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House Of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power – The Institutional History of US Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy
In House of War, the best-selling author James Carroll has created a history of the Pentagon that is both epic and personal. Through Carroll we see how the Pentagon, since its founding, has operated beyond the control of any force in government or society, undermining the very national security it is sworn to protect.From its "birth" on September 11, 1941, through the nuclear buildup of the Cold War and the eventual "shock and awe" of Iraq, Carroll recounts how "the Building" and its officials have achieved what President Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power."
This is not faded history. House of War offers a compelling account of the virtues and follies that led America to permanently, and tragically, define itself around war. Carroll shows how the consequences of the American response to September 11, 2001 -– including two wars and an ignited Middle East -– form one end of an arc that stretches from Donald Rumsfeld back to James Forrestal, the first man to occupy the office of secretary of defense in the Pentagon. House of War confronts this dark past so we may understand the current war and forestall the next.
This is not faded history. House of War offers a compelling account of the virtues and follies that led America to permanently, and tragically, define itself around war. Carroll shows how the consequences of the American response to September 11, 2001 -– including two wars and an ignited Middle East -– form one end of an arc that stretches from Donald Rumsfeld back to James Forrestal, the first man to occupy the office of secretary of defense in the Pentagon. House of War confronts this dark past so we may understand the current war and forestall the next.
688 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
James Carroll
62 books172 followersJames Carroll was born in Chicago and raised in Washington, D.C. He has been a civil rights worker, an antiwar activist, and a community organizer in Washington and New York. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1969 and served as Catholic chaplain at Boston University. Carroll left the priesthood to become a novelist and playwright. He lives in Boston with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall, and their two children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
October 20, 2008
This is a BIG BOOK, covering most of American military history from World War II on, and a bit of earlier history as well. The general theme here is that American foreign policy is to an unacceptable degree determined by the Pentagon and its associated institutions, the Military-industrial-political complex that Eisenhower cautioned against.
His central image is of Moby Dick, with the Pentagon in the starring role. But instead of seeing Moby as an amoral force of nature, Carrol sees his Pentagon-whale as an evil force. The thoughtless urges it expresses are the tips of pyramids sitting atop years and years of prior decisions, analyses, lies, mistakes, and no one person or group of people at home or abroad can long re-direct the Pentagon from its destined path.
There is more going on these days, as it is becoming clearer how extensively the CIA has engaged in military operations that were once the purview of the uniformed services. Why bring in the big guns when a well placed assassination or coup can get the job done at reduced cost and exposure, rule of law be damned?
Another factor is that the Pentagon, despite its internal impulses, takes orders, ultimately, from the same folks who tell the CIA and the president what to do. The USA does not go to war, overt or covert, to protect anyone's freedom. We only go to protect our interests, and by interests I mean the property and profitability of major corporations. It is why we intercede in the middle east against one brutal dictator and stand by while thousands are slaughtered in Rwanda. No US assets or financial interests involved? Then no military involvement. Sorry, Charlie.
His central image is of Moby Dick, with the Pentagon in the starring role. But instead of seeing Moby as an amoral force of nature, Carrol sees his Pentagon-whale as an evil force. The thoughtless urges it expresses are the tips of pyramids sitting atop years and years of prior decisions, analyses, lies, mistakes, and no one person or group of people at home or abroad can long re-direct the Pentagon from its destined path.
There is more going on these days, as it is becoming clearer how extensively the CIA has engaged in military operations that were once the purview of the uniformed services. Why bring in the big guns when a well placed assassination or coup can get the job done at reduced cost and exposure, rule of law be damned?
Another factor is that the Pentagon, despite its internal impulses, takes orders, ultimately, from the same folks who tell the CIA and the president what to do. The USA does not go to war, overt or covert, to protect anyone's freedom. We only go to protect our interests, and by interests I mean the property and profitability of major corporations. It is why we intercede in the middle east against one brutal dictator and stand by while thousands are slaughtered in Rwanda. No US assets or financial interests involved? Then no military involvement. Sorry, Charlie.
December 6, 2010
Using the Pentagon as a unifying focal point, this book explores the history of the cold war from a perspective that generally asserts that the world was darn lucky to have survived its paranoia-fueled excesses. This book flies in the face of the common perception that since we survived the cold war it logically follows that all the decisions made along the way must have been the correct decisions. The author, Carroll, takes the position that there were numerous actions taken that made conditions much worse and dangerous than necessary.
Among the points I found most interesting was the unintended consequences of certain actions taken. One example was how FDR’s use of the term “unconditional surrender” probably prolonged and increased the death toll of World War II. Another is how the fervent anti-communist rhetoric within American domestic politics increased the fear within Russian circles of the United States.
Another interesting point made by the book is how often anti-communist rhetoric was used as a cover for financial, parochial and political interests. And even politicians who perceived that the military-social-industrial complex was careening out of control, needed to go along with the fear mongering language in order to survive politically. An example is John Kennedy who is usually remembered today for stepping back from fear mongering with his Partial Test Ban Treaty. But it was Kennedy who won the 1960 presidental election partly by creating the "missile gap" issue. The missile gap turned out to be largely a matter of fearful perception rather than fact.
A related irony is Kennedy's Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, who's reputation today is largely tarnished by his involvement with the Vietnam War. But it was McNamara who imposed a rational system of administrative controls upon the Pentagon's "great white whale". "It was McNamara’s first encounter with the great white whale of Pentagon culture, and he moved immediately to harpoon it, as if he were back at Ford, killing off the Edsel." The case can be made for crediting McNamara for the rescuing of civilian control of the military.
I was appalled to learn about some of Nixon's most bazaar behavior. He tried to scare the Russian's into pressuring the North Vietnamese to reach a peace settlement by convincing the Soviets that he was truly crazy by recklessly ordering nuclear red alerts. It's interesting to note that the Soviets never made similar moves.
To those who want to credit Reagan with winning the Cold War, the author says the following: "Against those who claim the Reagan military buildup caused the collapse of the soviet Union, post-Cold War evidence gathered from inside the former Soviet Union suggests that Reagan’s early expansion of the Pentagon budget, together with the blatant threats of U.S. military exercises and aggressive reconnaissance overflights, bolstered the Soviet militants, delaying the thaw that came only when Gorbachev forced it."
One can tell from the book's title that the author has a negative opinion of American Power. Consequently, I suspect the readers who decide to read this book consists mostly of the converted choir. I wish the author had been less flagrant in broadcasting his opinion, and instead tried explore the opposing sides of the hawks versus doves controversies. A more even handed approach may have increased the number of pro-military readers and exposed them to some of the facts contained in this book that show how dumb headed and wasteful the military mindset can be.
Here's the trivia question of the day. Why was the building called the Pentagon constructed with five sides? One little factoid gleaned from this book is that the five-sided design was drawn up to accommodate the presence of access roads at a site just upriver in the District of Columbia. FDR vetoed that site so its location was moved to its present site in Virginia. The move was done in such a hurry that there was no time for a redesign, and the shape was retained. Just imagine what the building might have been called if it had been constructed in the more conventional four sided configuration.
Here’s the short review of this book that was on my PageADay Calendar:
THE GENERALS IN THEIR LABYRINTH
James Carroll tells the story of the Pentagon building from its groundbreaking on September 11, 1941, to the present day. He also tells the story of the institution that occupies it and its growth in power and influence over the nation it ostensibly serves. Finally, there is the story of a father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and his son (the author of this book), who drift apart as they come to have differing views of the five-sided behemoth and the vast military-industrial complex it represents.
HOUSE OF WAR: THE PENTAGON AND THE DISASTROUS RISE OF AMERICAN POWER, by James Carroll (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
Among the points I found most interesting was the unintended consequences of certain actions taken. One example was how FDR’s use of the term “unconditional surrender” probably prolonged and increased the death toll of World War II. Another is how the fervent anti-communist rhetoric within American domestic politics increased the fear within Russian circles of the United States.
Another interesting point made by the book is how often anti-communist rhetoric was used as a cover for financial, parochial and political interests. And even politicians who perceived that the military-social-industrial complex was careening out of control, needed to go along with the fear mongering language in order to survive politically. An example is John Kennedy who is usually remembered today for stepping back from fear mongering with his Partial Test Ban Treaty. But it was Kennedy who won the 1960 presidental election partly by creating the "missile gap" issue. The missile gap turned out to be largely a matter of fearful perception rather than fact.
A related irony is Kennedy's Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, who's reputation today is largely tarnished by his involvement with the Vietnam War. But it was McNamara who imposed a rational system of administrative controls upon the Pentagon's "great white whale". "It was McNamara’s first encounter with the great white whale of Pentagon culture, and he moved immediately to harpoon it, as if he were back at Ford, killing off the Edsel." The case can be made for crediting McNamara for the rescuing of civilian control of the military.
