The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner: Daniel Ellsberg: 9781608196708: Amazon.com: Books

The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner: Daniel Ellsberg: 9781608196708: Amazon.com: Books




The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Hardcover – December 5, 2017
by Daniel Ellsberg (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 42 customer reviews
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review


An Amazon Best Book of December 2017: When Daniel Ellsberg was busy photocopying the Pentagon Papers—the set of classified documents that outlined the actual scope of the Vietnam War, the scale and illegality of which was unknown to the American public—he was also collecting information about the capabilities of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, in particular its philosophies and strategies regarding its use. Ellsberg, who worked in the highest levels of government crafting nuclear strategy before he became a whistleblower, lost those copies long ago, and for decades he held his knowledge close for fear of prosecution. But recent Freedom of Information Act disclosures have made him a little more comfortable in sharing his experience and information, and again, what he reveals that what we have been told— that these devastating weapons only existed as a method of deterrence—has never been true. Rather, the options of “first strike” or “first use” were, and are, always key components of American foreign strategy. That’s just from the introduction of The Doomsday Machine; what follows is an astonishing behind-the-scenes collection of detailed descriptions of global near-calamities, flawed launch protocols (both the U.S.’s military and our adversaries’), and the government’s own chilling estimates on the potential carnage following a nuclear conflict. At this moment especially, this book is terrifying. It’s also impossible to put down. --Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review
Review




"The Doomsday Machine is being published at an alarmingly relevant moment, as North Korea is seeking the capability to target the United States with nuclear missiles, and an unpredictable president, Donald Trump, has countered with threats of 'fire and fury.'" - New York Magazine

"A groundbreaking and nightmare-inducing account of how the whole mad system works." - Esquire

"One of the best books ever written on the subject--certainly the most honest and revealing account by an insider who plunged deep into the nuclear rabbit hole's mad logic and came out the other side." - Fred Kaplan, Slate

"Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine (Bloomsbury) unpacks the power of our atomic arsenal." - Vanity Fair

"Ellsberg, the dauntless whistle-blower, has written a timely plea for a reassessment of a weapons program that he describes as 'institutionalized madness.'" - Best Books of the Year 2017, The San Francisco Chronicle

"A passionate call for reducing the risk of total destruction . . . Ellsberg's effort to make vivid the genuine madness of the 'doomsday machine,' and the foolishness of betting our survival on mutually assured destruction, is both commendable and important." - Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review

"Brilliantly and readably tackles an issue even more crucial than decision-making in the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which is policy on the handling of nuclear weapons." - 10 Excellent December Books, Huffington Post

"Gripping and unnerving . . . A must-read of the highest order, Ellsberg's profoundly awakening chronicle is essential to our future." - starred review, Booklist (“High Demand Backstory”)

"Ellsberg’s brilliant and unnerving account makes a convincing case for disarmament and shows that the mere existence of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to humanity." - starred review, Publishers Weekly

"Noted gadfly Ellsberg returns with a sobering look at our nuclear capabilities . . . When the author hurriedly copied the contents of his RAND Corporation safe to reveal, in time, what would become known as the Pentagon Papers, that was just the start of it. He had other documents, even more jarring . . . Especially timely given the recent saber-rattling not from Russia but North Korea and given the apparent proliferation of nuclear abilities among other small powers." - Kirkus Reviews

"His point is simple: We and our political leaders must stop thinking of nuclear war as a manageable risk. We must stop thinking of the possibility of nuclear war as normal." - St Louis Post-Dispatch, "Our Favorite Books of 2017"

"The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner blends personal recollections and historical analysis with a set of considered proposals for reducing the threat of apocalyptic war. Many years in the making, it’s a book that arrives at an opportune moment." - San Francisco Chronicle

"Ellsberg’s book, perhaps the most personal memoir yet from a Cold Warrior, fills an important void by providing firsthand testimony about the nuclear insanity that gripped a generation of policymakers . . . The Doomsday Machine is strongest as a portrait of the slow corruption of America’s national security state by layer upon layer of secrecy. He relates how the Cold War, the nuclear build-up and trillions of dollars of defense spending were compromised by information purposely withheld from the policymakers and politicians who debated and shaped our path." - Washington Post

