- MP3 CD
- Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; MP3 Una edition (October 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1433204843
- ISBN-13: 978-1433204845
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 13.5 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In his prescient 2000 bestseller, Blowback, East Asia scholar Johnson predicted dire consequences for a U.S. foreign policy that had run roughshod over Asia. Now he joins a chorus of Bush critics in this provocative, detailed tour of what he sees as America's entrenched culture of militarism, its "private army" of special forces and its worldwide archipelago of military "colonies." According to Johnson, before a mute public and Congress, oil and arms barons have displaced the State Department, secretly creating "a military juggernaut intent on world domination" and are exercising "preemptive intervention" for "oil, Israel, and... to fulfill our self-perceived destiny as a New Rome." Johnson admits that Bill Clinton, who disguised his policies as globalization, was a "much more effective imperialist," but most of the book assails "the boy emperor" Bush and his cronies with one of the most startling and engrossing accounts of exotic defense capabilities, operations and spending in print, though these assertions are not new and not always assiduously sourced. Fans of Blowback will be pleased despite Johnson's lack of remedies other than "a revolution" in which "the people could retake control of Congress... and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Americans worrying about Islamic terrorists should start worrying about their own Pentagonized government. So argues political-scientist Johnson in warning his fellow citizens that their own country's militarism--imperialistic abroad, secretive at home-- threatens their peace, their prosperity, and their freedom far more than does al-Qaeda. Johnson indicts the idealistic Democrat Woodrow Wilson for having first sent the U.S. military on a global crusade for democracy, American style. And he criticizes presidents of both parties for having supported an unnecessarily aggressive and far-flung cold war military buildup in the fight against communism. But he blames the current political crisis chiefly on recent Republican presidents (Reagan and the two Bushes), whom he accuses of having first misinterpreted the internal collapse of the Soviet Union as an American triumph and then claimed the entire world as victors' spoils. As an avowed leftist, Johnson exposes himself to charges of bias--and of geopolitical naivete. Certainly, it will chafe some readers when Johnson partially shifts the blame for the terrorist attacks against the U.S. to America's own arrogant militarists. But irritated readers can hardly dismiss Johnson as just another partisan ideologue when he buttresses his critique with Republican Dwight Eisenhower's cautionary analysis of the "military-industrial complex" and even echoes the long-ignored isolationism of Old Right traditionalists. A provocative summons to the task of reining in a runaway military. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Empire of Sorrows,
By HerrVonHarmonia (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Hardcover)
The Sorrows of Empire performs a blowback on the mind. Some the material has been covered in Johnson's last, prophetic book. We can no longer ignore the impact of the archipelago of US military bases upon the perceptions of citizens in other countries. Having family in and having visited South Korea a few years ago, I became quite aware of the resentment towards the US military bases there (and by extension the US) - particularly among the younger generation. The events of the last month in Iraq allows us to see the folly and hubris of the neoconservative vision and "warrior ethic." Johnson does an excellent job detailing the slide of the republic (ironically by many "Republicans") into a form of what Richard Rorty has recently called "benevolent authoritarianism." I recommend Michael Mann's Incoherent Empire as a companion to this book and as a better exploration of the economic and ideological components of the current administration's attempt at empire - and the weaknesses therein. In particular, he does an excellent job of detailing a realist assessment of the possibilities of establishing democracy in Iraq. David Harvey's book, the New Imperialism, is also highly recommended in its exploration of the differences, congruences, and contradictions between the "logic of capital" and the "logic of territory."To the reader from Kentucky: what are your criteria for empire? Would the British after the end of the Napoleanic period have qualified? Certainly they practiced a form of free-trade or informal imperialism in Latin America during this period, even as they promoted independence in those countries. What do you say to neoconservatives such as Robert Kagan who openly call for empire in name, stating that we are already one de facto? What of Michael Ignatieff's call for the US as "empire-lite"? If self-described conservatives, such as Kagan, and moderate left liberals, such as Ignatieff, are calling for empire, surely there must be something to the claim?
5.0 out of 5 stars
WARNING about posted reviews,
By
This review is from: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Paperback)
Amazon, the two user reviews that come out first for this book are identical except for the name and location of the poster. Their first three paragraphs deal with the book's topic. Their last three deal enthusiastically with alien abductions.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, and Forboding,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Hardcover)
I've read both Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. Chalmers Johnson is a brilliant political scientiest. He loves his country, but he wants to see change. Hopefully America heeds the lessons of this powerful book.
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