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Customer Review: ***** Spotlight Review
*****A deftly
researched, deadly serious warning , November 8, 2004 Reviewer: Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) In
The New American Empire, economist and professor emeritus Rodrigue Tremblay
dares to ask: what is really the motive behind the American war in Iraq? What
will be its consequences, both for the United States and the world? Focusing
on a critical shift that American foreign and domestic policies have taken
under George Bush since September 11, 2001, viewed both in the context of
modern history and as part of the evolution of Western civilization since the
fall of Constantinople in 1453. The dangerous implications of a war initiated
and led under false pretenses, the strategic importance of oil and its
fundamental motivation in a political and worldwide power grab, emerging
decadence in the West and more are all chronicles with a cautious eye and a
sharp tongue. A deftly researched, deadly serious warning of the clear and
present dangers of America's current uncontrolled national hubris. Was this
review helpful to you? Customer Reviews Review on Amazon UK: *****
"A DISPASSIONATE AND CONVINCING BOOK", 10
Jan 2005 By
RG Gregory
(London – United Kingdom) Dr.
Tremblay's "The New American Empire" is a very forceful account,
and, of course, shocking. I would hope that, eventually, the Bush Gang will
be brought to account for their terrible doings (and Blair along with them
for being an accessory before during and probably after the committing of
their crimes). The
deep worry is that, imbued as they are with the wish for Armageddon (in the
belief that they, as pure Christians, will be the only survivors in their
ascent to Heaven) they will get to a point where they will care not what happens
to everyone else on earth. They possess all the destructive power they need
to bring that about. Bush is not an aberration to the past. The policy of the
States for at least a century has been concerned with interfering in the
affairs of other countries and working surreptitiously to overthrow them by
whatever foul means are necessary. I was in Uganda for two years during the
sixties and, through the USIS and other bodies, even possibly the Peace
Corps, they were hard at work in that part of Africa sticking their fives in.
The Marshall Plan had its dark side, certainly where Britain was concerned,
and I do not feel as sanguine as the author does about the globalising
institutions that have carried US officials and power into all corners of the
globe. American intrigue to start wars was not limited to the Gulf of Tonkin
(1964). There seems to be evidence that Roosevelt knew in advance about the
attack on Pearl Harbour and decided to let it go ahead. Now, given the neo-cons' openly declared awareness of the
advantages of staging (in line with Hitler's assertions of seventy years
previously) some damaging attack upon the populace, in order to convince it
of the presence of outside terror and the need to mobilise against it, the
circumstances of the 9/11 attack cannot be let go for what it has been
officially declared as. For me, the film of Bush amongst the school children,
when the news of the attack is conveyed to him, does not show the face and
behaviour of an innocent man. Coincidence is a dodgy concept when it
conveniently suits authority to parade it as proof of non-guilt. Dr.
Tremblay's book is so clear about the lying capabilities of the Bushites -
perhaps better written as the Bu-shites - that I can't see that we should shy
away from the probability of any further lying on their behalf. He is clear
about the conniving cleverness of Karl Rove: I sense that absolutely nothing
should be taken as gospel dropping from the lips of these cynical hot
gospellers. The
villains of the Renaissance do not, I fear, have the drop on this present
bunch of villains. However, what intrigues me most about this book is the 625
year cycle of empires. That suggests there are deeper patterns at work in the
human story than any of us can gainsay. Fifty
or more years ago I read a Penguin paperback generally summarising the
overall history of the human race. It suggested that this history threw up
cyclical patterns, and that the twentieth century was at the end of one of
the longest understandable human cycles - one lasting six thousand years,
starting with the shift of human beings into agriculture and settled abodes.
It was suggested that the end of the cycle was likely to be marked by
cataclysm and military dominance and dictatorship. From
that book I began to work out my own theories of eras and ages - the last of
which, the Renaissance, exactly works in with Dr. Tremblay's time-assessment
of Western Empire. I saw also the cycle starting with the arising of
Christianity. And others. But what mostly struck me was that they all seemed
to be coming to their end at the present time. This led me, decades ago, to
the awareness that now represents what is probably the most important moment
of change in human affairs since Mesopotamia. So
much is at the end of its cycle and so much therefore is waiting to begin.
The corollary to this is that, if all change is dangerous, then the moments
of cyclical change are more dangerous, and moments of multiple cyclical
change are the most dangerous of all, and cannot help but be threatening to the
continued existence of the human race.... "The
New American Empire" states its case dispassionately, and with much
conviction. It charts ground that others too are working over with precision
and clear-headedness. It details connections that mainstream commentators are
mostly afraid to look at... It is also part of a clarion call to all who want
the world to survive in an honest, decent, sharing fashion to get their noses
above the parapet and to have their individual and collective voices heard,
and their actions, on whatever possible scale, paid attention to, through the
miasmas of deliberate corporate confusion. Strongly recommended. *****Fundamental Truth
about U.S. Foreign Policy, Sep 1 2006 Reviewer: Robert
C. Brown
(Toronto, ON) I am deeply indebted to Dr. Tremblay for
helping me understand the basics of geopolitics, as it relates to current
affairs, especially regarding how domestic politics in the U.S. functions,
how foreign policy is an extenion of domestic politics, and how American
foreign wars nowadays are not defensive wars but wars of aggression. Here are
some of the most crucial points the author makes: 1- President George W. Bush
intended to invade Iraq even before he became president. In 1999, for
example, he told his biographer Mickey Herskowitz: "If I have a chance
to invade (Iraq), if I have that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm
going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to
have a successful presidency." In fact, former Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill has confirmed that the discussion of a plan to oust Saddam Hussein
and invade Iraq was the main topic from day one of the new Bush
administration, in January 2001, nine months before the events of 9/11. 2- Bush's obsession with invading Iraq squared
perfectly well with the 1997 Neocon Project for the New American Century
(PNAC) and its agenda for transforming the Middle East in order to enhance
Israel's security in the region. The pro-Israel cabal within and outside the
government went full speed in pushing for a war against Iraq, on the
flimsiest of reasons, most of them made up from scratch. 3- When Vice President Dick Cheney's energy
advisory panel tabled its 163-page report on May 16, 2001, Middle East oil
policy came to reinforce Bush's and the Neocons' desire to invade Iraq. These facts go a long way toward explaining why the U.S.
occupation of Iraq lasts so long, costs so much and has no end in sight. If
you want to learn the fundamental truth about the Iraq war and other wars in
the Middle East, Dr. Tremblay's book is what you need. It's a book that's
easy to read and understand. Was this review helpful to you? *****Informative and
Original,
Aug 15 2006 Reviewer: G.
Belanger
(Montreal, Qc, Canada) This is a very informative book and a must
read for anyone interested in understanding why the Bush administration is so
prone to launching wars in the oil-rich Middle East region. The author, a
renowned economist, is very knowledgeable about the economics and domestic
politics that support such warmongering efforts. He identifies the pro-Israel
Neocon movement and its alliance with the lunatics of the religious Right as
important forces in the push toward involving the U.S. in wars abroad. The
military-industrial complex and the strategic importance of Middle East oil
are represented by Vice President Dick Cheney in the Bush administration, and
are also prime movers of war. Probably the most original part of this book
is its chronology of empires and how Western civilization started its
ascendency after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This chapter (chap. 16)
is worth buying the book in itself. The author's style is direct and pulls no
punches. An excellent book. Was this review helpful to you? *****A Way Out of the
Mess? June 23, 2006 Reviewer: S.W. Larson (Philadelphia, PA USA) As an amateur student of American foreign policy,
I am appalled by the wave of anti-americanism it has generated over the last
few years. The policy of systematically meddling in the internal affairs of
other countries, especially in the Middle East, has been most
counter-productive. There is no doubt that unbridled
interventionism, often done illegally and under murky influences, is the root
cause of why there is so much anti-americanism around the world. And case in
point is the gratuitous violence imposed on some Muslim countries, i.e. Iraq and
Palestine. This is creating tons of resentment all over the Muslim world,
turning many to hatred and some to terrorism. Tremblay's book offers a way out of this circular
dilemma: Apply to the Muslim world the same treatment given to the Communist
world with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. As he puts it (p. 152-53), the Helsinki
Accords, signed by 33 Eastern and Western European countries, the United
States, and Canada, played a fundamental role in opening up the communist
bloc to liberty, freedom and reforms. I doubt that bombs would have brought
the same result. Former President Mikhail Gorbachev has said
that the Helsinki Accords opened the door to reforms that would not have
taken place otherwise. Why can we not adopt a similar approach with the
Muslim world, instead of jumping all the time on the war wagon? This is a
well-written and well-researched book. It is highly recommended. Was this review helpful to you? *****The On-going Drama
in the Middle East May 16, 2006 Reviewer: C. A.
Templeton
(Calgary, AB, Canada) People who want a condensed introduction on
how the Bush administration walked into a quagmire in Iraq should read
"The New American Empire". I don't agree with all of Tremblay's
arguments, but in my opinion he hits the nail on the head when he identifies
the real reasons why Bush II invaded Iraq, i.e oil, Israel, military bases
and domestic politics. By the way, the same scenario seems to be repeating
itself with Iran, with the same deception about the real reasons for
intimidating Iran. So, even if you do not agree with everything the author
has to say, this book is worth a ton of newspapers articles or hours of TV
reporting. The chapters on `Oil' and on the `History of Empires' are worth
buying this book. Was this review helpful to you? *****Behind the Iraqi
Mess,
April 3, 2006 Reviewer: A.B.
Pactor
(Hyattsville, MD, USA) Among the many books written on the Iraq war
and the Bush administration's fixation with militarism, this book by economist
Tremblay is one of the most readable and most informative. The fact that George W. Bush was planning a
premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' in that country, even
before he took power in January 2001, should make people pause and think. So
should the Neocon blueprint for a complete American take-over of the Middle
East ("Rebuilding America's Defenses"), drafted in Sept. 2001, by
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby. Now that Iraq is a mess, that thousands and
thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of billions of dollars
have been wasted, the American people are entitled to know the real reasons
why the Bush administration launched an illegal war of aggression against
Iraq, with no provocation but with a lot of bad faith. All the official
reasons have been proven false. After reading this book, one knows the real
reasons behind one of the most foolish enterprises ever undertaken by a U.S.
government abroad. I have learned a lot also from prof. Tremblay's new blog: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/blog. The truth
shall set you free!
Was this
review helpful to you?
*****Very Informative, March 11, 2006 Reviewer: P.
Solomon,
(Washington DC,) I found this book fascinating. It is full of
insights. This is a book hard to put down. If you want to know why there are so many
wars, read this book. Was this
review helpful to you?
*****The Law vs.
Imperialism and Fascism, February 21, 2006 Reviewer: S.D.
Ryan
(San Francisco, CA, USA) There is much that could be said about this
book. First, it is well written. Second, its arguments are rooted in facts.
Third, it breaks new ground when it applies economic thinking to the
understanding of international and domestic politics. Tremblay is most
impatient towards imperialism, colonialism, militarism, despotism,
hegemonism, totalitarianism, and political ineptitude. What makes the book particularly interesting,
notwithstanding its somewhat polemical tone, is its humanistic and
philosophical approach. It is not per se a polemic, but the author never
hesitates to confront the neocon ideology, which he assimilates to old-style
imperialism and fascism. After a general introduction about hegemonism, Tremblay covers
five broad themes: (1) The place of religion in politics, especially as it
relates to the United States; (2) how oil has come to dominate U.S. foreign
policy; (3) how anything connected to Israel arouses political responses in
America; (4) how the Iraq war was launched on false pretenses; and (5) how
empires seem to follow a very long cycle. If you want a concise, short, and eloquent
opposition to aggressive wars and international lawlessness, I can think of
no better book to serve this function. Was
this review helpful to you? ***** Challenge to the Neocons, February 16, 2006 Reviewer: C. Martin (Madison, WI USA) This book is a significant challenge to the
neocon-fascist ideology of history and politics. Since this lawless ideology
has taken a stranglehold on the nation's foreign policy, this is a message
worth listening to. This is a must read. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Bush and the Law, February 13, 2006 Reviewer: B. J.
Bernstein (New
York, N.Y.) It would take many books to document the many
unlawful acts committed by the Bush administration. But this book goes a long
way toward explaining things. Sen. Byrd has said that "No president is
above the law." In a democracy, no politician can choose the
laws to be obeyed, and those to be discarded. Because G.W. Bush has often discarded laws he
did not like, many think he is guilty of impeachable offenses. Whatever Congress does is OK with me. This is
a great book to learn the facts. Was this review helpful to you? *****Bombings and
`wanton destruction of cities', January 1, 2006 Reviewer: Mary
Spencer,
(Madison, WI, USA) With an eye to the 2006 November elections,
the Bush adminstration will fake a troop reduction in Iraq, while continuing
to fortify large military bases in that country and escalating the air war
against Iraqi cities. This war will become even more immoral and cruel. This
war is a criminal war. Perhaps, George W. Bush should be reminded that terror
bombings of cities is criminal behavior. In particular, he should be reminded
of article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter that defines the term "War
crimes" to include: ". . . wanton destruction of cities, towns or
villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." Tremblay demonstrates without the shadow of a
doubt that this war is both illegal and immoral. Now, let's make the media
accountable for not reporting the thousands of civilian Iraqi deaths
ruthlessly caused by American bombings. The United States is not a force for
good in Iraq, it is a force for destruction and killing. The Bush
administration has lost any sense of right and wrong. It has become a
monster. Was this review helpful to you? ****Costly War Crimes, December 30, 2005 Reviewer: R.
M. Burns,
(Tarrytown, NY USA) Reading this book, we must conclude that wars
that are not accepted by the international community should not be
undertaken, period. And this applies to any country, including the United
States. Under the Nuremberg standard established by
the U.S. itself, Bush's invasion of Iraq is a war crime. Indeed, since the
1946 Nuremberg Judgment, it has been international law that "To initiate
a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains
within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Nevertheless, even if the Bush administration
has initiated such a war of aggression in Iraq, the cover-up of Bush's crimes
in American media goes on unabated. British Nobel laureate Harold Pinter recently
asked: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?" ...Bush now says (Dec.
12, '05) that only "30,000 Iraqis have been killed, more or less", while
the number of U.S. Military personnel slaughtered in Bush's war stands so far
at 2175. Other more credible sources (see the Lancet study), place the number
of Iraqi deaths above 100,000, since the beginning of the illegal war Bush
launched in March 2003. In Pinter's view, it would only be "just that
Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of
Justice." Now, most Iraqis want U.S. military forces out
of their country, but Bush wants to stay in Iraq because he wants "to
stay the course"! Talking of an uninvited and unwelcomed guest! Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress
estimates that the war in Iraq is costing $177 million per day, $7.4 million
per hour, and $122,820 per minute. This translates into $ 65 billion per
year, or approximately $ 1,000 for each American family of four. Congress was quick to impeach President
Clinton for a minor misbehavior. Where are they now that impeachable crimes
are being committed right under their very eyes, and costly ones at that? Was this review helpful to you? *****How to Elect a
Brutal Shiite Theocracy?, December 26, 2005 Reviewer: L. B.
McNamara, (Baltimore MD USA) George
W. Bush has done it. He has reconstituted the Persian Empire in the Middle
East. With the election of a pro-Iran theocratic government in Iraq, the
Shiites in Iran and Iraq are posed to form a Shiite coalition that will
dominate the region for years to come, as soon as they kick U.S. forces from
their lands. Is he stupid or what? This was all too predictable. Anybody who
knows anything about Middle East politics could have predicted that the Iraqi
Shiites, under religious-led parties, would attempt to establish an
Iranian-like theocracy in Iraq, if given the chance. Bush gave them their
chance and they took it. Indeed, it is the United States, with 160,000
troops, which props up the Iraqi Shiites in power. This book saw this coming. On p. 170, Tremblay
writes: "Democratic elections [in Iraq] would likely give power to
Shiite Muslims, who represent more than 60 percent of the Iraqi population.
What would then be the implications of a Shia-dominated government in Iraq?
Would Iran not stand to become the primary power in the Middle East, becoming
a direct threat to the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and
Israel?" And mind you, the worse is still to come. On
p. 62, the author writes: "If several Middle East countries fell under
the domination of fundamentalist and Islamic movements and became extremist
religious states, hostile to the West, along the lines of Iran, the resulting
world oil crisis could be extremely severe." Well, the Neocon Bush
administration now will likely want to raise the ante and attack Iran, a
country of 75 million people. Then the price of oil will surge above $100 a
baril, and the world will plunge into an economic depression. That's what happens when you elect stupid
people to government. Pray that this band of bozos will be prevented by
Congress from doing any more damage. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Every American
Should Read This Book, December 25, 2005 Reviewer: Catherine
A. M., (Seattle, WA USA) American politics is so complex that many
Americans don't even know the influence that powerful lobbies such as AIPAC
(American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) have on the nation's policies,
especially its foreign policy. Why is this so? Because the media never ever
mention this lobby and other dominating influences in Wahington D.C.
-Journalists know that talking about this facet of American politics is a
career-ending move. The same applies to politicians who would lose
contributions and be opposed by the lobbies' puppets. s. The war againppets. The war against Iraq is one such example of an
American foreign policy designed from the inside and from the outside with
the interests of another country front and center. Read this book to know why and to get the big
picture. Then, write your representatives in Congress and demand they put the
interests of America first! Then, write letters to the editor in your local
area. This book is very benefical if you want to know how foreign and
national policies are designed. It is a must read for open-minded, truth
seeking individuals. Was this review helpful to you? ****Outsourcing
American-Sponsored Torture, December 22, 2005 Reviewer: John
C. F.,
(Laurel, MD, USA) Secret prisons, ghost 'rendition' illegal
flights in the night, secret CIA torture chambers (pardon me, chambers where
"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" such as waterboarding are
carried on), are "the dark side" of the cynical Bush-Cheney
administration. Why do American CIA agents kidnap foreign nationals in
foreign countries and fly them to secret prisons in other foreign countries,
where there are no laws, to be tortured? This has all been confirmed by a
Council of Europe investigation. Such de facto police state sponsored sadistic
behavior throws out the window the fundamental principle of the inherent
right of any human being to physical integrity and personal dignity. Torture techniques
such as waterboarding (suffocation by water), have been denounced since the
time of the infamous Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. That the Bush
administration uses such torture techniques is appalling and shameful. So much for the 'honor and dignity' the
reigning president pledged to restore to Washington just five years ago. So
much for the myth of American moral superiority. The Bush-Cheney administration is the most
double-speaking administration we ever had. Its apparent motto is "The
end justifies all means." As Frank Rich of the N. Y. Times recently
wrote, this administration is the equivalent of the old Soviet Union: it
substitutes Orwellian propaganda for governing. We should take notice. President Bush says, "We do not torture".
Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, "We can't guarantee
it" [that we won't torture], while Vice President Cheney openly lobbied
Congress to allow the CIA to torture prisoners. When the Red Cross wants to
check the "no torture" claim made by Bush and requests access to
detainees held in secret prisons, it is rebuffed. It's obvious that torture
is an official Bush administration policy. It includes techniques such as
"waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military
dogs, and sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." It seems you cannot believe a word of what
this secretive and manipulating administration is saying. The only thing we
are sure of is that they are pretty much ready to commit human rights abuses if
that fits their purposes. But there are many other misdeads that this
bunch and their neocon sycophants in the media (Krauthammer, Brooks, Hannity,
O'Reilly, ...etc.) are doing. Get informed. Read this book. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Security and
Liberty,
December 20, 2005 Reviewer: M. K.
Morris, (Washington, D.C.
USA) Has the
line between security and liberty shifted so far after the 9/11 attacks that
America must accept to be a de facto police state, with government officials
spying on citizens without court warrants and for reasons known only to them?
Does the war against terrorism require that the U.S. become a de facto
dictatorship? If so, the Islamist attacks on the U.S. may
have succeeded to a greater extent than initially thought. That's why we
should start reflecting upon Benjamin Franklin's advice on this very subject:
"Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little
temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." What would Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson think of George W. Bush if they were to return and see the
unconstitutional and illegal spying machine the Bush administration is
setting up? Would'nt they turn in their graves? Wouldn't they think that Bush
behaves more like George III and less like George Washington? Would'nt they
think that GWB does not understand the system of checks and balances that
they created in the U.S. government as a way to protect American
liberty?-President Thomas Jeff -President Thomas Jefferson once said:
"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every
American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." What
is the invasion of Iraq if not a war of conquest? George W. Bush should also
meditate on another Jefferson's advise: "Governments constantly choose
between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the
same. One will always lead to the other." -What would President George Washington think
of George W. Bush's war of aggression in Iraq, he who said: "Nothing
short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national
character ought to involve us in war"? He also said: "Guard against
the impostures of pretended patriotism." -And, what about President James Madison who
said: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the
guise of fighting a foreign enemy"? And he added: "Of all the
enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it
comprises and develops the germ of every other." With the open-end Bush's war in Iraq and with
the cascading onslaught on our personal liberties by unscrupulous and cynical
politicians at home, how long will it take to make the U.S. Constitution
obsolete? Remember the Old Soviet Union Constitution: It was all nice on
paper, but the government did not consider itself constrained by it, and its
appointed judges went along with its plans to crush civil liberties. How long will it take before this takes place
in America? Congress better wake up and fast before Bush packs the Supreme
Court with like-minded people and concentrates imperial powers in his hands. Meanwhile, learn about what's going on behind
the curtains and read "The New American Empire" Was this review helpful to you? ****Two Democratic Parties?, December 18, 2005 Reviewer: S. Smith (San Francisco, CA
USA) The
highest profile Democratic politicians in America are on both sides of the
fence when it comes to the Iraq War. On the side of where the majority of
Democratic voters are, you have Congressman and war veteran John Murtha
(D-Pa) who proposes that most U.S. troops leave Iraq within a year. He does
not need to look "strong" or "hawkish" because he is a
brave man who has the courage of his convictions. You have also Democratic Chairman Howard Dean
who is lucid and honest enough to declare that "the idea that the United
States [as an invading force] is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain
wrong." -Also, both presidential candidate John Kerry and vice
presidential candidate John Edwards confessed that their votes for giving
George W. Bush a free rein to wage war against Iraq was a mistake, because
this support was obtained through lies and deceptive tactics. You have to
remember that 147 Democratic members of Congress had the courage to vote
against the war resolution in October 2002 (7 Republicans and 2 Independents
did the same). On the other hand, however, you have the sad
spectacle of Conn. Sen. Joe Lieberman who argues for having one single
bi-partisan War party, and that everybody should get behind lying George
Bush. Neocon Lieberman seems to be coordinating his statements on the war
with the Bush White House and would like nothing more than be named Secretary
of Defence. (That way, Ariel Sharion would not even have to call GWB to start
a war in the Middle East and AIPAC would be 100 % in charge.) Two Senate Democrats, Tim Johnson (S. Dakota)
and Ben Nelson (Nebraska), even went so far as to vote with Republicans on
extending the provisions in the Patriot Act that allow for the government to
spy on individual Americans inside the United States, without a court
warrant. What's going on here? Shouldn't warmonger and
Neocon Lieberman join the Republican party? After all, he has been supported
by the Far Right National Review. What is a Far Right and Neocon politician
doing in the Democratic party? Lieberman is so much the Bush Administration's
little boy that the cabal leader himself, Dick Cheney, is all praise for him.
And, how about these two Democratic senators in favor of a police state? Even senators who should know better, such as
Sens. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, while acknowledging that Bush made a
mess in Iraq and lied his way to a war, refuse to support a clear exit
strategy, afraid of looking "weak" on defense. Instead of peeing in
their pants, they should rather attack the dangerous neocon extremists in the
Bush administration as being traitors to America. But they don't. Why? Strange things are happening in American
politics. There is more that meets the eyes. That's the reason I enjoyed
reading this book. I learned a lot of things I didn't even suspected were
taking place. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Bush's War: A
Private War,
December 14, 2005 Reviewer: J. M. C., (Washington, D.C.
USA) "The world
should take notice when someone...with a fanatic mind and with powerful
means, receives his marching orders from Heaven." Rodrigue Tremblay,
"The New American Empire" (p. 18) Bush says that he accepts responsibility for
taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence. Wrong. It was not the intelligence that was faulty;
it was Bush's intentions to wage war against Iraq no matter what were the
intelligence and the facts. He twisted the intelligence reports and invented
lies around his already decided policy. That's why he is guilty of having launched a
war of aggression on lies and deception, and on having violated, in so doing,
international law. He should pray that he will never be brought before an
interntional court of justice. Anybody who reads "The New American
Empire" knows that's the case. Everything else is spin and fantasy. ***** THE IMMORALITY OF
WARS,
December 12, 2005 Reviewer: Carol H.
R., (Atlanta, GA USA) "Violence
is the first refuge of the incompetent." Issac Asimov I am in fact reading this book for a second
time. I think it is a very moral book. The author makes the strong case that the Iraq
War is not only illegal, but it is also immoral. Indeed, the Iraq War was,
from the beginning, a war of choice, not of necessity. It was unleashed after
the decision of one man only, George W. Bush. Like others before him who
initiated such wars of aggression, Bush Jr.'s place in history will be very
bad indeed. This was a premeditated war of aggression that
George W. Bush and his neocon advisors planned against Iraq, even before the
new administration took power in January 2001. They wanted a 'regime change'
in Iraq in order to implement an overall strategy of controlling the entire
Middle East militarily, secure its oil producing capabilities and buttress
Israel's defenses. This was clearly an illegal war, and an
immoral one at that, which was undertaken with a minimum of humility and
honesty. The war was based on illegality, since it was
not endorsed by the United Nations, and it was sold on false pretenses, like
the need to remove weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (there were none) and
to prevent a collaboration between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Husssein (there
was none). As Tremblay states (p. 191), "Incredibly,
the Bush administration abased itself by peddling faked documents in order to
show that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. Chief inspector El Baradei
told the U.N. Security Council that such documents were forgeries and not
authentic." This is reinforced by the fact that more than a year before
President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had
tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began
repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no
evidence to support the allegation. That's why this war of aggression could not be
supported by the American people for very long, as soon as the people learned
the truth behind the lies and the disinformation campaign. Now, 54 per cent
say it was wrong for the U.S. to attack Iraq (Angus Reid Nov. 28-Dec. 4,
'05), against only 41 per cent who approve of the war. The main architect of this war, Neocon Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, even persuaded George W. Bush that Iraqi
oil would pay for the war and Neocon Richard Perle said that the war would
not last very long because Iraqis would "welcome" American soldiers
with flowers and candies. This was planned as a war without cost. But even as it goes on, this is a war which
has no moral foundations, and which is only pursued in order to save face and
cover as***. This is a war that has made Iraq a more dangerous place, which
has devastated this country, which has impoverished the majority of Iraqis
and which has resulted in thousands and thousands of deaths. It has even
pushed the United States government to adopt torture as a policy, contrary to
international law, to the U. S. Constitution and to the most fundamental
democratic values. There is no morality in bombing people from
the safety of an airplane; there is no morality in shooting people in cars or
buses with machine guns; there is no morality in destroying villages with
tanks and missiles; there is no morality in torturing people. The immorality in Iraq is the same that
ultimately drove the French from Algeria and the Russians from Afghanistan.
