferret out and see clearly the ugly truths hidden in government reports and statistics. No cynic, he always measures the sordid reality against a bright vision of an America that lives up to its highest ideals.”
—Juan R. Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan


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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tom Engelhardt created and runs Tomdispatch.com, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author The End of Victory Culture and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Englehardt is also co-founder and co-editor of Metropolitan Books' The American Empire Project.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 269 pages
  • Publisher: Haymarket Books (July 1, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1608460711
  • ISBN-13: 978-1608460717
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #332,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
60 of 62 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading August 2, 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Tom Engelhardt is a national treasure. To attempt to describe this book in a paragraph or two would be to do author and reader a disservice, for its leading virtues are context and nuance, both of which would be lost in a brief review (as they have been long lost from our mainstream media). If you want to know what our ongoing wars are really about - and to appreciate how much the US has always had wars going on - read this book. I thought I understood the subjects he writes about - I focused on international law at Harvard Law School, have lectured on diplomatic and legal history at universities in the US and abroad, and have had books published on these subjects by major trade and academic publishers - but I doubled my knowledge with this book. READ THIS BOOK.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Paperback), by Tom Engelhardt, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2010

This little heralded paperback masterpiece of only 216 pages should enlighten anyone who has not already come to the sad conclusion that the USA has turned into a dangerous empire. Be sure, after reading Tom Engelhardt's book, to read those books recently published with similar views such as Chalmer Johnson's "Dismantling The Empire: America's Last Best Hope" and Andrew Bacevich's "Washington Rules: America's Path To Permanent War".

Yes, we lost 3000 lives on 9/11, plus over 4,000 men and women in the current wars, but we killed 3 million in Vietnam, then hundreds of thousands in Cambodia and now hundreds of thousands in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, including many women and children. Such civilian losses are commonly referred to as "Collateral Damage" by our military.

While our Cold War excuses (Remember the Domino Theory and the Missle Gap?)may have had validity at an earlier time, the claimed threats that prompted our continued military escalations and expansions clearly need reassessment now.

From its first line, author Tom Engelhardt sets the motif for his tragic recitation: ""War is Peace" was one of the memorable slogans on the facade of the Ministry of Truth or Minitrue in "Newspeak" the language invented by George Orwell in 1948 for his dystopian novel, "1984"". From there his readers are tutored in how our fear of attack was obsessively co-opted by our government and its willing industrial military suppliers into a level of Cold War "preparedness" which featured a supply of nuclear weapons which could have blown up the entire human race.

Arguably, the use to date of our awesome war making power has failed us, but this author plausibly describes the spread like an octopus of American presence around the world in the form of over 700 military bases which could hardly be described as mainly defensive, most in places where our security clearly wasn't then and/or is not now at stake.

In retrospect our forays into Korea, Vietnam and now in the Middle East, proved that war was not the answer. While control of oil was clearly a prime motivation in Iraq, the cost in human lives and treasure and the escalating threat of terrorism cry out for a new evaluation of our present imperial policies which have been embraced by all Presidents since WWII including Obama, who has now bought into Bush's ultimate folly, continuing that "preventive war" in Iraq with no real end of our occupancy there and around the world in sight. For example, we have built perhaps our largest overseas embassy in Bagdad and have other large permanent military facilities in Iraq.

After noting Obama's submission speech to his military industrial advisors at West Point, Engelhardt writes for us, perhaps the book's most brilliant writing, the policy speech which he hoped Obama would have made upon entering his Presidency. The author has Obama reciting the agreed upon facts of the present situation in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Then he has Obama saying we will not continue to fight a counter-insurgency war, as such cannot be won, as we proved in Vietnam.

So the author then has Obama state, "It's time for a change.....I expect anger and debate. I take full responsibility for whatever may result from this policy of departure."

As in Vietnam, we will eventually come to this point of withdrawal, after the loss of hundreds of lost lives on both sides later and trillions in wasted money. We can hope that point in time will be ASAP.

Citing the disastrous effect on all our domestic priorities resulting from this overspending on defense, we can well understand how excessive fear about our security and the greed of those who continue to reap huge profits from "the permanent war" have driven our country into the control of an elitist oligarchy perhaps beyond citizen control.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Raising consciousness about the realities of empire August 29, 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"The American Way of War" by Tom Engelhardt is a collection of 29 insightful posts from the author's blog that have been arranged, revised and edited for book format to also include an introduction, epilogue, notes and index. Written as a running commentary on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between March 2004 and early 2010, the articles have lost little of their energy and have retained all of their relevance. Written with intelligence and passion, Mr. Engelhardt's book should be read by everyone concerned about the militarization of American life and believe we can do better.

Mr. Engelhardt intends to raise public consciousness about the realities of our latter day American empire. Mr. Engelhardt detects a kind of Orwellian detachment where most Americans are at peace with the immense economic and social costs and the extreme suffering inflicted on others by Washington's perpetual wars. Mr. Engelhardt's description of a planet garrisoned by hundreds of U.S. bases whose arsenals include land, sea, air and space-based weaponry is a frightening description of an imperial America that has practically shed any semblance of its democratic past.

Lest anyone miss the point, Mr. Engelhardt writes how the Obama administration's war policies are all but indistinguishable from his predecessor's. It seems the institutional roots run too deep for the president to do much about the Pentagon, even if he wanted to. Consequently, while one might think that America's current economic crisis might hasten a dismantling of empire, the truth is that an enlightened and engaged citizenry represents our only hope for change; to which end this book makes an important and timely contribution.

I highly recommend this persuasive, eye-opening book to everyone.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars All wars are based on errors .. . some more than others
Show me an intelligent war, without undue brutality and fatal blunders, and if one such narrative exists it will be called a fantasy fiction too unreal to be believed by any... Read more
Published on February 3, 2011 by Theodore A. Rushton
5.0 out of 5 stars The Americcan Way of War
A sobering look at why we continue to stay in permanent state of war. These facts can be trusted to be valid. Read more
Published on February 3, 2011 by pegluther
4.0 out of 5 stars Polemic or insight?
A great deal of this book is a polemic against strategic bombing or perhaps indirect fire of all sorts. Read more
Published on December 7, 2010 by John E. Swindells
5.0 out of 5 stars An invaluable recommendation for any military or social issues...
The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's offers a fine survey of the art of making and marketing American military might around the world, and comes from an author... Read more
Published on September 19, 2010 by Midwest Book Review
4.0 out of 5 stars The Cold War is it well and truly over?
A thoroughly enjoyable read and one that disturbingly points up both economic and political fissures in American societal organisation in the first decade of the twenty-first... Read more
Published on September 5, 2010 by LT Leonard
5.0 out of 5 stars The American Way of War
Interesting analysis of how the Warfare State continues to roll on devouring the nation's resources and making us and the world less safe. Read more
Published on September 2, 2010 by Eric A. Barth
3.0 out of 5 stars Informative but not well written.
The book sheds light on several issues, but lacks a writing style that will only hold the interest of the already converted.
Published on August 23, 2010 by Larry Banner
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