I was appalled to learn about some of Nixon's most bazaar behavior. He tried to scare the Russian's into pressuring the North Vietnamese to reach a peace settlement by convincing the Soviets that he was truly crazy by recklessly ordering nuclear red alerts. It's interesting to note that the Soviets never made similar moves.
To those who want to credit Reagan with winning the Cold War, the author says the following: "Against those who claim the Reagan military buildup caused the collapse of the soviet Union, post-Cold War evidence gathered from inside the former Soviet Union suggests that Reagan’s early expansion of the Pentagon budget, together with the blatant threats of U.S. military exercises and aggressive reconnaissance overflights, bolstered the Soviet militants, delaying the thaw that came only when Gorbachev forced it."
One can tell from the book's title that the author has a negative opinion of American Power. Consequently, I suspect the readers who decide to read this book consists mostly of the converted choir. I wish the author had been less flagrant in broadcasting his opinion, and instead tried explore the opposing sides of the hawks versus doves controversies. A more even handed approach may have increased the number of pro-military readers and exposed them to some of the facts contained in this book that show how dumb headed and wasteful the military mindset can be.
Here's the trivia question of the day. Why was the building called the Pentagon constructed with five sides? One little factoid gleaned from this book is that the five-sided design was drawn up to accommodate the presence of access roads at a site just upriver in the District of Columbia. FDR vetoed that site so its location was moved to its present site in Virginia. The move was done in such a hurry that there was no time for a redesign, and the shape was retained. Just imagine what the building might have been called if it had been constructed in the more conventional four sided configuration.
Here’s the short review of this book that was on my PageADay Calendar:
THE GENERALS IN THEIR LABYRINTH
James Carroll tells the story of the Pentagon building from its groundbreaking on September 11, 1941, to the present day. He also tells the story of the institution that occupies it and its growth in power and influence over the nation it ostensibly serves. Finally, there is the story of a father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and his son (the author of this book), who drift apart as they come to have differing views of the five-sided behemoth and the vast military-industrial complex it represents.
HOUSE OF WAR: THE PENTAGON AND THE DISASTROUS RISE OF AMERICAN POWER, by James Carroll (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
April 9, 2013
-La historia de un hombre, la de un edificio, la de sus habitantes y además, Historia.-
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Mezclando Historia, biografía y algo de periodismo, relato de la evolución de la visión político-militar de los diferentes responsables de la estrategia de los Estados Unidos de América desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta comienzos del siglo XXI, centrado en Pentágono y muy relacionado con el propio autor.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Mezclando Historia, biografía y algo de periodismo, relato de la evolución de la visión político-militar de los diferentes responsables de la estrategia de los Estados Unidos de América desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta comienzos del siglo XXI, centrado en Pentágono y muy relacionado con el propio autor.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
November 28, 2022
I'd read Carroll's 'Constantine's Sword' previously. This book is quite different. Carroll tells the story of the Cold War, concentrating on the nuclear arms race, punctuating his account with personal asides describing his father's career in the Air Force and his own progression from ROTC to the Catholic priesthood to the antiwar movement. Reading it was rather depressing, reminding me that the threat of planetary catastrophe has remained a constant through my life, if not grown worse. But it also reminded me, more happily, of progressive moves aided by the Catholic Left in Eastern Europe, Central America and here in the States.
Interestingly, tellingly perhaps, the Kennedy brothers come across as heroes in this book...
Interestingly, tellingly perhaps, the Kennedy brothers come across as heroes in this book...
July 12, 2020
An in-depth look at how the US transitioned from being a largely isolationist nation with a limited military and a heavy reliance on diplomacy to a nation that largely defines itself by the strength of its military and engages all issues from a military-first point-of-view – in short how the Pentagon dominates nearly every aspect of the US government. From international relations to budgetary concerns, the Pentagon is the lead agency. The author draws from a tremendous amount of research, including interviews with Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, and other government leaders, and combines it with his experience as the son of a USAF three-star general to present a credible argument that the US is a militaristic country.
The author presents two events as the genesis of this process: the construction of the Pentagon and the development (and use of) nuclear weapons. He regularly mentions the size of the Pentagon. When it was built, it was the world’s largest office building. It was surpassed by the World Trade Center in 1973, but after 2001 it again became the largest office building. A building so large must be filled with people and these people must be given something to do. Thus, the DOD grows into the largest department in the US government. Naturally, the department that has the most resources (people, money) usually gets asked to do the most, even if the work it is assigned isn’t traditionally military in nature.
From firebombing in Japan during WWII, to napalm raids in Vietnam, to modern tactics in the “War on Terror,” the author draws a direct connection to the transition of the United States as a country. He makes a rather bold statement toward the end of the book. Speaking of the events of September 11, he writes “the events of that day were not themselves transforming. Rather, they revealed the currents of an American transformation that had been set moving years before. Set moving, in fact, by the vengeful, unnecessarily savage bombing of cities late in World War II and continuing through the U.S. air wars in Southeast Asia. Aerial attacks on cities, carried out after studies had shown such attacks to be strategically futile, amounted to terror campaigns with which the nation has never reckoned.”
He refers to a memo by Donald Rumsfeld where he stated “We lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the Global War on Terror.” This odd assessment from a secretary of defense (one struggles to imagine Robert McNamara making such a statement) actually reflects the Pentagon’s interest in an open-ended war. Permanent war means permanent martial dominance.” He closes his book with the statement that “The Pentagon is now the dead center of an open-ended martial enterprise that no longer pretends to be defense.”
Although he supports much of his opinions with research, His book does seem to rely on a fair amount of assumptions. This is particularly true when it comes to what the Soviet Union believed, thought, or would have done if the US had behaved differently. Nonetheless, the ideas that he advances do not seem unreasonable.
If you are someone who believes that the US too frequently views things through a military lens, then this book may help to explain why and to confirm your point-of-view. If you don’t believe that, then the book is still an interesting perspective on post-WWII American history and the role that the Pentagon has played in numerous events throughout history. I strongly recommend the book for anyone who works in national defense, or who has an interest in America’s role in the world.
The author presents two events as the genesis of this process: the construction of the Pentagon and the development (and use of) nuclear weapons. He regularly mentions the size of the Pentagon. When it was built, it was the world’s largest office building. It was surpassed by the World Trade Center in 1973, but after 2001 it again became the largest office building. A building so large must be filled with people and these people must be given something to do. Thus, the DOD grows into the largest department in the US government. Naturally, the department that has the most resources (people, money) usually gets asked to do the most, even if the work it is assigned isn’t traditionally military in nature.
From firebombing in Japan during WWII, to napalm raids in Vietnam, to modern tactics in the “War on Terror,” the author draws a direct connection to the transition of the United States as a country. He makes a rather bold statement toward the end of the book. Speaking of the events of September 11, he writes “the events of that day were not themselves transforming. Rather, they revealed the currents of an American transformation that had been set moving years before. Set moving, in fact, by the vengeful, unnecessarily savage bombing of cities late in World War II and continuing through the U.S. air wars in Southeast Asia. Aerial attacks on cities, carried out after studies had shown such attacks to be strategically futile, amounted to terror campaigns with which the nation has never reckoned.”
He refers to a memo by Donald Rumsfeld where he stated “We lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the Global War on Terror.” This odd assessment from a secretary of defense (one struggles to imagine Robert McNamara making such a statement) actually reflects the Pentagon’s interest in an open-ended war. Permanent war means permanent martial dominance.” He closes his book with the statement that “The Pentagon is now the dead center of an open-ended martial enterprise that no longer pretends to be defense.”
Although he supports much of his opinions with research, His book does seem to rely on a fair amount of assumptions. This is particularly true when it comes to what the Soviet Union believed, thought, or would have done if the US had behaved differently. Nonetheless, the ideas that he advances do not seem unreasonable.
If you are someone who believes that the US too frequently views things through a military lens, then this book may help to explain why and to confirm your point-of-view. If you don’t believe that, then the book is still an interesting perspective on post-WWII American history and the role that the Pentagon has played in numerous events throughout history. I strongly recommend the book for anyone who works in national defense, or who has an interest in America’s role in the world.