You cannot be a democracy and wage an immoral war and win. You can only lose,
including your self-respect. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Of Lies, Liars and
War,
December 10, 2005 Reviewer: Joe A.
P., (Lincoln, NE, USA) "The lie can be
maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the
political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie." Joseph
Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Don't wait for the mainstream media to tell us
how and why George W. Bush lied us into a war. The media are part of the
propaganda machine and their job is not to inform the public, but to cover up
and mislead. All the evidence is now there in the open: GWB
decided on his own to have a change of government in Iraq, and he proceeded
from there, irrespectively of domestic or international laws. That makes him
not only a liar, but also a potential war criminal. Bush and Blair knew perfectly well, from their
own intelligence services, that Iraq possessed no WMD. They knew that the
Iraqi government was complying fully with the United Nations' inspectors, giving
them unconditional access to presidential palaces and military sites,
destroying short-range missiles that exceeded the permitted range, and even
submitting a disk containing all of its relevant documents. They also knew
that Iraq was not a military threat, had attacked nobody and could not attack
any country even if it wanted to, because its military capabilities had been
destroyed after 1991. But Bush has even attempted to lie about his
lies. Here's what he said on July 14, 2003, less than four months after the
Iraqi invasion (as reported on p. 318 of "The New American Empire):
"We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and
he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we
decided to remove him from power." This is a blatant lie since Hans
Blix's U.N. inspectors were inside Iraq in the months preceding the
American-led invasion. Only an idiot or a born liar could make such a false
statement. That the president of a country can make a statement so contrary
to the most elementary facts and get away with it is astounding. What happened was that Bush was very worried
that the United Nations' inspectors would demonstate to the entire world that
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, forcing him to stop the
war machine he had placed in motion as early as the fall of 2001. Then, he
would somewhat lose face and appear weak for the 2004 presidential election.
That's precisely what Bush told Blair on a phone conversation on January 30,
2003, according to official notes taken by Blair's personal secretary,
Matthew Rycroft. All this is well documented and historians will have a field
day establishing that George W. Bush was one of the greatest public liars of
all times. Bush Jr. once said "I do not have a
perfect record as a youth." Well, his record as an adult is much worse.
Thousands and thousands of people have died because of his duplicity and
cowardice. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Excellent, December 9, 2005 Reviewer: B.W.M., (New York, NY, USA) Super scholarship in an easy to read format.
This is a grand synthesis of what's wrong with the Bush administration. Buy
it, read it, give it to a friend. Was this review helpful to you? ***** IMPEACH BUSH?, December 8, 2005 Reviewer: Mary B.
P., (Waldorf, MD USA) When to impeach a president? When he has
illegal sex or when he is delusional and wages illegal wars? Delusion is a state of mind that remains even
after a person is confronted with reality. When one loses contact with
reality, it is said this person is delusional; the person lives in his or her
own imaginary world, independently of surrounding facts. So, when president George W. Bush says
"We do not torture", while all the evidence indicates the contrary,
is he delusional or simply lying or covering up? Unbelievably, the U.S. is now a democracy that
is led by a person who believes God has chosen him to carry out His divine
will. Are we not back to the Middle Ages or what? What should we think when someone says: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I
did...", as president Bush is reported to have said in June 2003. No
wonder he discarded advice American generals gave him about Iraq. And, what about
this quote from president Bush on October 22, 2004: "I believe that God
wants me to be president." Why should we vote if the election is already
decided? It's obvious that GWB confuses theology and
politics: he seems to make this simplistic mistake over and over
again-confusing nation, church, and God. This is not wise and may be outright
dangerous. The Iraq war is a good example of a dangerous mix of bad foreign
policy and bad theology. It's hard to disagree with the author of
"The New American Empire" when he says: "That such a
regression takes place in the most heavily-armed nation on the planet can
only add to the fear...." (p. 10-11). Also read "How America Gets
Away With Murder" by M. Mandel. ***** Bush's Dangerous
Doublespeak,
December 4, 2005 Reviewer: J.
E. Tamblyn, (Charlottesville, Va.
USA) Around the world, George W. Bush is an object
of ridicule. His quotes are met with disbelief and fear. Take this unbelievable quote from George W.
Bush in Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War": "We will export death and violence to the
four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world
of evil." We can imagine terrorist Osama bin Laden saying the same
thing. Since we know GWB is one of those religious
people on the Christian Right who expect the end of the world soon, such
utterances give the chills. Religious nuts, who believe every word and
every legend in all the nooks and crannies of the Bible, foresee a mythical
battle of Armageddon which is supposed to fulfill John's prophecy in the Book
of Revelations, i.e. a cataclysmic conflict between the forces of Good
against the forces of Evil, climaxing in our lifetime. Then, according to
this fantasy, Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, will return to rule the world from
the rebuilt temple in the reclaimed nation of Israel according to the
prophecies, and they will witness a global holocaust.Bush, as a strongly arm Bush, as a strongly armed megalomaniac
politician, may be the only person to act upon his religious fantasies and
make them reality. Since he seems to hear voices and repeats that "I
believe that God wants me to be president" (Oct. 22, 2004), this is
something to reflect upon. Let me quote from Tremblay's book a sentence
that says it all: "The line between religious fanaticism
and insanity, between religious fervor and pathological delusion, is very
thin indeed. The world should take notice when someone with a following, with
a fanatic mind and with powerful means, receives his marching orders from Heaven."
(p. 18) ***** IRAQ: THE NEW
VIETNAM,
December 3, 2005 Reviewer: Military
Mom, (Toledo, OH, USA) In
Vietnam, the U.S. government was training South Vietnamese troops to fight
the Viet Cong insurgents and shore up the Thieu government. In Iraq, the U.S.
government is training Iraqi troops to fight the insurgents and shore up the
government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. It's 'deja vu' all over again! So, forty years apart, a new generation of
politicians is making the same mistake again, thinking that bombing a country
and killing its inhabitants will persuade them to love Americans. You cannot
build a democracy on a mountain of deaths. When will we ever learn? The New American Empire draws a clear parallel
between Iraq and Vietnam: the faked Bay of Tonkin incident; Congress
hoodwinked to support a foreign war of aggression; young Americans going half
way around the world to die for lies and deception, and a politician, L. B.
Johnson, elected president in a landslide in November 1964. History seems to
repeat itself with a devastating regularity. Are our grandchildren going to
pay for our errors? This is discouraging. ***** THE
"CHENEY" ADMINISTRATION, December 1, 2005 Reviewer: F. B. D., (Glen Burnie, MD USA)
In the Bush
administration, the Office of the Vice President is the real strategic
center. That's where most important policies and decisions originate.
President Bush Jr. can say one thing, but the guy who runs the shop is Dick
Cheney and its guard of Neocons. Case in point: When Bush says "We do
not torture", Cheney is actively lobbing the Senate to stop it from
prohibiting torture. Who then is the true president and who speaks for this
administration? It's obvious that Vice President Cheney is the "steamrolling
force" in the Bush Jr. administration. Because Cheney's former chief of staff, I.
Lewis Libby, has been indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of
justice, the public is bound to learn more on how powerful Dick Cheney is, in
running the U.S. government. In particular, we shall learn more on how Vice
President Cheney led the Big Lie-Disinformation-Intimidation Campaign to sell
the Iraq war. Outside the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI), where his wife Lynne works, and the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (WINEP) where many of his neocon advisors (Hannah, Wurmser,...etc.)
come from, Cheney's political image is terrible, hardly better than
Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' in Nazi Germany. A recent Newsweek poll
taken in Nov. 2005, after the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff in the
Valerie Plame affair, found that only one in four Americans had a positive
view of Bush's vice president. Most think he is neither honest nor ethical. When Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff
to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that a parallel and invisible
government was in charge in Washington D.C., he was undoubtedly refering to
the imperial and malevolent "Cheney" administration within that
government. Wilkerson even implies that Cheney may be responsible for war
crimes. This was also what former Secretary of State Colin Powell himself
infered when he characterized the actions of the Neocons in the vice
president's office and the top civilian echelons of the Pentagon as a sort of
"coup d'etat". Ever since Cheney was Secretary of Defense
under Bush I (1989-1992), he has been advocating a policy of American
unilateralism in the post-Cold War, and he has planned with his deputy
secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, a war in the Middle East. The 2002 "Bush
Doctrine" is therefore just as much a "Cheney Doctrine". When
Wolfowitz became Rumsfeld's deputy undersecretary of defense in the Bush II
administration, the 'Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz' team pretty much imposed
their foreign policy on poor George W., who has been reduced to making
packaged speeches in front of friendly college aged audiences at military
bases. This is, of course, to the despair of the State Department, which has
been manipulated and outmaneuvered at every turn. Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton
(1995-2000) and an oil-man by profession. It's not surprising that he took
over the job to devise Bush's secret energy policy in the spring of 2001. It
was no surprise, when Cheney tabled his 163-page report on May 16, 2001, to learn
that Iraq and the Middle East were at the center of the new
"American" energy policy. The tone was "if we cannot produce
oil, we can at least steal it". So, when Tremblay writes that "in Bush
and Cheney's minds, the need for a secured access to Middle East oil was not
an option, but almost a strategic and economic necessity" (p. 80), he
hits the nail right on the head. If you can only read one book, read this
one, no matter what other reviewers say. Was this review helpful to you? ****Trying to Spin a
War,
November 30, 2005 Reviewer: Catherine
M. Gross, (Dayton, OH USA) In the
words of General William E. Odom, the Iraq War is "the greatest
strategic disaster" in our history. He is quoted in "The New
American Empire" as saying that Bush's Neocons couldn't care less about
the mess they have created in Iraq (p. 187). And now, George W. Bush wants to
dig deeper. Bush's "Plan for Victory in Iraq" is
a plan to spin his way out of a mess that he recklessly created himself. But
this is a plan for more and more disasters. What he means by 'victory in
Iraq', is for him not to lose face personally after launching an illegal and
immoral war. Bush wants to save face by having American soldiers stay in Iraq
and die for him, even if an overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the U.S.
occupiers out. This is a bloody shame. The United States is in a lose-lose situation
in Iraq and Bush is leading us down a reckless road to ruin. Wake up America
before it's too late. Was this review helpful to you? ***** A Dishonest and
Fraudulent War Plot,
November 26, 2005 Reviewer: J.
Wilkinson, (Ann Arbor, MI USA) Reading this book, one gets the information
necessary to make a personal judgment on why the United States ended up being
a military aggressor in Iraq. Chapter
after chapter, we learn how the Bush administration embarked upon a
deliberate and carefully planned conscious policy of deception, lies and
manipulation of public opinion, soon after it took office in January 2001.
The Bush administration wanted a war with Iraq, and it got it. -The immediate
goal was the quick removal of Saddam Hussein, but the overall objective was
to remake the entire Middle East, in order to secure Iraqi oil and increase
the security of the state of Israel, considered by many to be America's 51st
state, with rich political contributors and supporters in the U.S. Even though the plan had existed for years,
the Neocons in the Bush administation quickly recognized, after Sept. 11,
2001, that the fear engendered by the terrorist attacks could be used to
mobilize the American people and Congress to support a war of aggression
against Iraq. The plan was to stir the emotions of the American public and
the U.S. Congress and make them believe that Saddam Hussein somehow was
responsible for the terrorist attacks, and to use this ploy to have Congress
sign on a war of aggression. Numerous Bush officials went on the airwaves and
warned Americans that there would be atomic "mushroom clouds" over
U.S. cities if a war against Iraq was not immediately initiated. But to launch such an illegal war required a
ton of lies, half-truths, misrepresentations and disinformations. Later, the
Bush administration even covered up and lied about the whole mess. It's
because a liar must stand ready to lie a thousand times. Let's review the most obvious
misrepresentation. Three months before a congressional vote on the question
and more than eight months before the March 2003 Iraq war started, a high
Bush administration official, Richard Haass, was told, in July 2002, by
Bush's personal Security advisor Condoleezza Rice that a war against Iraq was
on: "That decision's been made. Don't waste your breath'', she told him.
Nevertheless, George W. Bush pretended
afterwards that he was keeping an open mind and would only go to war as a
last resort. This was a blatant lie since he had already decided to go to war
no matter what. Other countries at the United Nations knew
this was a lie, as was his claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,
as also was his pretention that the Iraqi government had ties to Al-Qaeda.
The CIA, the Pentagon and the U.N. all knew that Iraq had destroyed "all
weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear" after the 1991 Gulf
War. This was officially confirmed by U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin
Powell himself, who said, on Feb. 24, 2001,: "Saddam Hussein has not
developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass
destruction,... "he is unable to project conventional power against his
neighbors." That's why the United Nations refused to give
Bush the war resolution he and his British lap dog, Tony Blair, were counting
on to cover their plot, because their claims were widely known to be false or
widely exagerated, even within their own governments. It's then, according to the secret British
Downing Street papers, that facts and intelligence info had to be twisted and
distorted to fit the already decided policy. There was a rush to make the
case for war, not a search for the truth, In September 12, 2002, Pres. George W. Bush
even had the gall to go to the United Nations and utter these hypocritical
words: "We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while
free nations strive to resolve differences in peace." This was a cynical
lie. On September 25, 2002, GWB continued his
campaign of lies when he said: "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda
and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." He knew this was not
true and that secularist Saddam Hussein and religious Osama bin Laden were
enemies, not friends. Eventually, as the British before them,
Americans will be forced to leave Iraq, as all foreign occupiers are, sooner
or later. But the cost of this tragic war based on lies and deception will
have been high and avoidable: more than 100,000 people killed and a country
completely devastated. All of that because of a dishonest and fraudulent war
plot. Was this review helpful to you? ***** STEALING IRAQI OIL
WITH GUNS,
November 26, 2005 Reviewer: J. W. M., (Houston, TX, USA) The rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth campaign is
now on at full speed. American and British oil companies are descending on
Iraqi oil fields like vultures. As a result, Iraqis are expected to lose up
to $200 billion of their oil wealth to foreigners. For individual Iraqi, this
loss will represent from $2,800 to $7,400 per Iraqi adult over a 30-year
period. This is done under the so-called Production
Sharing Agreement (PSA) that the Bush administration has imposed on the Iraqi
Oil Ministry. This program is designed to hand over all Iraq's undeveloped
oil fields to multinational oil companies, to be developed under production
sharing agreements, rather than by Iraqi oil companies. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had
warned us that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis had "plans for how the
world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world's oil
contractors." Mind you, anybody who read chapter 7 of
"The New American Empire" knew this was coming, but few expected
this grab of Iraqi oil wealth by American and British oil companies to come
so soon, and be done so openly and with such ruthlessness. Was this review
helpful to you? ***** Saddam or the
Entire Middle East?,
November 25, 2005 Reviewer: T. B.
Santos,
(Baltimore,
MD, USA) There is a lot in this book that helps put the
pieces of the Iraq War puzzle together. First, it is well documented that toppling
Saddam Hussein was on George W. Bush's agenda long before 9/11. But the Iraqi
President was not the true strategic target. Saddam was demonized for
propaganda reasons. Bush's and the Neocons' real objective was to control the
entire Middle East militarily, for its oil and for Israel's security. Regarding the God-given natural right that
Americans are supposed to have to depose and remove from power other nations'
leaders such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an international illegal act in
itself, it was well understood and duly reported in the fall of 2002 that if
"Saddam Hussein were to be overthrown even before the American strikes,
the U.S. could still intervene, in order to 'liberate' and 'pacify' the
country." This was clearly spelled out in a 2001 Report of The Project
for the New American Century that said: "While the unresolved conflict
with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of
Saddam Hussein." - So much for an illegal war with the sole purpose to
remove Saddam Hussein from power. Second, regarding Middle East OIL, Vice
President Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, in a May 2001 report,
called on the White House to make "energy security a priority of US
trade and foreign policy". The report, issued two years before the
beginning of the attacks against Iraq, contained a map of Iraqi oilfields,
pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi
oil and gas projects. And, as planned, when American soldiers reached Baghdad
in the spring of 2003, their orders were to secure only the Oil industry
buildings, and let the others be ransacked. So much for
"liberating" Iraq and its citizens. If this does not indicate that oil plays an
important part in that war, what does? Third, how about the Neocons' fixation with
Israel's security, as a catalyst for George W. Bush's ruinous foreign policy?
a) the neocon blueprint for the Middle East
was detailed in the 1996 report " A Clean Break, ...", signed by
chief Neocons Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, ...etc.. This
report advocated an American-led war to overthrow Saddam Hussein and install
a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, as a way of moderating the Shiites of the
region and securing "the realm" of Israel. b) One has to be reminded that George W. Bush
himself espoused many of the crazy schemes promoted by his right-wing
Christian base, such as wanting to transfer the temple mount in Jerusalem
from Muslim to Jewish hands and to facilitate the rebuilding of the temple so
Jesus can return. For both " born-again" Bush and the Neocon
"cabal", Israel is left, right and center. Finally, how about the claim that the Iraq war
was to fight international terrorism? This also is bogus. Instead of fighting
terror, as Bush likes to proclaim, his war on Iraq has drawn droves of
foreign terrorists into Iraq to fight against the Western infidels. The war
has multiplied the number of Islamist terrorists worldwide, not reduced or
subdued them. Therefore, if some reviewers do not seem to
get the picture, it may simply be because they haven't tried hard enough. Was this review helpful to you? **** Questions,
Questions,
November 25, 2005 Reviewer: Peter A.
S., (Trenton, NJ, USA) This book raises some interesting questions
and even gives a fair amount of answers. However, there are some fundamental
and obvious questions that nobody seems to want to ask. For instance, who or what persuaded George W.
Bush in the 2000-01 transition period to relinquish to Dick Cheney the
important responsibility of choosing and naming most of the high officials in
the new administration? Another one: how come Dick Cheney ended up naming, at
the deputy and under secretary levels, people cast in the same neo-con mold? If the so-called "cabal" everybody
talks about played such an important role in selling the Iraq war to the
country, who are the ones behind the curtains who placed them at the higher
echelons of the Bush administration and for what reasons? Without answers to
these questions, our knowledge of the political game in Washington D. C.
sounds incomplete and superficial. I am waiting for answers. Was this review helpful to you? ***** The Iraq War and
Israel,
November 25, 2005 Reviewer: An
Observer
(Rockville, MD, USA) Tom
Friedman, the journalist at the New York Times, put his finger on the
fundamental reason for the U.S.-led war in Iraq when he wrote: "It's the war the neoconservatives
marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they
sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses
demanded. This is a war of an elite. ... I could give you the names of 25
people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this
office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago,
the Iraq war would not have happened." But when former State Dept Sec. Colin Power's
Chief of cabinet Col. L. B. Wilkerson said publicly that "A cabal of
[Neocon] ideologues who revel in the idea of waging World War IV has worked
its way into the White House,"...and that "Some of the most
important decisions about U.S. national security... were made by a secretive,
little-known cabal," the amnesiac corporate American media could not
cover-up any longer the pro-Israel lobby's influence in the push for war. But who are these people who hijacked U.S.
foreign policy and created the current political and military mess the
country finds itself in, in Iraq? It's simple. The plotters signed their names to a Project
for the New American Century (PNAC) letter they sent President Clinton on
January 26, 1998, pushing for a war against Iraq: "Removing Saddam
Hussein and his regime from power ... now needs to become the aim of American
foreign policy." Who were they? No fewer than 11 of the 18 signatories
have held very senior positions in the Bush Administration, mostly in
Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices, while the others have been the
administration's outside sycophants for war: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Zalmay
Khalilzad, R. James Woolsey, William Kristol, Paula Dobriansky, Robert B.
Zoellick, ...etc.. Many of the same plotters signed a similar
letter addressed to President Bush II, on September 20, 2001, pushing again
for a war against Iraq in order to "fully support our fellow democracy
(Israel) in its fight against terrorism." This time, a few well known characters added
their voice to the war chorus: Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Frank
Gaffney, Charles Krauthammer, ...etc.. Within the government, the neocon cabal was
well represented by a small group of other pro-Israel under-secretaries of
the kind of Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser,
Frederick Fleitz, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, Michael Rubin, Harold
Rhode...etc.. Therefore, people who say that Israel had
nothing to do with the 2003 U.S. rush to war against Iraq are either ignorant
or have no respect for the truth. Let me spell things out even more clearly for
them. Consider these statements: 1- "Iran, Libya and Syria are
irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction,
and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to
achieve," (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon). 2- "The Israeli government made a
conscious decision to influence U.S. foreign policy and drag us into a war
with Iraq," (author William Bowles). 3- "People linked to the office of Paul
Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Department of Defense were seen as having
some very close contacts and sharing information with Israeli intelligence
sources," (Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and counterintelligence
expert). 4- "The U.S cannot leave Iraq because of
Israel," (George W. Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley). Before long, special prosecutor Patrick J.
Fitzgerald's investigations should reveal the extent and gravity of this
treasonous cabal for war in favor of a foreign country. In particular, we
shall know what tactics and what forgeries of intelligence were carried out
in an overt effort to build up the evidence to allow the Bush administration
to justify going to war for Israel's sake. The coming trial of Larry
Franklin, the Pentagon analyst who has pleaded guilty to charges of spying
for Israel, will also throw more light on this very widespread scandal. When reading Tremblay's "The New American
Empire", keep in mind the above statements. Also, read Prados's
"Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War." Was this review helpful to you? ****Militarism and
Imperialism Pay (for some), November 21, 2005 Reviewer: W. S.
Miller, (Hollywood, Florida,
USA) "Imperialism will ensure the existence of
perpetual "enemies": "We have managed to acquire bases all
over the world ... . There is no part of the world where trouble can break
out where. . . we cannot claim that our interests are menaced. Thus there
must remain ... a continuing argument ...for a vast naval establishment and a
huge army ready to attack anywhere or to resist an attack from all the
enemies we shall be obliged to have. John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching, 1944). Many conservatives like military spending
because the war industry makes a lot of money with government contracts. Many
liberals like military spending because it destroys old military gear and
creates jobs. That's why war is the best of business and the most appealing
to desperate politicians. This is what all fascist countries have experienced
throughout history, fascist Germany being the paramount example in the
1930's. Truly democratic countries are opposed to war
and imperialism. Fascist countries, however, embrace war and imperialism,
even if it ends up bankrupting them. In 1952, author and journalist Garet Garett listed
the signs that indicate when a country ceases being a democratic republic to
become undemocratic and imperialistic. He listed five criteria of imperialism: 1- First is the dominance of the executive
power; 2- Second, the subordination of domestic to
foreign policy; 3- Third, the "ascendancy of the military
mind"; 4- Fourth, a "system of satellite
nations"; and 5- fifth, "a complex of vaunting and
fear", a vaunting of unlimited national might combined with continuing
fear, fear of the enemy, of the "barbarian", and of the
unreliability of the satellite allies. Surprisingly, Garrett found fifty years ago
that each one of the criteria applied fully to the United States. It is
therefore not unexpected that American imperialism would be so virulent under
the current Bush II administration. By far the fastest growing part of the
federal budget is military spending (more than $500 b. in 2006 if the Iraq
war is included). As someone said, the Pentagon under George W. Bush is not
only the Department of Energy, it is also the Department of Industrial
development. The U.S. has now a fascist-oriented and
debt-ridden war economy with a vast military bureaucracy, which in turn
supports a host of technology industries, while many consumers and service
industries are being transferred abroad, mostly to China and India. That's
seemingly what the Washington politicians and their corporate and media
sycophants want. -Militarism becomes the most glamorous public works project
upon which a variety of political and economic interests can be brought into
agreement. For this to succeed, however, a climate of
constant fear at home and of permanent war abroad has to be created and
maintained. This is the task of the imperialist media propaganda machine.
And, by maintaining military bases all over the world, the government makes
sure that this will be the case: there will always be enemies somewhere to
fight and the war budget will remain big and growing. After the demise of the Soviet empire in 1991,
a "peace dividend" could have been logically expected. A smaller
military budget could have allowed for more social spending, especially for
health giving the fact that 40 million Americans are too poor to have health
protection. But no. The war party did not see it that way. New war projects
were designed and new pretexts for war were found, and if needs be, invented.
And now, 'Posse Comitatus' notwithstanding, Bush wants to use the military at
home, to fight eventual bird flu epidemics or Katrina-like hurricanes!!! Crazy.
This books explains how the rationale for new
war projects came about, starting in 1992, just after the end of the Cold
war. The current war against Iraq is the first manifestation of this
aggressive war planning. It is being waged within a series of planned wars of
conquest in the Middle East, presented as a fight against
"terrorism" and for "democracy", but with the ultimate
aim of keeping the huge American war machine humming. There will be more wars of this sort in the
future, because the U.S. economy needs wars to prosper. The U.S. has a
planned economy: a militarist and imperialist economy. There are no other
countries whose economy so much depends on wars to succeed. As the author of this book says: "At the
close of the 20th Century, one could have expected that empires and
aggressive wars belonged to a primitive past; but suddenly and without
warning, the 21st Century appears to be a throwback to the 19th."(p. 10)
I couldn't agree more. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Politics and War
Rhetoric,
November 20, 2005 Reviewer: R. D.
Franklin
(Columbus, OH USA) What I like about this book is its
straighforwardness. Reading it made me think about the saying: "He who
lives by the sword, dies by the sword." In the 2002 and 2004 elections,
the Bush-Rove Republicans created a war hysteria, based on lies and
deception. In the run-up to the Iraq War, they masterminded a campaign aimed
at manipulating public opinion and justifying foreign policy regarding an
invasion of Iraq. The plot was to divert America's wrath away from those who
perpetrated the 9/11 attacks (Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda) and turn it
against those who did not (Saddam Hussein and Irak). For example, to show how well the plot worked,
in October 2004, a Harris Poll reported that 62 percent of all voters (84% of
those planning to vote for Bush) still believed that Saddam had ''strong
links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41 percent of all voters (52% of Bush
backers) believed that Saddam Hussein had ''helped plan and support the
hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11. We all know what happened. The Democrats, led
by Gephardt-Daschle-Lieberman, voted for war. They were completely mesmerized
and hoodwinked. As a result, they lost control of Congress and for months were
baffled by the Iraqi mess. But now, the wind has changed direction and
the truth is coming out: 57 percent of Americans polled believe that
President Bush II deceived them on the reasons for the war in Iraq, a
majority doubts George W. Bush's honesty and 53 percent want to impeach him.
