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How everything became war and the military became everything tales from the Pentagon

The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So th...

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Main Author: Brooks, Rosa (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Edition:First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
Subjects:
United States > Military policy.
Strategic culture > United States.
War (International law) > Philosophy.
Armed Forces > Operations other than war.
Terrorism > Prevention > Government policy > United States.
Just war doctrine.
National security > United States.
Militarism > United States.
United States > History, Military > 20th century > Anecdotes.
United States > History, Military > 21st century > Anecdotes.
Anecdotes.
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Summary:The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So the heart of American military power is a shopping mall?" In a sense, yes: the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Today's military personnel analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol the seas for pirates. Rosa Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war from an unconventional perspective. She is a former top Pentagon official and the daughter of antiwar protesters; a human rights activist and the wife of an Army Special Forces officer. Her book is by turns a memoir, a work of journalism, and a scholarly exploration of history, anthropology, and law. But at its heart it is a rallying cry, for Brooks shows that when the war machine breaks out of its borders, we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos. And as we pile new tasks onto the military, we make it increasingly ill-prepared for the threats America faces. Brooks sounds an alarm, forcing us to see how the collapsing barriers between war and peace threaten both America and the world. And time is running out to make things right.--From dust jacket.
Physical Description:viii, 438 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-418) and index.
ISBN:9781476777863 (hardcover)
1476777861 (hardcover)
9781476777870 (pbk.)
147677787X (pbk.)
Author Notes:Rosa Brooks is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, a columnist for Foreign Policy , and a law professor at Georgetown University . She previously worked at the Pentagon as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; in 2011, she was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Brooks has also served as a senior advisor at the US Department of State, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, and a weekly opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times . Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal , and dozens of other newspapers and magazines, and she is a frequent television guest, with appearances on the Charlie Rose Show , the Rachel Maddow Show , the Today show, Meet the Press , and Erin Burnett OutFront . Brooks lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband Joe, her daughters Anna and Clara, and a Brittany spaniel named Scout.

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