November 21, 2023
Blatantly biased narrative of American foreign policy. While he often makes statements to try to seem less partial he blatantly misconstrues facts to fit an agenda. I could not bring myself to waste over 500 pages after coming to the chapter on the decision to drop the bomb. The author attempts to cast doubt on the casualty numbers predicted by the government for an invasion of Japan given to the public by Stimson (~500,000). He quotes instead the number of 40,000 in the invasion of Japan from a war planning committee and heavily implies that the top brass fabricated the numbers to justify nuclear policy. He leaves out the very apparent fact that the 40,000 number is a monthly RATE. The report estimated 40,000 per month in American deaths during an invasion. I find it very hard to believe that a researcher could mistakenly overlook that aspect when it forms the focal point of his commentary on the atomic bomb. I do not wish to second guess and fact check every figure the author presents any further so I choose to read no further. If you want to write a bias and argumentative essay to disparage policy, the arguments should at least be based on honest quotations of statistics.
Update:
Decided to read the book anyway with healthy skepticism. Points author makes based on factual evidence are striking, and the relationship with his father is interesting. The alarmism of intelligence agencies and top brass (almost constantly proven hysterical, at least in hindsight) is a striking recurrence in the book. It draws doubt to the current wave of alarmism over China, and the parallels with Cold War lunacy seem to line up. Nonetheless, the Carroll reserves the vast perks of being a critic and not a decision maker. He finds a way to somehow criticize the majority of presidents for being Warhawks but then chastises Carter and Clinton for their timidity. Additionally, he has a boyish admiration of JFK that fails to acknowledge how instrumental his administration was to the debacle of Vietnam. Gorbachev is equally treated as a messiah despite many faults and failures that destroyed the strength of Russia and helped pave the way for Putin-era resurgence (though his criticisms of the post-Soviet collapse American foreign policy are sound according to my own views). Overall, the book is ripe with cherry picking and even fabrication to prove a point, and his thesis lacks any real substance. He clings to the idea that the world would be fixed by simply abolishing nuclear weapons as a whole, but he points to it as a perfect solution without acknowledging the many destabilizing problems that occur in a world without nukes. The book is an ore with gems hidden throughout, but much waste rock must be sifted through to get there.
Update:
Decided to read the book anyway with healthy skepticism. Points author makes based on factual evidence are striking, and the relationship with his father is interesting. The alarmism of intelligence agencies and top brass (almost constantly proven hysterical, at least in hindsight) is a striking recurrence in the book. It draws doubt to the current wave of alarmism over China, and the parallels with Cold War lunacy seem to line up. Nonetheless, the Carroll reserves the vast perks of being a critic and not a decision maker. He finds a way to somehow criticize the majority of presidents for being Warhawks but then chastises Carter and Clinton for their timidity. Additionally, he has a boyish admiration of JFK that fails to acknowledge how instrumental his administration was to the debacle of Vietnam. Gorbachev is equally treated as a messiah despite many faults and failures that destroyed the strength of Russia and helped pave the way for Putin-era resurgence (though his criticisms of the post-Soviet collapse American foreign policy are sound according to my own views). Overall, the book is ripe with cherry picking and even fabrication to prove a point, and his thesis lacks any real substance. He clings to the idea that the world would be fixed by simply abolishing nuclear weapons as a whole, but he points to it as a perfect solution without acknowledging the many destabilizing problems that occur in a world without nukes. The book is an ore with gems hidden throughout, but much waste rock must be sifted through to get there.
July 14, 2016
Another fabulous non-fiction read here. Interesting take on the time period in history from when the pentagon was built. The author/narrator was recalling and researching on events surrounding the rise of the military and funnily enough, his own father and his 'military' career - so this was clearly a personal book for the author to write. I didn't think there was too much bias in this delivery - but since I don't know much else about Joe Carroll I could be wrong.
Very well researched, well written; this book offers done unique insight and perspective on the many colourful and larger than life characters that helped shape the Cold War, the arms race and the nuclear age.
Very well researched, well written; this book offers done unique insight and perspective on the many colourful and larger than life characters that helped shape the Cold War, the arms race and the nuclear age.
February 17, 2017
Interesting book here that takes a broad view about how the idea of war has led to our society being more built up, militant and in that way has led other countries on the defensive or made them more militaristic to counter us. Carroll is someone who in his own words advocates for peace but he has a unique position because his father (a former FBI agent) became one of the senior generals who founded the nuts and bolts of the departments that became the Air Force. He also helped set up the what we know today as the CIA starting with counter espionage in the military...
- Colonel Leslie Groves was the head of the Army Corps of Engineers and was tasked to build the headquarters for the military which eventually became the Pentagon. To build it he secured and bought HALF of all of the lumber in the United States. The first headquarters of the military was deemed too small to house the services. That building became the State Department which sits at Foggy Bottom.
- Nearing the end of WW II Russia was our ally in the battle against the Axis powers. But the dropping of the Atomic bombs in Japan put Stalin on notice and convinced him that the United States wanted to dominate the world and fearing loss of his own territory he started to explore getting atomic weapons himself.
- Right after WW II the Soviets started to assert themselves by setting up checkpoints in Europe but (and I didn't know this) they weren't military checkpoints at first...they were looking for cash which Russia did not have access to. This later would become the iron curtain slowly falling down.
- The Marshall Plan was primarily approved because of the perceived threat of Europe turning to communism. The Plan engaged Europe and got them involved directly into the American economy and markets where the US wanted them.
- The Berlin Airlift which was organized by Curtis Lemay became one of the greatest successes for the US military because it projected US power deep into Europe and around the globe. Showcasing that air power led Russia, China (another former ally) and other nations to beef up their militarism to counter us.
- In the United States the threat of communism wasn't as pronounced as it could have been...but to the military threats meant money. And that also meant that because of that threat military budgets went out of control. When Truman was President the budget went from $4 billion to FIFTY billion in 10 years.
- In fact when Eisenhower was elected to sort of curb military spending he appeared to put himself open to bellicose threats with all kinds of huge weapons in the field. This in a sense frightened many people who could have been enemies, allies and even the military who allows Eisenhower to use the military budget to build the Interstate and other home grown projects.
- JFK tried to reset relations with Russia at a speech he gave at American University. As he did it led to the first test ban treaties...nuclear arms treaties and and a cooling off of threats between the two nations. But JFK was then killed and with his death LBJ escalated into Vietnam deepening our conflicts.
Carroll goes all the way up to the Bush administration and his broader point is that we often see hobgoblins under the bed that aren't there. We react by building ourselves up for a threat that doesn't exist and in doing so often cause conflicts to happen. If you read Steve Coll's great books 'Ghost Wars' or the 'Bin Ladens' we find that often conflicts come because we lay down the conditions for them to grow through our own fear. A hard point to disagree with...
- Colonel Leslie Groves was the head of the Army Corps of Engineers and was tasked to build the headquarters for the military which eventually became the Pentagon. To build it he secured and bought HALF of all of the lumber in the United States. The first headquarters of the military was deemed too small to house the services. That building became the State Department which sits at Foggy Bottom.
- Nearing the end of WW II Russia was our ally in the battle against the Axis powers. But the dropping of the Atomic bombs in Japan put Stalin on notice and convinced him that the United States wanted to dominate the world and fearing loss of his own territory he started to explore getting atomic weapons himself.
- Right after WW II the Soviets started to assert themselves by setting up checkpoints in Europe but (and I didn't know this) they weren't military checkpoints at first...they were looking for cash which Russia did not have access to. This later would become the iron curtain slowly falling down.
- The Marshall Plan was primarily approved because of the perceived threat of Europe turning to communism. The Plan engaged Europe and got them involved directly into the American economy and markets where the US wanted them.
- The Berlin Airlift which was organized by Curtis Lemay became one of the greatest successes for the US military because it projected US power deep into Europe and around the globe. Showcasing that air power led Russia, China (another former ally) and other nations to beef up their militarism to counter us.
- In the United States the threat of communism wasn't as pronounced as it could have been...but to the military threats meant money. And that also meant that because of that threat military budgets went out of control. When Truman was President the budget went from $4 billion to FIFTY billion in 10 years.
- In fact when Eisenhower was elected to sort of curb military spending he appeared to put himself open to bellicose threats with all kinds of huge weapons in the field. This in a sense frightened many people who could have been enemies, allies and even the military who allows Eisenhower to use the military budget to build the Interstate and other home grown projects.
- JFK tried to reset relations with Russia at a speech he gave at American University. As he did it led to the first test ban treaties...nuclear arms treaties and and a cooling off of threats between the two nations. But JFK was then killed and with his death LBJ escalated into Vietnam deepening our conflicts.
Carroll goes all the way up to the Bush administration and his broader point is that we often see hobgoblins under the bed that aren't there. We react by building ourselves up for a threat that doesn't exist and in doing so often cause conflicts to happen. If you read Steve Coll's great books 'Ghost Wars' or the 'Bin Ladens' we find that often conflicts come because we lay down the conditions for them to grow through our own fear. A hard point to disagree with...
January 3, 2008
"Defenses do what they would defend," says A Course in Miracles. "You become what you fight" comes to mind as well.