The war rhetoric is going to haunt the Republicans in the coming 2006 and
2008 elections. Thanks to brave men such as Rep. John Murtha
of Pennsylvania, the Democrats have regained their spine and senses. Never
again will the Bush-Rove gang be able to pull the coup they did in 2002 and
2004. Was this review helpful to you? ***** Then and Now, November 17, 2005 Reviewer: A. B.
Goldberg, (Milwaukee, WI USA) In 1934, shortly after German President Hindenburg
died, the German cabinet adopted a law decree merging the position of
Chancellor and President of the Reich, making Adolf Hitler a very powerful
politician indeed. This grab for power had been announced by Propaganda
minister Joseph Goebbels. It is good to remember that this was Hindenburg who
made the fatal error of asking the Nazis to form the government, in February
1933. Well, we know the rest. -Hitler reinforced the
German army to the point that he thought he was invincible. He began to
request "regime changes" in other countries and to proclaim
Germany's demands for more "vital space". His first objective was
to overthrow the neighboring Polish government that he considered not
flexible enough and not open enough to German requests. For a while, Russia
aligned herself with Germany, hoping to split Poland between Berlin and
Moscow. And, when France and Great Britain attempted to defend Poland, the
Second World War was on its way, resulting in more than 50 million deaths
between 1939 and 1945. Today, sixty years later, we have a man in
charge of the United States' government who does not like the governments of
other countries, deemed not open enough to American interests. And, what's
more, George W. Bush pretends he has some sort of God-given right to overthrow
these governments and replace them with puppets of his own. Even though this is never proclaimed as in
Germany sixty years ago, it is nevertheless felt that the U.S. economy needs
a lot of oil, and any oil-producing country whose government is not friendly
enough must be dispensed with, no matter that such aggressions are illegal
under international law. As President George W. Bush mockingly said:
"International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to
me." (Dec. 12, 2003). When the days of reckoning came for the German
criminals, at the Nuremberg trial after the war, the case against them was
very clear: "To initiate a war of aggresion...is not
only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated
evil of the whole." (Nuremberg Tribunal) But then, what about U.S. aggression and
ends-justify-the-means brutality against Iraq to provoke a regime change in
that country? U.N. Secretary general Kofi Annan echoed the Nuremberg Tribunal
when he said: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that
contravened the UN." (Sept. 2004). That's where we stand today, with the Bush administration
involved in an illegal military aggression in the Middle East to provoke a
"regime change" in Iraq, and planning other "regime
changes" in Iran and Syria, ...etc.. -This runs clearly against
international law, and the fact that President George W. Bush ignores
international law does not mean it does not exist. In "The New American Empire",
economist-author Tremblay concludes that the 2002 'Bush Doctrine' of
pre-emptive and discretionary wars "places America above international
law." How come American lawyers and judges do no speak more openly about
this attack against international law? Is it not illegal for a president to
repudiate treaties adopted and signed by the United States? What is the
difference between invading Poland and invading Iraq to provoke "regime
changes"? I cannot recommend more strongly to read this
book. It's a great help to snap out of our collective amnesia. Was this review helpful to you? ***** TORTURE THE
AMERICAN WAY,
November 14, 2005 Reviewer: Cathy P., (San Antonio, TX USA)
The Torture Question goes to the highest
levels of the American government. After
September 11th, the Justice Department fashioned secret legal guidelines that
appear to indemnify C.I.A. officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations
outside the United States. This has allowed President Bush II to
disingenuously declare that such torture is "legal" since it is
done outside of territorial United States. Such use of torture techniques has
been condoned by the Bush administration when it issued its infamous
classified interrogation protocol of 2001, arguing that the United States
sometimes needs the "flexibility" to treat detainees in the war on
terrorism in "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" ways. The Bush Administration Justice Department
also issued two torture memos in 2002 and in 2003 that established a detailed
interrogation policy for the Pentagon and the C.I.A., in so doing dismissing
virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of
prisoners, including war-crimes and assault statutes. It is worth pointing
out that the torture of prisoners is contrary to the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, signed by the U.S. in 1992, which outlaws
torture or degrading treatment of prisoners. Under the law, ignoring American
treaties is an impeachable offence for a president. One of the authors of these "torture
memos" is Justice Department lawyer John Yoo (now a professor at
Berkeley). This fascist-minded individual distinguishes himself by arguing
that the President, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, is a virtual
dictator who can do whatever he wishes, including torturing and killing. As a consequence of this official torture
policy, people die while being interrogated by CIA or U.S. Army officers at
Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantanamo in Cuba or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan,
and at other secret locations, such as in Thailand and in Eastern Europe.
Some other prisoners are being "exported" to countries that engage
in torture, and some are "sub-contracted" to torture contractors,
all in the name of the United States of America. John McCain, the Republican senator from
Arizona, introduced a bill in Congress that would require Americans holding
prisoners abroad to follow the same standards of humane treatment required at
home by the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. But Vice-President
Cheney has been actively lobbying against McCain's amendment to the $445
billion defense bill for 2006 and is rather in favor of torture by the CIA.
As a result, the Washington Post has dubbed Cheney the "Vice-President
for Torture." There we have it. The United States is now run
by people who are the disciples of Torquemada; they are torturers-in-Chief. This is a shame for what use to be a great
nation. I agree with the author of "The New American Empire" that
" ...if it is not vigilant, the United States could be in the 21st
Century what Germany was in the 20th Century, that is, a danger to the
world." This is a fascinating book. Was this review helpful to you? ***** When the Next
Judgment at Nuremberg?, November 3, 2005 Reviewer: A
Reader,
(Washington D.C., USA) There are many unsavory things going on with
the Iraq war, and sooner or later the American people will have to come to
grips with them, if we want our nation to regain its decency. President
George W. Bush has ordered criminal acts to be committed that place him at
risk of being judged one day as a war criminal. Why is that so? To begin with, let's not
forget that Mr. Slobodan Milosevich, former president of Yugoslavia/Serbia,
is on trial at the Hague for war crimes and atrocities which, by all
measures, are less serious than what has happened in Iraq. 1- First and foremost, this war is clearly
illegal under international law. Because the belligerent invasion of Iraq was
not authorized by the United Nations, this unjustified act of international
aggression constitutes in itself a Crime against Peace and is contrary to the
Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), the Nuremberg
Principles (1950), and paragraph 498 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).
Who knows what an impartial court of justice would do if Mr. Bush's actions
were confronted with the violation of these laws? 2- Second, President Bush Jr. has overtly
attempted to assassinate the President of Iraq in March 2003, after issuing
an ultimatum, and this was in itself an international crime. 3- Third, contrary to article 6(b) of the 1945
Nuremberg Charter which forbids "... wanton destruction of cities, towns
or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity..."
Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush has authorized a "shock and awe"
military bombing of Baghdad and its inhabitants, a campaign which was
contrary to the laws of war. Similar terror bombings of other Iraqi cities
would presumably be deemed to be criminal behavior under international law
and be traceable to Mr. Bush. 4- Fourth, Mr. Bush is open to indictment for
having authorized torture in torture chambers in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and
in the gulag of Guantanamo, and in other secret CIA prisons around the world.
In doing so, Mr. Bush has violated the treaty
against torture called "the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights" (ICCPR), which the U.S. signed in 1992, and wrongly
pretends that U.S. violations of the treaty taking place in American military
detention facilities abroad, in places like Abu Ghraib (Iraq) and Guantanamo
Bay (Cuba), are not covered by the treaty. (N.B.: more than 100 detainees
have died in U.S. custody since 2002). Torturing prisoners is also a war crime under
the Third Geneva Convention protecting prisoners of war or under the Fourth
Geneva Convention protecting civilians. Moreover, since Mr. Bush has
unilaterally claimed, in 2002, that the 1949 Geneva Conventions (of which the
U.S. is a signatory) do not apply to the fight against terrorism, he may also
be open to charges on this account. 5- Fifth, here at home, Mr. Bush is tearing
down the traditional wall between overseas military action and domestic law
enforcement, and he may be violating the U.S. Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
President Bush has repeated too often that "If this were a dictatorship,
it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator",
not to be worried.6- Sixth, President BusMr. Bush is tearing down the
traditional wall between overseas military action and domestic law
enforcement, and he may be violating the U 6- Sixth, President Bush may have also
violated the National Security Act, which prohibits federal officials from
engaging in unauthorized intelligence gathering, when he authorized his Vice
President to set up intelligence gathering services that Cheney later
falsified and used to deceive Congress and the American people. 7- And
seventh, George W.Bush's decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the
country without court approval is in violation of the Federal Communications
Act and the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act which criminalize surveillance
without a warrant. The list of potential criminal acts by
President Bush is very long and worrisome. Not being a lawyer, Mr. Bush does
not fully realize the predicament he is in. But, in a democracy, nobody is
above the law. "The New American Empire" deals
factually with the Iraq war and how the Bush administration has paid scant
attention to international and even domestic law. Read this excellent book! Was this review helpful to you? ***** A Disaster Named
Bush,
November 1, 2005 Reviewer: J. G. Mc
Cormick, (Bradenton, FL, USA) It's now obvious that Americans made a gross
error in 2000, an error compounded in 2004, when they placed in power an
inexperienced, ill-prepared and immature man. George W. Bush's legacy will be
a long list of disasters that will linger on, long after his departure. George W. Bush is an immature person who
refuses to consider policy alternatives and possibilities and who is afraid
of listening to dissenting opinions. Because he is weak, he surrounds himself
with yes-men and yes-women who cater to his wishes and comfort him in his
illusions. The problem is that most of these yes-men and yes-women are
compulsive liars. They have raised lying to an art form. According to ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkinson,
chief of staff of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, under Bush II,
"some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -
including vital decisions about postwar Iraq - were made by a secretive,
little-known [neocon] cabal," ..."not unlike the decision-making
one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."There we
have it. A hi There we have it. A highly placed official
from within the Bush administration compares George W. Bush to a dictator. One of the consequences of George Bush's
amateurish and cynical approach to government has been his ruinous unilateral
foreign policy based on "fixed" intelligence and facts "around
the policy" and supported by ultra-neo-conservative think tanks, many of
them with direct ties with the Israeli government. Today, the entire world
knows that George W. Bush presided over a campaign to lie to Americans,
traumatized by 9/11, and lead them into a war against Iraq. The summum of
deception was his January 28 2003 State of the Union, in which he made the
known false claim (based on forged Italian documents) that "The British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa." These lies are now well documented. Why and
for whose interests? This remains to be ascertained. For example, returning from a tour of Arab
capitals, Vice President Cheney uttered these words on March 24, 2002:
"There's good reason to believe that he [Saddam Hussein] continues to
aggressively pursue the development of a nuclear weapon. Now, will he have
one in a year, five years? I can't be that precise." (NBC's "Meet
the Press) On August 26, 2002, Cheney pursued his
provocative campaign to frame Iraq for a military attack when he said:
"Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons
fairly soon", even though the Bush administration knew this was false.
Iraq had no active nuclear weapons program. The "weapons of mass
destruction" argument was a fabrication and this has been confirmed by
both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, on September 8, 2002,
then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice repeated the lie:"We
don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." And, when former national security advisor and
former Air Force general Brent Scowcroft warned against invading Iraq under
such false pretenses, in August 2002, he was castigated by none other than
Condoleezza Rice herself. With the fiasco of the war against Iraq, it's
no wonder that Bush's approval rating is 38%. It should be 0% if everybody
knew better. This is one of those books that opens one's
eyes. Because it is a synthesis, it provides a wide picture of what's going
on without being too obtuse. The clear message that comes out of this book is
that George W. Bush will go down in history as a national catastrophe and his
aides and advisors, as lackeys of small stature and little repute. Was this review helpful to you? ***** The Neocon Propaganda Machine, October 28, 2005 Reviewer: A Reader, (Milpitas, CA, USA) The Neocons in Washington have embarked upon
an agenda of endless illegal `preventive' wars on the Islamic world, in the
Middle East, that serve the interests of only one country, i.e. Israel. Their ideology is simple: what is good for
Israel is good for the United States, and no international law, treaty or
organization should stand in the way. Their agenda is also simple: use the
U.S. military for "solving" international problems, whatever the
costs. In their minds, their war against Iraq is only the first in a string
of wars that they have planned against Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Saudi
Arabia and other Middle Eastern and African counties. They have become
masters in manipulating public opinion by misrepresenting reality and by
using time tested propaganda techniques and brazen lies. Their efforts must be admired if only because
such a small group of people, inside and outside the Bush administration, has
succeeded in taking nearly complete control of U.S. foreign policy. This is
quite an accomplishment! How did they do it?Fir How did they do it? First, they teamed up with the Religious far
Right which has a fixation about Israel and Jerusalem. We all know the main
spokesmen for the Religious Right: Pat Robertson (Christian Coalition and
Christian Broadcasting Network), Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority), James Dobson
(Focus on the Family), Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), ...etc.
-George W. Bush, as a born-again Christian president, has become the kingpin
of this neocon-religious axis. Second, their rich backers got Bush to
delegate to Dick Cheney the task of nominating most of the high officials in
the new administration. Cheney then proceeded to appoint a whole group of
Neocons, Libby, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Perle...etc. at the top of the Bush
administration, all Likudniks and war hawks. The tip of the iceberg is the
recent indictment of Dick Cheney's right arm, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false
statements in the CIA leak investigation of the case of Valerie Plame, former
ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife. The central question is how a small group of
government officials, in tandem with their overseas allies, engaged in a
criminal conspiracy to falsify "intelligence" - and, in the process,
lie the nation into war. As Senator John Kerry has said, this case of
deception is "evidence of White House corruption at the very highest
levels." Third, the rich far right political and
agenda-bearing think tanks and other front organizations (American
Enterprise, Heritage, Defense of Democracies, Middle East Media Research
Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, ...etc.) spewed out reports and
"studies" making the case for war. Fourth, they enlist the neocon media attack
machine: the talk show demagogues (Limbaugh, Hannity at Fox News ...etc.);
and the army of propagandist "journalists", almost all of them
Jewish: Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and Fred Barnes; David Brooks,
Judith Miller and Thomas Friedman at the NYTimes; Paul Gigot at The Wall
Street Journal; Charles Krauthammer at Time; Robert Kagan at The Atlantic
Monthly, ...etc. Fifth, some academics also lent their support
to the neocon cause: Bernard Lewis (Princeton), Victor D. Hanson (Hoover
Institute), Eliot Cohen (Johns Hopkins), ...etc. All these valiant neocon political soldiers
are responsible for the mess America finds itself in today, not only in Iraq
but around the world. They deserve our profound contempt. "The New American Empire" is a well
researched book that is filled with pertinent information and intelligent
analysis. It provides the reader with links to understand why the U.S. defied
international law and went to war in the Middle East. It has 365 pages that
read like a novel. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in
American politics and geopolitics in general. Was this review helpful to you? ***** The Scripted Presidency, October 16, 2005 Reviewer: Betty S.
S., (San Francisco, CA,
USA) As time passes, George W. Bush's presidency
looks more and more like a bad movie, scripted by a drunkard. Case in
point no-1: Considering the recent "spontaneous" exchange between Bush
and some American soldiers, staged and scripted by the Pentagon, one is
reminded of the electronic device GWB seemed to be carrying under his jacket
during the 2004 presidential debates. Who was prompting him? Case in point no-2: The nomination of his
personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, as Justice of the Surpreme Court. In Bush`s
mind, her main qualification for the job is the fact that "she is a good
Christian." Since when has someone`s belief in the
supernatural become the litmus test to be named a Supreme Court Judge? The Constitution says clearly that "No
religious qualifications shall be required for any public office or
employment." Now, President Bush turns that completely
around and violates the Constitution! This seems to be unconstitutional. Well, this is what happens when somebody who
does not believe in the Constitution is elected president. When will that bad
movie end? This book helps us to understand how things
like this have come about. Was this review helpful to you? ****Two Most Heavily
Subsidized Industries, October 14, 2005 Reviewer: D.
Johnson, (Las Vegas, NV, USA)
– The author of this book makes the
controversial statement that: "It
is always a danger when too many people in a country earn their living in the
industry of war and in the industry of religion. Today in the United States,
these two industries are very prosperous. For one thing, all American
industry profits from the 300-400 billion dollars and more that the Pentagon
injects into the economy each year. For another, more than anywhere else in
the West, tax-exempt American religious organizations are de facto political
organizations, acting in parallel alongside the mainstream traditional
parties." (p. 37) It's hard to disagree. It is well known by now that militarist and
religious ideologues are currently running the White House. What's more, they
rely on improvisation, speculation and scant evidence to make decisions.
Everyone can see the results. What is less well known, and this may come as
a surprise to many, is that two of the most heavily subsidized industries in
the U.S., after agriculture, are the arms industry and the religion
industries. These happen to be the industries that run the White House.
Coincidence? Let's start with the arms and war industry. The Department of Defense (DOD) had a bloated
$380 billion discretionary budget in 2004, and this did not even include 100
billion spent on special projects and for the war in Iraq, for a total of 480
billion in military expenditures. Since the total world military expenditures
in 2004 were estimated to have been $1.03 trillion, that meant the U.S.
accounted for 47 per cent of total world military expenditures, in 2004, with
less than 5 per cent of the world population. This also meant that the
biggest US defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon, General Dynamics, Honeywell, United Technologies, Halliburton,
...etc.) have been riding high with juicy and profitable costs-plus military
contracts. Our skewed priorities are shown by the fact
that 51 per cent of our taxes go to defense and less than 5 per cent to
education. (On the other hand, some 300 American universities receive huge
military research contracts each year for weapons development, and this seems
to be enough to keep these 300-plus Pentagon-dependent schools quiet in the
face of governmental abuses.) With its enlarged budget, the Pentagon pays
pensions to some 25 million veterans, maintains an estimated 702 bases in 130
countries around the world, and pay the salaries of over 240,000 soldiers
stationed abroad from Afghanistan to South Korea. (If one were to include
troops deployed in Iraq, worldwide military presence abroad would be more
than 350,000 soldiers). Of course, the Pentagon operates also some 318 major
military bases within the United States and has 1.5 million military
personnel within the USA. As an a parte, as far as Iraq is concerned, if our
true goal were to install democracy there, we wouldn't be building 14 new
permanent bases there. Because of its large Because of its large military industry, the
U.S. is the number one weapons-exporting nation. In 2004, for instance, the
United States exported $18.5 billion worth of arms, around 80 per cent of
these exports going to developing countries and non-democratic regimes. This
placed the U.S. ahead of Russia ($4.6 billion) and France ($4.4 billion. To keep this huge military war machine
humming, you need wars, lots of wars, permanent wars. As George Orwell said,
"War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise
be used to make the masses too comfortable and...too intelligent." There
is no doubt now that America is a militarist nation that keeps its people as
little informed as possible. Now, let's look at the religion industry. This is a tax-free and heavily subsidized
industry. This has always been the case. But now, churches operate radio and
TV networks and money flows in like torrents. Some televangelists are
multi-millionnaires, with ranches and large properties. A case in point is Marion Gordon 'Pat'
"pro-assassination" Robertson whose charity gathering outfit,
"Operation Blessing", gives more than half of its yearly cash
donations to Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, according to the
IRS. On top of that, Robertson's shell organizations have collected more than
$25 million from the federal government under various "faith-based"
federal-handout programs. So, religious organizations not only do not pay
taxes, they also receive large government subsidies. Somebody should
calculate the total amount of money that religious organizations receive
yearly from the government, both in taxes not paid and in subsidies. It must
be in the billions and billions of dollars. What are the political consequences? What is
the political pull of these two powerful subsidized industries? It's enormous
and it is enough to make the influence of ordinary citizens irrelevant. If
the U.S. becomes an aggressive empire with a religious bent, you can bet it's
going to be financed with our own taxes. And the two major political parties
won't oppose it because the American party system has broken down under the
weight of special interests. This will have disastrous long-term effects for
America. No other book raises such fundamental
questions. Read it. Was this review helpful to you? ***** THE BUSH WORLDWIDE
ECONOMIC DEPRESSION , October 1, 2005 Reviewer: P. Randall, (Houston, TX, United
States) There is a big oil shock coming and the Bush-Neo-con
administration has hastened it. The U.S.-led illegal military invasion of
Iraq will be remembered as the start of the age of oil scarcity because it
has created a widening political instability and chaos in the Middle East
that will come to haunt us in the coming years. New energy-using technologies
will not be ready in time to avoid the coming 'Bush worldwide economic
depression'. I gather from this book that the first priority of U.S.
foreign policy is and has been for a long time the security of oil supply.
The author also asserts and demonstrates convincingly, I think, that the
American dependence on oil, both domestic and foreign, is high and growing
higher, and that the true U.S. Department of Energy is, in fact, the
Pentagon. But, by attempting to grab Iraq's oil reserves
by invading the country of Iraq, the Bush administration may have outsmarted
itself on a grand scale. Far from increasing the flow of oil, the U.S.
aggression against the oil-rich Muslim Middle East region will most likely
reduce it, and push oil prices to unheard of levels. Nobody at the Pentagon
seemed to have figured that out. As retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a
Vietnam veteran, has said, the invasion of Iraq has been the "greatest
strategic disaster in United States history." How did such a strategic blunder come about? According to the author of 'The New American
Empire', it all boils down to how the neo-cons succeeded in persuading the
Bush-Cheney team to defy the Muslim world (and the entire world), and invade
Iraq militarily. Starting as far back as 1992, neo-con-in-chief
Paul Wolfowitz and his neo-con buddies Lewis ('Scooter') Libby and Eric
Edelman, when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary under George H. Bush, penned
the overall neo-con Manifesto disguised as a Pentagon's planning report
entitled 'Defense Planning Guidance on Post-Cold-War Strategy' (Feb. 1992). That report said emphaticlly that "Our
overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle
East and Southwest Asia to] preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's
oil." The blueprint for targeting Iraq - and taking
control of the entire Middle East - conceived not only as as a strategy to
control oil flows but also to take the pressure off Israel, was echoed four
years later, in 1996, in a policy paper prepared for then-Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break", and signed by several key
neo-conservative policymakers - including Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. Wolfowitz himself reiterated this strategic
objective in a September 2000 document of the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC), called 'Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and
Resources for a New Century', to make sure the oil flows out of the Middle
East. In the spring of 2001, before 9/11, advisors on energy supplies to Vice
president Richard "Dick" Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, also
singled out Iraq for a military attack: "Iraq has become a key
"swing" producer[of oil], posing a difficult situation for the U.S.
government." Then came the infamous "Bush
Doctrine" of unilateral American aggression of September 2002. Echoing
the Wolfowitz Memo of 1992, the "Bush Doctrine" became then
official American policy in a 33-page National Security Strategy (NSS) issued
by President Bush on Sept. 21, 2002. This neo-con policy reversed 50 years of
containment and deterrence, within the international system of laws. Since Wolfowitz, as Rumsfeld's Defense Deputy
Secretary, is the guy who planned the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it can safely be
said that those who say that the attack against Iraq "had nothing to do
with oil" are either misinformed, dishonest or dumb. So are those who
say this war has nothing to do with Israel. Just check the recent endictments
of key AIPAC operatives for spying for Israel and how many of the lies
leading to the Iraq war came from this group of neo-cons. The U.S.-Israel
axis against the Muslim world is very strong and is the driving force behind
the Middle East conflicts. It's obvious the Bush administration, with its
Likudniks, is doing Israel's bidding in the Middle East. Now, the same group of neo-cons is planning a
U.S. military attack against Iran, and possibly also against Syria. When this
comes about, watch for the price of oil to go through the roof. The price oil
would likely go above $100 a baril, possibly shoot to $150 a baril. Then,
inflation and interest rates will be on the way up, and stagflation will
result. - The crush will probably come in the fall of 2006. - Meanwhile, get
prepared and read "The New American Empire" for more persuasive
arguments. ***** EXCELLENT ANALYSIS
WITH FACTS ,
September 27, 2005 Reviewer: A
Reader,
(Gary, IN United States) This is a straight forward book that looks
dispassionatly at the current political climate prevailing in the United
States. It presents a very forceful and convincing account of what makes
politics tick and how decisions of war and peace are made, and for which
interests. When the warmongering Neocons team up with the Armageddon
Christian fanatics, you better pay attention. Nothing good can come out of
such an unholy alliance. Chap. 16 on Western Civilization is worth by itself
buying this book. Stay informed and read this book. Was this review helpful to you? ***** 'Not a MUST WAR,
Not a JUST WAR',
September 22, 2005 Reviewer: W.
A. Boyle,
(Naples, FL, USA) President Bush's misguided and immoral war
against Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster from day one. It is a failed
strategy which is the result of a long series of lies. It was not a MUST WAR,
and it never was a JUST WAR. That's why it is bound to fail. Americans have seen through the lies and the
bad rationales for this war, and now, 50 per cent of respondents think the
U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq to begin with (Angus Reid poll). Another
poll revealed that 51 per cent of respondents believe the Bush administration
deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction (CNN and USA Today poll). Moreover, the public has not much
confidence the Bush administration can extricate itself from the Iraqi
quagmire, since 72 per cent of Americans believe President Bush has not
developed a clear plan for getting American troops out of Iraq (N. Y. Times
and CBS). As for the future, 55 per cent nevertheless
want to see a reduction in the number of troops in Iraq (NBC/WSJ poll). These
are political realities that the Bush Republican administration will have to
cope with in the coming months. In a democracy, the government has to
represent the will of the people. We are approaching 2,000 American deaths in
Iraq, and the number of Iraqi dead is in the tens of thousands, possibly more
than 100,000. Have we not got enough blood revenge, if this is what Bush is
after in Iraq? What is he doing in Iraq anyhow? It's not for al Qaeda, since bin Laden is in
Pakistan. It's not to protect the U.S. against weapons of mass destruction,
since Iraq has none. It's not to install true democracy by force since Iraq's
new constitution transforms this country from a secular state into an Islamic
state, on the basis of Islamic precepts. It's not even for the oil (even
though that's what Cheney was after), because Iraqi oil production is
actually down 25 per cent since the March 2003 invasion and is of no help in
keeping prices down. This is the case as U.S. forces control Iraqi oil
terminals, Iraqi oil fields, Iraqi refineries and the Oil Ministry building
in downtown Baghdad. It's not either to stabilize politically the
Middle East, since most experts, starting with Republican Senator Chuck Hagel
of Nebraska, believe the occupation of Iraq is doing just the reverse:
"I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the
longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur." And, it is not to save Iraq from chaos since
it is our illegal presence there that creates chaos; and, as a consequence,
the two major Iraqi groups (Sunnis and Chiites) are fighting us, the
invaders, and they want us out, especially out of their oil fields. Then what? Why are we killing people in Iraq
and getting our young soldiers killed? Why are we defying the international
community and betraying our own principles? Why are we making the oil
situation worse? The answer may be found in this book. The
author opens a new perspective on why the Bush administration took so many
risks in being the aggressor in Iraq. This is enlightening and rewarding
reading. Was
this review helpful to you?