"History may remember Ellsberg as the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers and helped end the Vietnam War, but his alarmingly relevant new book should also assure his legacy as a prescient and authoritative anti-nuclear activist. The Doomsday Machine, which takes its title from Dr. Strangelove, reads like a thriller as Ellsberg figures out that America's pledge never to attack first was fiction and that the so called 'fail-safe' systems are prone to disaster." - Los Angeles Times

"Ellsberg writes briskly in the service of opinions formed by long and sober study. What he means is never in doubt and it is always interesting . . . He is a vigorous writer with a gift for dramatic tension and the unfolding of events as they cascade toward disaster." - Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books

"Ellsberg presents his thoughts on how best to dismantle a program that could lead to global annihilation, while once again proving how deeply disturbing and radically ignorant our country's leaders are when it comes to thermonuclear warfare." - SF Weekly

"The Doomsday Machine is chilling, compelling and certain to be controversial." - Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Is it really necessary to declare that a knowledgeable, detailed and passionate book about the odds-on danger of cataclysmically destroying all human life on earth is important? Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine demands to be widely read. Its claims should be examined by experts, corroborated, rebutted, taken up by Congressional committees (alas, unlikely) and generally forced into public consciousness . . . The Doomsday Machine is engrossing and frightening." - Peter Steinfels, America Magazine

"In the era of barbed insults regarded as precursors to nuclear threat, the warnings yielded by The Doomsday Machine have become required reading. . . . Daniel Ellsberg's title evokes Kubrick's film on purpose, a metaphor that culminates in his definition of the 'Strangelove Paradox.' The United States has thousands of 'Doomdsay Machine' weapons and hundreds of 'fingers on the button.' The question the reader must ask, now mortified by the necessary horrors of Ellsberg's masterpiece, is how to save the world." - Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

"The Doomsday Machine is, in fact, a Bildungsroman, a tale of one intellectual’s disillusionment with the country in which Ellsberg had placed so much trust. It reveals how the horrors of US nuclear war planning transformed a man of the establishment into a left-wing firebrand." - Los Angeles Times

"[The Doomsday Machine is] an important tome that’s as optimistic as it sounds. It’s vital reading that reminds people that both poor planning--such as the US under Dwight Eisenhower having no contingency in place for only bombing the USSR into dust, but it being a package deal with China, something that confirmed the rigidity of these planners as well as their blithely democidal tendencies--and the potential for simple mistakes still run rampant in US nuclear policy." - antiwar.com

"Gripping . . . The Doomsday Machine is essential reading--both a terrifying ‘Doctor Strangelove’ saga and a hopeful consideration of future scenarios." - Mercury News

"Ellsberg's book is essential for facilitating a national discussion about a vital topic." - starred review, Library Journal

"Alarming, galvanizing, and brilliantly written." - Barnes & Noble Review

"Given the current crises, both domestic and international, the timeliness of Ellsberg’s exposures―and warnings―is unnerving... The Doomsday Machine is not for the faint of heart, but its sense of urgency should make it required reading, and―more importantly―a call to action." - BookPage

"Shocking . . . The Doomsday Machine is full of deeply disturbing revelations. The book sometimes reads like a thriller, as Ellsberg describes his mounting horror and revulsion over the discoveries he made over the years." - Five out of Five, Berkleyside

"An absolutely imperative read in this day and age of Trump, Putin, Kim Jong Un, and global instability." - Helen Caldicott, Founding President, Physicians for Social Responsibility

"This long-awaited chronicle from the father of American whistle-blowing is both an urgent warning and a call to arms to a public that has grown dangerously habituated to the idea that the means of our extinction will forever be on hair-trigger alert." - Edward Snowden

"Nobody could have told this horrifying story better than Daniel Ellsberg. He introduces us to the men who have coldly and with a God-like sense of righteous entitlement, put in place a plan that can, on a whim--not virtually, but literally--annihilate life on Earth. What a book." - Arundhati Roy, anti-nuclear activist and author of THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS and the Pulitzer Prize-winner THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