James Carroll is uniquely qualified to write this book, being the son of an air-force officer, and having grown up around the Pentagon culture. The book is a stark reminder of the insanity of it all, which in our generation was probably mostly expressed in the cold war and the spiralling nuclear threat, in which supremacy was defined in how many times one super power or another could wipe out the planet, as if one wasn't enough.
One of the most priceless vignettes in the book is in just how far the military got out of control, when Curtis LeMay at the hight of the Cold War ends up admitting to have his own plans for a nuclear wipeout of the Soviet Union with his Strategic Air Command, on his own recognizance, since he plainly understood that the warning systems then in existence would not work. This was yet another incident (besides McArthur's insubordinations), of a general pre-empting civil authority, which ever since Caesar is the deepest fear of any republic or democracy, and always a signal of the start of empire and totalitarianism.
Another episode straight out of the lunatic asylum was of Nixon ordering a nuclear red alert, and flying B-52's with their nuclear payload around, just to convince the Russians that he was crazy, as a mere negotiating ploy never stopping to realize that this actually was an insane thing to do. Evidently, not only did he not realize it, neither did anyone else around him.
The principles are easy to understand, and are the same for any country in the world, and certainly for any empire in history. Carroll gives it to us blow by blow, and with a keen analysis of the recent history we have lived through since World War II.
The book misses out on a priceless Cold War story that came out on the positive side, though it also documented the underlying problems. This was the incident on Sept 26, 1983 when a Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, actually overrode what he suspected was a false positive on the radar, and prevented nuclear holocaust, for which he was duly fired.
James Carroll is uniquely qualified to write this book, being the son of an air-force officer, and having grown up around the Pentagon culture. The book is a stark reminder of the insanity of it all, which in our generation was probably mostly expressed in the cold war and the spiralling nuclear threat, in which supremacy was defined in how many times one super power or another could wipe out the planet, as if one wasn't enough.
One of the most priceless vignettes in the book is in just how far the military got out of control, when Curtis LeMay at the hight of the Cold War ends up admitting to have his own plans for a nuclear wipeout of the Soviet Union with his Strategic Air Command, on his own recognizance, since he plainly understood that the warning systems then in existence would not work. This was yet another incident (besides McArthur's insubordinations), of a general pre-empting civil authority, which ever since Caesar is the deepest fear of any republic or democracy, and always a signal of the start of empire and totalitarianism.
Another episode straight out of the lunatic asylum was of Nixon ordering a nuclear red alert, and flying B-52's with their nuclear payload around, just to convince the Russians that he was crazy, as a mere negotiating ploy never stopping to realize that this actually was an insane thing to do. Evidently, not only did he not realize it, neither did anyone else around him.
The principles are easy to understand, and are the same for any country in the world, and certainly for any empire in history. Carroll gives it to us blow by blow, and with a keen analysis of the recent history we have lived through since World War II.
The book misses out on a priceless Cold War story that came out on the positive side, though it also documented the underlying problems. This was the incident on Sept 26, 1983 when a Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, actually overrode what he suspected was a false positive on the radar, and prevented nuclear holocaust, for which he was duly fired.
September 17, 2012
World War II converted the United States into a culture addicted to war like a junkie addicted to heroin. Our first reaction to any international crisis is to send in the troops rather than sending the diplomats. The incomprehensible amount of money we spend on the military has become one of the biggest driving forces of our economy and in turn the money donated by military funded industries fuels the election campaigns of our politicians.
Carroll shows how over the past six decades the Pentagon has systematically exaggerated threats to the United States in order to justify its bloated and ever growing budget. At the same time the ossified bureaucracy of the Pentagon has been unable to adapt to the radically changed international situation. Locked in Cold War thinking, the Generals basically ignored the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued to increase the American nuclear arsenal rather than questioning its size and usefulness.
Presidents from both parties have either bought into American military triumphalism and paranoia or have been so intimidated by the military that they were incapable of reigning it in. Meanwhile the U.S. gets drawn into one military misadventure after another because the intelligence provided by the Pentagon exists to justify the expenditures of the military and reinforce the forgone conclusions of the superior officers of the analysts rather than provide an accurate assessment of threats.
Carroll, the son of an Air Force General, became first a Catholic Priest and then an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War. His family connections provide him with an surprising level of access to Pentagon insiders, but his feelings about the U.S. military establishment are all mixed up with his idolization of and ultimate alienation from his father. He is far from unbiased, but the insight he provides into U.S. military culture will leave you in equal parts angry and depressed.
Carroll shows how over the past six decades the Pentagon has systematically exaggerated threats to the United States in order to justify its bloated and ever growing budget. At the same time the ossified bureaucracy of the Pentagon has been unable to adapt to the radically changed international situation. Locked in Cold War thinking, the Generals basically ignored the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued to increase the American nuclear arsenal rather than questioning its size and usefulness.
Presidents from both parties have either bought into American military triumphalism and paranoia or have been so intimidated by the military that they were incapable of reigning it in. Meanwhile the U.S. gets drawn into one military misadventure after another because the intelligence provided by the Pentagon exists to justify the expenditures of the military and reinforce the forgone conclusions of the superior officers of the analysts rather than provide an accurate assessment of threats.
Carroll, the son of an Air Force General, became first a Catholic Priest and then an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War. His family connections provide him with an surprising level of access to Pentagon insiders, but his feelings about the U.S. military establishment are all mixed up with his idolization of and ultimate alienation from his father. He is far from unbiased, but the insight he provides into U.S. military culture will leave you in equal parts angry and depressed.
November 23, 2015
The subtitle of this book is "The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power" which is pretty accurate, based on the book's assertions.
Every so often I read a book which really makes me mad about the fucked up way that the world works, and the atrocities and madness which have been perpetrated in our names by governments. Although I am not American, I felt like the story of Australia's post WW2-history was interwoven into so many of the events, due to our being dragged into so many of America's conflict.
The book follows the history, political and power developments which occurred through the lifetime of the Pentagon from its construction in the second world war, through to what it has become today. Chiefly the author focuses on a number of events which occurred on September the 11th in various years, and it is certainly interesting how so many pivotal events occurred on that particular date.
The author certainly takes an anti-military industrial complex stance in the book. However, it is hard not to feel that the world may well have been a different place if it were not for military forces creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion about what the Russians were doing in the world. What great works, or how many of the world's problems might have been solved if billions and trillions were not being spent on preparing for a nuclear war which never came.
I remember reading a quote a while ago, although its origin now escapes me, which goes something like this:
"How many times over do we need to be able to kill everyone on the planet with nuclear weapons? About three times should do it."
It's just fucking crazy, and it's fucking madness.
All in all, House of War is an interesting look at the relationship between the military leadership and the civilian politicians they are answerable to throughout the decades.
Every so often I read a book which really makes me mad about the fucked up way that the world works, and the atrocities and madness which have been perpetrated in our names by governments. Although I am not American, I felt like the story of Australia's post WW2-history was interwoven into so many of the events, due to our being dragged into so many of America's conflict.
The book follows the history, political and power developments which occurred through the lifetime of the Pentagon from its construction in the second world war, through to what it has become today. Chiefly the author focuses on a number of events which occurred on September the 11th in various years, and it is certainly interesting how so many pivotal events occurred on that particular date.
The author certainly takes an anti-military industrial complex stance in the book. However, it is hard not to feel that the world may well have been a different place if it were not for military forces creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion about what the Russians were doing in the world. What great works, or how many of the world's problems might have been solved if billions and trillions were not being spent on preparing for a nuclear war which never came.
I remember reading a quote a while ago, although its origin now escapes me, which goes something like this:
"How many times over do we need to be able to kill everyone on the planet with nuclear weapons? About three times should do it."
It's just fucking crazy, and it's fucking madness.
All in all, House of War is an interesting look at the relationship between the military leadership and the civilian politicians they are answerable to throughout the decades.
September 22, 2013
Once I picked James Carroll's huge history of the U.S. Defense Department/Pentagon, I couldn't put it down. It is fascinating, upsetting, and because I lived through its history, utterly believable. But it has not been popular with everyone: some reviewers have panned it as distorted and biased (they are in the minority), and I would guess it has received a very negative response from the Bush Administration, the Pentagon and the CIA.
Three things stand out for me in this fine book: (1) the power of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so eloquently cautioned against; (2) the power of the Defense Department bureaucracy over other branches of government, including the President and Congress; and (3) the insanity of some of its top officers and their political allies as they planned and contemplated devastating attacks against those whom they considered enemies. When people talk about plans to drop atomic and hydrogen bombs and killing hundreds of millions of "the enemy"; when they talk about "winning" when only three people have survived such a holocaust (two of "us" and one of "them", those people are out of their minds. They are not living in reality. They are insane.