***** There is a reason
why this book is gernerally not made readily available in corporate chain
bookstores. (ie. Cha***rs), September 11, 2005 Reviewer: N.
A. Lawrence
(Hamilton, Ontario Canada) I am not going to write a long winded
paragraph (not that that would be a bad thing). I just wanted to ad my
two-cents without going into elaborate detail. By this mean I really won't
leave any quotes to back up my arguements, so it is really up to the reader
who has read the book to determine whether he agrees with me. My only criticisms of this author's writing is
that it is too objectively written to the point where I think he neglects the
more sensational aspects, that pervade similar topics of reading. (How is
that for a run-on sentence?) I think slightly more blame for
"beligerant American foreign policy" lies within corrupt secrtive
groups. By this I refer to high ranking freemasonry (ie. dynastic power
families like the Rockefellers), Bilderbergers, Rothschilds and various
pro-zionist movements. Yes the author mentions all of these groups and their
influences, but I feel that he has taken too kind of an approach in
emphasizing their heinous acts in the last 300 years. Finally, a book that gives due criticism to
the pro-zionists. Too often does publishing make an effort to mask the hidden
agenda and faults of the Israel problem. Too often does Israel fail to
receive it's worthy critcisms for unjust land occupation. Though it is not a revelation by now, the
author of this book sufficiently goes on to elaborate on the true motives for
the US lead invasion of Iraq. He proves beyond a reasonable doubt that WMD
were not present in Iraq, nor were there any conlusive links to AL-Qaeda. This is the best example I reccommened of a
concise account of the war in Iraq. I will not credit this book with bringing
a revolutiionary new perspective to the Iraq conflict, but it eloquently puts
the conflict into perspective. This may sound like a detraction of the
quality of this book. However, I really think that an objective version of
the Iraqi war is needed. This is an educating read. Also, for those that fear of a book which
dwells specifically on the first hand accounts and strategies of the US war
effort, fear not. This book is written more from a political perspective. Ok, I guess that was long-winded. Was this review helpful to you? ***** OPERATION IRAQI
LIBERATION (O.I.L.) , September 8, 2005 Reviewer: Ray
E. McClelland,
(Springfield, IL, USA) In March of 2003, the Pentagon was looking for
a catchy phrase to name the military invasion of Iraq that it was about to
embark upon. At first, the geniuses at the Pentagon thought they had found
the perfect name: 'OPERATION IRAQI LIBERATION', until they realized that this
came out as an acronym: "OIL".-They settled for a less
controversial slogan: 'OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM'. 'Liberation' and 'freedom' here are only
propaganda terms to cover the real objectives of war. The American media
nevertheless fell for them and pretended that the Bush administration was
invading a sovereign country, without the legal basis of the United Nations,
because it wanted to "liberate" 25 million Iraqis from their
terrible leader, Saddam Hussein. The latter was demonized and accused of
preparing an atomic attack against the United States, using recently acquired
'weapons of mass destruction' (WMD) and colluding with the Saudi Osama bin
Laden to bring terrorism to the United States. The Bush administration
strongly insinuated that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks.
-Thanks to the media, a majority of Americans believed that, even though
everything, from day one, was a big LIE. Before opening "The New American
Empire", I had read Alterman's book "When Presidents Lie", a
book that covers the lies made by L.B. Johnson (Gulf of Tonkin Incidents),
John Kennedy (Cuban Missile Crisis Deals), Ronald Reagan (Iran-Contra
Scandal), Richard Nixon (Watergate Scandal), Bill Clinton (Monica), even F.
D. Roosevelt (Yalta). I did not suspect that belligerent-in-chief George W.
Bush would be so neo-Machiavellian and would best all of them in lying in
order to launch an aggressive war on his own. What else did I learn from this book? -That secular and religious supremacists are
very highly placed within the current Bush administration; -that the U.S., with less than 5 percent of
world population has close to 50 percent of military expenditures; -that G. W. Bush has a theologian writing his
speeches; -that Vice-president Cheney penned a report in
April 2001 singling out Iraq for a possible invasion in order to secure oil
shipments; -that highly placed Neocons within the
administration had long planned using U.S. power to secure Israel's military
dominance in the Middle East; -that Democrats are so indebted to AIPAC
(American Israel Political Action Committee) that they are paralysed when it
comes time to oppose Bush's foreign policy; -that the Nuremberg trials condemned countries
and leaders who do not respect international treaties; -that Bush's military invasion of Iraq did not
meet any of the five conditions for a "Just War"; -that the 2002 so-called 'Bush Doctrine'
repudiates principles which have been accepted by civilized nations since the
Peace of Westphalia, in 1648; -that the Patriot Act which suspends the right
of Habeas Corpus is a throwback to before the Magna Carta of 1215; -that all the public reasons given by Bush to
justify the war turned out to be lies; etc., etc., etc.. "The New American Empire" is a book about
geopolitics and history. It gives the big picture behind the on-going events.
It makes the reader open his or her eyes. Nobody can be fooled after reading
such a book. It's excellent writing. My thanks to the author. Was this review helpful to you? ***** BUSH: Failed
Policies and Disaster in Iraq, September 3, 2005 Reviewer: M.
C. Brown,
(WASHINGTON D.C., USA) When historians write the history of the early
years of this century, they will be aghast at the bad policies pursued by the
Bush administration. George W. Bush is a parental lineaged president and an
accidental president badly unprepared for his function. Former cabinet
secretaries, like former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil and former
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Whitman, have
confirmed that Bush does not have a cabinet of responsible secretaries, but
has assembled around him a choir of incompetent yes-men who tend to his
dictatorial wishes. The consequence has been that since George W.
Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, things have started to go from bad
to worse for America. Government resources have been sucked up into a foreign
war of aggression and tax cuts have been given to the rich and the
super-rich, while the poor are left to fend for themselves (see the outrage
of what happened in New Orleans!) and the middle class is left facing higher
prices and a move to poverty. When Bush, on his own, decided to go to war
against Iraq, he had no serious plan how to administer a country illegally
conquered through the force of arms. He had not made a realistic assesment of
the risks that such a rash enterprise would entail, and he had no plan on how
to extradite himself of the mess once the well expected disaster struck. Now,
others pay for his amateurism, his immaturity and his irresponsibility. Close
to 2,000 young Americans have lost their lives in this senseless war (one for
every day GWB has been in office!), while Iraq has been destroyed and
ransacked, and ten of thousands of Iraqi have been killed. Thanks to George
W. Bush, Iraq is a man-made disaster of great proportions. Faced with such disaster, Bush is reduced to
utter platitudes such as we need to have American troops in Iraq in order to
honor the troops who died there before. What a circular form of reasoning! -A
significant majority according to the polls, is against this war. If we were
a democracy, this war would end. -But everyone knows we are a plutocracy, and
a lot of people are getting awefully rich with this war. -Of course, there
are unmentionable reasons for this illegal and immoral war and why it does
not end. Reading "The New American Empire", everything becomes
cristal clear. You ought to read it. Was this review helpful to you? ****The (corrupt)
Fourth Branch of Government , September 1, 2005 Reviewer: Mary
B. J.,
(Amherst MA, USA) "Our country is now geared to an arms
economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an
incessant propaganda of fear. " General Douglas MacArthur In the 1976 movie "Network", a TV
network makes money by putting on the air a lunatic yelling commentator.
Thirty years later, how many radio-TV networks make money having lunatic
yelling characters in their programming? How about the four major
cable-television channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC) where fake jounalists
regularly hurl at each other? This a fact that the American conservative
cable-television channels and radio talk-shows have become an embarrassment
for the United States and for our democracy. They have become what Pravda and
Izvestia (News) were to the former Soviet Union, i.e. mouthpieces for the
government's propaganda. They air fake news and ignore news that doesn't fit
their pre-determined political agenda. Their only preoccupation seems to be
to control and manipulate public opinion and confuse the public. They are
comfortably "embedded" with the government and they act as shills
for it. Who are these corporate propaganda machines?
Well, suffice to say that a few global corporate giants such as Time-Warner, Disney,
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Viacom, General Electric, and Vivendi own and
control most media in this country. They own and control the powerful
propaganda machines that have the ability to turn outright lies into accepted
truth. A good example of corporate journalism
deception: On May 9, 2005, former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans
Blix spoke at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review conference in
N. Y. and proposed a Middle East ban on uranium enrichment, covering both Iran
and Israel, as a compromise solution to the so-called Iran threat. -Guess
what? -His comments were completely ignored by the New York Times, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal; they were cited only by the L.A. Times. Everybody
knows that in journalism, ignoring a story is tantamount to lying; it is the
conspiracy of silence. Then there were the famous May 1st (2005)
Downing Street memos which proved, without the shadow of a doubt, that Bush
II lied his way to his own pet war against Iraq. What happened in the U.S.
media world? -Silence. Their defence: We knew from the start that Bush was
lying; therefore, this is "old" news! Here is how John Swinton, former Chief of
Staff at the New York Times, qualifies this sort of corporate journalism: "The business of the journalist is to
destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the
feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and
I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools
and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they
pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives
are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." In his book, Tremblay stigmatizes American
media as having "abdicated their responsibility for critical inquiries
into government affairs and have become instead an integral part of the
government propaganda machine." (p. 95) When are we going to have an independent
investigation on how monopolized corporate journalism is destroying the very
institution of a free press in this country? How about the ownership
concentration of American media which is threatening freedom and democracy?
How the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is a joke in failing to
protect public interest? When are we going to get anti-trust media reform
which will place the rights of the people above commercial media monopolies?
-Meanwhile, read "The New American Empire" and read also D. Brock's
"The Republican Noise Machine". These two books complement each
other. Was this review helpful to you? ***** MURDERS R US, August 27, 2005 Reviewer: Michael
C. K.,
(New York, N.Y., USA) "The really dangerous American fascist is
the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler
did in Germany in a Prussian way." Vice President Henry Wallace, April 9, 1944 I don't know what's happening in the USA, but
there is a dangerous mental disease spreading like brush fire. When the
fundamentalist preacher Pat Robinson (and head of the Christian Broadcast
Network) called for the assassination of Venezuela's President, we know that
our own mullahs are as crazy as the extremist Islamic mullahs, like the ones
who called for the assassination of writer Salmon Rushdie. --I used to think
that Pat Robinson should be in an asylum. Now, I think he should be in
prison. The conservative fundamentalist Christian
movement is a perverse politicized religion. It deforms the Christian message
of "Love thy enemy" into "Assassinate those you don't
like". Unfortunately, that's the kind of screwball impostors and
charlatans that George W. Bush invites to the White House and consults. What would Jesus do? they sometimes ask.
Assassinate! Declare war! Bomb them!-This is insane. But we live in insane
times. If the fascist politico-religious movement had
its way, America would become a theocracy at home, under the control of
Christian supremacists, and an imperialist empire abroad, closely allied with
Israel. Dr. Tremblay in his wonderful book brillantly
synthesizes the fundamental political problem the U.S. is facing: "In this dawn of the 21st Century, a
disturbing wind of religious militancy and a supremacist will to military
power blows in certain important circles of American society. That such a
regression takes place in the most heavily-armed nation on the planet can
only add to the fear that, on the international front, political
destabilization and recurrent armed conflicts become an enduring reality."
( p. 10) 'The New American Empire' is an extremely well
written book filled with important information and fascinating analysis. I
wholeheartly recommend it to anyone with concern or interest in the future of
this country. Was this review helpful to you? ***** THE 'FUHRER
PRINCIPLE' and CIVIL LIBERTIES, August 21, 2005 Reviewer: Debbie
Coleman, (Washington DC) "I do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States." Presidential Oath "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this
land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison, 4th President of the United
States In Germany, in 1933, the German Reichstag
adopted the "Enabling Act", which gave the German chief executive -
Adolf Hitler - the legal basis for building the National Socialist
dictatorship and allowed him to conduct aggressive wars against other
countries. In 2001, in the United States, Congress adopted the "Patriot
Act", which gave the American Commander-in-Chief - George W. Bush -the
legal basis for imprisoning anyone he designates as an enemy in the so-called
open-ended "war on terror", without trial, or to launch wars of aggression
against other countries. Some may say: if that was good for Germany in
1933, why should it not be good for the U.S. today? It cannot, because
Germany was a de facto dictatorship (even though Hitler was elected), and the
USA is a democratic republic with a strong constitution. There are two principles in conflict here. One
essential principle is the old Anglo-Saxon Common Law, dating back to the
Magna Carta of 1215. It says that the government, as represented by a king or
a president, cannot imprison an individual without due process. This is the
Habeas Corpus principle which which forbids house arrest and detention
without a jury trial. The other principle, the one dictators and
tyrants of all stripes have always preferred, is the "leader principle",
under which the executive - monarch, president, or dictator - answers to no
one but to himself (or to God if he happens to be delusional and privileged
enough to hear voices). There is a "hic" here: the U.S.
Constitution does not include the doctrine of absolute executive power that
dictators in other countries (Lenin, Hitler, Staline...etc.) have devised to
suit their imperial instincts. For one thing, the Constitution reserves the
power to declare war and raise armies exclusively to Congress [Sect. 8, Cl.
11]. For another, the Constitution clearly states [Sect. 9, Cl. 2] that
"The privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended,
unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require
it." -The Bill of Rights , through its Fourth Amendment, guarantees
basic individual liberties essential to a free and democratic society. It
guarantees due process and stipulates that people have a right "to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures," and that such right "shall not be
violated." For the President to become a dictator would
require a violation of the Constitution and its betrayal, both by Congress
and by the Surpreme Court. In fact, however, there are American citizens
who have been in jail for years without being accused or submitted to a
trial. This is the case with Jose Padilla, an American citizen from Chicago,
who has been detained in military custody, without trial, at the Naval
Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, since May 15, 2002. This is in clear violation of the U.S.
Constitution. Why is that so? Has the U.S. Constitution ceased to operate? Is the author of "The New American
Empire" right when he says (p. 53); "The country which nowadays has
the most laws on its books restraining freedom and liberty is the United
States of America, with its Patriot Act and similar legislation that suspend
the right of Habeas Corpus and even allow the establishment of concentration
camps." This is a very current and very judicious book
that blends historical facts and geopolitical analysis. It's too bad it has
gone almost unnoticed in U.S. media. It deserves to be read and discussed
widely. Was this review helpful to you? ***** TO DIE FOR LIES, August 19, 2005 Reviewer: Richard
C.
,
(Portland, Oregon, USA) The U.S.-led Vietnam-style war against Iraq is
turning into a genuine disaster. Iraq is in worse shape than it has ever
been, the U.S. reputation in the world is in tatters and a majority of
Americans realize that close to 2,000 young soldiers were sent 10,000 miles
away to die for lies and for an emerging Islamic theocracy that will push
Iraqi women back half a century. As U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad
recently stated, "A lot of American blood and money has been lost."
In March 2003, when George W. Bush plunged
into a war in the Middle East with a minimum of knowledge, reflexion and
planning, it's obvious he had no real plan for an exit strategy from Iraq,
after the initial invasion. His pro-Israel Neocon advisors had assured him,
and he believed them, that the invasion of a foreign country would be a
cakewalk, the residents of Baghdad would be welcoming the invaders with
"flowers and candies". How could one be more wrongheaded? The Neocons
were marching to the arrogant tune that "We're an empire now, we make
our own reality." They could proceed with the faith-based invasion and
military occupation of Iraq with no regard for international law, for international
opinion and for common sense morality. -Well, reality is catching up with
them with a vengeance. But, why were 138,000 American soldiers sent
to Iraq in the first place? In the beginning, many chose to believe the
official lies, i.e. that the U.S. had to declare war on Iraq in order to
disarm the country of its dangerous weapons of mass destruction and to
prevent Saddam Hussein from helping al Qaeda's Islamist terrorists. When it was demonstrated that these rationales
were bogus, some still wanted to believe that the U.S. launched an unprovoked
war in order to build an American-style democracy in Iraq. No matter that
such an endeavour was completely illegal and impractical, it recomforted the
believers in the propaganda creed that U.S. soldiers were killing thousands
of Iraqis for a "good cause". Then, some started to go behind the announced
purposes and pretexts for this dastardly war. Not everybody was an idiot. The author of "The New American
Empire" could read through the lies and see that the entire exercise
only made sense if the Bush administration intended to reshape the entire
Middle East region, with its 300,000,000 inhabitants, to suit strategic
American interests in that part of the world. The book identifies the central real
objectives: -insure the continuous flow of Middle East oil, -control this
flow against European and Asian producers and consumers, -protect Israel
against its unfriendly Islamic neighbors (Iraq, Iran, Syria), -and establish
permanent military bases that will project American military power in the
Near and Far East with the obvious aim of containing and intimidating Europe,
Russia and China. Whether the planner was Cheney, Perle or Wolfowitz, the
order of priorities would change between oil and Israel, as wished. The
Neocons had a community of interests that American military power could be
relied upon to realize in one big swoop. Now, this entire plan is imploding: oil
production in the Middle East is being impaired by the hostilities, and this
could get much worse if a conflict with Iran or a revolution in Saudi Arabia
take place; oil prices are exploding and threaten the very stability of the
world economy; trade relations between countries are tenuous and risk being unravelled
in favor of protectionism; and, many banks and companies, here and in Japan,
for example, are on the brink of financial collapse. -In other words, things
may start ressembling a situation that one finds at the beginning of a severe
recession, possibly a depression. For his judment, for his analyses, and for his
deep understanding of geopolitics, Tremblay should be read by all those who
are trying to grope their way through the maze of official propaganda and
spin stories. "The New American Empire" is the closest thing to
one-stop shopping for an understanding of the Iraq war. This quote from
Clinton's national security advisor Samuel Berger stands out: "A
democracy cannot and should not go to war under false or incorrect premises."
-The book has an excellent bibliography with 559 footnotes. Was this review helpful to you? ***** The Neocon coup
d'etat after 9/11,
August 6, 2005 Reviewer: A
Reader,
(Arlington DC, USA) A legitimate debate has been censored, even
suppressed, in the U.S. about the key role played by pro-Israel Neocons in
providing faked intelligence reports and in persuading the Bush-Cheney team
to launch an unprovoked aggressive war against the country of Iraq. What role did Richard Perle, (Deputy Secretary
of Defense) Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Luti and others, play in
this illegal and immoral war, a war based on false pretenses? Why was the
Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, nearly completely staffed with Neocons,
so central in planning and implementing the war? Who appointed all these
Likudniks in such high positions of authority, many of them at the crucial
level of deputy under Secretaries? How come so many of them came from
agenda-promoting pro-Israel think tanks, such as the American Enterprise
Institute , the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs? Why have the Neocons taken nearly absolute control of the
Department of Defense? What political deals were made in the shadows?
Is treason involved? What will be the costs for young Americans in the armed
forces, for the U.S. taxpayers and for our democracy? Only a thorough and intensive investigation
would allow us to get to the bottom of this sordid affair in U.S. history.
Should we wait for historians to unearth the truth, or shouldn't Congress do
its job? In "The New American Empire",
economist Tremblay writes that "What is worrisome is that the events of
recent years have allowed a radical right to take complete control of the
U.S. government."(p. 11-12). He adds that there are " ...dangerous
ideological underpinnings for a U.S. foreign policy aimed at controlling
militarily Arab and Muslim countries, in its own interests and in those of
Israel. From there also originates the idea that the United Nations should be
cast aside, because it is too "obsessed" with the Arab-Israeli
conflict." (p. 66) "The New American Empire" is
brilliant , factual, revealing and straight to the point. It can be read
along with Imperial Crusades (Cockburn) and The Politics of Anti-Semitism
(Cockburn). Anybody who was initially in favor of this war has no leg to
stand on after reading this book. Was this review helpful to you? ****Democratic
Leadership and the American Empire, August 1, 2005 Reviewer: A.
Cole
(New York, NY) Why are the leaders of the Democratic party so
stupid and so foolish? Why do they try to position themselves to the right of
George W. Bush, where there are no votes for them and no moral ground to
stand on? Joseph Biden (DE), Hillary Clinton (NY) and
John Kerry (MA) pursue the same loosing strategy adopted by former Senate
Democratic leader Tom Daschle and former House Minority Leader Richard
Gephardt, when they took up Sen. Joe Lieberman's agenda (rather than
following Al Gore, Ted Kennedy or former President Jimmy Carter) in his
pro-war-against-Iraq cabal. You remember when Joe Lieberman said: "We
(the Democrats) feel that the president should be authorized to take military
action without the U.N." Lieberman, of course, was speaking for those
who really control the Democratic Party, i.e. AIPAC and their special
interests. What did the Democrats reap for their
association with the Bush administation? In 2002, rather than winning 40 new seats
and taking control of the House, as expected, they lost 5 seats and lost
control of the Senate. In 2004, things got worse and the Democrats lost 4
House seats and 4 Senate Seats, with John Kerry falling behind GWB by more
than 3 million votes. Is it true
that in matters of foreign policy, as Gore Vidal says, the U.S. is a
one-party system...with two right wings, controled by the same people? Now the Democrats are at it again. Against
common sense and reality, they are behind George W. Bush and his personal and
disastrous war in Iraq. Worse, they want to dig deeper: they call for sending
more US troops with more fire power into this ravaged land, rather than
calling for stopping this illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign
country. Don't they understand that our troops there are part of the problem
and are feeding terrorism all over? We should follow the advice of former CIA
chief John Deutch and pull out of Iraq now. Sad to say, but the present
Democratic leadership has lost its moral compass, if not its grip on reality.
It's amazing. What is going on? - In a recent USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll, a
majority of Americans (51%) say the Bush administration deliberately misled
the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and
a majority (58%) also say the United States won't be able to establish a
stable, democratic government in Iraq (July 26, '05). -Polls also show that 54% of Americans say
that the Iraq War made the country less safe (July 12, '05); -57% say they
did not believe it was worth going to war in the first place (May 3, '05);
and, 59% want a full or partial pullout of US troops from Iraq (June 13,
'05). And even more ominous, 42% of Americans say they would favor
impeachment proceedings if President Bush misled the nation about his reasons
for launching the war. Obviously, that's where the votes are, i.e.
with the American people. But no. The Democrats live on another political
planet. They are more bellicose than the Neocons! Why? Where are the
Democrats to lead the fight against the Bush administration and its lies?
Could someone answer these questions for me? This book gives some of the answers. On page
98, the author writes: "(The) Democratic leaders were much less critical
(of the war) than certain Republicans. They didn't dare confront both Bush
and Lieberman, choosing to support the objective of overthrowing Saddam
Hussein, while hoping that Congress would be consulted as to the means. The
Democrats in Congress, in the words of Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic
leader, wanted to 'move on to other things'." The author brilliantly and succinctly
explained why the Democrats lost in the fall of 2002: "The Democrats had
let themselves be hoodwinked by George W. Bush. Their "me too"
strategy had backfired. Instead of criticizing and proposing alternatives to
their opponents' propaganda, the Democrats had strengthened Bush and the
Republican Party's main electoral theme." (p. 115). I, for one, do not understand why future
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is so much pro war? Does
she really believe she can outbid George W. Bush as a warmonger? Maybe
Democrats like her should meditate on the rulings by the judges at Nuremberg
who described an unprovoked, violent invasion of a defenceless country as
"a crime against humanity, the paramount war crime." But wait. Congressional Democrats are not only behind
the Neocon/AIPAC war against Iraq, a large number of them are also behind GWB
and his Patriot II Act, a law that gives government agents the power to seize
educational, financial and medical records, without a court order, and jail
people without the protection of Habeas Corpus. On Thursday, July 21, 2005, 43 House Democrats
(including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, Maryland, and Rahm Emanuel, Illinois)
voted to extend or make permanent the most extreme provisions of the original
Patriot Act, while 156 House Democrats opposed. Since 15 Republicans opposed
the Bush administration's extension of the sixteen provisions of the act that
are set to expire at the end of the year, unless they are reauthorized by
Congress, if all House Democrats had opposed this permanent crackdown on
civil liberties, the measure would not have been adopted. As if this were not enough, now we learn that
some Democrats, led by Rep. Tom Lantos (D:Calif.) and Senator Joe Lieberman
(D:Conn.) have 'swallowed the bait hook-line-and-sinker' of Neocon delusion
and perversion in sponsoring a bill (the ADVANCE Democracy Act), -sort of a
"World Liberation Act" on the model of the 1998 "Iraq
Liberation Act", -to force the United States to intervene in the affairs
of other nations that do not pass the test of American democracy. -This is pure madness. Such legislation is
only designed to wrap up the failed Neocon war against Iraq (waged to conquer
the Middle East for Israel's sake) into a worldwide American crusade with the
aim of destroying Islam as a political force. Nothing could fan more the
fires of militant Islamist terrorism than such misguided legislation. Moreover, since the Congressional Budget
Office has already estimated that the Iraqi conflict's cost may exceed $700
billion, one can see that a worldwide crusade of intervention, with possible
military invasions, occupations and wars in one hundred-plus countries, could
bankrupt the U.S. as it did the former Soviet empire. Congressional
Democrats, by jumping in the neocon bed, are only helping Bush's Neocons pile
blunder upon blunder. The Dems should not let the Neocons pyramid our losses.