"A fascinating and terrifying account of nuclear war planning by a consultant from the RAND Corporation at the highest levels of government in the Kennedy administration. Ellsberg tells us of the close calls with nuclear war and of the policies developed then that still threaten the planet with annihilation. I couldn't put the book down." - Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FIRE IN THE LAKE


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David Swanson
5.0 out of 5 starsWhen a Nuclear War Planner ConfessesDecember 5, 2017
Format: Hardcover


Daniel Ellsberg’s new book is The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. I’ve known the author for years, I’m prouder than ever to say. We have done speaking events and media interviews together. We’ve been arrested together protesting wars. We’ve publicly debated electoral politics. We’ve privately debated the justness of World War II. (Dan approves of U.S. entry into World War II, and it seems into the war on Korea as well, though he has nothing but condemnation for the bombing of civilians that made up so much of what the U.S. did in those wars.) I’ve valued his opinion and he has rather inexplicably asked for mine on all sorts of questions. But this book has just taught me a great deal I had not known about Daniel Ellsberg and about the world.

While Ellsberg confesses to having held dangerous and delusional beliefs that he no longer holds, to having worked within an institution plotting genocide, to having taken well-meaning steps as an insider that backfired, and to having written words he did not agree with, we also learn from this book that he did effectively and significantly move the U.S. government in the direction of less reckless and horrific policies long before dropping out and becoming a whistleblower. And when he did blow the whistle, he had a much bigger plan for it than anyone has been aware.

Ellsberg didn’t copy and remove 7,000 pages of what became the Pentagon Papers. He copied and removed some 15,000 pages. The other pages were focused on policies of nuclear war. He planned to make them a later series of news stories, after shining a light first on the war on Vietnam. The pages were lost, and this never happened, and I wonder what impact it might have had on the cause of abolishing nuclear bombs. I also wonder why this book has been so long in coming, not that Ellsberg hasn’t filled the intervening years with invaluable work. In any case, we now have a book that draws on Ellsberg’s memory, documents made public over the decades, advancing scientific understanding, the work of other whistleblowers and researchers, the confessions of other nuclear war planners, and the additional developments of the past generation or so.

I hope this book is very widely read, and that one of the lessons taken from it is the need for the human species to develop some humility. Here we read an up-close account from within the White House and Pentagon of a group of people making plans for nuclear wars based on a completely false conception of what nuclear bombs would do (leaving the results of fire and smoke out of casualty calculations, and lacking the very idea of nuclear winter), and based on completely fabricated accounts of what the Soviet Union was doing (believing it was thinking offense when it was thinking defense, believing it had 1,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles when it had four), and based on wildly flawed understandings of what others in the U.S. government itself were doing (with levels of secrecy denying both true and false information to the public and much of the government). This is an account of extravagant disregard for human life, outdoing that of the creators and testers of the atomic bomb, who placed bets on whether it would ignite the atmosphere and burn up the earth. Ellsberg’s colleagues were so driven by bureaucratic rivalries and ideological hatreds that they’d favor or oppose more land-based missiles if it benefited the Air Force or hurt the Navy, and they’d plan for any combat with Russia to immediately require the nuclear destruction of every city in Russia and China (and in Europe via Soviet medium-range missiles and bombers and from the close-in fallout from U.S. nuclear strikes on Soviet bloc territory). Combine this portrait of our dear leaders with the number of near-misses through misunderstanding and accident that we’ve learned of over the years, and the remarkable thing is not that a fascistic fool sits in the White House today threatening fire and fury, with Congressional committee hearings publicly pretending nothing can be done to prevent a Trump-induced apocalypse. The remarkable thing is that humanity is still here.

“Madness in individuals is something rare; 
but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” –Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Daniel Ellsberg.

A memo written for only President Kennedy to see answered the question of how many people might die in Russia and China in a U.S. nuclear attack. Ellsberg had asked the question and was permitted to read the answer. Although it was an answer ignorant of the nuclear winter effect that would likely kill all of humanity, and although the top cause of death, fire, was also omitted, the report said that about 1/3 of humanity would die. That was the plan for immediate execution following the commencement of war with Russia. The justification for such insanity has always been self-deceptive, and intentionally deceptive of the public.

