What happens when a nation loses an important part of its connection with history, when its heritage and even its roots are sacrificed to political expediency? When the offspring of The Greatest Generation out source national service to other people's kids? Finally, having distanced themselves from the harsh realities of war, what happens when an implacable enemy with an ideology of generations-long conflict attacks this country? The answer is that the nation watches the war on TV, the "Electronic Coliseum" that substitutes for the direct experience that our Founders always assumed would be a cornerstone of American democracy. "Warheads" reveals what goes on behind the closed doors of that coliseum, from the make-up rooms and TV studios of cable news to the E-ring conference rooms of the Pentagon. Written by one of the best-known members of television's elite cadre of military analysts, or Warheads, Colonel Ken Allard's hard-hitting and often hilarious narrative shows how he and his colleagues from MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News covered the events of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq - usually in "hits" of three minutes or less. In his book, Allard also considers the tough issues that the Warheads could seldom wedge into their hits: that technology is never the final answer in warfare and that, from Hurricane Katrina to the war on terror, no robot can substitute for the American soldier. He concludes with the highly provocative question: Are the American political and media establishments up to the challenges of a war from which there may be neither end nor retreat?
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
"This is an important book at a critical time in the evolution of the modern military and its place in American life. It is timely and instructive for all citizens civilian and military alike."--Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent for NBC News, and author, The Greatest Generation
"A new species of journalistic animal has evolved: the military expert talking head, or ‘warhead,’ as the species calls itself. Ken Allard’s trenchant, seriocomic, and wildly witty insider account captures all the madness and dangerous qualities of the Pentagon-Big Media matrix. A must-read."--Charles Moskos
"A hard-hitting yet often hilarious tell-all from inside the belly of the media beast. Ken Allard straddles the worlds of the military and broadcast journalism, which makes him uniquely qualified to rail against America’s perilous military and civilian divide. Eye-opening and timely, Warheads is one of the most exciting political books of the year."--Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.)
"Warheads is incisive and laugh-out-loud funny while tackling one of the most critical issues of our time – the dangerous "divorce" between the military and decision-makers in America."--Kathy Roth Douquet, Author of AWOL
"A timely and highly informative insider's look at military retirees struggling to educate the American people in the wartime world of 24/7 news. Unique and revealing."--Ralph Peters, author of Never Quit the Fight and New Glory
"Ken Allard has given us a joyful and most informative romp behind the scenes of the cable news warfront."--Lt Gen Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.), author of Cobra II
"Essential reading for the 21st Century battlefield. If the commander does not shape the message, the network will."--Bing West, author of No True Glory
About the Author
Kenneth Allard, widely known as one of TV's most respected military analysts, rose from the ranks to become a Colonel in the U.S. Army, Dean of the National War College, and one of the nation's leading soldier-scholars.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reporting On and Understanding the War,
By
This review is from: Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War (Hardcover)
A beautiful book that is not likely to get the readership that it deserves. it is nominally on the subject of those retired military officers who work for the television networks and provide the 'in depth' coverage of what the military is doing - in three minute segments. As a 'talking head' that only gets called to the studio when there's a war on, one of them coined the term for themselves of 'warhead.'
Secondly though, or perhaps even more important this book is about the situation between the military and the populace in the United States and indeed in most of the countries in Western Europe. Mr. Allard sees the problem of us as citizens becoming further and further away from the soldiers that come from typically the less well off, the less well educated, and often a membership in a minority. This is complemented by a congress that has less and less military experience or understanding, which is a direct result of the above. With the abolishment of the draft, America's elite doesn't join the military, doesn't understand the military, but does run from Congress. The result of this change in our culture will be interesting to watch as the overall Jihad against us is continued by the militant Muslim community.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Airheads,
By
This review is from: Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War (Hardcover)
The little band of retired officers who provide commentary about military matters on the cable news networks dubbed themselves the Warheads. It sounds better than Airheads, which fits just as well.
Kenneth Allard is one of the longest-serving Warheads, and he is an amusing, quick-witted man. His book "Warheads" is a strange mixture of jokes, anecdotes, not terribly revealing looks behind the curtain at cable news operations, strategy lecture, sermon and call to arms. Allard has contempt for people who get their news from cable television -- a feeling I share heartily -- so perhaps he feels that he can lure them to read his book with insider talk about what they care most about (besides themselves) -- television -- and then trap them into thinking sensible thoughts about real issues. If so, I suspect he is going to be disappointed. Too bad, because there's a bite or two of meat in this dumpling. Once you get past the low-intensity gossip, Allard has three or four serious points to make: -- A small, volunteer military means that the large majority of the citizenry has no direct experience of military affairs, and a majority has no intimate connection to anybody in the services. He contrasts this with the situation after 1945, when millions of civilians had had to serve two to six years involuntarily. His claim that American civilians have always, until the advent of the volunteer military in 1973, had a connection to the military is nonsense, though. Even adjusting for the larger total population today, our tiny military is still a larger proportion of the whole population than it was in 1939 -- and far, far larger than it was in the late 19th century. He says he is not calling for a return to the draft, preferring the higher skill levels of a professional army (though, oddly, he endorses shorter enlistments); but he does not seem to realize that a professional army is also a careerist army, and that is a large source of our problems today. -- Not only do Americans not have any personal, emotional connections to the military, few of those who purport to keep them informed (like cable news producers) know anything about military affairs. Here Allard is on solid ground. -- He says, "The United States had put those soldiers (in Iraq) at an enormous disadvantage by not ensuring enough of them were present, by not designating an effective postwar strategy, and above all by wasting time." All correct, but not the whole story. First, you have to know who your enemy is. This would seem a simple matter, but Republicans and Democrats disagree about who it is (if anybody), and a sizable (or at least noisy) fraction of the citizenry have not even conceded that America has an enemy. If you waste your resources fighting the wrong enemy, you are likely to be defeated, and at the least, you will never defeat your enemy. That is the level of global strategy. At the theater level (the Mideast, or only Iraq), the goal of imposing democracy on the inhabitants (or seducing them into it) was a strategic mistake. The Syrian political scientist Bassam Tibi, even before the war began, warned that Arabs have no interest in democracy. He was, of course, correct, and it takes a particularly blind partisan to claim differently now. Even if there were nascent Arab democrats, they have no state to focus their policy on -- Iraq is neither a state nor a nation, neither a polity, an ethnicity nor a community. -- That the 2004 presidential campaign was a travesty, that instead of taking an opportunity to debate issues, it was an exercise in trivial gossip. Correct. -- That the United States thought and still thinks it can wage war "on the cheap." True when he wrote this several years ago, although we could hope less true now -- except for that large fraction that thinks no war needs to be waged at all.
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