They should instead fight for domestic freedom and international peace. These are only three examples where
Congressional Democrats are failing a majority of Americans. Why is it so? That remains an open question. The author of "The New American
Empire" is to be congratulated for at least raising the issue. His
presentation is quite compelling in showing how close the U.S. is to becoming
a one-party state. *****BUSH'S FIASCO IN IRAQ, July 21, 2005 Reviewer: Karen W., (Los Angeles, CA,
USA) Who
can deny that Bush's faith-based military invasion of Iraq has been a fiasco
all along the line? In
"The New American Empire", Tremblay predicts that
"liberated" Iraq will morph into an Islamic theocracy, hostile to
women and politically allied with the Iranian mullahs. Guess
what! That's precisely what's happening under our very eyes. In
early July (2005), the Iraqi government signed an extensive pact with Iran
(remember the Axis of evil), a deal that reportedly included a billion
dollars in military and reconstruction aid. There goes the idea of a
western-styled democracy in Iraq. But
there is worse. The latest victims are women. For
nearly half a century, i.e. since 1959, Iraqi women were protected from the
harsh medieval Islamic law and had acquired legal equality with men in
secular Iraq. Now, Shiite clerics and religious politicians, put in power by
Bush's armies, have introduced a draft of the new Iraqi constitution that
contains a provision that places personal status law under the authority of
religious judges. The new religious constitution would repeal a relatively
liberal personal status law enacted in 1959, after the British-backed
monarchy was overthrown by secular military officers. Marriage,
divorce, inheritance and other such matters would be judged according to the
religious law of the community to which the person belonged. This step would
be a tremendous set back for women's rights in Iraq. As in the past, they
could be divorced at the whim of a husband, lose the guardianship of their
children and be discriminated against in matters of inheritance, besides
being prevented from working outside the house. Eventually the mullahs will
be asking Iraqi women to cover their faces. Is
this the accomplishment of U.S. armies in Iraq? What a disaster! Now,
we learn from famed journalist Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker) that the Bush
administration manipulated the January 30th (2005) election in Iraq by
covertly giving money to favored parties, such as the slate controlled by
Iyad Allawi, the CIA-supported acting Prime Minister, and by double-counting
many votes. The purpose: To prevent the Shiites, Iraq's major ethnic group
with more than sixty per cent of the population, from gaining a clear
majoritiy in the new assembly. What? Rigged elections? That's the pits. That
only proves Bush's deep hypocrisy when he talked of bringing
"democracy" to that country. Is
there a single American who still believes George W. Bush? Was
this review helpful to you? *****Simply the best book on American Empire, July 19, 2005 Reviewer: Mike K. King, (New York, NY, USA) I
have read many great (and not so great) books on President Bush and on how
his Neo-con advisers gave him the intellectual and the intelligence
ammunitions to launch a unilateral war against Iraq. None, however,
integrates the lessons of history (the cycle of empires) and the intricacies
of domestic politics (the role of AIPAC) in such a clear and powerful way as
The New American Empire does. The book covers such a wide range of related
topics, from the 'Just War theory' to the 'Brezhnev Doctrine' and the
'Helsinki Accords', that it is impossible to read it without acquiring ipso
facto a synthetic view of geopolitics and its current ramifications. It is a
welcomed antidote to the superficial analyses that one reads in the major
newspapers and hears on cable TV. I
have a feeling that this is one book that will stand out as very prophetic in
a few years. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A war conceived in Israel, July 17, 2005 Reviewer: S. K. Laudau, (Roanoke, IN, United
States) Why
did George W.Bush decide to defy international law and invade, a-la-Hitler,
the sovereign country of Iraq? The vast majority of foreign policy experts,
both Republican and Democrat, opposed Bush's whole approach to Iraq and
considered it a disaster. The same feeling existed among top American
military experts who were also opposed to an unprovoked U.S. attack on Iraq.
Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff were initially against the war. Then,
if reasoned analysis is lacking and if American interests were to be hurt by
this crazy adventure, why did it come about? That's
pretty much the question the author of "The New American Empire"
attempts to answer in this book, with very persuasive arguments, I believe. According
to Tremblay, the only group which has been consistently and vocally in favor
of the U.S. invading Iraq, going back to the mid-1990's, way back before
September 11, was the pro-Israel Neo-conservatives. This group's agenda was
clear from the beginning, i.e. they wanted to use American military power to
eliminate Middle East regimes hostile to the state of Israel, and they took
the means to persuade the Bush administration to get on their bandwagon. For
them, a global fight against Islamist terrorism represented a golden
opportunity to advance Israel's security. They argued, and possibly
self-deluded themselves in believing, that Israel's security was America's
security. It's
a fact that the only foreign government that openly lobbied for an American
attack against Iraq was Ariel Sharon's right-wing Israeli government.
Sharon's Likudnik government not only supported the war but also fed the Bush
administration with bogus intelligence that the latter used to justify the
war. As
historian Paul W. Schroeder has pointed out, this war is "the first
instance ... where a great power [is doing] the fighting as the proxy of a
small client state." Indeed,
that war has been very good to the Israeli government because it has done
what it was intended to do, i.e. destabilize Iraq along ethnic groupings,
while allowing the Sharon government inside Israel to build a wall to
segregate the Palestinians and expel as many of them as possible from Israel.
On the other hand, this has been a war that has turned into a catastophe for
the United States, whose youth went over there to die and to kill, while this
unlawful conflict has antagonized not only America's friends but has fueled
the international terrorist movement like nothing else. This has been an
unmitigated disaster. After
such a disaster, we need an independent investigation to throw some light on
the role of the foreign interests which superceded American interests in
promoting this ill-advised war. Where are the true democrats in the
Democratic party? Where are the true patriotic conservatives in the
Republican party? Is U.S. politics so corrupt that there is no one left to
fight for America's dignity?- Read this book to understand the cancer that
has taken over the U.S. government. Was
this review helpful to you? *****FOR OIL AND ISRAEL, July 16, 2005 Reviewer: P. B. Jonavan, (Amherst MA, United
States) "Depart
from evil,and do good. Seek
peace and pursue it." Psalms
34:14 Since
2000, the Neocons have taken charge of American foreign policy and they have
imposed their evil agenda. In so doing, they have brought to America the same
failed political philosophy that has produced the disastrous
Israeli/Palestinian relations of the past 30 years or so: Paranoia and more
paranoia; xenophobia and more xenophobia; injustice and more injustice;
lawlessness and more lawlessness; hatred and more hatred; violence and more
violence; deaths and more deaths, war and more war, ...etc.. This is the
vicious cycle that Israel has found itself in and that's the same vicious
cycle in which the pro-Israel Neocons want America to fall. In
1997, this group of pro-Israel Neocons created a Washington-based think tank
called "the Project for the New American Century" or (PNAC). The
central objective of the PNAC was to turn the United States into a
totalitarian global empire which is closely aligned with Israel's politics
and priorities, and which disregards international law and the interests of
other nations. In
2000, the Neocons produced a practical foreign policy plan for the United
States called "Rebuilding America's Defenses", while they were
about to fill the highest policy posts in the January 2001 Bush
administration, with the help of AIPAC. Their recommandations: - -Increase
defense spending; - -develop
and deploy a global missile defense system, and develop a strategic dominance
of space; - -exert
American control of cyberspace; - -and,
above all, reposition American permanent military bases to Southern Europe,
Southeast Asia and the Middle East. George
W.Bush and Dick Cheney, two oil-men, jumped on this imperial plan. It just
happens that the Middle East is not only important for Israel's security, but
it also has a lot of oil. If we Americanize the Middle East, so the thinking
went, we will de facto reduce our foreign oil dependence. As chief Neocon
Paul Wolfowitz said it, we can invade these countries and, ... their oil will
pay for our invasion. What a win-win situation! There
is a hic here: This oil does not belong to us, and people have a nasty
tendancy to resist foreign invaders, especially if they have the word
"crusade" on there lips and pretend they talk to God. Another hic:
Close to two-thirds of the 25 million Iraq population are of the Shia faith,
the same as their 75 million-strong neighbor, Iran. By overthrowing Saddam
Hussein's Arab Sunnis in Iraq, the U.S. ran the risk of establishing a Shia
government which, in time, will naturally align itself with Iran and be as
anti-U.S. as Iran. In
other words, as Tremblay clearly demonstrates in his book, the new Neocon
U.S. policy of military aggression in the Middle East has opened a Pandora's
Box in that part of the world, and elsewhere, with tons of unforseen problems
for now and for the future. And,
that's precisely where we stand today. Instead of isolating the small group
of Islamist terrorists responsible for September 11, by solving the feisty
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by targeting Osama bin Laden, the Neocon-run
Bush administration threw gazoline on the fire and illegally invaded a
sovereign Muslim country, creating thousands and thousands of new terrorists
among the Muslims the world over. Sooner or later Americans are going to wake
up to this reality. If
you want to understand how we got sucked in that mess, you need to read this
book. It will add to your own thoughts and ideas and make for more focused
thinking. Was
this review helpful to you? ****THE POLITICS OF PREJUDICE, July 15, 2005 Reviewer: J. S. Applebaum, (Ann Arbor, MI) Why
are America's poorest voting Republican? It's
all in the "southern strategy": First, it is a strategy that
attempts to convince poor whites to vote Republican and against their own
interests, for religious or moral values reasons. Second, it's also a
strategy that attempts to convince poor whites to vote in favor of tax cuts
for the rich, against their own interests, by appealing to prejudice against
blacks. And,
third, the same strategy of divisiveness attempts to convince poor blacks to
vote against their own interests by appealing to prejudice against gays. There
you have it: The politics of prejudice, and it pays, especially if that
strategy is reinforced by an attempt to deny the poorest blacks the right to
vote, as was the case in Florida and in Ohio during the last presidential
elections. On
page 33, the author of The New American Empire writes: "...it was a
veritable tour de force for the Republican Party to attract the poor white
vote that traditionally has gone to the Democrats, since Franklin D.
Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, but today, because of religion, goes to the
Republicans. The Bush administration has succeeded in granting huge tax
reductions to the richest Americans, while at the same time retaining the
support of the poorest with the lure of a reactionary religious ideology.
This polarization of the vote along religious lines instead of socio-economic
status is a new phenomenon." I
have to part somewhat with the author here. Although it's true that many
prejudices come from religion and that religious fervor blinds people about
their own interests in voting Republican, it's also true that this blindness
goes further than pure religion and so-called moral values: It encompasses
the whole gamut of racial and lifestyle prejudices. The
chapter " Politico-Religious Fundamentalism in the USA" (ch. 3) is
most interesting to read; so is the entire book. The New American Empire is a
valuable contribution to the political discourse. Was this review helpful to you? *****The Iraqi Quagmire and Terrorism , July 10, 2005 Reviewer: Edward C. Griffin, (Scottsdale, AZ
United States) Now
the Bush administration is telling us that we did not go to Iraq to liberate
democracy-thirsty Iraqi, but to follow what they called a "flypaper
strategy". According to this hairy theory, we wanted all along to turn
Iraq into a terrorist heaven in order to draw the terrorists to a place of
our choosing and fight them over there, rather than at home. President Bush
went to Fort Bragg on June 27 to outline this "theory", arguing for
a never-ending US war in Iraq and declaring: "We are taking the fight to
the enemy abroad so we do not have to face them here at home." Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld has echoed publicly this theory for a never-ending US war in
Iraq, a war that could see American soldiers die in Iraq for another twelve
years or more. As President Herbert C. Hoover once said: "Old men
declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die." How convenient.
Rumsfeld is 72 years old and most of his life is behind him. But
this absurd theory is being shred to pieces by the bombings in London and
Madrid. Unbelievably, even after the London attacks, President G. W. Bush was
still touting the flypaper theory: "We will stay on the offense,
fighting the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them at home."
Is braindead too strong a word? In
reality, not only is Iraq being turned into a dangerous den of terrorists and
insurgents, but it is becoming clear that the West's largest cities are now
prime targets for the very terrorists that the Bush administration has
multiplied by invading and desecrating Iraq. Far from making us safer, the
war in Iraq is encouraging more and more Islamist terrorists to strike at the
West. This could have very serious economic consequences in the coming years
and there will be a lot of losers. As
you remember, the U.S. was supposed to be out of Iraq in six months. On May
1st, 2003, President Bush even made a speech aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln in
which he declared "mission accomplished" and boasted that the
invasion of Iraq had "removed an ally of Al Qaeda." This has turned
out to be completly false. But, as Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of
propaganda, once said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating
it, people will eventually come to believe it." Now
the Bush administration is in a quagmire in Iraq and it is creating more
terrorists than it can kill. Let
us recapitulate the origin of this disaster. Instead of concentrating in
fighting al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration chose instead
not to finish the job in Afghanistan but to go after oil-rich Iraq (where
there were no al Qaeda terrorists). This allowed al Qaeda to rebuild and
reorganize, and the war in Iraq helped swell its ranks with young Muslims
from all over the world, outraged by the daily brutality of American troops
in that country. We
can say that the situation was created, first, by not concentrating on
fighting the small group of isolated Islamist terrorists, mainly located in
Afghanistan and Pakistan; second, by invading illegally another country;
third, once there, by protecting only one ministry, the oil ministry, and letting
other government offices be looted; also, fourth, because the Bush
administration was stupid enough to disband Iraq's 400,000 strong army, and
remove senior Baathist members (30-50,000) from the Iraqi government; then,
fifth, they compounded their mistake by organizing an election which excluded
the Arab-speaking Iraqi Sunnis, setting the stage for a grassroot nationalist
insurgency and what looks and feels like a civil war in Iraq. If this is not
"criminal negligence", what is? I
appreciate Mr. Tremblay's book telling it like it is. It's refreshing to
read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A World of Demagogues, July 10, 2005 Reviewer: S. Kennedy, (Berkeley, CA, USA) "No
passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning
as fear." Edmund
Burke During
the 1930's, when the world prepares itself for the calamity of World War II,
a few demagogue politicians rose to power in Germany and in Italy. These two
demagogues were Adolf Hilter and Benito Mussolini. Seventy years later, is
the same thing happening in the United States? The author of "The New
American Empire" seems to think so. Others
have found good passages in that book. Here is one on President Bush that I
find illuminating. On pages 115-16, Tremblay writes: "In
the fall of 2002, the Democrats were drubbed. The success of Bush and his
"Let's go to war" party was complete. On several occasions, Bush
displayed his worst character traits. He didn't hesitate to use demagogy to
further his aims-demagogy against Saddam Hussein, demagogy toward Democratic
candidates, demagogy against the United Nations-so much so that it seemed to
become a habit. Who could seriously claim that the politics of war and
patriotism à la Bush, is not a winning tactic in the U.S.? " Who
could disagree with that? I would only add demagoguery in exploiting
politically the tragedy of September 11. The
Oxford dictionary defines a demagogue as "a political leader who tries
to win support by using arguments based on emotion rather than reason." That's
an old story in certain countries, with a demagogues exploiting justified
grievances and fears in order to rise to power. Hitler did it in Germany,
exploiting the German defeat during World War I and the German resentment
against the Versailles Treaty. And now, Bush II has done it with the 9/11
terrorists attacks and the American resentment against Islamist terrorists. A
reasoned policy after these attacks would have been to track down Osama bin
Laden and his al Qaeda network of terrorists, with the help of the community
of nations, unanimously appalled as we were after these attacks. If that
policy had been followed, bin Laden would be either in jail or would have
been killed a long time ago, and the terrorist threat would have greatly
diminished. But
no. -Bush II chose instead to exploit the situation for his own personal
political benefit and, he saw a good opportunity to grab Iraqi oil and please
Israel and the neocon lobby in the U.S., by falsely accusing Saddam Hussein
of being behind the 9/11 attacks and of planning a nuclear attack on the
U.S..- All this was baloney and he knew it. The result: More Islamist
terrorists than ever and for decades to come. Indeed,
where are we? Bugged down in another unwinnable Vietnam-style war of aggression
and occupation, with young Americans dying in a remote land, with no support
from the international community and with the rest of the world looking at us
as a dangerous rogue state. It's a dead-end. As
the author says, the U.S. should "behave as a democracy and not as a
tyrant, and it should believe in self-limitation of its power for the sake of
world peace." That's not what we do now and this has disastrous
consequences. This book is highly recommended. Was
this review helpful to you? *****The USA as a big Israel, July 8, 2005 Reviewer: Paul M., de Melo, (Washington, DC USA) Bush's
ill-advised war against Iraq is quickly becoming the biggest U.S.
foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam. The American military occupation of
Iraq is the main cause of the insurgency, not its cure. It is a fallacy to
believe that you "liberate" people by raiding their homes, killing
their loved ones and pushing them around. When
you do that, as Israel has done in Palestine for decades, and as the U.S has done
in Iraq, flattening whole towns - from Fallujah to Ramadi and now to the
desert villages around Qaim, - you only breed more resentment, more despair,
more chaos, and you end up creating the very conditions for the development
of a nationalist insurgency bent on fighting the "foreign invaders"
at all costs. As
analyst Fred Kaplan has commented: "Leveling towns, bombing every
suspicious target in sight - this is not how hearts and minds are won or how
persistent insurgencies are defeated." That should be obvious. But many,
beginning with George W. Bush, do not understand or do not want to
understand. It's
a truism to say that the United States is hated across the Muslim world. As a
matter of fact, if truly free elections were held tomorrow in Egypt and Saudi
Arabia, for example, their U.S.-backed regimes would be swept away by
anti-U.S. Islamists. This
war against Iraq was improvised from day one. A small group of longtime
pro-Israel advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the Bush
administration's agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
The State Department, the CIA and even top generals were shoved aside and
replaced with pro-Israel civilians (Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Shulsky, Luti,
Cambone, ...etc.) elevated to decision-making posts within Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. After Sept. 11, President Bush and Vice President
Cheney embraced the Neocon plot to invade and occupy Iraq. -That's history. But,
whatever the current pressures from the Neocons and their allies in the
media, the Bush administration should cease all offensive military operations
in Iraq and end its illegal and immoral occupation of that foreign country.
It should not wait for the disaster predicted by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld to unfold, i.e. a protracted bloody occupation that could last
"five, six, eight, 10, 12 years." The
sensible alternative is an international peacekeeping force, made up of many
Muslim countries, that could help the Iraqi government regain some legitimacy
in the eyes of its own people. That's at least the message I got from reading
this book, ...unless the U.S. wants to turn into an big imperial Israel on
the world stage. But then, we should not be surprised if we are isolated and
loathed. This is a "thumbs up" book. Was
this review helpful to you? *****CHIP ON THE SHOULDER PATRIOTISM, July 5, 2005 Reviewer: William B. Rice (Seattle, WA United
States) What
this book suggests is that we find in contemporary America an explosive
mixture of exacerbated self-centered nationalism, a feeling of military
supremacism and a quasi-religious dismissive chauvinism against the rest of
the world, that can only lead to disasters. The
author contrasts the Jekyll-and-Hyde set of conflicting personalities that
America presents to the world, i.e. an idealistic one and a chauvinistic one.
On
page 158, he writes: "There
is the America that was foremost during the time of John F. Kennedy:
idealistic, ...progressive, generous, internationalist, ...confident in
itself and in the future, at the vanguard of scientific progress, open-minded
and heedful of human rights. ...This is the America that contributed to
creating the United Nations on June 26, 1945, and that sent a man to the moon
in July of 1969. It has been the pride of humanity."--- "There
is another America, that most exemplified by George W. Bush: materialistic,
egocentric, xenophobic, abrasive, ...arrogant, ...bathed in religiosity and
superstition, isolationist, vengeful, ...militaristic, belligerent, ...projecting
a spoiled brat and "instant gratification" mentality, and somewhat
paranoiac. Since January 2001, it is this second America, ... that George W.
Bush embodies and projects around the world, with disastrous results for the
international image of the United States." Tremblay
examines how these two contradictory traits of American political culture
have played out in the Bush administration's policy to invade Iraq, without
an explicit endorsement from the United Nations and against most of the world's
public opinion. But
"The New American Empire" is even more devastating when the author
draws a parallel between the evils of nationalism in 1930 Nazi Germany and in
2000 Neocon America. Hilter's Germany invaded Poland against the world's
public opinion; Bush's America invaded Iraq against the world's public
opinion. Hitler
had arrogantly said: "I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the
war, never mind whether it be true or not. The victor shall not be asked
later on whether he told the truth or not." In 2003, amazingly, George
W. Bush used nearly identical words when he said, before his invasion of Iraq
under false pretenses: "History is written by the victors". And,
his political mentor Karl Rove added: "...The victor is always
right." This
is a severe diagnosis, all based on facts. But
the book's central message remains optimistic. The author cannot bring
himself to believe that a great democracy like the USA would reject for very
long its ideals of liberty, democracy, and the rule of law, and choose
instead, like 20th Century Germany, to go all the way on the treacherous and
bitter road of military unilateralism and permanent wars. -Everything hinges
on a renewal of the American political leadership in the coming years. -If
such a renewal is not forthcoming, a regression of historical proportion
remains possible. The
book is a good complement to Lieven's Anatomy of American Nationalism, and to
Bacevich's The New American Militarism. It is a clear and cogent contribution
to the discourse on U.S. foreign policy, especially as it relates to the
military occupation of Iraq and to America's place in the world. Was
this review helpful to you? *****THE BIG LIE, July 1, 2005 Reviewer: James M. Nelson, (Chapel Hill, NC,
United States) Can
a politician, bent to launch a war of aggression on his own, deliberately and
systematically lie to Congress and the American people, and use those lies to
gain congressional approval for his predecided military action? That's pretty
much what President George W. Bush did in deciding to invade Iraq on March
20, 2003. It
is all documented: The Bush administration made a policy of war, then
altered, twisted and distorted the facts to fit that policy. For that, they
used disinformation and psychological warfare against the American public.
Their main objective was to make enough arguments connecting Iraq to
terrorism and bin Laden that the American people would believe Iraq was
behind the 9/11 attacks. And, with the active help of conniving media, it
worked. This has been a concerted and blatant effort to manipulate the truth
and fool the American people. The
New American Empire is a book that documents the long string of lies by the
Bush administration on the way to its ugly bloody war against Iraq. First,
the Bush administration fabricated intelligence to back up its decision to go
to war. Later, it would manipulate the results of Iraq's elections, waiting
three long weeks to announce the results, in order to prevent the Shiites to
have an absolute majority. Second,
the Bush administration scared the American public to death by pretending
that Iraq was hell-bent on getting WMD and atom bombs, and that, when it did,
it would give them to religious fanatics to use on Washington, D.C..- To
"prove" that, they invented the story of the uranium from Niger and
pretended some aluminum tubes were for uranium enrichment. This was false.
Then, Secretary Powell went to the United Nations and pretended that some
trucks were biological labs. That was false. The President himself used this
false information in a speech in Cincinnati, on October 7, 2002, and added
that Iraq had drone aircraft that could possible deliver chemical weapons
into the United States. This was a fabrication. Third,
we learn from the official British Downing Street Memos that Bush launched a
secret war against Iraq on September of 2002, more than a month before
getting Congress's authorization. Bush also ordered bombing 'spikes' in Iraq,
as early as June 2002, in order to goad Saddam Hussein into a war. President
Bush has the tendency to camouflage his lies and imperialist instincts with
lofty 'goals', such as spreading 'freedom and democracy', so as to provide
some moral justification for his un-democratic and Americo-centric military
interventions in the affairs of other countries. This is pure posturing and
hypocrisy. Nobody outside the United States believes this rhetoric. All
this smells very badly and reveals flawed thinking. -When President Bill
Clinton engaged in some illicit sexual misconduct, the Republicans asked for
an investigation and for his impeachment. Now that President George W. Bush
has engaged in lies and deception to launch an illegal and immoral war, with
1,750 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, -and compting-, the
least the Democrats could ask is an investigation and a possible impeachment.
---This
book Is a Must Read. Was this review helpful to you? *****A VERY PERSONAL WAR, June 28, 2005 Reviewer: Charles Dalton, (Alexandria, VA, USA) As
early as 1999, coming back from a trip to Israel and a meeting with Ariel
Sharon in December 1998, future President George W. Bush confided to the
writer of his biography that he intended to use American military power to
invade Iraq, ... if he was given the chance. Author and Houston Chronicle
journalist Mickey Herskowitz, who met GWB many times in 1999, says: "It
was on his mind. He (Bush) said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great
leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he (Bush) said, 'My father
had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of
Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade..., if I
had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything
passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful
presidency.' " Since
when has the United States had a president who wants to wage war for his own
personal glory? Some may have come close, but this is the first time in U.S.
history (to my knowledge) that a politician says aloud that he needs a war
for personal egoistical reasons. Everybody
knows that the Neocons in the government (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, ...etc.)
wanted to invade Iraq since at least January 1998, when they sent an open letter
to that effect to President Clinton. It is a fact that the so-called
'neoconservatives' in the Pentagon have wanted to invade Iraq long before
Sept. 11, and they fixed the information and the intelligence to make
everybody believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and
that Iraq was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. What
most people ignore, however, is that George W. Bush also had Iraq in his
target at least since 1999, a full year before he was elected president, by a
whisker and the help of the Supreme Court, in November 2000. In the aftermath
of 9/11, he thought he had all the cover necessary for launching a
first-strike invasion of Iraq. The Neocons made sure to frame Iraq as a false
national security threat posed to the United States, and they supplied the
President with faked intelligence reports that the White House actively
requested; and, in turn, Bush used these bogus reports to deceive and mislead
the United States Congress and the American people as to the real basis for
taking the nation into war against Iraq. This
information is well documented in "The New American Empire" and,
what's more, it is brillantly presented within the overall historical
context. It would be hard not to recommend such a book. This is a book that
will be read twenty years from now. -It belongs in everybody's library. -Read
Tremblay's book carefully and you will never think the same way about U.S.
foreign policy. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A PROPHETIC BOOK, June 23, 2005 Reviewer: M. Jennessy (New York, NY, USA) On
page 180-81, the author of "The New American Empire" wrote: --"
In the spring of 2002, George W. Bush had already decided to "invade
Iraq no matter what". Indeed, it was revealed by Richard Haass, the
director of the policy-planning staff at the State Department, that George W.
Bush had made the decision to invade Iraq well before July 2002. He was told
by Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, during the first week
of July 2002, "not to waste his breath... the decision has been
made." New information makes it more likely that the decision to attack
Iraq was made within days after the September 11th suicide hijackings of
2001, eighteen months before the event.- Well,
this is precisely what highly classified British documents, published last
May 1st (2005), have revealed. Half a dozen official memos and option papers,
written by top aides to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have indeed
provided the definitive proof that President George W. Bush and his neocon
advisors had decided to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein, whatever the
circumstances and whatever the costs, as early as the fall of 2001, and even
before. That's the reason the author could say that the entire diplomatic
exercise of going to the United Nations during the fall of 2002 and in early
2003, supposedly to avoid a war, was truly a charade and a deception. As
a matter of fact, the Bush administration and Bush himself were lying openly
when they repeated ad nauseam that war was their choice of "last
resort". We now know that war against Iraq was rather their first
choice. Sir Richard Dearlove, the Head of the British CIA (called the MI-6
spy service) confirmed, after a visit to Washington, that the Bush
administration was fixing "the intelligence and facts ... around the
policy", which was to invade Iraq, whatever the legality or the morality
of such a policy. They [the Bush administration] were "scrambling to
establish a link between Iraq and al (Qaida)" and that there were
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, knowing full well that this was false.
But that's what they told Congress and the American people. Bush and his
Neocons knew from the start that they were going to have to manufacture
excuses to justify a war against Iraq. What
now? A lying President? a duped Congress? a misinformed American electorate?
an illegal and immoral war? "The
New American Empire" is an eye-opener. Its author succeeds admirably in
placing everything in the proper context, so the reader has a complete picture
of the real motives behind a war which has already killed 1,741 American
soldiers (more than 13,000 wounded) and brought death to as many as 100,000
Iraqis, directly or indirectly. I encourage you to read this book. Was
this review helpful to you?