“The declared official rationale for such a system,” Ellsberg writes, “has always been primarily the supposed need to deter—or if necessary respond to—an aggressive Russian nuclear first strike against the United States. That widely believed public rationale is a deliberate deception. Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack—or responding to such an attack—has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations. The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the requirements of quite different purposes: to attempt to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the USSR or Russia. This capability is, in particular, intended to strengthen the credibility of U.S. threats to initiate limited nuclear attacks, or escalate them—U.S. threats of ‘first use’—to prevail in regional, initially non-nuclear conflicts involving Soviet or Russian forces or their allies.”

But the United States never threatened nuclear war until Trump came along!

You believe that?

“U.S. presidents,” Ellsberg tells us, “have used our nuclear weapons dozens of times in ‘crises,’ mostly in secret from the American public (though not from adversaries). They have used them in the precise way that a gun is used when it is pointed at someone in a confrontation.”

U.S. presidents who have made specific public or secret nuclear threats to other nations, that we know of, and as detailed by Ellsberg, have included Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, while others, including Barack Obama, have frequently said things like “All options are on the table” in relation to Iran or another country.

Well, at least the nuclear button is in the hands of the president alone, and he can only use it with the cooperation of the soldier who carries the “football,” and only with the compliance of various commanders within the U.S. military.

Are you serious?

Not only did Congress just hear from a lineup of witnesses who each said that there might be no way to stop Trump or any other president from launching a nuclear war (given that impeachment and prosecution should not be mentioned in relation to anything so trivial as apocalypse prevention). But also it has never been the case that only the president could order the use of nukes. And the “football” is a theatrical prop. The audience is the U.S. public. Elaine Scarry’s Thermonuclear Monarchy describes how imperial presidential power has flown from the belief in the president’s exclusive nuclear button. But it is a false belief.

Ellsberg recounts how various levels of commanders have been given the power to launch nukes, how the whole concept of mutually assured destruction through retaliation depends on the ability of the United States to launch its doomsday machine even if the president is incapacitated, and how some in the military consider presidents incapacitated by their very nature even when alive and well and believe it therefore to be military commanders’ prerogative to bring on the end. The same was and probably still is true in Russia, and probably is true in the growing number of nuclear nations. Here’s Ellsberg: “Nor could the president then or now—by exclusive possession of the codes necessary to launch or detonate any nuclear weapons (no such exclusive codes have ever been held by any president)—physically or otherwise reliably prevent the Joint Chiefs of Staff or any theater military commander (or, as I’ve described, command post duty officer) from issuing such authenticated orders.” When Ellsberg managed to inform Kennedy of the authority Eisenhower had delegated to use nuclear weapons, Kennedy refused to reverse the policy. Trump, by the way, has reportedly been even more eager than Obama was to delegate authority to murder by missile from drone, as well as to expand the production and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

Ellsberg recounts his efforts to make civilian officials, the secretary of “defense” and the president, aware of top nuclear war plans kept secret and lied about by the military. This was his first form of whistleblowing: telling the president what the military was up to. He also touches on the resistance of some in the military to some of President Kennedy’s decisions, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s fear that Kennedy might face a coup. But when it came to nuclear policy, the coup was in place before Kennedy got to the White House. Commanders of distant bases that often lost communications understood (understand?) themselves to have the power to order all of their planes, carrying nuclear weapons, to take off simultaneously on the same runway in the name of speed, and at risk of disaster should one plane change speed. These planes were to all head off to Russian and Chinese cities, without any coherent plan of survival for each of the other planes crisscrossing the area. What Dr. Strangelove may have gotten wrong was just not including enough of the Keystone Cops.

Kennedy declined to centralize nuclear authority, and when Ellsberg informed Secretary of “Defense” Robert McNamara of U.S. nukes being illegally kept in Japan, McNamara refused to take them out. But Ellsberg did manage to revise U.S. nuclear war policy away from exclusively planning to attack all cities and in the direction of considering the approach of targeting away from cities and seeking to halt a nuclear war that had begun, which would require maintaining command and control on both sides, which would allow such command and control to exist. Writes Ellsberg: “‘My’ revised guidance became the basis for the operational war plans under Kennedy—reviewed by me for Deputy Secretary Gilpatric in 1962, 1963, and again in the Johnson administration in 1964. It has been reported by insiders and scholars to have been a critical influence on U.S. strategic war planning ever since.”

