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Report from Iron Mountain
In a tradition of political satire that ranges from A MODEST PROPOSAL to DR. STRANGELOVE falls the perplexing, ingenious, and ceaselessly curious REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN. Upon its first appearance in 1967, this best-selling "secret government report" sparked immediate debate among journalists and scholars with its disturbingly convincing claim: a condition of "permanent peace" at the end of the Cold War would threaten our nation's economic and social stability. Although finally identified as an antimilitarist hoax by writer/editor Leonard Lewin, who conceived and launched the book with a consortium of peace movement intellectuals including future NATION editors Victor Navasky and Richard Lingerman, novelist E.L. Doctorow, and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, IRON MOUNTAIN would eventually take on a life of its own.
75 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 3, 2016
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October 12, 2022
Thought provoking to say the least. Is peace really achievable? or even really desired? Struggle and strife is what propels the human race forward. Without war can we have advance and grow?
There has been stories that the actual report does not exist. But I am less worried if there was an actual report but what the so called report talks about in terms of our society. Does the economy need war? does society actually need war?
But the prime value of Report from Iron Mountain, I think, lies in its contribution to our understanding of the war in Vietnam. For if one argues that America’s national security is not at stake in Vietnam, that the cold war with Russia is about over, and that China’s imperialistic aims are less ambitious than its imperialistic rhetoric—if, indeed, America is in some measure inventing an external menace—than the proposition is worth considering that the Vietnamese war persists in part because it performs a variety of domestic functions.
It is obvious, for instance, that the war acts as a crutch to the domestic economy for many of the reasons suggested by the Report. In addition, it functions as a source of internal cohesion, as an outlet for America’s aggressive impulses, and as a dumping ground for many white and nonwhite poor who would otherwise be unemployed. But principally, I suspect, the war serves a function not really considered by the Report: it enables its advocates to defend an American way of life which is threatened less by foreign enemies than by tendencies in American society, and it permits them to believe that they can stave off the inevitable domestic social change that these tendencies will ultimately require.
There has been stories that the actual report does not exist. But I am less worried if there was an actual report but what the so called report talks about in terms of our society. Does the economy need war? does society actually need war?
But the prime value of Report from Iron Mountain, I think, lies in its contribution to our understanding of the war in Vietnam. For if one argues that America’s national security is not at stake in Vietnam, that the cold war with Russia is about over, and that China’s imperialistic aims are less ambitious than its imperialistic rhetoric—if, indeed, America is in some measure inventing an external menace—than the proposition is worth considering that the Vietnamese war persists in part because it performs a variety of domestic functions.
It is obvious, for instance, that the war acts as a crutch to the domestic economy for many of the reasons suggested by the Report. In addition, it functions as a source of internal cohesion, as an outlet for America’s aggressive impulses, and as a dumping ground for many white and nonwhite poor who would otherwise be unemployed. But principally, I suspect, the war serves a function not really considered by the Report: it enables its advocates to defend an American way of life which is threatened less by foreign enemies than by tendencies in American society, and it permits them to believe that they can stave off the inevitable domestic social change that these tendencies will ultimately require.
Displaying 1 of 1 review