****A GOOD READ, June 23, 2005 Reviewer: Jimmy H. Mitchell, (Attleboro, MA, USA) Because
of the good reviews and positive comments, I began reading The New American
Empire looking for an original analysis of why America is jumping on the
imperial bandwagon and betraying its democratic ideals. I was not
disappointed. The author is straight-forward and very credible. Many
authors deplore that the USA under Bush II is turning imperialistic, but few
explain why. There are some political taboos, it seems, few want to
challenge. For example, each time somebody points out the disproportionate
influence that pro-Israel Neocons exerted in promoting and planning the war
against Iraq, there is a chorus of sycophants who resort to character
assassination and brandish the label "anti-Semitic" in order to
silence the impertinent. Why the censorship? For
example, when former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told a June 16, 2005 House
Democrats hearing that the war against Iraq was part of an effort to allow
the United States and Israel to "dominate that part of the world,"
he was condemned by none other than Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic
National Committee. Another
case in point: In March 2003, U.S. Congressman, Jim Moran (D. VA) attempted
to denounce the corrosive influence of the pro-Israel cabal goading US into a
war with Iraq (a cabal orchestrated by the Jewish AIPAC lobby), he was
promptly chastized and stripped of his regional leadership post within the
Democratic Party by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. It seems evident
that money talks louder than truth within the Democratic Party. The
New American Empire depicts the enormous efforts the pro-Israel cabal
invested in persuading the Clinton and Bush II administrations to launch a
war against Iraq. These efforts were public and well publicized. Then, why
the denial? As
a sideline, one particular passage struck me as very revealing. The author
indicates on page 56 that when Ariel Sharon was Israeli Minister of Foreign
Affairs, he gave George W. Bush the use of a helicopter to tour the country.
The visit to the holy sites stimulated Bush's religious fervor. The President
himself tells in his autobiography how impressed he was to see the golden
roofs of Jerusalem. Is this anti- semitic to point that out, especially
considering that Ariel Sharon made many public and private calls on Bush to
declare a war against Iraq? On
the whole, I enjoyed the book but I would have liked to read a deeper
analysis on the economic side of the imperialist equation, especially since
the author is a renowned economist. Nevertheless, the book is a good asset to
have on the shelf with others like Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire
and Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival. I give it four stars. Was
this review helpful to you? *****OIL, ISRAEL, AND MILITARY BASES, June 21, 2005 Reviewer: R. Eller, (New York, NY, USA) "Bush
wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy." DOWNING
STREET MEMO,May 1st, 2005 "Oil,
Israel, and Military Bases", could have been the title of this
enlighthening book. This indeed summarizes in a nutshell the true rationale
behind George W. Bush's decision to invade Irak and wreak havok in this
remote country. Now
that everybody knows that the official reasons to go to war were false, there
remains the central issue of why did we go down the road of an aggressive and
unprovoked war. As the British government's Downing Street Memo made clear,
the case for war has been a machination from the start: The Bush
administration knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and
that Iraq had not been involved in the September 11 attacks. Nevertheless, it
could not resist using the pretext of 9/11 to launch an illegal and
unprovoked war against that country. Why? Well,
the book, "The New American Empire", gives the answers. 1-
The oil factor Besides
the personal obsession of GWB with Saddam Hussein, the two oil-men Bush and
Cheney (remember Halliburton?) yearned to control Iraq's rich oil fields.
That's the reason why they gave the orders to American troops arriving in
Baghdad to surround and protect the buildings of the Iraqi Oil Ministry and
leave the other buildings open to looting. 2-
The Israeli factor Then,
a pro-Israel cabal, well entrenched within the U.S. government, and the
Sharon government itself, mounted a tremendous campaign, starting in 1998, to
have the United States take the lead for a regime change in Iraq and install
a pro-American and pro-Israel government. This group, led by Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz (the true architect of this war) is the most responsible
for feeding the government and the media with false information about Iraqi
WMD and Saddam's nonexistent links to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 3-
The Military Bases factor A
third strategic goal in attacking Iraq was the pressure Saudi Arabia was
placing on the Pentagon to remove its bases and troops from that country and
the need to relocate these bases in a more central location in the Arab
Middle East. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz confessed, in a May 9,
2003 interview with Vanity Fair, that relocating the military bases was
indeed an overriding motive for the decision to attack Iraq. There
you have it. You can close your eyes, as some pro-war commentators are doing
and say that you knew from the start that GWB was lying, but you cannot any
longer deny the truth. You can also do what Bush is doing and invent new
reasons to justify the war after the fact and say that you did it for
"democracy" or even for "God", but these empty phrases do
not hold any water. Once
you have read this book, nobody will be able to feed you propaganda baloney.
Read it. Was
this review helpful to you? *****LIES AND DECEPTION AS A POLICY, June 19, 2005 Reviewer: Jim Reed (Oakland, California,
USA) "That's
the interesting thing about being the president,... I don't feel like I owe
anybody an explanation." President
George W. Bush I
wish I had read this book long ago. It's an eye-opener. It contains all the
information and analysis I needed to fully understand why and how President
George W. Bush hijacked the tragedy of 9/11 for his own personal benefit and
for the benefit of his pro-Israel neocon advisors (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith,
Bolton, ...etc.). The
Downing Street secret memorandums on this deception confirm everything that
is explained in "The New American Empire." It is true a lot of what
the author covers could have been known to an astute observer, but the
details he includes and the connexions he makes throw new light on the facts.
Everything becomes crystal clear and the lies and deception are all there for
one to see. My
personal reaction is that the American people has been had by the pro-Israel
Neocons and by a trigger-happy and half-educated president who saw, after
9/11, a good opportunity to control Middle East oil and settle a score
against Saddam Hussein, about whom he had an obsession. Everybody
knows, by now, that the President was lying when he presented himself as a
Christian man of peace who saw war only as a last resort. The march to war
against Iraq was choreographed from the start. The President had decided to invade
Iraq long before he consulted Congress in the fall of 2002. Then he made a
blanket use of the discretionary powers Congress gave him under the false
pretenses of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a fabricated link
between 9/11 and Iraq, in order to wage war at his only and sole personal
discretion. But, are we a democracy or a dictatorship? All
these lies and abuse of power should be investigated to establish if any
crime has been committed by all those involved in this sordid affair. There has
not been such a systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic
manipulation of American opinion, such official propaganda and agitprop
intended to agitate and frighten the American people into a pre-determined
course of action, since the war in Vietnam. And then, as we remember, this
led to President Lyndon B. Johnson's departure and eventually, to President
Richard Nixon's resignation.- The coming years risk being very interesting
indeed. This is the one book to read on the Iraq War. Was
this review helpful to you? *****THE HYPOCRISY OF WAR: God made me do it, June 16, 2005 Reviewer: Paul H. Turner, (Georgetown, DC, USA) "International
law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to me." George W.
Bush, 12 Dec. '03 "War
is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others on the
altar of their greed." John Cory In
almost all wars, especially in the case of aggressive wars, governments must
use deception and lies to persuade the people that to go abroad to kill other
people is necessary. Politicians and their allies in the media then create a
psychosis of war, villify and demonize the targeted enemy through propaganda,
and pretend that the war is being waged for grandiose ideas of "freedom
and democracy", while it is no more that the old thirst for conquest,
for exploitation, and for resources. Truth and objectivity are sacrificed in
order to rally the people around the war effort. The
epitomy of hypocrisy is only reached, however, when the warmongers pretend
that they are doing their killings under an order from God. This
on-going war against Iraq, started on March 20, 2003, but planned by George
W. Bush and his neocons over a decade before, is the type of aggressive war
that the founding of the United Nations, in 1945, was supposed to outlaw. As
this book demonstrates, even if offensive wars are illegal, this does not
prevent a strongly armed government that does not respect international law
from launching wars at will. That's pretty much the case with the Bush
administration. At
first, it used lies to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction and was connected to al-Qaeda. Then, when these
lies were exposed, it pretended that the U.S. had received some sort of
divine mission to overthrow other governments and impose their vision of
"democracy". In the final presidential debate of October 2004,
George W. Bush went even further and said that he was implementing God's
policy in launching illegal wars abroad: "I believe that God wants
everybody to be free. That's what I believe. And that's part of my foreign
policy. In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the
Almighty." There
we have it. - Bush is saying in effect that he cannot be held accountable for
his illegal and immoral decisions because "God made me do it."
After all the pain and suffering, after 1,700 American deaths and 13,000
wounded, and after tens of thousands Iraqi dead and their country destroyed,
the war president is saying that he did all that to please God? Come on! Has
the While House become a madhouse? "The
New American Empire" exposes the hypocrisy of this first aggressive war
of the 21st Century. It's a must read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****HAVE WE BECOME A VIOLENT NATION UNDER THE GUISE OF
RELIGION?,
June 5, 2005 Reviewer: Cathy O'Connell, (Los Angeles, CA,
USA) "The
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the
same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of
tyranny." James
Madison, fourth US president, Federalist Paper 47 "Many
of the wars whose desolating surges have divulged the earth, have been
carried out in the name and under the sanction of those who profess the name
of Christ." Veritatis
Amans, 1847 On
May 25, 2005, Amnesty International accused the United States government of
violating human rights, of ignoring international law and of sending a
"permissive signal to abusive governments". That's where the Bush
administration stands internationally, i.e. a government accused of having
launched an illegal war against Iraq and of violating basic human rights through
killings and torture. If
the U.S. turned fascist, this would not be the first time that there has been
a corruption of democracy. During the 1930's, the German people also thought
they were free until a small group of fascists took over the government,
embarked upon wars of aggression and suspended individual liberties. The
seeds of tyranny take time to grow and blossom, as bit by bit freedom is
being eroded. What
is most dangerous in the current calls for violence and wars is the religious
and nationalistic cloak they are wrapped in. George W. Bush is a politician
who pretends to be a warring Christian and a staunch nationalist. Faced with
this religious fervor and nationalist pride, millions of American have come
to accept that "freedom-loving Christian America" must engage in a
battle for survival with millions of Muslim foreigners who supposedly hate
freedom. This has become some sort of a crusade in Bush's words or a new war
of religion. But
politics and demagoguery often go together. Politician G.W. Bush and
televangelist Jerry Falwell, for example, like to say that "God is
pro-war", while at the same time professing that they draw their
political philosophy from Jesus. For Christians, nothing can be further from
the truth. As
the author of this book points out (pp. 127-131), the Christian "Just
War theory" only allows for defensive and self-defense wars, not the
aggressive and imperial war Bush and his neocon advisors have embarked upon
in Iraq. As the author explains, the Bush administration has violated all
five criteria for a just war (just cause, correct intention, legitimate
authority, proportionality and as a last resort), when it unilaterally
decided to launch an immoral, illegal and un-American war against Iraq,
before the United Nations inspection team had even completed its
investigations. This first aggressive war of the 21st Century cannot have
been undertaken in the name of Christianity. The late Pope John Paul II
solemnly condemned it and most respected religious authorities have done the
same. Too
many Americans of the George W. Bush-Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson type have
transformed their faith in God into a faith-based patriotism and into a
quasi-religious belief in the American nation-state and its imperial wars.
But waging wars of aggression is the most un-Christian act one can commit,
because it involves killing and maiming innocent individuals with ever more
sophisticated means. The god of war is not a Christian god. There
are few better books on the theme of an American empire gone amok than
Tremblay's welcomed critique of George W. Bush's foreign policy. It is a book
that does not pull any punches. This makes for an interesting reading. Was
this review helpful to you? *****The Right Wing Propaganda Machine, June 4, 2005 Reviewer: J. Bannier, (Boston, MA, USA) The
right wing media are not very good at covering the news, but they are very
good at suppressing it. A good case in point is the famous Downing Street
Minutes of the British Cabinet, which revealed that George W. Bush had
officially decided to launch a war against Iraq in July 2002, months before
submitting a resolution on Iraq to the United States Congress and months
before Bush and Blair asked the United Nations to resume its inspections for
alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. First published by The Sunday
Times of London on May 1, 2005, the report is the official government minutes
from a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national
security officials who had just returned from meetings with high U.S.
Government officials in Washington during the summer of 2002. Citizens
in the rest of the world were able to read verbatim the words of Richard
Dearlove, the then-director of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6, about how the
intelligence and facts were being fixed in the United States around the
policy that Bush had already decided to pursue, ... no matter what. What
was the U.S. press's reaction to these stunning revelations about a president
who manipulated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in order to carry
out his preconceived plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein? Did they inform the
American public about the duplicity of their president who decided in early
2002 to invade Iraq without justification and then cooked up the justification
later? Not at all. They rather chose to ignore the official report and
pretend it did not exist. What an appalling performance. When
some say that we are not far from fascism, this is a good example of how information
is being suppressed in totalitarian regimes. The American media on the whole
are blatantly biased on the conservative side and would do anything to shield
the Bush administration from serious investigation about its lies and its
crimes. That's what you would expect from the press corps in a dictatorship. "The
New American Empire" is a book which provides a scathing critique of
U.S. media. When it says that U.S. mass media "have allowed a radical
right to take complete control of the U.S. government" (p. 11), or that
they have allowed an American nomenklatura to embark upon a new imperialism
(p. 12), who can disagree? For these negligent and incompetent media, war is
seen as part of the entertainment industry, nothing less. As the author points
out, the media have played a central role in the country's war psychosis
before the onset of the 2003 war against Iraq. Even the best among them, i.e.
The New York Times, have confessed their mistakes. Others do not have the
necessary professionalism to do the same. Some so-called
"journalists", such as Charles Krauthammer of Time magazine, were
active members of the pro-war cabal. This
book provides more than information. It analyses the causes and explanations
behind the policies and the events as they were unfolding in 2002-2003. It is
a good primer on the ideology of empire and how the U.S. is dangerously
moving away from its democratic ideals and embracing instead the totalitarian
idea of armed world hegemony. It's a good read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A WORLD OF SMALL LEADERS, June 2, 2005 Reviewer: M. Jennessy (New York, NY, USA) A
major problem today comes from the reality that many important countries are
run by individuals of little moral or intellectual capabilities. The
U.S. under Bush II, Russia under Putin or Italy under Berlusconi are typical
of countries whose leaders are at the very bottom of the heap. Such leaders
are mistrusted, even loathed. This is a most unheathy situation and is an
harbinger of bad things to come. Bush's
illegal war against Iraq, Putin's brutal repression in Chechnya and
Berlusconi's on-going corruption crisis in Italy, paired with the possible
disintegration of Europe, feed a genuine public mistrust of politicians. -Bad
leaders usually make bad decisions, but the negative consequences may take
years and decades to onfold. All that creates a general crisis of political
confidence in many countries, not the least in the United States. It's not
far for this crisis to spill into the economic sphere, already badly damaged
by the financial and accounting scandals of the last five years. This
book is undoubtedly pessimistic. It places emphasis on the some 54-year
Kondratieff cycle of inflation-disinflation-deflation as the main
undercurrent of what's happening in the world, politically as well as
economically. -For example, the movement toward European integration
initiated by the Treaty of Rome of 1950, is currently being stopped (55 years
later) by negative popular referendums in member countries. The author also
expands on the some 600 year cycle of empires (chap. 16) at the end of which
he sees China and Asia taking the lead over the U.S. and Europe. Maybe he
should have also mentioned Arnold Toynbee's 100 year hegemonic wars cycle
that has plagued Western civilization for centuries and which is in the
process of repeating itself today. The
U.S. now plays a leading role in these cycles of booms and bust, of peace and
wars, and of imperial conquests. As a republic, America is presently on the
wrong path and is saddled with the wrong leaders. Fifty years ago, President
Dwight Eisenhower warned us against the undue influence of the
industrial-military complex. Presently, we have a president who is the very
embodiment of the industrial-military complex, besides being religiously
superstitious and intellectually weak. How
to survive the coming crisis? Reading "The New American Empire"
helped me focus on the big picture and become convinced that better leaders
with foresight and vision are more needed than ever. -I enjoyed reading this
book. So will you. Was
this review helpful to you? ****CORROSIVE INFLUENCE OF RIGHT-WING MEDIA, May 12, 2005 Reviewer: Carolyn Corbett (Buffalo, NY USA) "The
minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the
Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the
emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them [in Germany]." Albert
Einstein - 1932 Rodrigue
Tremblay is an economist from the University of Montreal who usually writes
about economics and finance. This time, his concentration on the
inflation-deflation long Kondratieff cycle, that he identifies as having run
from 1949 to 2003, leads him to explain the present international geopolitic
turmoil. Tremblay believes that the last prosperous 50-some years maybe on
the verge of unravelling under the pressures of international terrorism,
American unilateralism and militarism, and the coming crisis for energy
resources. Now
that the U.S. is close to becoming a one-party state, whenever the
Republicans take over the Judiciary, i.e. the Supreme Court, while
controlling the Executive and the Legislative, it is time to ask ourselves
why such a concentration of power has come about in a country founded on the
principle of "checks and balances". The
answer lies with the corrosive and totalitarian role that the media have
played over the last twenty years. First of all, they have become more
concentrated and more biased politically. Presently, the big Five of the
electronic media are Time Warner (CNN); Viacom(CBS); Disney (ABC); GE (NBC);
an Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation(Fox News). These
big five are assisted by other powerful groups of radio/TV propaganda
machines, like the rightist radio networks of Clear Channel (1200 radio
stations and 50 TV stations), Freedom Communications and Liberty Media, and
also increasingly by the seven tax-exempt religious radio/TV networks and
their 2000 stations. Add
to the above the 80 large non-profit and tax-exempt right-wing organizations
and family foundations who sponsor right-wing causes, and the large
right-wing press, and you have probably the most powerful propaganda machine
ever assembled in a single country. Obviously, such a huge concentration of
propaganda power in one direction poses a direct threat to the republic and
to the freedom of its citizens. Another
author, (D. Brock in "The Republican Noise Machine") has documented
how the FCC under Nixon-Reagan-Bush has allowed for such concentration of the
American media and how they are mostly to the Right and Republican. In 2000,
for instance, the FCC has even allowed religious broadcasters to take over
frequencies initially designated for educational programming.-The political
agenda of these right-wing media is obvious: They want to turn America into a
fascist and militarist country. The
scope of Tremblay's book, and the clarity of its arguments, is fascinating.
It is densely packed with lots of insights and ideas on American politics and
on the immorality of modern warfare. Even though I would have preferred that
the author expand a bit more on the economic side of the equation, on the
whole, I enjoyed reading this book. Was this review helpful to you? *****THE JEKYLL-AND-HYDE U.S. PERSONALITIES, May 11, 2005 Reviewer: Jaime Ramillo (San Jose, CA USA) There
are two Americas. Not the red and the blue ones regarding conservative or
liberal values, although this may also be part of the answer. It's rather
that, deep down, there is a good American soul and a bad American soul. First,
there is a decent, moral and idealistic America: The one which sponsors the
arts and sciences and promotes truth and peace in the world. This is the
America that contributed to the creation of the United Nations in 1945, and
that sent a man to the moon in 1969. Second,
there is a more barbaric, less moral and more abrasive America, one bent on
hatred, vengeance, reprisal, repression and brutality: That's the America of
Hiroshima, McCarthyism, slavery, segregation, Vietnam and Iraq. Ironically,
the latter type of America hypocritically pretends to be religious and
Christian, but it is very comfortable with lying, revenge and killing,
"sins" supposedly forbidden by religion. As
the author of "The New American Empire" points out, the wise and
democratic America is the America of ideals, represented by Jefferson,
Lincoln, Wilson, F. D. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and above all, by John F.
Kennedy. -Then, there is what many have called the ugly America, -the imperialist
and militarist America, -the one which has savagely bombed cities, killing
thousands and thousands of civilians (children, women and men), which
tortures prisoners and scoffs at international law. Unfortunatly
for us and our children, since January 2001, it is this second America that
George W. Bush embodies and projects around the world, with disastrous
results for the international image of the United States. Let's hope we can
soon snap out of this revenge binge and become more civilized. This is a book
to read and reflect upon. It has a lot of good analysis, and should be
required reading for anyone interested in international geo-politics. Was
this review helpful to you? ****CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, May 7, 2005 Reviewer: S. Spitzer, reviewer (Arlington, Texas
USA) "Our
position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable
it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling
those grievances or for altering those conditions." Justice
R. Jackson, (American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials) In
The New American Empire, internationally-known and respected economist
Rodrigue Tremblay examines the place held by the United States within Western
civilization (chap. 16) and how the events since 2000 have produced a break
in history and a dangerous ideological shift in American foreign policy. This
makes it an original and interesting book to read. Tremblay
denounces the emergence of the George W. Bush administration as a ruthless imperialist
state on the international stage, as a throw-back to 19th Century politics
and as a break with the march toward democratic global governance witnessed
since the end of World War II. In particular, he sees the 2002 "Bush
doctrine" of preventive warfare as unprecedented in American history and
as being closer to Hitler's thinking in 1930 Europe than to the spirit of the
U.S. Constitution. Tremblay
doesn't buy the neocon rhetoric about a (new) missionary crusade to bring
American-style democracy to the Muslim world. Rather, he identifies and
documents the real motives behind this resurgence of militarism in U.S.
foreign policy as being related to pure vengeance, to the concomitant need to
control Middle East oil resources, to the desirability of Iraq as a location
to establish permanent military bases, and to the bi-partisan policy of the
United States to protect the state of Israel. However,
he sees Bush's aggressive moves in the Middle East as dangerous and
self-defeating, (besides being immoral and illegal), both for the United
States and for the world. Obviously, Tremblay has very little confidence in
the current U.S. leadership that he sees as shortsighted, ineffective and
petulant. He remains confident, however, that once the current spate of
hubris runs its course, new American leadership will emerge to refocus U.S.
actions within the democratic scope of the U.S. Constitution. This
is an insightful and thought-provoking book that is well worth reading. This
is a book everyone in the world should read. Strongly recommended. Was
this review helpful to you? *****THE NEO-FASCIST CHARACTERISTICS, May 5, 2005 Reviewer: Jack B. W., (Baltimore, MD USA) I
am an anti-imperialistic and anti-fascist Republican and I agree with a lot
of what this book has to say. I also like Pat Buchanan's book "A
Republic, Not an Empire". Both books are a welcomed call for a return to
sanity in foreign policy. The Neocons are no conservatives at all; they are
political radicals closer to Stalin and Hitler than to Eisenhower and Reagan.
They
fit perfectly the main defining characteristics of fascists, i.e.: -an
obsession with national security and national humiliation; -extreme
nationalism, the restriction of civil liberties in the name of patriotism; -the
mixing of religion and government in order to manipulate public opinion; -the
manipulation of the electoral process and the mass media, and the use of
smear campaigns against the opposition; -cronyism
and corruption in government appointments and expenditures; -the
use of scapegoats (racial, ethnic or political minorities) as a unifying
cause; -disdain
for freedom of expression, human rights, intellectuals, higher education and
academics; and finally, -the
glorification of everything military, and the adoption of militarism as a
political doctrine. Reading
these characteristics, do you recognize anybody in the Bush administration?
In the media? In the fundamentalist religious Right? The Neocons,
notwithstanding their obvious neo-fascist inclinations, dominate U.S. foreign
policy, with disastrous results for us and for the world. In
one of the most insightful sections of the book, Tremblay explains clearly
how the application of the ten Helsinki principles to Eastern Europe, in
1975, can be credited as having opened the door to democracy in these
countries (pp 152-55). It
is a fact that President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger's approach to the
former Soviet Union was instrumental in having 33 European countries (plus
the United States and Canada) as signatories of the August 1st, 1975 Helsinki
Accords. The adoption of the Helsinki principles, which proclaimed
fundamental individual rights and the principle of national sovereignty,
played a stronger role than anything else in provoking needed reforms within
the former USSR, according to Mikhail Gorbachev. The Ford-Kissinger approach
to foreign policy was the correct conservative one and stands as the the
correct alternative to the current foreign policy of militarism and
unilateralism. It's
rare that a book changes my mind and my outlook on things, but this book has.
The arguments presented in it are most persuasive and enlightened. I would
surely recommend that you read this book. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A BOOK OF SYNTHESIS, April 29, 2005 Reviewer: P. F. Garrett (Washington, DC USA) This
is a book of synthesis, in the sense that it combines many interrelated
topics such as the role of religion in politics, the morality and legality of
modern warfare and the evolution of empires. Tremblay
states at the outset that his central preoccupation is the fundamental shift
in U.S. foreign policy toward unilateralism and supremacism. He sees things
through the eyes of an economist who is afraid that the new conflictual
American approach to international relations, combined with the end of the
long Kondratieff economic cycle, could provoke an unraveling of the entire
international economic system. -In this, he rejoins economist Paul Krugman in
his book " The Great Unraveling." Tremblay
sees three phenomena as having provoked a fundamental shift in international
relations: The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in
December 1991, the cliffhanger election of George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency
on November 7, 2000, and the al Qaeda terrorist attacks against the United
States, on September 11, 2001. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is only the
consequence of this trilateral shift. During
the Cold War, the U.S. pursued an anti-imperialist policy of deterrence and
applied self-restraint regarding its own use of force in international
affairs. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, no such restraint exists.
Neocon ideologues were quick to argue that the U.S. had an historic opportunity
to become itself an empire and it should use its "surplus" power to
impose its world vision of things along the lines dictated, not by
international law, but by its own national interests and those of its close
allies, such as Israel. I
agree with Tremblay that the Bush administration is painting itself into a
corner with this "Bush Doctrine" of preventive wars and
unilateralism. Where does it lead? Perpetual wars? The collapse of
international organizations? Ever expanding military budgets? The militarization
of space? A new arms race?-It's a dead-end. We
cannot go back to the 19th Century and still pretend we are for democracy. In
this, Tremblay agrees with Pat Buchanan that the U.S. cannot remain a free
republic and at the same time become paranoid with militarism and national
security. Sooner or later, America will have to choose to remain faithful to
its Constitution or to become some sort of British-like empire that
subjugates other people against their will. Democracy and imperialism do not
go together, at least not for very long. This
book is a very good contribution to the debate. It is full of wisdom and
every thoughtful citizen should read it. Was
this review helpful to you? *****The neocon ideology is criminal thinking, April 27, 2005 Reviewer: A concerned American
"Arlington, DC USA" Let's
be clear here. Proposing (as the neocon Bush administration does) the use of
indiscriminate force against others is criminal thinking. It is thinking of
this sort which has produced countless massacres and wars throughout history.
So, when the disingenuous Neocons propose that the United States be above
international law, invest massively in means of war and use its sophisticated
military gear to kill other human beings in other lands, who just happen not
to think like them, they joined other psychopaths and criminals who did the
same thing in the not too distant or glorious past. This
book will please many readers anxious to understand what's going on, but some
could be irritated and even enraged by it. As George Orwell once said,
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary
act." Nobody can deny that we live in a time of lies and deceit; that we
live at a time when militarism and imperialism are raising their ugly heads.