Ellsberg’s account of the Cuban Missile Crisis alone is reason to get this book. While Ellsberg believed U.S. actual dominance (in contrast to myths about a “missile gap”) meant there would be no Soviet attack, Kennedy was telling people to hide underground. Ellsberg wanted Kennedy to privately tell Khrushchev to stop bluffing. Ellsberg wrote part of a speech for Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric that escalated rather than reduced tensions, possibly because Ellsberg was not thinking in terms of the Soviet Union acting defensively, of Khrushchev as bluffing in terms of second-use capability. Ellsberg thinks his blunder helped lead to the USSR putting missiles in Cuba. Then Ellsberg wrote a speech for McNamara, following instructions, even though he believed it would be disastrous, and it was.

Ellsberg opposed taking U.S. missiles out of Turkey (and believes it had no impact on the resolution of the crisis). In his account, both Kennedy and Khrushchev would have accepted any deal rather than nuclear war, yet pushed for a better outcome until they were right at the edge of the cliff. A low-ranking Cuban shot down a U.S. plane, and the U.S. was unable to imagine it wasn’t the work of Fidel Castro under strict orders direct from Khrushchev. Meanwhile Khrushchev also believed it was the work of Castro. And Khrushchev knew that the Soviet Union has put 100 nuclear weapons in Cuba with local commanders authorized to use them against an invasion. Khrushchev also understood that as soon as they were used, the United States might launch its nuclear assault on Russia. Khrushchev rushed to declare that the missiles would leave Cuba. By Ellsberg’s account, he did this before any deal regarding Turkey. While everyone who nudged this crisis in the right direction may have helped save the world, including Vassily Arkhipov who refused to launch a nuclear torpedo from a Soviet submarine, the real hero of Ellsberg’s tale is, in the end, I think, Nikita Khrushchev, who chose predictable insults and shame over annihilation. He was not a man eager to accept insults. But, of course, even those insults that he ended up accepting never included being called “Little Rocket Man.”

The second part of Ellsberg’s book includes an insightful history of the development of aerial bombing and of the acceptance of slaughtering civilians as being something other than the murder it was widely considered to be prior to World War II. (In 2016, I would note, a presidential debate moderator asked candidates if they would be willing to bomb hundreds and thousands of children as part of their basic duties.) Ellsberg first gives us the usual story that first Germany bombed London, and only a year later did the British bomb civilians in Germany. But then he describes British bombing, earlier, in May 1940, as revenge for the German bombing of Rotterdam. I think he could have gone back to the April 12 bombing of a German train station, the April 22 bombing of Oslo, and the April 25 bombing of the town of Heide, all of which resulted in German threats of revenge. (See Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker.) Of course, Germany had already bombed civilians in Spain and Poland, as had Britain in Iraq, India, and South Africa, and as had both sides on a smaller scale in the first world war. Ellsberg recounts the escalation of the blame game prior to the blitz on London:

“Hitler was saying, ‘We will pay back a hundredfold if you continue this. If you do not stop this bombing, we will hit London.’ Churchill kept up the attacks, and two weeks after that first attack, on September 7, the Blitz commenced—the first deliberate attacks on London. This was presented by Hitler as his response to British attacks on Berlin. The British attacks, in turn, were presented as a response to what was believed to be a deliberate German attack on London.”

