With Enough Shovl V203

by Robert Scheer

Book Overview

From the dust jacket: President Ronald Reagan had been in office less than a year when he approved a secret plan for the United States to prevail in a protracted nuclear war. This secret plan,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394722035
• ISBN13: 9780394722030
• Release Date: October 1983
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The first review is totally off base

"I read Scheer's book when it first came out many, many years ago and was struck by the preposterous, but adamant, assertion by one of the lesser players: Richard Perle. Facts are not facts, but rather confirmation of a "world-view" of reality. A nugget of the book, and partly where the title comes from, is that Perle claimed that satellite photos of the Soviet Union showed mass-shoveling outside major cities." I'm looking at an image of the hardcover book dust jacket on another page, you can google it if you like... it reads, "Dig a hole, throw two or three doors on top of it, and then cover it with three feet of dirt. It's the dirt that does it. If there are enough shovels around, everyone is going to make it". T.K. Jones, Dept. Under Secretary of Defense for Strategic and Nuclear Forces. That is where the title of the book comes from. The thesis of this title which was originally published in 1982 (that is important, this was EARLY in the Reagan era), was that the US Government under Reagan had adopted an aggressive policy of promoting fear among Russians that the United States thought we could survive a nuclear exchange with Russia. The Russians weren't the ones digging trenches to survive a nuclear war. We wanted the Russians to believe that this was OUR plan. The goal was to convince them to enter into an arms race that they couldn't possibly win, which would cause their economy to collapse and make them reform their Communist system of Government. That loony neocon Mr. Reagan... what a crazy cowboy. How could he ever have thought that this plan could have worked... What... what is that? The Soviet Union suffered an economic collapse and embraced a more democratic society? You don't say... Oh... *nevermind*... Let's focus on Bush W. and what a rotten guy HE is, in that case... The value of this book is that it the author got it ALL right. Reagan was in a staring contest with the Soviet Union, and he made them blink. He convinced them that he and his administration was crazy, and they were so caught up in that - they bankrupted themselves, causing the collapse of soviet communism. Now... the laughable thing is that the author painted Reagan and his administration as lunatic conservative warmongerers with an irresponsible plan that didn't have a chance at success and that was more likely to result in a horrible nuclear exchange between Russia and America. Yup... hindsite is 20/20... and I bet this author doesn't like to discuss this book, or doesn't have much political credibility. I suppose that is the danger in writing history books before the history has occured.

What a difference another Bush makes

I happened on this book in January 2003 when we were not sure "if" and "when" we were being lnto Iraq, the week PBS replayed the 1996 Gulf War video in which Colin Powell said nuclear power was an option there. Suddenly this book sounds very scary, especially as the author emphasizes that he had reason to think from preelection interviews with Bush when he was running for president against Reagan, that Bush believed nuclear war was winnable. I have not checked out all of the facts, and the other reviewer here who questions them may have a point, but if the younger Bush is in fact heavily influenced by his father now, then we may be in for some frightening days ahead, and I a not happy to see Bush the son with the hand on the nuclear trigger.The book is facinating, especially written as it was just barely into Reagan's two terms."Evil empire""Axix of evil"Similar, aren't they ?