To tell it as it is and to learn the truth takes unusual efforts. "The
New American Empire" is a very persuasive book because it is based on
facts and intelligent analysis. I agree with Tremblay's main arguments, though
I doubt if they will be much appreciated by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz or Perle, or by their deferential sycophants in the media (Kristol,
Krauthammer, O'Reilly and Co). -Nobody can deny that the Neocons have taken
over Bush's foreign policy and that the religious Right is about to take over
the country. In particular, nobody can deny that the neocon "Bush
Doctrine" of discretionary preventive wars is pushing humanity decades,
if not centuries, back. Nobody can deny that the U.S. is launching a new
nuclear arms race that is bound to increase the chances of future nuclear
devastation. Nobody can deny that the war against Iraq has been sold on the
basis of lies and distortions. Nobody can deny that the Patriot Act is
reducing American liberties. We
have no choice but to refute and oppose the neocon fascist agenda. An
arrogant imperial America won't remain for long a democratic America. It will
go down the road of despotism, militarism and fascism as other misguided
arrogant countries have done in the past. This is something that the
go-along- get-along Democrats should think about as they are rammed through
by Tom Delay and Co on Capitol Hill. This book is highly recommended. Was
this review helpful to you? *****THE VERDICT IS IN: IT'S AN UNJUST WAR, April 24, 2005 Reviewer: A. C. O'Brien (Boston, MA, USA) President
Bush went to John Paul II's funeral even though the deceased pope had
condemned 65 times his war of aggression against Iraq. And the new pope,
Benedict XVI, is just as opposed as his predecessor to GWB's
"preventive" wars of aggression. When
he was Cardinal Ratzinger, the new pope was once asked a question about
whether the 2003 American-led Iraq war would be just. His answer was
unequivocal: "Certainly not." And, on the subject of what
constitutes a "Just War", the new pope had this to say: "There
were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of
the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go
beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is
still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'." In
"The New American Empire", Dr. Tremblay deals at length with the
topic of what constitutes a "Just War" (pp. 127-131). His
conclusion is the same as the one reached by Pope John Paul II and Pope
Benedict XVI: Bush's war of aggression in Iraq is unjust, besides being
illegal. This
is something that is rarely discussed in U.S. media. Even American bishops
and priests are relatively silent on the question, preferring to put the
emphasis on their opposition to gay marriages, abortion and stem cell
research. During
the 2004 presidential election, American Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the
highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado, went so far as to declare
publicly that voting in favor of Democratic candidate John Kerry would be a
sin that must be confessed before receiving Communion! In doing so, he parted
ways with Pope John Paul II and implicitely condoned the killing of ten of
thousands of people in an unjust war. (In fairness to the bishops, however,
it has to be said that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S.
bishops, in June 2004, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice
on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied
Communion. In so doing, the future pope associated himself with the
reelection of George W. Bush.) This
book does not sit on both sides of the fence. Tremblay lists the five
criteria for a "Just War" (a war must be waged with good intentions;
declared by a legitimate authority; be carried on for a just cause; be
undertaken as a last resort, and should not result in the indiscriminate
killing of innocent people. The author's conclusion: " ...the Bush
administration [is] violating all five moral conditions for a just war in
launching an offensive war against Iraq." One
wonders why this moral question is not more often debated. Read this book. Was
this review helpful to you? *****Very Informative: Are warlords now in power?, April 21, 2005 Reviewer: Marypoppinsx (Williamport, MD) As
this book says, (about the war against Iraq), "Everybody had been
hoodwinked. The whole thing was a machination from the outset. War against
Iraq was a preexisting policy of the Bush administration. Revenge and
retribution, with a background of pro-Israel cabal and of oil fumes, were at
the center of the oilmen Bush & Cheney's Middle East war plans. The
'weapons of mass destruction' pretext was a massive historical scam, maybe
one of the most blatant ever." (pp. 202-203). After
literally tons of official reports, this has turned out to be the truth and
that's the image that's going to stick for decades to come: The U.S. has
engaged in an illegal and immoral war of aggression on the basis of lies and
false pretenses. President
Bush himself insinuated that Iraq, not bin Laden and al Qaeda, was
responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks when he said, on May 1st, 2003, on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier: "...the terrorists and
their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they
got." This was a blatant official attempt to mislead and disinform in a
nationally televised speech. It was a good example of 'warlord politics': How
to win elections in posturing as 'Commander in Chief''. It seems that the
cynical way to win elections in the United States is to create an atmosphere
of a permanent condition of war, even if you have to invent reasons for war. But,
as President James Madison once said "No nation can preserve its freedom
in the midst of continual warfare." Indeed, how long can we remain free
if our government lies to us, invents pretexts to wage war and engages in
wars without end? Only fascists can celebrate barbarous and sadistic wars
without end. Do
we really need full-fledged excess military power for its own sake? Have we
become paranoid and nazi-like supremacists? Why do we want to dominate the
world? Who elected us for this mission? -These are taboo questions that every
American should reflect upon. -I recommend reading this book for the
substantive questions it raises. Was
this review helpful to you? *****TO FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, April 14, 2005 Reviewer: J. G. (Montreal, QC,
Canada) "Populus
vult decipi; decipiatur." ["The people wish to be deceived; let
them be deceived."], Caraffa. Reading
this book and its tale of how the Bush administration has hoodwinked the
American people into supporting the very concept of wars of aggression, I was
thinking about President Abraham Lincoln's (1809-1865) rule saying that
"You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some
of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the
time." But
again, as Goethe said, "We are never deceived, we deceive
ourselves." -So maybe, just maybe, the American people may have wanted
to be deceived and lied to. At the very least, they did not care very much
about being lied to, since they reelected GWB in November 2004. The
hard fact remains that this first war of the 21st Century, the War against
Iraq, was sold on false pretenses and on lies. An unhealthy thirst for post
Sept. 11 revenge, a quest for regime change in Baghdad in order to secure oil
supplies in the region, pressures from the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby to subdue
an Israeli foe, the Pentagon's requirements for permanent military bases in
the Middle East-all these factors played a role in pushing the U.S. into a
war against Iraq. If the false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction or the
fake links with al Qaeda had not been used, other pretexts would have been
invented. In
a true democracy, a special commission would have been established in order
to inform the public on why public representatives relied on deception and on
lies in order to push the country to war. This has not been done. Of course,
President Bush did set up a Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities, but
this was one astute means for him to use the CIA as a scapegoat and to wash
his hands of the entire mess. Most
people outside the United States saw the deception from day one. In the U.S.,
however, a conniving press and government propaganda persuaded a scant
majority to go along with the lies and to approve an illegal and immoral war. Dr.
Tremblay's book is clear and concise on why this hoax was perpetrated upon
the American people. Anybody who reads this book can see through the clouds
of disinformation and deception and access the truth. I rarely give five-star
ratings to books, but I have no hesitation in doing just that for this book. Was
this review helpful to you? *****IT'S ALL IN OFFICIAL REPORTS, April 6, 2005 Reviewer: "James F." (Williamsport, PA,
USA) This
book gives the real reasons why Bush II intended to invade and occupy Iraq,
even before he was elected. The facts are all there to see if one wants to
take the time to reflect upon them. Tremblay analyses four official reports,
starting in 1992, that clearly show that the Pentagon had plans to invade
Iraq and establish permanent military bases in that country. It was thought
that Turkey and Saudi Arabia were becoming less and less secure places to
have such bases. 1
-In 1992, the Dick Cheney-Paul Wolfowitz Defense Department issued a document
entitled "Defense Planning Guidance, on post-Cold War strategy"
which openly envisioned the United States as a self-appointed world
policeman, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and
economic power. (The proposal was repudiated by the first President Bush.) 2
-In 1996, a report called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing
the Realm" was prepared on behalf of Israel's right-wing Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and proposed, in effect, that Israel and the USA merge
their foreign policies in the Middle East. 3
-In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century issued a similar
report, written by a group of neo-conservative interventionists promoting the
idea that the United States should grab its chance at becoming a global
empire, and, in the process, become a more active supporter of Israel in the
Middle East. This foreign policy report was entitled "Rebuilding
America's Defenses," written with the participation of 27 people, many
of them active supporters of Israel's Likud Party. "At no time in
history has the international security order been as conducive to American
interests and ideals," the 2000 report proclaimed. 4-
On September 20, 2002, one year after the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush
administration issued a document about a new National Security Strategy,
proposing a new "Bush Doctrine" of unilateral imperial incursions
abroad, along the lines proposed by the neocon cabal. It was a significant
departure from previous U.S. foreign policy approaches of the last half
century. The policy paper dismissed the previous policy of deterrence as a
Cold War relic, spoke disparagingly of the United Nations and of its Charter,
and expressed the view that the U.S. should disregard international opinion
and international law when that suits U.S. interests. The rest is being lived
every day under our very own eyes. This
was before the March 20, 2003 War against Iraq. On
March 18, 2005, the Bush administration issued another report titled -
"The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America", in
which it is said that the world is against us and does not accept our
strength and imperial good intentions: "Our strength as a nation state
will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak
using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism", listing
diplomatic and legal challenges in international forums in the same sentence
with terrorism. This
is pure official paranoia. So, diplomacy and legality are seen by the Bush
administration as being as dangerous as international terrorism. Under Bush
II, the U.S. administration has become the world's preeminent paranoid. And
to top it all, the Bush's neocons invoke God and pretend to be on the side of
the angels, while swearing eternal vengeance against their devilish foes. If
this is not scary, what is? Why did the U.S. fall for such mediocre and
treacherous leadership? I
hope everyone reads this book. Highly recommended. Was this review helpful to you? *****REWARDING INCOMPETENCE, April 4, 2005 Reviewer: "C. B. Martin" (Georgetown, DC, USA)
President
George W. Bush gave a medal to former CIA director George Tenet and made his
Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State. Then, he named
Alberto Gonzales attorney general. After that, he promoted Paul Wolfowitz to
the position of President of the World Bank and named John Bolton ambassador
to the United Nations. What's going on here? All
of these people are renowned incompetents: Tenet gave Bush and Powell the
famous "slam dunk" certainty about WMDs in Iraq, a
"certainty" that Bush used to invade Iraq with hundreds of
thousands of people killed and counting. Alberto Gonzales is better known as
the lawyer who issued the famous pro-torture advice, while John Bolton is a
neocon who tried to sabotage the International Criminal Court and who
despises the United Nations. As for Wolfowitz, he was the guy who promised
that an invasion of Iraq would cost nothing and that Iraqis would welcome
American soldiers with flowers and candies! This
is reminiscent of the infamous Roman emperor Caligula who named his horse
senator, as a gesture of contempt for the institution. Bush has to have a lot
of contempt for the U.S. Senate, the United Nations and the World Bank. On
the other side of the picture, GWB fired Brent Scowcroft, his father's
closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence
advisory board, and he did the same thing with Henry Kissinger as a member of
the same board. These are two of the most competent Americans in the field of
foreign policy. Why so much incoherence? We
did not get any definite answer from the March 31 Report of the Commission on
weapons of mass destruction intelligence, with its 692 pages, that did not
throw any new light on why so many people in the U.S. government were worse
than incompetent in regards to the preparation for the illegal invasion of
Iraq. The report did conclude that "the Intelligence Community was dead
wrong in almost all of it pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction." Why
then, one is entitled to ask, is the "Intelligence Community" being
singled out as the scapegoat for the Iraqi disaster? Why did the report
ignore the key issue, i.e. whether Bush and his aides overstated and
misrepresented the flawed intelligence they received from the intelligence
agencies? The buck has to stop somewhere. The overwhelming evidence is that
Bush and other administration officials, especially at the Pentagon,
exaggerated the intelligence community's overstatements. The
question is why. And that's where this wonderful little book comes in. It
contains all the answers the reader needs to understand why Iraq and Saddam
Hussein were set up for an attack. This is a book to read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****FASCISM IN THE USA?, April 1, 2005 Reviewer: "Harry Johnson" (Chicago, Illinois,
USA) In
1935, novelist Sinclair Lewis wrote a cautionary tale, "It Can't Happen
Here", about an eventual rise of fascism in the United States. At that
time, nobody could seriously think that the U.S. could one day turn fascist.
But we have to remember that in the 1920-30's, nobody would have believed
either that Germany, the most advanced country of the time, could fall into
the hands of a determined group of Nazis. But it did, with tremendous
consequences for Germany itself, and also for the world. Now,
the U.S. is clearly on a fascist path. Since the highly contested election of
2000, the U.S. has been governed by a far-right religious fundamentalist
person, and this president can count on a docile Congress and on a servile
press; he commands a strong military apparatus and is about to take control
of the Supreme Court by filling it with cronies. In such a context, is the
United States that far away from the one-party and totalitarian state?
Unbelievably, this was precisely the theme of Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel! In
the novel, one character attempts to describe the new president by saying,
"I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic." Sometimes,
one has the uneasy feeling that reality catches up with fiction! As
with "It Can't Happen Here", Tremblay's book illustrates how a
small group of people can turn a country around and launch it on a
destructive path, no matter what its constitution says. When the right of
Habeas Corpus is suspended, when people of low character are nominated to
high offices and endowed with the responsibility of enforcing the laws, when
the mindless patriotism of "you are with us or against us" is
proclaimed, when publishers self-censure and shy away from letting
"controversial" topics become new books, and when the media become
government, religious and corporate mouthpieces and provoke paranoia, how far
can we be from full-fledged fascism? I
think everybody should simultaneously read "It Can't Happen Here"
and "The New American Empire" and make comparisons. It's an
excellent way to become better aware of what's going on around us, ... before
it is too late. Unfortunately, the signs and signals are all there to see.
These are two astonishing books that belong on the bookshelves of every
educated person. Was
this review helpful to you? *****THE HIJACKING OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, April 1, 2005 Reviewer: "Liz R." (South Bend, IN, USA) This
book explains how the neocons, the petro-military complex and the Christian
right have hijacked US foreign policy, and what the consequences are for
America and for the world. The events of Sept. 11 provided an opportunity for
the pro-Israel neocons and the pro-oil imperialists to launch the USA on its
current empire expansion mode. Even though Iraq had nothing to do with the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - the fundamentalist al-Qaeda terrorists from Saudi
Arabia did - the chance to establish the U.S military as the principal ruling
force in the oil-rich Middle East was too good to be passed up, even though
this was bound to destroy the U.S.'s reputation in the world. In
reading "The New American Empire", everything falls into place and
a clear picture appears: Economic motives related to oil, strategic
considerations tied to the position of Israel in the Middle East and the
concurrent need to have permanent U.S. military bases in the region are the
basis for the Bush II administration's shift to a pro-empire foreign policy.
That's the message that the book conveys over the mountain of lies and of
disinformation that has been fed the American people since the 2003
American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Democrats, Republicans and
Independants should all read this book. This is a must-read. Was
this review helpful to you? Well
Written and Revealing, March 28, 2005 Reviewer: "Forrester G." (Philadelphia, PA
USA) As
the author of this book, a respected economist, judiciously observes:
"Many U.S. news media abdicated their responsability for critical
inquiries into government affairs and have become instead an integral part of
the government propaganda machine." And further, he adds: "The word
"propaganda" was used more and more often in relation to the Bush
administration. Under George W. Bush, it seems the entire governmental
apparatus was placed under partisan political control." This
is a timely reminder that when a country loses its free press, it is not far
from also losing other freedoms as well. Without a free press, there can be
no free society. This is an echo of what Supreme Court Justice Black once
said: "In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press
the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our
democracy...Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose
deception in government." But
freedom of the press seems to be the least of concerns for the current
administration. It has instead embarked upon a program of government
spoon-fed propaganda and disinformation to further its far-right agenda by
creating its own "news". As the NY Times has reported, at least 20
government agencies have made and distributed "fake news segments"
to local TV stations, and the Bush administration has spent $254 million in
the last four years to buy self-aggrandizing puffery from P. R. firms. The purpose
of such government propaganda is to make sure that any contestation of the
government's actions will be subdued and criticism will be muted. Lenient
changes in FCC regulations and in technology have also allowed for the
arrival of the 24-hour TV news networks. Such networks have no entertainment
programming per se. They rather thrive on sensasionalism and on
"assertion journalism", as compared to traditional "facts
journalism". Some have already crossed the line and have become de facto
24-hour propaganda machines. Possbibly the best example is Rupert Murdoch's
Fox News. As a matter of fact, in the USA today, there is a corporate
oligopoly of the five largest corporations that control most of the
information - a number that is down from 50 corporations in 1983. That says
it all. These few corporations are pro-imperialism and pro-wars of
aggression, and they spew out the neocon theology. All
considered, this is a well written and most revealing book, and I highly
recommend it to anyone interested. Was
this review helpful to you? *****EXCELLENT AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING, March 25, 2005 Reviewer: "Samuel XXX" (Arlington, Virginia,
USA) I
just finished reading this book and I think it's a very articulate vision of
the current geopolitical situation in the U.S. and in the world. Professor
Tremblay provides a realistic assessment of the post-USSR and post-September
11 world. I
agree with him that the world is as uni-polar as it has been for a long time.
His Chapter 16 nevertheless predicts that sooner or later a multi-polar world
will emerge, partly as a reaction to the gross abuse the U.S. is now making
of its prominent position. It is expected that the ruthless unilateralist
drives of the Bush administration will create counter-balancing behavior
against the United States by a host of other nations. In other words, the
current administration's determination to pursue an arrogant unilateralism is
bound to backfire and hurt U.S. long term interests. It could produce short
term gains (control of some oil supplies and enhanced protection for Israel),
but also long term pains (a surge of Islamist militancy, a costly new arms
race and a huge drop in U.S. prestige around the world). Tremblay
deplores that the U.S. is currently lacking a leadership capable of
intellectual and institutional creativity and is rather led by people who put
all their eggs in the one basket of simplistic militarism. Today's problems
require a multilateral approach and the world should rely more, not less, on
international institutions. Contrary
to other theses [see Kupchan's "The End of the American Era" or
Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers"] that see a
unified enlarged Europe as the main American competitor, professor Tremblay
envisages the rise of China as the main factor for the emergence of the
future multiple poles of power. China is due for a return to its historical
preeminence which was hers before 1500 AD. In
the 21st century, the U.S. will continue to play a dominant role in the world
because of its strong economic North American base, supported by Canada and
Mexico, while sharing fundamental democratic values with Europe. The U.S.
won't be able to prevent China from playing a dominant role in all of East
Asia. In a few decades, a three-polar world is bound to emerge: North
America, in a love-hate relationship with Europe, but with more fundamental
and lasting clashes with China, - Russia assisting both Europe and China. As
an economist, Tremblay is very preoccupied by the fragility of the world
economy and he fears an economic unravelling of high proportions. It's too
bad he did not elaborate more on this aspect in his book. "The
New American Empire" is well-written and timely. It is highly
recommended for the informed public, as well as for students of history and of
political science. Was
this review helpful to you? *****A MILITARIST RATHER THAN ECONOMIC EMPIRE?, March 23, 2005 Reviewer: "Barbara Dudley" (Chicago, IL) In
the Bush Neocon's utopia, the U.S. would use its armies to rule the world and
protect friendly states such as Israel, while reaping enormous economic
benefits through secure markets and secure access to oil and other resources.
This
is not a new idea. In
fact, it goes back to the depression of the late 1890's and the "Open
Door Doctrine" of the William McKinley Administration, when it was
thought that America could export its domestic problems by opening up new
markets abroad. American foreign policy has never very much diverged from
this imperialist approach to international relations. In Cuba or in the
Philippines in the early 1900's, like today in the Middle East, American
foreign policy was geared to expansion under the cover of fighting
"tyranny", while at the same time crushing any native insurgencies.
This was American policy then, as it is now. Then as now, exaggerations of
threats and oversimplifications of reality, if not outright lies, were used
to frighten the American people into supporting wars of aggression abroad. The
two world wars and the cold war of the Twentieth Century, not counting the
defeat in Vietnam, temporarily put a check to U.S. worldwide expansionist
plans. With Germany and Russia trying to export their own domestic problems
abroad, the U.S. didn't have to play an overtly imperialist role. In fact, it
could even play the anti-imperialist card against the British and the French,
as the 1956 Suez Canal crisis illustrated. However,
the disappearance of the Soviet empire in 1991 emboldened enough neocon
imperialist thinkers in Washington - many of them having direct connections
to the Israeli Government - and persuaded them that the U.S. should resume
the old McKinley/Teddy Roosevelt policy of the "Big Stick",
especially since such a policy would fit perfectly well with Israeli
strategic interests in the Middle East. For the two oil-men Bush and Cheney
in charge, such an imperial policy seemed also to coincide perfectly with
American strategic economic and military interests in the region. And that's
where we stand today. But
the stakes are high, and there is great danger that such a heavy-handed
militarist policy could unravel the delicate fabric of global economic
integration that has brought prosperity to the world since 1945. As
Tremblay writes, "since 1945, there is no other country in the world
which has promoted more enthusiastically and benefited more from the
globalization of the economy. As a consequence, American corporations,
financial institutions and brand names are all over the world, and
international trade has grown three times faster than all other economic
activities." It is Tremblay's fear, and also mine, that the U.S. won't
be able to have simultaneously a militarist empire and an economic empire.
There is a strong likelihood, and it is showing in many places and in many
ways, that a unilateralist and militarist American foreign policy will create
such a political backlash around the world that the entire legal and
political international framework suporting economic globalization could
start unraveling. With such an occurrance, every country will lose, not the
least the United States. This
essay is full of meaning and relevance and is most helpful in understanding
what lies behind the current U.S. foreign policy. This is a must read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****GERMANY THEN, AND THE U.S. NOW, March 18, 2005 Reviewer: "Sandy W." (Toronto, Ont.,
Canada)) A
quote from the Introduction of "The New American Empire" captures
its thesis perfectly: "Armed with this [Bush] doctrine, if it is not
vigilant, the United States could be in the 21st Century what Germany was in
the 20th Century, that is, a danger to the world." Consider
this: --
Then, in the 1930's, they said that "Gott ist mit uns" (God is with
us). Now,
in the 2000's, they say "God Bless America". --
Then, Nazi Germany was defying the League of Nations and invaded Poland and
Czechoslovaquia. Now,
Imperial America is defying the United Nations and invaded Iraq, and is about
to invade Syria or Iran, or both. --
Then, Adolf Hitler repeated that "I believe that I am acting in
accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator...I am fighting for the work
of the Lord." Now,
George Bush says that "I believe that God wants me to be
president", and, summarizing his motivation for attacking Iraq, he
proclaims that "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do
the Lord's will." --
Then, Hitler's admirers were saying that he was sent by God: "God gave
the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakable faith,
that he was sent to us by God to save Germany." (Hermann Goering) Now,
Bush's admirers are saying that Bush II is in the White House because of God:
"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not
vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the
White House because God put him there for a time such as this." (Lt.
Gen. William Boykin) --
Then, Adolf Hilter used to say that "...It is my conviction that in the
future as in the past the Lord God will always help us." Now,
George W. Bush also insinuates that God will help him: "God...is on the
side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we
faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the
people of other lands." The
historical parallels are striking. You'll
want to read "The New American Empire" to find out how little you
know about what's going on. Even if you do not agree completely with the
author's perspective, you'll find out that reading this book is the best
antidote to ignorance and disempowerment. Was
this review helpful to you? *****AN IMPERIAL AND FASCIST MENTALITY, March 16, 2005 Reviewer: "J. N. Smith" (Dayton, OH, USA) At
the beginning of the book, the author summarizes his thoughts about the
political climate in the U.S. today: "In this dawn of the 21st Century,
a disturbing wind of religious militancy and a supremacist will to military
power blows in certain important circles of American society." I cannot
agree more. There
is indeed a sort of aggressive "Jacobin" spirit, especially among
the Neocons of the Republican War Party now in power in Washington D.C. and
in the far-right media empires. (Remember the conceited revolutionaries of
the French Revolution, in 1789, who wanted to export their revolution to the
rest of Europe through endless wars, and who finally were defeated at
Waterloo in 1815.) The
neocon ideologues and activists in the Bush administration and in the large
corporate media, like the Jacobins of the French terror, have also developed
a supremacist ideology of U.S. global domination through the force of arms.
They mascarade this general objective under the pretext of imposing democracy
at gunpoint all over the world. In this sense, they are self-appointed
imperialistic democrats, not realizing the fundamental contradiction between
imperialism and democracy. They
assert that they create their own reality - a faith-based reality - that
allows them to disregard evidence and logic and to push ahead with the most
hairy and irresponsible plans. They even invented a new foreign policy tool,
the "preventive war", in order to attack a country, even if it
poses no credible threat to the U.S. The result of this delusional thinking
has been the disastrous war against Iraq. "The
New AMerican Empire" spells out clearly this imperial and fascist
mentality. It also shows the likely consequences of such a misguided
attitude, i.e. the disintegration of international institutions, a reversal
of global economic integration and, most likely, a severe worldwide economic
downturn. This is a most valuable contribution to the debate. Tremblay's book
is a good read for anyone interested in an articulate critique of
contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Was
this review helpful to you? ****THE EXPLOSIVE PHASE OF U.S. IMPERIALISM, March 11, 2005 Reviewer: "K. Armstrong" (Cambridge, MA) Tremblay's
American Empire is a very useful guide to understanding the current push
toward U.S. global dominance. Indeed, Bush II and his neocon advisers are
pushing the imperial doctrine to new heights with his worldwide, open-ended
fight against "terrorism and tyranny", ouside the legal confines of
the 1945 United Nations Charter and outside international law. There is no
doubt that since September 20, 2002, the "Bush Doctrine" of world
domination has opened a new chapter in the history of American imperialism.
