The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

What more critical reviews often miss (which is not unexpected, as some of them indicate they did not even read the book past the first chapter because they thought it was 'propaganda') in questions like 'Why couldn't the bases have a stabilizing effect?' is crucial lines like the assertion that many of the bases aren't even of military significance and have a great deal of bloat. Do our soldiers REALLY need golf courses, or our generals several luxury jets? What's even more horrifying is the fact there are air conditioned tents. TENTS. Just get a damn building if you must have something air conditioned, to have tents be such is ridiculously wasteful in the extreme.

Regardless of whether you agree with the premise that all these bases constitute an empire by another name, the fact that we have a huge number of frivolous expenditures that are completely hidden to us (by us I mean American voters) and aren't accountable to taxpayers in the slightest should be deeply concerning. It's no wonder the military keeps racking up such huge expenditures when they can hide everything. (Even if we were building some sort of superweapon that we wanted such secrecy that we didn't even want the budget of it known, the thing about doomsday superweapons is that they're really only useful as a deterrent if other people know you have them, and we already /have/ superweapons, they're called nukes...)

That said, this book is as dry as you might expect a book detailing military excesses to be, and I never actually finished the entire thing (although I might at a later date). I still recommend reading at least a little bit of it, though; it's interesting enough for a brief skim through at least, especially if you didn't know anything about it beforehand or if it's one of your favorite subjects.