A Political Odyssey
The Rise of American Militarism
and One Man's Fight to Stop It
 
By Sen. Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria

 

Foreword by Daniel Ellsberg 

 

A Political Odyssey tells two stories: one man's political career and the combined expansion of the American military industry, US territory and presidential power. The two stories collide when Mike Gravel enters the Senate in the 1970s.

The US demobilized and returned to a civilian economy after every war until the end of World War II. To avoid a new Depression and to keep the enormous profits for defense contractors, the government and the media trumped up false fears of an exaggerated Soviet threat to support a war economy in peacetime.  It created a model for 60 years: intentionally exaggerated threats followed by disastrous military responses for the basest motives.

After three decades of coups, assassinations, wasteful weapons systems and invasions American militarists were defeated in the jungles of Vietnam. That opened a rare period of national self-examination: what had America done with the unprecedented power and wealth it accrued in a world devastated by the Second World War? Was that power and wealth used for human progress at home and abroad or simply to multiply wealth and power? Congressional commissions in the mid-seventies answered those questions question by unearthing the misdeeds of U.S. power.

In the Senate at the time, Gravel fought the militarists by opposing their nuclear weapons tests; filibustering against the military draft and releasing the top Secret Pentagon Papers, which caused Nixon to sue Gravel to the Supreme Court. But militarism was restored when the Reagan counter-revolution swept out Democrats like Gravel and gave Congress to the Republicans. The fear mongering and militarism of the 1950s were back, the cloud under which we still live. The victors in that militarist restoration started with small probes: a landing on Grenada here, an invasion of Panama there, working themselves up to a limited ground campaign in Iraq in 1991.

By 2003--just 23 years later--the resurgent militarists, with support from their courtiers in Congress and the press, felt bold enough to try for a Vietnam-sized invasion—in Iraq. The rise of the Cold War and the War on Terror—in personalities and tactics—are closely linked in the book.  Terrorism has replaced Communism as the exaggerated threat to justify outlandish military spending leaving health care, transportation, education and alternative energy in crisis.

The book is full of gossip: It delves into Gravel's private life, his affairs and his friendship with Frank Sinatra and other Hollywood stars. Gravel and his nemesis Scoop Jackson have it out in the Senate cloakroom after Gravel voted against Jackson on the militarists' prize ABM system even though Jackson took Gravel to a private meeting in the Oval Office with Nixon. Gravel tangles with Ted Kennedy too, swearing at him to get his people off his back because he wouldn't become a Kennedy Man. Gravel and Carter did not get along and Reagan is called one the biggest knaves to occupy the White House.

After deep personal depression during the Reagan resurgence, Gravel makes a comeback arguing for a new form of citizenship, having been convinced through his experiences that representative government is irredeemably corrupt. He runs for president in 2007 confronting the militarism of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the stage of the Democratic primary debates, which is where the book opens and closes. Gravel looks forward to the 2008 election and beyond, offering what he sees as a last hope for Americans to reject militarism, the central problem of our day, and embrace a more sane foreign and domestic policy.

 

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