If James Carroll's massive book does nothing else, it eloquently documents what happens when leaders begin to think in terms of "us" versus "them", to divide the world into opposing camps of "winners versus losers", "us" versus "them", and arm themselves with weapons of such appalling destructiveness that the consequences of such recklessness is mind-numbing to contemplate.
Three things stand out for me in this fine book: (1) the power of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so eloquently cautioned against; (2) the power of the Defense Department bureaucracy over other branches of government, including the President and Congress; and (3) the insanity of some of its top officers and their political allies as they planned and contemplated devastating attacks against those whom they considered enemies. When people talk about plans to drop atomic and hydrogen bombs and killing hundreds of millions of "the enemy"; when they talk about "winning" when only three people have survived such a holocaust (two of "us" and one of "them", those people are out of their minds. They are not living in reality. They are insane.
If James Carroll's massive book does nothing else, it eloquently documents what happens when leaders begin to think in terms of "us" versus "them", to divide the world into opposing camps of "winners versus losers", "us" versus "them", and arm themselves with weapons of such appalling destructiveness that the consequences of such recklessness is mind-numbing to contemplate.
March 27, 2016
Up to page 100 now and I might press on but it's sure hard to plough through. The authors bias is so strong it's become irritating. Hindsight is a very handy thing but without a balanced view just another rant.
What on earth does the author expect when the subject is war? Just like the kid that volunteers for the military and aggrieved when he is wounded or heaven forbid disabled. The family that is so proud he's in a fancy uniform then rails at the government for letting him get killed - suck it up, that's what the military is for, killing.
Why castigate decision makers who made their best guess amongst a myriad of possible eventualities?
I now see Goodreads bio of the author and realise the origin of his bias, and I have some amusement at his having to leave his messianic calling in order to have a conventional personal life.
What on earth does the author expect when the subject is war? Just like the kid that volunteers for the military and aggrieved when he is wounded or heaven forbid disabled. The family that is so proud he's in a fancy uniform then rails at the government for letting him get killed - suck it up, that's what the military is for, killing.
Why castigate decision makers who made their best guess amongst a myriad of possible eventualities?
I now see Goodreads bio of the author and realise the origin of his bias, and I have some amusement at his having to leave his messianic calling in order to have a conventional personal life.
November 4, 2014
This book is a biased, yet informative look at the development of the Pentagon and the associated rise of the military-industrial complex. I have every reason to believe that the facts and information in the book are correct, but the author uses correlations as a way to build a conspiracy where he could have simply built a coherent narrative. Nevertheless the story is fascinating, and I have no problems maintaining my perspectives of history while reading it.
October 9, 2016
IMPORTANT, If you have thought about the results of a warlike frame of mind,and the need to pursue PEACE, this book can give food for thought and action to preserve the lives of our children.
The book is long and filled with hope for a brighter future.
The next years can make the world a better place or yield a nuclear winter that few will survive. It is up to us, as individuals to choose which!
The book is long and filled with hope for a brighter future.
The next years can make the world a better place or yield a nuclear winter that few will survive. It is up to us, as individuals to choose which!
March 27, 2010
Some interesting anecdotes re: his father, the first AFOSI general officer. James Carroll seems quite disillusioned with the United States. He raves on Soviet leaders and praises them for the end of the Cold War. Quite a turn off. I give it 2 stars instead of 1 merely because there was some interesting information in it, once you got past the author's anti-American sentiment.
December 31, 2020
A Sobering and Revealing History Of America’s War Machine
Thought-provoking tale by a lifelong Pentagon observer. Well researched and well-written. Highly recommend to any interested in American history, and how it has been shaped by our military leaders.
Thought-provoking tale by a lifelong Pentagon observer. Well researched and well-written. Highly recommend to any interested in American history, and how it has been shaped by our military leaders.
Read
July 12, 2007I discovered that the pentagon is not what it appears to be. The important part the atomic bomb has played in everything that has happened since the early 1940's right through today.
February 8, 2010
House of War is a somewhat lengthy narrative of how the military operates in the post-WWII era. Many interesting facts, I'm sure, for military buffs, but it never really captured my interest.
December 3, 2017
Carroll writes this book as an interested journalist but also as the son of General Joseph Carroll, the founding father of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Gen. Carroll had a birds-eye view of the Vietnam War and saw the lies up close, himself being charge of overseeing the intelligence that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara saw. He may have provided some source material for his son in chronicling the internally contradictory McNamara, who ramped up the war and was replaced by Johnson when he began to publicly renounce his own strategy of mass-bombing. The author writes that Gen. Carroll was demoted and fired in 1969 because he had refused to sign off on the inflated Soviet missile counts, the "missile gap," that Congress and President Nixon were using to justify an anti-ballistic missile program. Gen. Carroll had an up-close look at Richard Nixon's "Madman" strategy of bringing US nuclear forces to alert three times to attempt to frighten the Soviets into thinking he might actually start a war (the Soviets, writes Carroll, never brought their forces to alert). All this was enough to sour the General and Carroll uses such examples to show the impending danger to the world of a superpower's unchecked military might. (I listened to this book about the same time Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary aired, which focused heavily on the lies the government told or information it withheld from the public; I found the works complementary.)
This book is also partly about the younger and elder Carroll's relationship. The military man could not understand his son's foray into the Catholic Priesthood. The General's son is a self-proclaimed 'peacenik' who gives the benefit of the doubt to the Soviets on several occassions (like the Nixon example above). So, an unrequited relationship between father and son exist in the background of this book and in the emotion of the author. Carroll is trying to be a voice of morality, pushing back on what he sees are false narratives and choices about military action. It's not clear that Carroll would ever subscribe to a theory of a "just war." Michael Tomasky penned a mostly favorable review of this book and wrote "one can't help wishing at the same time that Carroll were a little less sure of the righteousness of his (belief system)." I agree.
The Pentagon was commissioned on September 11, 1945, a day and month that have obviously ominous connections to future Pentagon history. The current State Department building was originally intended for what the Pentagon eventually became, but once Pearl Harbor happened it became clear that something bigger was needed-- and Leslie R. Groves, who built the place, made it even larger than FDR had wanted. Leslie Groves went from building to the Pentagon to being a driving force behind the Manhattan Project and building the atomic bomb. The author walked the halls of the "nation's sacred temple" as a toddler while his dad worked there. He credits Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for seeing and warning other of the rise of the Pentagon. But those who were involved in shaping WWII and post-war policy both saw its dangers while they contributed to its rise. Some, like James Forrestal (and perhaps McNamara to a lesser extent), went insane.
The push by Churchill and FDR for unconditional surrender of the Axis powers likely led to a worsening of the war and a dramatic increase in casualties, argues Carroll. Malcolm Gladwell (podcast) and various military analysts and historians have pointed out some of the faulty logic of Churchill and others who wanted to bomb civilian centers to scare the public into hastening and end to the war. These were emotional decisions, not rational ones. Studies have since found that it would have been much more effective at hastening the end of the war to solely focus on munitions factories and other key military targets. But perhaps the memory of WWI trench warfare had instilled a fear in the Allies of unbreakable stalemates. Carroll notes that the fire bombings and Hamburg and Dresden would have been war crimes if they were done by ground troops instead of from the air. Similarly, Curtis LeMay ran incindiary raids in China and Japan. Carroll writes that Robert McNamara, who worked for LeMay at the time, now admits that the Tokyo bombing was a "war crime." Furthermore, Truman and others likely wanted to drop an atomic bomb to send a message to Moscow as much as the Japanese. Leslie Groves reportedly wanted Kyoto on the target list to maximize civilian casualties, and Truman helped quell the thirst for blood and revenge.
After the war, Congress passed the National Security Act and the joint forces would now be housed at the Pentagon and under one authority. Policy preferences across government, however, were divided. Stimson forsaw that the Russians would eventually get the atomic bomb and believed we needed a pre-emptive treaty to share information and build trust. He allegedly wanted to save society from a nuclear holocaust; maybe he regretted what he had earlier set in motion. Forrestal and others, however, wanted war with the Soviets. Stimson resigned, and policy eventually settled into harder facets of the Cold War. While Carroll acknowledges that 20 million would die under Stalin's purges as the USSR's conditioned worsened, he does little to acknowledge the Soviet's systems crimes, as well as the treachery felt by formerly free people like the Poles who were now under brutal Soviet occupation thanks to the agreement with FDR. He notes George Kennan's long telegram, which basically said negotiating with the USSR was pointless. Carroll takes a contrary position and finds that Kennan's view was flawed. Militarism would win the day, however. Forrestal (and his wife) became increasingly dangerously paranoid (schizophrenic?) and eventually committed suicide.
