TY - BOOK ID - 1763443 TI - House of war : the Pentagon and the disastrous rise of American power PY - 2006 SN - 9780618187805 0618872019 0618187804 PB - New York Boston Houghton Mifflin DB - UniCat KW - International relations. Foreign policy KW - Polemology KW - United States KW - Pentagon KW - Militarism KW - Arms race KW - Militarisme KW - Course aux armements KW - History KW - Histoire KW - Pentagon (Va.) KW - United States. KW - Etats-Unis KW - Military policy. KW - Politique militaire KW - Pentagon (Va.). KW - Military policy KW - United States. Department of Defense KW - 21st century KW - 20th century UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:1763443 AB - This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. To argue his case, he marshals a trove of often chilling evidence. He recounts how "the Building" and its denizens achieved what Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power"--from the unprecedented aerial bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II to the "shock and awe" of Iraq. He charts the colossal U.S. nuclear buildup, which far outpaced that of the USSR and has outlived it. He reveals how consistently the Building has found new enemies just as old threats--and funding--evaporate. He demonstrates how Pentagon policy brought about U.S. indifference to an epidemic of genocide during the 1990s. And he shows how the forces that attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 were set in motion exactly sixty years earlier, on September 11, 1941, when ground was broken for the house of war. Carroll draws on rich personal experience (his father was a top Pentagon official for more than twenty years) as well as exhaustive research and extensive interviews with Washington insiders, from Robert McNamara to John McCain to William Cohen to John Kerry. The result is a grand yet intimate work of history, unashamedly polemical and personal but unerringly factual. ER -