A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It

Portada
Seven Stories Press, 2011 M01 4 - 296 páginas
In this candid portrait, former two-term senator from Alaska and 2008 presidential candidate Gravel expounds on his views of the military-industrial complex, the imperial presidency, postwar US foreign policy, and corporate America; critically assesses figures he worked with, such as Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy; and reveals the private life behind the public persona. When he isn’t being actively silenced, Senator Gravel’s voice is generally acknowledged to be the most refreshing and honest of all the 2008 presidential candidates.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

Foreword by Daniel Ellsberg
9
Over There
97
Journey to Alaska
133
The Senate Revolts
155
Afterword Acknowledgments
263
Index
281
Derechos de autor

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 76 - This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Página 117 - The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products — principally from America — are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.
Página 140 - Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies — in the final sense — a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Página 123 - Second, the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.
Página 75 - The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.
Página 117 - Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.
Página 43 - security" is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.
Página 75 - Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous moneychangers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
Página 115 - This means that we are going to continue for a long time to find the Russians difficult to deal with. It does not mean that they should be considered as embarked upon a do-or-die program to overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of the inevitability of the eventual faJl of capitalism has the fortunate connotation that there is no hurry about it. The forces of progress can take their time in preparing the final coup de grace. Meanwhile, what is vital is that the "socialist fatherland...

Acerca del autor (2011)

MIKE GRAVEL is most prominently known for releasing the Pentagon Papers—the secret official study revealing the manipulations of successive US administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. His publications include The Senator Gravel Edition: The Pentagon Papers, Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power.
JOE LAURIA is a New York–based journalist. He has covered foreign policy at the United Nations for nearly two decades for numerous newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the Montreal Gazette, and the Johannesburg Star. His articles have also appeared in the Sunday Times of London as part of its investigative unit, the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and the Huffington Post, among other publications.

Información bibliográfica