One major turning point in US history was the infamous NSC-68 in 1950, which made "us versus them" America's official national security policy. The Truman Doctrine basically adopted George Kennan's viewpoint and looked to halt any further Soviet expansion and to roll it back where possible. Korea was the first test as Truman decided it waas ultimately a war against the USSR. Early on, he stated that atomic bomb use was on the table. From declassified Soviet archives we now know that Stalin was willing to accept US dominance on the Korean peninsula, fearing that a US military setback there meant the US would start dropping A-bombs to achieve victory. Had Truman actually authorized use of atomic weaponry, it certainly would have loosened the taboo against such usage. One moral of Carrol's story is that normalization of military actions, armament buildups, leads to bad consequences. I have not read anything Carrol has read recently, but I imagine 2016-2017 has been a horrifying period for him given that the Pentagon is now overtly less transparent about troop totals in various countries and Republican presidential candidates stated they were opened to using nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In the end, it would be Eisenhower and Sec. of State John Foster Dulles' policy of brinkmanship that would enforce the Korean armistice.
Meanwhile, Allen Dulles' young CIA was carrying out Eisenhower-sanctioned black ops away from the public scrutiny, unlike the US military. (The author does not mention CIA-led operations, coups, etc. under Eisenhower as chronicled in Stephen Kinzer's book The Brothers.) Ike's policies and statements were sometimes contradictory. The CIA and Pentagon were quite convinced there was a missile gap, that the USSR was achieving a hidden dominance in missiles. Eisenhower pushed the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to help stem the gap. This fear drove the U-2 program. But Eisenhower also wanted a lasting peace. Ike was very close to having a serious peace summit with Kruschev when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 over Central Asia that set relations back (see Bridge of Spies). During this period, General Carroll was in charge of running what would now be known as "red team" operations against US airbases to test their vulnerability. He found they were incredibly vulnerable to penetration. This led to the US decision to have 1/3 of the nuclear bomber fleet in the air at all times, away from the airfield and able to attack if disabled.
According to Carroll, when President Kennedy took office, Robert McNamara discovered that the missle gap was a myth. The CIA had discovered that the USSR only had four ICBMs, located at one base which could easily be targeted, and all of their strategic bombers could easily be destroyed at their bases as well-- the US was far superior. Perversely, that led to Pentagon logic that the USSR would strike first because the USSR knew of its vulnerability, and likely knew that the US knew. This leads only to excuse for more buildup. The post-war housing and Korean war defense spending booms had helped boost the economy and weaponized Keynesianism basically became a practice (the author doesn't use the term, I am). Kennedy lost all trust in the CIA after the Bay of Pigs and saw the danger of the military complex during the Cuban Missle Crisis; Curtis LeMay was basically insubordinate as Kennedy pushed back from the brink. Kennedy is somewhat of a hero of Carroll's and Carroll overlooks plenty of Kennedy's flaws (see Dylan Matthews' argument that he is one of the worst presidents ever) because Kennedy called for peace and disarmament. He is apparently ignorant of the many ways in which Kennedy deceived the American public about American troop levels and actions in Vietnam (again, see Ken Burns' documentary). Kennedy increased arm sales, according to Carroll, because he knew that would appease Congress. The author's dad was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency at this time and perhaps it is a personally happy period of memory for him that clouds his judgment.
Paul Nitze is also a player in the book, operating in the background crafting US defense policy; he was LBJ's Secretary of the Navy, and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Carroll chronicles the Vietnam war buildup and McNamara's push for data, troop increases, and bombing, and then the later public apparent recanting of his policies (see above). In the end, McNamara was put over the World Bank and the author's father was demoted. Perhaps most scary are the Nixon years, when he began secretly bombing Cambodia and further escalating the loss of human life. Nixon's "madman" ploy apparently brought the USSR to the SALT negotiations, but a drunken Nixon would sometimes give orders that Secretary of Defense Schlesinger had to intercept. Another moral of the story is that once the powder keg is built, bad things will happen if you put someone crazy enough to light a match in charge of it.
President Carter, of course, is the nuclear submariner who wanted to reduce nuclear arms and canceled the B-1 bomber program. But Paul Nitze "drove the opposition," according to the author. SALT-II was watered down and never ratified. Carroll is quite critical of Carter's action not living up to his lofty rhetoric and reputation-- Carter expanded the list of nuclear targets, initiated what would eventually be Reagan's SDI, and funded the covert war in Afghanistan. He does not get the same benefit of the doubt of placating Congress that the author gives Kennedy.
President Reagan initially took the mantle of Barry Goldwater and pushed for a defense build-up and madman-style rhetoric before eventually pushing for arms reduction and talks with Gorbechev. But Carroll does not follow the traditional narrative, he does not credit SDI and the USSR's balking at the cost of massive additional defense spending with bankrupting the Soviet Union (that's fine, a lot of other factors were involved). He credits Gorbechev with ending the Cold War and actually writes that Gorbechev rescued Reagan by helping him out in public relations at a time when the arms-for-hostages scandal was coming to public light and damaging Reagan's poll numbers. In the end, it's the Pentagon that missed Gorbechev's signals and maintained its vast overestimation of USSR capability. Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice, and other supposed experts never forsaw the fall of the Berlin Wall-- in their minds, the USSR was too strong to imagine it.
Unfortunately, the author misses philosophical arguments about what a superpower does when its enemy no longer exists. (ie: read ancient Polybius' take that Roman morals declined after their mortal enemy Carthage was finally destroyed.) The 1991 Gulf War was simply using the tools that the military-industrial complex had made. Carroll claims that, like racial integration before, gay rights are the perpetual enemy of the Pentagon. He notes that we still spend at Cold War levels. We are still pushing anti-ballistic missile defense, and every President promises additional buildups. He holds special ire for Paul Wolfowitz and the neocons, who formulated the doctrine to maintain nuclear arms and global military dominance, and pushed a doctrine of pre-emptive war. Carroll writes that President Clinton was simply complicit, oiling the way for Bush-Cheney in 2000. Of course, all of the trillions spent on defense proved useless on September 11, 2001. And now we spend trillions more as a result, in far-away lands against enemies without countries. (This book was published in 2006, during some of the low points of the Iraq war before "the surge.") The author aims to push back against what he sees are what the majority believes and says (like the "missile gap" that many still believe exists). "My father and his cohort were neither religious nor political fundamentalists. Their successors may be both. Beware the House of War when understood as the House of God." The nation's military is essentially impossible to rein in and we are all endangered. The audio version of the book has a brief interview with the author. Three stars.
This book is also partly about the younger and elder Carroll's relationship. The military man could not understand his son's foray into the Catholic Priesthood. The General's son is a self-proclaimed 'peacenik' who gives the benefit of the doubt to the Soviets on several occassions (like the Nixon example above). So, an unrequited relationship between father and son exist in the background of this book and in the emotion of the author. Carroll is trying to be a voice of morality, pushing back on what he sees are false narratives and choices about military action. It's not clear that Carroll would ever subscribe to a theory of a "just war." Michael Tomasky penned a mostly favorable review of this book and wrote "one can't help wishing at the same time that Carroll were a little less sure of the righteousness of his (belief system)." I agree.
The Pentagon was commissioned on September 11, 1945, a day and month that have obviously ominous connections to future Pentagon history. The current State Department building was originally intended for what the Pentagon eventually became, but once Pearl Harbor happened it became clear that something bigger was needed-- and Leslie R. Groves, who built the place, made it even larger than FDR had wanted. Leslie Groves went from building to the Pentagon to being a driving force behind the Manhattan Project and building the atomic bomb. The author walked the halls of the "nation's sacred temple" as a toddler while his dad worked there. He credits Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for seeing and warning other of the rise of the Pentagon. But those who were involved in shaping WWII and post-war policy both saw its dangers while they contributed to its rise. Some, like James Forrestal (and perhaps McNamara to a lesser extent), went insane.
The push by Churchill and FDR for unconditional surrender of the Axis powers likely led to a worsening of the war and a dramatic increase in casualties, argues Carroll. Malcolm Gladwell (podcast) and various military analysts and historians have pointed out some of the faulty logic of Churchill and others who wanted to bomb civilian centers to scare the public into hastening and end to the war. These were emotional decisions, not rational ones. Studies have since found that it would have been much more effective at hastening the end of the war to solely focus on munitions factories and other key military targets. But perhaps the memory of WWI trench warfare had instilled a fear in the Allies of unbreakable stalemates. Carroll notes that the fire bombings and Hamburg and Dresden would have been war crimes if they were done by ground troops instead of from the air. Similarly, Curtis LeMay ran incindiary raids in China and Japan. Carroll writes that Robert McNamara, who worked for LeMay at the time, now admits that the Tokyo bombing was a "war crime." Furthermore, Truman and others likely wanted to drop an atomic bomb to send a message to Moscow as much as the Japanese. Leslie Groves reportedly wanted Kyoto on the target list to maximize civilian casualties, and Truman helped quell the thirst for blood and revenge.
