"A DEVASTATING ACCOUNT OF AMERICAN MILITARY FOLLY AND POLITICAL DYSFUNCTION BY THE WASHINGTON EDITOR OF HARPER'S MAGAZINE
Washington Is Burning reveals the inner workings of Trump's Washington—a grotesque carnival of corruption. Andrew Cockburn sets fire to US pieties, focusing on the spectacular greed at the heart of the nation's political system.
Graft and self-interest have long typified both Democratic and Republican administrations. Cockburn charts the connections between the American military bureaucracy and the defense industry, which have created a senseless drive for ever-greater spending on arms. After the failed adventures of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon now seeks fresh rewards through inflating the threat from China and Iran, deploying time-tested techniques to boost the budget, including the invocation of supposedly superior enemy weapons development.
The American empire has reached a watershed. With Trump back in the White House, Washington Is Burning is a must-listen account of unedifying practices in the US capital."
"In the last decades, America has gone to war as supposed defenders of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the west from the dangers of Islamists. US soldiers are stationed in over 800 locations across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law. In this book, Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the intentions behind Washington's martial appetites. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the private passions and interests of those who control it—principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as Cockburn witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 because it will do us good at budget time. After years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid and, at the same time, terrifyingly dangerous."
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