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| Hazardous Duty: America's Most Decorated Living Soldier Reports from the Front and Tells It the Way It Is | 
| Authors: David H. Hackworth, Tom Mathews
Publisher: William Morrow & Co
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 1364189
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 350
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0688147186
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.0092
EAN: 9780688147181
ASIN: 0688147186
Publication Date: September 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Nobody can question Hackworth's credentials--he's America's most decorated living soldier, a military reporter forNewsweek, and author of the best-selling About Face. In Hazardous Duty, he travels to danger spots like Bosnia, Haiti, Korea, Somalia and the Persian Gulf to rate U.S. military performance. All too often, he sees it coming up short. "Our military machine is sputtering like a worn-out tank," he writes in the final chapter, where he also offers a practical agenda for reform that is sure to raise the hackles of what he calls the Pentagon's "Perfumed Princes and Propaganda Poets."
From the Publisher
Colonel David H. Hackworth, the maverick military hero and war correspondent, has earned over 70 awards for heroism as well as eight purple hearts. More than any other military commentator, he has earned the trust and confidence of the millions of soldiers--from foreign armies as well as our own -- who cheered every word of his widely acclaimed autobiography, About Face: The Odyssey of An American Warrior... Hazardous Duty is a real-life, hard-hitting, nonfiction thriller set in the ruins of Bosnia and the sands of Saudi Arabia, the deadly alleys of Mogadishu and the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince. Colonel Hackworth returns from these new American battlefields to report that the Pentagon is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars gearing up to fight the wrong kind of wars, and offers a tough-love critique of American military leadership, interpreting the new post-Cold War conflicts. "I don't want to bash the military," writes Hackworth, "but as an institution [the military] is not above criticism. It desperately needs honest critics who know what they are talking about, not ideologues or fools or people who have been co-opted, but tough minded patriots who will push for a lean, mean, invincible and affordable defense force." Hazardous Duty highlights include: -- How Hackworth angered General Norman Schwarzkopf by predicting his strategy during Operation Desert Storm with uncanny accuracy
-- How he was nearly killed by friendly fire in the Gulf War
-- Revelations regarding the inefficiencies of both the SCUD and Patriot missiles, as well as other high-tech equipment, which have, for the most part, failed to perform to expectations
-- Why Desert Storm was a hollow triumph costing over $60 billion
-- How the Pentagon's efforts to media manage Operation Restore Hope in Haiti nearly resulted in casualties among the press corps
-- How a lucrative lobby is keeping the POW/MIA issue alive
-- How Army Rangers were needlessly killed as a result of being sent into combat without the armor that they needed to survive in Somalia
-- How U.S. leaders flirted with disaster during the most recent Korean crisis
-- Why U.S. forces presently stationed in South Korea are in jeopardy
-- How Raoul Cedras bluffed the White House into providing him with total amnesty and is now living the good life at U.S. taxpayers' expense
-- How the United States military are forced to wear full combat gear under tropical conditions just to look good on television
-- Why so-called OOTW (Operations Other Than War) are robbing the armed services of their combat readiness
-- The salaries of giant defense contractors' CEO's are disclosed and reveal this group to be among the highest paid executives in the country -- all at the expense of American taxpayers
-- How the armed forces are wallowing in redundancy
-- What steps we can realistically take to reform the military
Published to precede the presidential elections and provide a wake-up call for military reform, Hazardous Duty pulls no punches in calling America's top political and military leaders to account for selling out duty, honor, and country.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 We All Should Know August 23, 2007
Hackworth is the ultimate soldier. He has been there, done that, and his record gives him the credentials to call a spade a spade in military matters. Recommendations and condemnations are posited on the basis of what is best for each soldier and his defense of our country. Even his technical descriptions are easily understood by an average reader. The writing flows naturally, and Hackworth's integrity is clear on every page. Honor, duty, country. Hackworth was all about that, even without the ring of West Point. He lived it; all of us owe him respect.
A Soldier's Tale May 12, 2006
Love him or hate him, you can't deny that David Hackworth has a story to tell. "Hazardous Duty" is his very persuasive diagnosis of the problem with American armed forces. Hackworth has "been there." Hew has led men in combat in Vietnam and experienced the "ticket punchers" who were less interested in destroying the enemy than in feathering their resumes. In this book, he takes us from the rice paddies in Vietnam to the scorching sands of Iraq and Kuwait in order to show us the weaknesses in the American fighting machine.
Hackworth takes dead aim at the "military-industrial-congressional complex," the source of much of the problem, in his telling. His "perfumed princes" ride the military promotion machine to high rank while arms manufacturers pad their expenses and congressmen use the revolving door to lucrative jobs in the arms trade. The media and public are bedazzled by a few "smart" bombs and glad-handed into shelling out more tax dollars for Flash Gordon wizzbangery. Meanwhile, the grunts on the ground are outfitted with obsolete weapons and uniforms manufactured for the wrong climate.
Hackworth portrays himself as a soldier's soldier, more interested in what happens on the ground than in some major's efficiency report. His devastating analysis of the debacles of the Grenada invasion and the Iranian hostage rescue are the first serious criticism I have heard about these botched operations. His skewering of Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf is pretty frightening. In Hackworth's telling, it's a good thing that Saddam Hussein was such a horrible tactician; the US might have taken some serious casualties otherwise. By letting Iraq's Republican Guard escape, he empowered Saddam Hussein, and ensured that we would have to fight him again.
Hackworth sees the military as a bloated giant, drunk on appropriations and its own sense of importance. Its leaders are dizzy with bringing home the bacon and fighting the other services, leaving America poorer and less prepared to fight the next war. Hackworth's pre-9/11 perspective is fascinating, if not always on target. He criticizes Reagan and Bush I for blindly throwing money at the military and Clinton for trying to integrate gays at a time of severe cutbacks and low morale. Writing at the time the US was involved in stopping Bosnia's self-destruction, he criticizes that effort as well as our interventions in Somalia and Haiti. The measured success in Bosnia and Haiti were still in the future, and somewhat diminishes Hackworth's omniscience.
Whatever his excesses, Hackworth is passionate about his country and the ordinary soldiers and sailors who defend it. His prescriptions (reducing the armed services from 4 to 1, stopping the revolving door from Congress to arms manufacturers) may be either visionary or unrealistic. But it's clear from his experiences and perspective that a military that persecutes and marginalizes "war fighters," which continually prepares to fight the last war, and is hypnotized by fancy gadgetry is no asset to our country.
Where have all the soldiers gone? November 26, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There are two types of soldier, peacetime and wartime. Hackworth is from that wartime brand. A pain in the ass in peace but vital in conflict. He clearly identifies the issues and yet is lambasted as a poor staff leader, funnily enough so was Patton, and what a fighting general he was! No one believed him about the Russians at the end of WW2. As an ex-soldier from a recon background i'd really have liked to have met and even served under Col. Hackworth. At least he wouldn't have thrown my life away like modern leadership. The quickest way to resolve an issue is to accept that it exists. The US Military should listen to these views and act on them, otherwise when the big day comes and they are up against an effective force they will be sorely embarrased. Look how badly they are currently handling the insurgency in Iraq.
Hazardous Duty October 9, 2005
Great read, unique and interesting perspective about the US military from a qualified expert.
Excellent December 7, 2001
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Very interesting book. I couldn't put it down after the first page or two. I've been inspired to read his other books -- esp. About Face, and support his organization Soldiers for the Truth.
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