After the war, Congress passed the National Security Act and the joint forces would now be housed at the Pentagon and under one authority. Policy preferences across government, however, were divided. Stimson forsaw that the Russians would eventually get the atomic bomb and believed we needed a pre-emptive treaty to share information and build trust. He allegedly wanted to save society from a nuclear holocaust; maybe he regretted what he had earlier set in motion. Forrestal and others, however, wanted war with the Soviets. Stimson resigned, and policy eventually settled into harder facets of the Cold War. While Carroll acknowledges that 20 million would die under Stalin's purges as the USSR's conditioned worsened, he does little to acknowledge the Soviet's systems crimes, as well as the treachery felt by formerly free people like the Poles who were now under brutal Soviet occupation thanks to the agreement with FDR. He notes George Kennan's long telegram, which basically said negotiating with the USSR was pointless. Carroll takes a contrary position and finds that Kennan's view was flawed. Militarism would win the day, however. Forrestal (and his wife) became increasingly dangerously paranoid (schizophrenic?) and eventually committed suicide.
One major turning point in US history was the infamous NSC-68 in 1950, which made "us versus them" America's official national security policy. The Truman Doctrine basically adopted George Kennan's viewpoint and looked to halt any further Soviet expansion and to roll it back where possible. Korea was the first test as Truman decided it waas ultimately a war against the USSR. Early on, he stated that atomic bomb use was on the table. From declassified Soviet archives we now know that Stalin was willing to accept US dominance on the Korean peninsula, fearing that a US military setback there meant the US would start dropping A-bombs to achieve victory. Had Truman actually authorized use of atomic weaponry, it certainly would have loosened the taboo against such usage. One moral of Carrol's story is that normalization of military actions, armament buildups, leads to bad consequences. I have not read anything Carrol has read recently, but I imagine 2016-2017 has been a horrifying period for him given that the Pentagon is now overtly less transparent about troop totals in various countries and Republican presidential candidates stated they were opened to using nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In the end, it would be Eisenhower and Sec. of State John Foster Dulles' policy of brinkmanship that would enforce the Korean armistice.
Meanwhile, Allen Dulles' young CIA was carrying out Eisenhower-sanctioned black ops away from the public scrutiny, unlike the US military. (The author does not mention CIA-led operations, coups, etc. under Eisenhower as chronicled in Stephen Kinzer's book The Brothers.) Ike's policies and statements were sometimes contradictory. The CIA and Pentagon were quite convinced there was a missile gap, that the USSR was achieving a hidden dominance in missiles. Eisenhower pushed the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to help stem the gap. This fear drove the U-2 program. But Eisenhower also wanted a lasting peace. Ike was very close to having a serious peace summit with Kruschev when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 over Central Asia that set relations back (see Bridge of Spies). During this period, General Carroll was in charge of running what would now be known as "red team" operations against US airbases to test their vulnerability. He found they were incredibly vulnerable to penetration. This led to the US decision to have 1/3 of the nuclear bomber fleet in the air at all times, away from the airfield and able to attack if disabled.
According to Carroll, when President Kennedy took office, Robert McNamara discovered that the missle gap was a myth. The CIA had discovered that the USSR only had four ICBMs, located at one base which could easily be targeted, and all of their strategic bombers could easily be destroyed at their bases as well-- the US was far superior. Perversely, that led to Pentagon logic that the USSR would strike first because the USSR knew of its vulnerability, and likely knew that the US knew. This leads only to excuse for more buildup. The post-war housing and Korean war defense spending booms had helped boost the economy and weaponized Keynesianism basically became a practice (the author doesn't use the term, I am). Kennedy lost all trust in the CIA after the Bay of Pigs and saw the danger of the military complex during the Cuban Missle Crisis; Curtis LeMay was basically insubordinate as Kennedy pushed back from the brink. Kennedy is somewhat of a hero of Carroll's and Carroll overlooks plenty of Kennedy's flaws (see Dylan Matthews' argument that he is one of the worst presidents ever) because Kennedy called for peace and disarmament. He is apparently ignorant of the many ways in which Kennedy deceived the American public about American troop levels and actions in Vietnam (again, see Ken Burns' documentary). Kennedy increased arm sales, according to Carroll, because he knew that would appease Congress. The author's dad was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency at this time and perhaps it is a personally happy period of memory for him that clouds his judgment.
Paul Nitze is also a player in the book, operating in the background crafting US defense policy; he was LBJ's Secretary of the Navy, and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Carroll chronicles the Vietnam war buildup and McNamara's push for data, troop increases, and bombing, and then the later public apparent recanting of his policies (see above). In the end, McNamara was put over the World Bank and the author's father was demoted. Perhaps most scary are the Nixon years, when he began secretly bombing Cambodia and further escalating the loss of human life. Nixon's "madman" ploy apparently brought the USSR to the SALT negotiations, but a drunken Nixon would sometimes give orders that Secretary of Defense Schlesinger had to intercept. Another moral of the story is that once the powder keg is built, bad things will happen if you put someone crazy enough to light a match in charge of it.
President Carter, of course, is the nuclear submariner who wanted to reduce nuclear arms and canceled the B-1 bomber program. But Paul Nitze "drove the opposition," according to the author. SALT-II was watered down and never ratified. Carroll is quite critical of Carter's action not living up to his lofty rhetoric and reputation-- Carter expanded the list of nuclear targets, initiated what would eventually be Reagan's SDI, and funded the covert war in Afghanistan. He does not get the same benefit of the doubt of placating Congress that the author gives Kennedy.
President Reagan initially took the mantle of Barry Goldwater and pushed for a defense build-up and madman-style rhetoric before eventually pushing for arms reduction and talks with Gorbechev. But Carroll does not follow the traditional narrative, he does not credit SDI and the USSR's balking at the cost of massive additional defense spending with bankrupting the Soviet Union (that's fine, a lot of other factors were involved). He credits Gorbechev with ending the Cold War and actually writes that Gorbechev rescued Reagan by helping him out in public relations at a time when the arms-for-hostages scandal was coming to public light and damaging Reagan's poll numbers. In the end, it's the Pentagon that missed Gorbechev's signals and maintained its vast overestimation of USSR capability. Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice, and other supposed experts never forsaw the fall of the Berlin Wall-- in their minds, the USSR was too strong to imagine it.
Unfortunately, the author misses philosophical arguments about what a superpower does when its enemy no longer exists. (ie: read ancient Polybius' take that Roman morals declined after their mortal enemy Carthage was finally destroyed.) The 1991 Gulf War was simply using the tools that the military-industrial complex had made. Carroll claims that, like racial integration before, gay rights are the perpetual enemy of the Pentagon. He notes that we still spend at Cold War levels. We are still pushing anti-ballistic missile defense, and every President promises additional buildups. He holds special ire for Paul Wolfowitz and the neocons, who formulated the doctrine to maintain nuclear arms and global military dominance, and pushed a doctrine of pre-emptive war. Carroll writes that President Clinton was simply complicit, oiling the way for Bush-Cheney in 2000. Of course, all of the trillions spent on defense proved useless on September 11, 2001. And now we spend trillions more as a result, in far-away lands against enemies without countries. (This book was published in 2006, during some of the low points of the Iraq war before "the surge.") The author aims to push back against what he sees are what the majority believes and says (like the "missile gap" that many still believe exists). "My father and his cohort were neither religious nor political fundamentalists. Their successors may be both. Beware the House of War when understood as the House of God." The nation's military is essentially impossible to rein in and we are all endangered. The audio version of the book has a brief interview with the author. Three stars.
January 20, 2019
I gave this book two stars. It got one star because the Author read the book on tape; that is how I listened to this book. It got an additional star in that the outline of the book was historically accurate. The last three stars it did not get, because the Author wrote off ideas, that were clearly "of his opinion" as a "matter of fact", so that he could push his agenda that the Pentagon is some type of evil war driven factory. While there were many things in the book that were ideas of an opinion, that he wrote off as fact, I will only talk about one of those instances. The instance where he gave Mikhail Gorbachev "full credit" of ending the cold war is only an opinion and not a fact. Yes, there are some that give him credit, but for all of us that grew up while this was going on, we remember there were many other things that brought the end of the cold war; President Reagan, the physical fall of Russia, etc. Can we identify one thing that ended the Cold War, absolutely not, thus it is not a fact but an opinion as to what did it. In short, unless you already know a lot of facts about the Military, Pentagon, etc I do not suggest reading this book, as it will mislead you to believe an untruth about it.