World War II, by Ellsberg’s account — and how could it be disputed? — was, in my words, aerial genocide by multiple parties. An ethics accepting of that has been with us ever since. A first step toward opening the gates of this asylum, recommended by Ellsberg, would be to establish a policy of no-first use.
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Stephen Miller
5.0 out of 5 starsA must read from the man who knew all about it.January 20, 2018
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

Ellsberg describes his work as a nuclear strategist with The DOD and RAND at the transition from Eisenhower to Kennedy administrations. He is extremely knowledgable and extremely worried. This is a transfixing narrative and a painfully thoughtful rumination on our arsenals of world destruction. A must read.
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W. Hoyt
5.0 out of 5 starsCompelling, very frightening, and yet hopeful all at onceJanuary 22, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

Simple factually based history of how we got to where we are in this nuclear age ... Also a prescription to dismantle the rooms day machine and offer good of survival of humanity for another 500 years!
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Prufrock
5.0 out of 5 starsA brilliant and alarming book of great historical and political importanceDecember 5, 2017
Format: Hardcover


A brilliant and alarming book, beautifully written by America's greatest whistle blower.

Before the Pentagon Papers, before Watergate, before his involvement as an advisor in Viet Nam, Daniel Ellsberg worked in the U. S. national security system as a nuclear planner. It's a memoir of that time, of the still classified policies of nuclear strategy, and of the secret, often reckless protocols that had been developed for their implementation.

Much of the information and revelations in this book has never been exposed in previous memoirs by the principals of the period nor in subsequent histories. This makes it a history document of enormous importance.

This book exposes for the first time the secret plan developed by the government and approved by the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a nuclear strike against Russia and China, under a range of possible circumstances, that they knew was likely to kill 600,000,000 people worldwide.

The title comes from the iconic film, Dr. Strangelove, and it demonstrates that the movie is more a documentary than a work of the imagination.
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Saralinda
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Best Book about Nuclear War Ever WrittenDecember 9, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition


I would like to nominate this book for best book of the year, not just best book of the month. Daniel Ellsberg made history by leaking the Pentagon Papers, and it is possible that he is the person most responsible for ending the atrocity of the Vietnam War. In that sense, he is an international hero.
This book goes farther. Ellsberg reveals that he personally wrote plans and reviewed strategies for the US to fight a nuclear war, against the Soviet Union or China. In the SIOP, for massive retaliation and Mutually Assured Destruction, Ellsberg reveals the the US planned to attack both the USSR and China in the event of war, no matter who started it or why. Ellsberg was a brilliant young patriot who served as rifle platoon leader, and eventually a rifle company commander in the US marine corps. (Note: I made a mistake when I first wrote this. He was not a sniper himself, but the only lieutenant in the 2nd Marine Division at the time to be given command of a rifle company (a regular infantry company, 229 men, 5 officers.) However, his academic specialty was economics, specifically blackmail and decision making under stress; he earned a PhD from Harvard in economics for an intensely mathematical analysis of human decision making.
This extraordinary book reveals that he believed in the Communist threat and the domino theory enough that after he left academia, he actually went to RAND and then the Pentagon and personally wrote plans for waging nuclear war. However, as time went on he changed. He not only changed his mind, but he changed deep within his heart and core. He began to see the fallacy of nuclear threats and deterrence theory, and the moral bankruptcy of the US investment in nuclear weapons. Deterrence theory was the academic justification for war fighting, in the 1940s and now.
This is so complex! As a metaphor, he went to Hell and made an alliance with the Devil, developing plans to end life on earth...and then he changed and became nearly a saint. He is one of the world's foremost whistleblowers and antiwar activists. This book is his heroic attempt to unmask US nuclear policy, from the point of view of an insider, hoping to prevent disaster. He makes the point that he is still a patriot, and he is trying to do his patriotic duty to prevent the destruction of our homeland and the rest of the world which are hostages to a macabre suicide pact.
When you read this book, and you must, you will learn the astonishing details of how the US pioneered strategic bombing, bombing to maximize casualties, during World War II, and how that mentality led directly to current war plans. You will learn what is really going on in the military-industrial-academic complex, and that it is not too difficult to understand; you don't have to be an expert. Dr. Ellsberg's prose is clear and cogent, compelling and astonishing. It is a wonderful book about the world's most horrible topic. Most importantly, you will learn that you are not personally helpless. There are cogent, realistic and immediate actions that you can take and I can take and the US can take to prevent Doomsday. But we have to act right away, with conviction and a sense of urgency, because the momentum is towards war.
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