March 5, 2019
This book is the first I've in this type of genre. James Carroll accounts the history of the Pentagon from the time of construction on 9/11/1941 through Clinton's administration. The story is told via Carroll from his standpoint as the son of the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Carroll having grown up being in/around the Pentagon, as well as his research. Our Forefathers created the Constitution of the United States to enforce the rights of American citizens and to try to avoid government officials overstepping the boundaries of our laws. Carroll strives to point out how the Pentagon and its agencies within have overstepped those boundaries many times. Carroll points out many decisions made by Pentagon officials and the US. Government as a whole and what the consequences were from those decisions.
A very informative and often enlightening read even though Carroll's biases show through, you can learn or be reminded of a lot of U.S. war history and the history of the Pentagon. A very long book but it would be interesting to have the book pick up from where it left off until current day.
A very informative and often enlightening read even though Carroll's biases show through, you can learn or be reminded of a lot of U.S. war history and the history of the Pentagon. A very long book but it would be interesting to have the book pick up from where it left off until current day.
February 19, 2020
I got caught up with the title of the book, thinking it was going to be a major read.
It turned out mediocre.
James Carroll is a priest who gave up his practice, and decided to write a book.
He comes across as an anti war person, and based on that bias, and his father being a one star general at the Pentagon, he decides to write as though he's an insider and the octagon expert.
It's a "blah blah" book with little inside knowledge to pass on to us readers.
I should have paid attention to the sub title word "Disastrous" and then avoided this book.
Not worth a dime.
It turned out mediocre.
James Carroll is a priest who gave up his practice, and decided to write a book.
He comes across as an anti war person, and based on that bias, and his father being a one star general at the Pentagon, he decides to write as though he's an insider and the octagon expert.
It's a "blah blah" book with little inside knowledge to pass on to us readers.
I should have paid attention to the sub title word "Disastrous" and then avoided this book.
Not worth a dime.
May 20, 2025
Great insight on the inner workings of the Pentagon.
September 22, 2007
I first heard about this book as James Carroll was discussing the history of U.S. war policy on the Diane Rehm Show. House of War is a very enlightening (if frustrating) read into the history of U.S. war diplomacy and foreign relations, with a tight focus on the pentagon. In my opinion, Carroll presents the information in a very objective and accessible manner, dispelling such warmongering myths of reasoning as, “it was necessary to use nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war in the Pacific.” Carroll points out that, contrary to popular myth, Tokyo had been in negotiations for surrender with Washington long before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Similarly, carpet bombing and the use of “fire bombs” (i.e. a grisly beta version of what can now be called our Proud Legacy in the use of Napalm) on the civilians of Japan and Germany can be attributed more to a morbid curiosity with technological advances in weaponry than a legitimate tactical or “proportional” response.
House of War presents a well researched and cited version of U.S. history that often conflicts with what I remember learning at university or in high school. The insights and conclusions that Carroll offers aren’t necessarily critical of a particular partisan platform, but of the philosophy that war is a noble method of conflict resolution.
House of War presents a well researched and cited version of U.S. history that often conflicts with what I remember learning at university or in high school. The insights and conclusions that Carroll offers aren’t necessarily critical of a particular partisan platform, but of the philosophy that war is a noble method of conflict resolution.
June 15, 2014
If you want to know what history looks like, particularly American history, from the perspective of someone who sees evil and nefarious dealings in just about every single action taken by the United States then this is the book for you. I never thought I would see the day when the Marshall Plan would be described as economic warfare but it is in this book and that is just one example. I found it difficult to suspend disbelief and finish this book but i managed to man up and do so. This is history of the Zinn School. That is, it is a history written by a person consumed with spite and self-loathing for the culture and nation that nurtured and created them.
I would call this book a waste of paper but that is not strong enough. It is worthwhile in one respect though. If you can see beyond the banality and fake moralism the intense dislike of the modern American left for the United States is plainly on display. I found myself wondering, if the author finds America so evil why is he still here? I cannot recommend this book except as an example of what infinitely biased history and twisted facts look like.
I would call this book a waste of paper but that is not strong enough. It is worthwhile in one respect though. If you can see beyond the banality and fake moralism the intense dislike of the modern American left for the United States is plainly on display. I found myself wondering, if the author finds America so evil why is he still here? I cannot recommend this book except as an example of what infinitely biased history and twisted facts look like.
March 7, 2015
Carroll portrays the Pentagon as a kind of self-sustaining war machine, the engine of the Military Industrial Complex that has consumed American foreign policy at least since the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo.
One thing that distinguishes this account from similar critiques of American power (Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson) is that Carroll weaves his ambitious, capital-H History of the Defense Department together with his own personal history. As the son of a top brass Air Force bureaucrat, he went from scampering around the Pentagon's massive ramps and hallways to protesting with hippies in the parking lot. It's a unique perspective that, I think, insulates him from critics who claim that he just hates the military. One GoodReads reviewer derisively called this book, "history of the Zinn school" -- which is certainly the case. Zinn was a strong critical voice in a world of American exceptionalism and Zinn himself flew bombing missions in World War II, where he bore witness to the rise of "total war" logic. So yes, that would be an accurate statement.
One thing that distinguishes this account from similar critiques of American power (Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson) is that Carroll weaves his ambitious, capital-H History of the Defense Department together with his own personal history. As the son of a top brass Air Force bureaucrat, he went from scampering around the Pentagon's massive ramps and hallways to protesting with hippies in the parking lot. It's a unique perspective that, I think, insulates him from critics who claim that he just hates the military. One GoodReads reviewer derisively called this book, "history of the Zinn school" -- which is certainly the case. Zinn was a strong critical voice in a world of American exceptionalism and Zinn himself flew bombing missions in World War II, where he bore witness to the rise of "total war" logic. So yes, that would be an accurate statement.
September 10, 2007
House of War is the story of the Pentagon. The author, a self-described beatnik, is the son of a general who spent his career at the Pentagon. Noting ironically that the birth of the Pentagon matches exactly the birth of the Atomic bomb he takes through the years showing how each president has effect the nuclear arms race for good and bad. He also make a point of highlighting Gorbachev's key role in ending the cold war and starting the disarmament process. Despite years of trying implement reductions each president has made it worse, so by accident, others by design. In the authors opinion George W Bush is singlehandedly responsible for the return of the nuclear arms threat and has significantly increased the possibility of a nuclear warhead being used against the United States.
This is one big, scary book that has me anxiously waiting for a new president to undo the damage that the current administration has unleashed.
This is one big, scary book that has me anxiously waiting for a new president to undo the damage that the current administration has unleashed.
Currently Reading
November 16, 2008IN progress: Carroll begins by discussing how decisions were made with regard to daylight versus night-time bombing and the ethics (or lack thereof) in bombing civilians, i.e. bombing for effect on morale etc. I had no idea of the strong influences that inter-service rivalry had on strategic and often tactical decision-making. I guess I'm naive, but that was truly depressing.
Kennedy's laudable attempt to have some kind of arms control agreement with Russia over nuclear weapons was tempered by the necessity of "buying off" the hawks, both in the Pentagon and in Congress. The Pentagon was promised more military spending and virtually unlimited underground tests, and Congressmen were guaranteed governmental sponsorship of military spending in their districts. All this had the net effect of continuing an arms race that Eisenhower warned against and Kennedy didn't want.
Kennedy's laudable attempt to have some kind of arms control agreement with Russia over nuclear weapons was tempered by the necessity of "buying off" the hawks, both in the Pentagon and in Congress. The Pentagon was promised more military spending and virtually unlimited underground tests, and Congressmen were guaranteed governmental sponsorship of military spending in their districts. All this had the net effect of continuing an arms race that Eisenhower warned against and Kennedy didn't want.
February 22, 2009
September 11 is one thread of many in this exhaustive view of the Pentagon from its groundbreaking on Sept. 11, 1941 through Sept. 11, 2001. Along the way we learn FDR wanted the Pentagon to be a temporary building, not wishing the US to have a huge permanent military. Over time, the power of the Pentagon became greater than the politicians who tried to curb it. In this National Book Award winner we get insights into Trumans 'red scare', hear Ike warning against the 'military industrial complex' we have now (think Halliburton),JFK's efforts to get rid of the atomic bomb, Johnson and his inability to stop the Pentagons' Viet Nam war......... and and on to George W. Bush and his unpresedented invasion of Iraq.
This is a long detailed book which clarifies an America pushed and pulled by the military.
Citizens - this is where your money went.
This is a long detailed book which clarifies an America pushed and pulled by the military.
Citizens - this is where your money went.
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