Corporate and religious America can now count on Bush II to pursue their
worldwide interests in an even more aggressive way than Reagan did in the
1980's, when trillions of dollars were spent on military and intelligence
infrastructures. The
push by the U.S. military-industrial-religious complex for world dominance
under Reagan and Bush II (1980-2005+) represents the fourth phase in the
history of American imperialism. This is evidently the most dangerous one and
one that could end up in apocalyptic disasters. The previous three American
imperialist phases covered the periods 1800-45 (Monroe Doctrine), 1846-1916
(Manifest Destiny expansion) and 1917-1979 (Wilson and Truman doctrines and
the containment of the 'Old World' empires). But,
already, we see emerging a large international coalition for the containment
of the American empire, with many European countries joining Russia, China,
India, Brazil...etc., not counting the 1.3 billion-inhabitants strong Muslim
world, to counteract the U.S. push for world hegemony. In such a context of
widespread mistrust and hostility toward Americn plans, I do not think that
the new worldwide American imperial adventure will last more than a decade,
before it is forcefully rolled back. Meanwhile,
we may have a string of U.S.-led wars of aggression, in the Middle East and
in Central Asia, and we are poised to witness the likely complete collapse of
the collective security system established around the United Nations and NATO
(North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and possibly also the disintegration of
the international trade system built around the WTO (World Trade
Organization). If these ever come to pass, the disasters won't just be
military, they will also be financial and economic. Tremblay's
book spells that out very clearly and with much more authority- since he is a
well-known international economist- than other books on the same topic. I
would certainly recommend reading his book to anyone who is preoccupied with
the current geopolitical situation and who wants to understand the role the
United States plays in the current state of international tensions. Was this review helpful to you? *****ABUSE OF POWER AND DIRE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES, March 9, 2005 Reviewer: "Bernie W." (New York, NY) Professor
Rodrigue Tremblay (U of Montreal) is a world-renowned economist before being
a writer on geopolitics. You
will never watch your local or national news the same way after you read this
book. For example, you will understand why Democrat and Republican
Congressmen are so often in the same bed when it comes to voting on foreign
policy issues. Perhaps I am incurably naive, but I think that the American
people will not tolerate much longer to be lied to by the conservative media machine
and by government officials. One hopes thay will react in the future by
electing honest candidates over the sleazy ones we have today. Tremblay
never uses the term "rogue state" to describe American involvement
and interventionism in international affairs, but he clearly infers that
under GWB, the U.S. is quickly moving in that direction. The
scariest thing about this book is its analysis of the economic consequences
of widespread international conflicts within the confines of the 54-60 year
Kondratieff cycle. He sees the lack of respect displayed by the Bush II
administration for international law and international treaties as having the
potential to unravel 50 years of worldwide economic integration. When trust
and confidence disappear from international relations, countries tend
naturally to fall back on economic isolationism and nationalism. And we all
remember how the depression of the 1930's was exacerbated by economic
nationalism and by "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies. Tremblay
does an excellent job of backing up his analyses with voluminous and detailed
footnotes and references. The bibliography is also quite complete. All said,
this is a convincing and thought-provoking book that is certainly going to be
an eye-opener to many people who are naive about U.S. behavior around the
world. Tremblay's "The New American Empire" rates a solid Five
Stars. You ought to read it. Was
this review helpful to you? *****INTERVENTIONISM, NUCLEAR MILITARISM AND INFAMY, March 1, 2005 Reviewer: "Rick C." (Haverford, PA) "No nation can preserve its
freedom in the midst of continual warfare." James Madison, 4th President
of the United States (1751-1836) As
if we needed to be reminded, the author of "The New American
Empire" points out (p.93), that the United States was victim, in 1941,
of an unprovoked "preventive" act of aggression, at the hands of
imperial Japan. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was awakened by
the deadly noise of Japanese planes and their exploding bombs. This was
truly, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "a day of
infamy". On
March 20, 2003, it was Baghdad which found itself under the bombs of another
imperial power dropping its deadly bombs in a "preventive" attack
on another country. This date will also pass into history as an infamous day.
The only difference is the fact that the victim of yesterday, the USA, was
itself this time the initiator of an unprovoked act of aggression. No
propaganda camouflage can ever erase this historical fact. It is much easier
for a politician to initiate wars than to go the patient route of preserving
peace. Under
Bush II, arrogant and bellicose interventionism abroad has become the
hallmark of U.S. foreign policy, as clearly expressed for everyone to see in
the September 20, 2002 "Bush doctrine" and as applied in the war
against Iraq in 2003. With this "doctrine" of unlimited military
interventionism, reiterated by GWB in his inaugural address of January 20,
2005- notwithstanding the wise admonition of President Madison quoted above-
the United States is thus in danger of being endlessly at war, with all the
disastrous consequences that such a misguided policy of escalating conflicts
entails. Any
imaginable pretext will be used to justify to a gullible populace that a
perpetual state of war is unavoidable. Larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism
will be skillfully concealed under the orations of big empty words such as
"liberty", "freedom", "democracy" and the "need
to end tyranny in the world". As former Harvard University President
James Bryant Conant once said, "Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds
have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases." And,
if needs be, the argument will be made that we must forcefully convert scores
of "less civilized" peoples to our own proprietory Deity and
"values", ...while controling their markets and resources. This is
a pattern observed during the entire course of History. The
result will be an ever-bloated U.S. defense budget and soaring deficits that
will inevitably siphon off funds from Social Security, education and health,
and end up in devastating all social programs. Only the very rich will profit
from such a militarist posture. The
most scary side of this push toward militarism, especially nuclear
militarism, is that it could dramatically increase the chances that nuclear
weapons are going to be used in future conflicts.-As some atomic scientists
have said recently(See: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists- March/April 2005),
a Bush administration's policy of military preemption abroad and a push for
developing new nuclear weapon designs could be a sure recipe for making
nuclear arms proliferation more likely, not less. The world and the United
States will be much less secure if the oncoming arms race is allowed to
proceed. The simplistic and paranoid policy of "I must hurt them first
to be safe" is a clear path to global disaster. There
is hardly any debate in the United States about the impending disasters that
a nuclear militarist policy by the U.S. is bound to bring about, even though
military planners in the Pentagon are busy working on such schemes. Where are
the investigative journalists? Are they all "embedded" in the
official propaganda? The
Tremblay book is a great help in understanding the issues at stake and the
events and arguments that led to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, on March 20,
2003. It is easy to read and filled with facts and references. "The New
American Empire" should be required reading in all Politics or American
History classes. *****A FASCIST PROPAGANDA BUBBLE, February 25, 2005 Reviewer: "G. Brownville" (Los Angeles, CA)
– There
is a strong fascist wind blowing in the U.S. presently, and attemps to
establish a cohesive partisan propaganda machine and a plutocratic one-party
state are only two features of this reality. The third indication is the
intent of the Bush administration to defy international law and engage in
illegal wars of aggression abroad. Within
the Republican-controlled oligopolistic propaganda machine, fake news, bogus
reporting and systematic disinformation have become the norm rather than the
exception. In this regard, right-wing "news" organizations such as
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC (both owned by GE), CNN (Time
Warner), the tax-exempt religious right networks, the tax-exempt rich
"charitable" foundations and the rabid talk radios are so biased
and so pro-government that they are the equivalent of government-controlled
Izvetsia (News) and Pravda under the communist Soviets in Russia. The
Pentagon itself even has a free (propaganda) Channel for unsuspecting
American viewers at the Dish Network. The
dismal result is there for everyone to see: The media watchdog Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) did a study of on-camera sources used in
television news in the run-up to the 2003 war against Iraq. Incredibly, as if
the U.S. were a Third World dictatorship as far as the imbalance of news
reporting is concerned, out of 1,167 experts brought on camera during news
broadcasts, the study shows only 3% opposed the US-led invasion. That's a
97%-3% imbalance. The
Bush White House is at the center of this vast propaganda strategy to subvert
the free press, and is actively engaged on its own in "covert
propaganda" and scripted "news" by secretly paying syndicated
journalists to promote the Bush agenda, under the cover of real journalism.
The neocon "control-the-media" initiatives and the Bush
administration's "faith-based" initiatives are all designed with
the same purpose in mind, i.e. to use public funds and government power to
entrench partisan political dominance of the media and to create the
"brave new world" reality of a de facto one-party political system.
This is an echo of the Nazis of 70 years ago. The
practical consequence of these devious practices is all too obvious: 90% of
U.S. electronic media are now Republican-controlled, directly or indirectly,
and the remaining 10% (NPR, PBS, C-SPAN) are intimidated by the Republicans
and by the far right, and coerced to tow the official propaganda line. In
the 1930's, Germany used its imperialist army to conquer other countries, to
level cities and to slaughter civilians; and the German mass media
disseminated the most outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the patriotic
conquering "storm troopers". That was then. In 2005, the American
imperialist army is being used to conquer other countries, to level cities
and to slaughter civilians, and the American mass media disseminate the most
outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the patriotic conquering
"marines". Two generations apart, and you have the same unhealthy
patriotic context to behave fascistly. People
in the fascist propaganda bubble do not see clearly what's happening, but the
rest of the world does, today as in the 1930's. That is why most countries
are now taking steps to distance themselves from the U.S. of the Bush era. In
"The Anatomy of Fascism" (2004), Robert O. Paxton explains fascism
as "a mass-based form of militant nationalism, one working in uneasy
alliance with the usual elites, which pursues policies of internal cleansing
and external expansion so as to unify and regenerate what it regards as a
victimised, humiliated nation." In
"The New American Empire", author Rodrigue Tremblay similarly
concludes by saying: "The same simplistic populism, the same
anti-intellectualism, the same aggressive isolationism, the same xenophobia,
the same militarism, and the same scorn for international laws and
institutions are found in some U.S. Republican leaders today. The United
States is perhaps in greater danger than many think. If this unsettling
tendency continues, in the vein of the impracticable Bush Doctrine, the
United States could be on a path to self-destruction. The greatest success of
the Islamist al Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, will not have been
the killing of 3,000 innocent people, but rather the transformation of a
great democratic republic into a neo-conservative and neo-fascist
society." (p. 224) Nobody
can afford not to read this book. This is a meticulously organized book that
gives the reader a thoughtful explanation of the modern American empire. It's
an eye-opener. Was
this review helpful to you? ***WE NEED THE OIL! SO, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?, February 23, 2005 Reviewer: A. Clarkson (Houston, TX) This
is a well written book I disagree with. This book is much too un-American for
me and much too kind to the Arab Muslims and their allies, the al Qaeda
terrorists. I don't think Saddam Hussein had the right, in the spring of
2002, to declare an embargo on oil exports to the United States and use the
euro rather than the dollar for international sales, solely on the basis that
the U.S. is supportive of the State of Israel. In this instance, Saddam was,
in a way, declaring war against the United States. He should have known
better. I
know that the United Nations does not recognize economic embargos as war
crimes, but this is just too bad. We cannot wait for international law to
catch up with the new reality of state-sponsored and stateless terrorism and
let our economy be decimated by fanatics and dictators who used their
economic leverage for political reasons. As President George W. Bush said in
his inaugural speech, we should not hesitate to revolutionize the world and
impose freedom and liberty wherever it is needed. Another
reason I have strong reservations about this book is the feeling I have that
the author is not very religious. He implies, for example, that organized
religions are a source of human conflicts and wars, forgetting that without
religion we would all be savages. Thank God that we now have a president who
reads the Bible every day. So,
even though the author can be commended for his review of western history,
the book is surely not worth more than three stars. Was
this review helpful to you?
*****PREVENTIVE WARS VS PRE-EMPTIVE WARS, February 7, 2005 Reviewer: "A.J. K."
(Norfolk, Va, USA)
"Pre-emptive
war was invented by Adolf Hitler. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't take
anyone who came up with such a thing seriously." (President Dwight
Eisenhower, 1953) As
the quote above indicates, George W. Bush is in unsavory company when he uses
the argument of "pre-emptive" wars to attack other countries, when
it is clear the U.S. is not facing an imminent threat. In
fact, the author of "The New American Empire" refers justly to the
"Caroline Clause" in international law (pp 142 and 297n) as
justifying "pre-emptive" attacks, but not unprovoked "preventive
wars". This is an important distinction, because some commentators have
a tendancy to mix the two. In
1981, under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government reaffirmed the
validity of the Caroline Clause in international law that says that no
country can launch an attack against another, merely because it is the
stronger, if it is not in a situation of self-defense. Indeed, when Israel
launched a strike against Iraq's Tamuz 1 reactor, under construction, on June
7,1981, this was an example of an unlawful preventive war. With American
support, Resolution 487 of the U.N. Security Council was adopted unanimously,
on June 19, 1981. It condemned Israel because it considered that its move
endangered peace and was contrary to international law, and was a violation
of the Charter of the United Nations. The
war that GWB initiated on March 20, 2003, was not a pre-emptive war, but a
preventive one, and was therefore illegal. Many thanks to Dr. Tremblay for
outlining these important legal facts behind the so-called doctrine of
unilateral military intervention. The
book is particularly clear and strong when it explains how the
neoconservative disciples of Leo Strauss (1899-1973) advised George W. Bush
that he should disregard international law and pursue a unilateralist policy
in the Middle East. The
book "The New American Empire" offers the right combination of
insight and analysis to understand what's going on. It is a must-read for
anyone who wants to question intelligently the moral and legal justification
behind the "imperial" projection of US power around the globe. This
is a book that shows the tremendous breadth of Dr. Tremblay's scholarship and
experience. Was
this review helpful to you? *****Lucid Dissection of the New American Empire, February 1, 2005 Reviewer: "A Reviewer" (New York, N.Y.) Author
Rodrigue Tremblay understands the importance of history in analyzing the
deadly desire of some countries to embark upon international wars of
aggression. When this has occurred in the past, the interventionist nations
ended up destroying themselves through domestic moral and political decay and
through the animosity they created in the rest of the world. During the 20th
Century, two powerful countries went the aggression route, Germany and Russia,
and both surrered tremendous set-backs. Now, it seems it is the turn of the
United States to try its luck at aggressive empire building. Why is that so,
and what would be the likely consequences of such policies? "The
New American Empire" is an attempt to answer these questions. Chapters 3
to 5 present a lucid analysis of the various political forces at work in the
U.S. Chapter 4, "Politics and Religion in the USA" contains a
particularly brilliant presentation of the growing influence of TV-strong and
tax-exempted religious groups within the American political process (remember
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell?) Tremblay
then goes on (chapter 7) to a detailed examination of the importance of oil
for the U.S. economy, and how all previous governments have devised policies
to secure the flows of oil. It would have been most unusual if oil-men Bush
and Cheney had forgotten to factor in the almighty "god of oil" in
their worldwide mission to spread "liberty" and
"democracy" with bombs and destruction! The
most damning chapter for the Bush administration is chapter 15 ("A
Hegemonic War Under False Pretenses"). There, all the fake motives for
invading Iraq are unmercifully dissected and exposed. What is left are the
two major real reasons for this illegal war: to protect Israel and to secure
the supply of Middle East oil. For
the reader, perhaps the most interesting chapter is chapter 16,
"Greatness and Decadence of the West". There, Tremblay shows his
profound mastering of history by attributing the beginning of the rise of
Western Civilization to the shock that resulted from the Fall of
Constantinople to the Muslim Turks in 1453. The discovery of the Americas
followed and the reform ideas of the Renaissance ushered in the advent of
political and economic democracy. All
in all, this is a very sound book for anyone looking to delve deeper into the
arguments behind the resurgence of empire-building politics in the United
States. It is a good read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****Giving Democracy a Bad Name, February 1, 2005 Reviewer: John (Hamilton, ON,
Canada) George
W. Bush abuses the use of the word "democracy" in his rhetorical
justifications for American military meddling in the affairs of other countries.
In Bush's mouth, however, democracy rhymes with imperialism, militarism,
gingoism, unilateralism and neoconservatism. Everybody
is, in principle, for guaranteeing a people's right to freely choose its own government.
But, when rhetorical calls for democracy become a cover for one country
taking over another country, they sound hypocritical and false. You do not
kill tens of thousands of people and pretend you want to "liberate"
them- especially when, as a result, as in the case of Iraq, you grab their
natural resources! Rather
than bringing true democracy, such illegal wars of aggression set back the
cause of democratic reforms in the countries thus victimized. Moreover, such
military aggressions portray the U.S. as an international bully and as a
ferocious rogue state. The
author of "The New American Empire" is right to point out that
former President Gerry Ford and his then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger,
were more responsible and more successful, in 1975, when they supported the
Helsinki Accords. These historical agreements reaffirmed the principle of
self-determination of nations and, by removing external threats, opened the
gates to reforms within the former Soviet Union. It
would seem that current President George W. Bush has a lot to learn from
former President Ford and from former Secretary Kissinger. I doubt very much
that Bush II consults them any more than he seems to consult his own father,
President George H. Bush.- This book is highly recommended. Was
this review helpful to you? *****Powerful and Eye-Opening, January 19, 2005 Reviewer: A Howard (San Francisco, CA) Excellent
book for understanding the forces behind the "American Empire" Quotation:
"Political
language. . . is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind." George
Orwell, author of "1984" This
is a current affairs book that concentrates on the "new" world
empire that the Bush administration outlined in its September 20, 2002,
"Bush Doctrine" document. This does not mean that the
"old" American empire should be ignored. This "old"
American empire has been a fixture of the world order ever since the doctrine
of "Manifest Destiny" was invoked to justify the invasion of Mexico
in 1846, and culminated in 1898, when the U.S. provoked a war with Spain in
order to exert its control over Cuba. Therefore, one should keep in mind this
American colonialist and imperialist past when trying to understand the
"new" attempt at empire building. The
author is right, however, in stressing the fact that GWB and his neocon
advisers have given a whole new direction to the United States' relations
with the rest of the world, at least as far as the second part of the 20th
Century is concerned. He is also right that this shift was not
"caused" only by the events of Sept. 11, but had been in
preparation and advocated by neocon ideologues for more than a decade,
especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. George W. Bush himself
had planned to invade Iraq long before he became president on January 20,
2001. Nevertheless, some observers continue to make the huge mistake of
believing that "the new American empire" was suddenly born in the
ruins of the Twin Towers. World
War I was declared after the Germans jumped on the "pretext" of the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, on June
28, 1914. Similarly, the Islamist terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
provided the pretext to launch an American-led war in the Middle East, a war
that the pro-Israel lobby and the oil cartel had been advocating for many
years. Indeed, Iraq was in the sights of the U.S. war planners for quite some
time, as Cheney's April 2001 energy report clearly outlines. For the Bush-Cheney
team and its neocon clique, the true Energy Department of the United States
is the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 events merely provided the political
justification and cover for establishing permanent military bases in the
Middle East in order to control the entire region militarily, from Egypt to
Iran. - During the 2004 presidential debates, Senator John Kerry revealed
that the Bush administration was establishing 14 permanent military bases in
Iraq, but this scoop, strangely enough, was not picked up by any news media! What
is refreshing is the fact that the author does not rely on a grand conspiracy
theory to explain how the plans for a new era of U.S. world domination came
about and have finally been implemented. Of course, there was the Wolfowitz-Perle
cabal that he stresses, but this has been obvious ever since this group of
neocon ideologues sent public letters to President Clinton in 1998, and to
President G. W. Bush in 2001, publicly advocating the invasion of Iraq and
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. More cogently, he clearly
establises the convergence of big political and economic interests, between
three powerful groups in the U.S., i.e. the all-powerful pro-Israel lobby,
the pro-oil-industrial and militarist lobby and the far-right fundamentalist
religious groups, all of them having a stake in getting the United States
involved in the so-called military adventure of "liberating" the
Middle East. All of these powerful groups thought that the conquest of the
modern "Babylon" would be beneficial to themselves. As Paul
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense, ominously said, "The
road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad!" The rest is history. This basic
analysis is the book's main contribution. Another
welcome feature I found in Dr. Tremblay's book is the wider picture that
emerges when the author refers to the principles behind the 1648 "Peace
of Westphalia" principles, which are at the very foundation of today's
system of "nation-states" and of a peaceful and prosperous world
order. With the current "Bush Imperial Doctrine" and its alleged
right to launch preventive wars "on suspicion", the very idea of a
law-abiding democratic American nation-state is pushed aside and replaced with
the hubris of a worldwide empire that derives its legitimacy from raw
military power rather than from the consent of the people. This is a
tremendous shift of emphasis that must have the writers of the U.S.
Constitution turning over in their graves. If it wished to remain democratic
and respectful of the rule of law, the United States would not aspire to
become a vilified empire but would rather stick to its core democratic
values. For the time being, however, there is a strong current in the U.S. to
transform the republic into an empire "no matter what", under the
watchful eye of a complacent and Americanized English-speaking
"God". In so doing, the United States risks becoming the first
democracy in modern history to transform itself into an empire, and possibly
an international rogue state, through the use of military power. On
the whole, this a well-researched and a well-written, albeit hard-hitting,
book that puts together all the important pieces of the current geopolitical
puzzle of an America paradoxically becoming more isolationist, more
religious, less moral, less law-abiding and more interventionist around the
world. The author's choice of quotations, his more than 500 footnotes and his
exhaustive bibliography are impressive and make this book a must-read. Was
this review helpful to you? *****Bouts of National Craziness, January 5, 2005 Reviewer: Anonymous (Washington, D.C.
USA) The
U.S. is presently going through one of those bouts of craziness that could
last a decade before we get back to our senses. Meanwhile,
it may be appropriate to remind ourselves that there's a War Crimes Act in
the United States, passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that
grave breaches of the "Geneva Convention" are subject to the death
penalty. Who are the candidates? Well,
it is widely acknowledged now that the Bush administration has violated the
"Geneva Convention" in Iraq by authorizing torture, by bombing
hospitals, and by destroying cities and killing civilians. In
1945, when the U.S. had a government which was a bit more moral than the one
we have now, the Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, Mr. Robert
L. Jackson, made it abundantly clear that leaders who initiate wars of
aggression are guilty of war crimes: "We
must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders
are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we
must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to
aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of
policy." Therefore,
by the very principles of the Nuremburg Tribunal, which the U.S. initiated
and carried out, it can be concluded that the supreme international crime is invasion,
aggression, and that supreme crime includes within it all the evil that
follows. When
will the crimes committed in Iraq be accounted for? History will tell. Meanwhile,
no American can wash away his personal responsability for what is being carried
out in his or her name in Iraq. The least he or she can do is to get
informed. A book such as "The New American Empire" provides all the
relevant facts to make a judgment.- I would certainly recommend reading it. Was
this review helpful to you? *****The Shame of Humanity, December 1, 2004 Reviewer: Gaston (Cambridge, MA USA) When
you see on the news that U.S. soldiers are shooting on unarmed Iraqi
civilians, in a church, because they are "still breathing", it is
easy to reach the conclusion that America, under Bush II, has become the
shame of humanity. Don't we have any decency left? America has lost its moral
compass. It seems the more religious it becomes, the less moral it is. Why
would Imperial and Nazi Germany and Stalin's Imperial Soviets become our
models for invading other countries? Why would a democratic United States
ever aspire to become a "New American Empire"? Why is our
intellectually corrupt and subservient media go along and accept to be
"embedded" in the official propaganda? Fox News, in particular,
owned by Rupert Murdoch,
is so biased and so pro-government that it is the equivalent of Izvestia
(News) under the communist Soviets in Russia. Thanks
to this book for opening our eyes regarding the true democratic values of
America. As the author aptly says (p. 20 ): "What the United States has
to offer the world is not a sketchy medieval version of Good and Evil, but a
system of fundamental political values that are based upon the right of
peoples to self-determination, to a democratic government and the rule of
law, on inalienable human rights and individual freedom, on the respect for
life, on tolerance, on the basic rights of freedom of thought, of religion,
and liberty of conscience, on free enterprise and economic progress through
science, industry, and personal effort, and on the right of individuals to
seek happiness." I agree wholeheartedly. Now
that we have a pro-war president, a warfare state and a permanent war
economy, it is high time to reflect upon the militarist and imperialist path
that some misguided and self-interested minds want our democracy to take. It
is not going to be easy. Nowadays, the U.S. population is so disinformed and
dumbed by its politicians and by the big right wing media machine that it is
showing all the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown. With the
yellow-red alerts continually changing, with VP Dick Cheney warning that al
Qaeda would have attacked us if we had dared to vote for John Kerry, or that
we would have "sinned" or displeased "God" if we had not
reelected President Bush (dixit the bishops and the evangelical sorcerers),
it should surprise nobody that the level of collective hysteria is
dangerously high. Unfortunately, we have four more years of this
hysteria. At least we have enlightened books such "The New American
Empire" to remain focused and sane and to warn us of what is at stake
here, and that's civilization. Thanks to authors such as Dr. Tremblay. Was this review helpful to you? *****A DISPASSIONATE AND CONVINCING BOOK, January 9, 2005 Reviewer: RG
Gregory
from UK Dr. Tremblay's "The New American Empire" is a
very forceful account, and, of course, shocking. I would hope that,
eventually, the Bush Gang will be brought to account for their terrible
doings (and Blair along with them for being an accessory before during and
probably after the committing of their crimes). The
deep worry is that, imbued as they are with the wish for Armageddon (in the
belief that they, as pure Christians, will be the only survivors in their
ascent to Heaven) they will get to a point where they will care not what
happens to everyone else on earth. They possess all the destructive power
they need to bring that about. Bush
is not an aberration to the past. The policy of the States for at least a
century has been concerned with interfering in the affairs of other countries
and working surreptitiously to overthrow them by whatever foul means are
necessary. I was in Uganda for two years during the sixties and, through the
USIS and other bodies, even possibly the Peace Corps, they were hard at work
in that part of Africa sticking their fives in. The Marshall Plan had its
dark side, certainly where Britain was concerned, and I do not feel as
sanguine as the author does about the globalising institutions that have
carried US officials and power into all corners of the globe. American
intrigue to start wars was not limited to the Gulf of Tonkin (1964). There
seems to be evidence that Roosevelt knew in advance about the attack on Pearl
Harbour and decided to let it go ahead. Now,
given the neo-cons' openly declared awareness of the advantages of staging
(in line with Hitler's assertions of seventy years previously) some damaging
attack upon the populace, in order to convince it of the presence of outside
terror and the need to mobilise against it, the circumstances of the 9/11
attack cannot be let go for what it has been officially declared as. For me,
the film of Bush amongst the school children, when the news of the attack is
conveyed to him, does not show the face and behaviour of an innocent man.
Coincidence is a dodgy concept when it conveniently suits authority to parade
it as proof of non-guilt. Dr.
Tremblay's book is so clear about the lying capabilities of the Bushites -
perhaps better written as the Bu-shites - that I can't see that we should shy
away from the probability of any further lying on their behalf. He is clear
about the conniving cleverness of Karl Rove: I sense that absolutely nothing
should be taken as gospel dropping from the lips of these cynical hot
gospellers. The
villains of the Renaissance do not, I fear, have the drop on this present
bunch of villains. However,
what intrigues me most about this book is the 625 year cycle of empires. That
suggests there are deeper patterns at work in the human story than any of us
can gainsay. Fifty
or more years ago I read a Penguin paperback generally summarising the
overall history of the human race. It suggested that this history threw up
cyclical patterns, and that the twentieth century was at the end of one of
the longest understandable human cycles - one lasting six thousand years,
starting with the shift of human beings into agriculture and settled abodes.
It was suggested that the end of the cycle was likely to be marked by cataclysm
and military dominance and dictatorship. From
that book I began to work out my own theories of eras and ages - the last of
which, the Renaissance, exactly works in with Dr. Tremblay's time-assessment
of Western Empire. I saw also the cycle starting with the arising of
Christianity. And others. But what mostly struck me was that they all seemed
to be coming to their end at the present time. This led me, decades ago, to
the awareness that now represents what is probably the most important moment
of change in human affairs since Mesopotamia. So
much is at the end of its cycle and so much therefore is waiting to begin.
The corollary to this is that, if all change is dangerous, then the moments
of cyclical change are more dangerous, and moments of multiple cyclical
change are the most dangerous of all, and cannot help but be threatening to
the continued existence of the human race.... "The
New American Empire" states its case dispassionately, and with much
conviction. It charts ground that others too are working over with precision
and clear-headedness. It details connections that mainstream commentators are
mostly afraid to look at... It is also part of a clarion call to all who want
the world to survive in an honest, decent, sharing fashion to get their noses
above the parapet and to have their individual and collective voices heard,
and their actions, on whatever possible scale, paid attention to, through the
miasmas of deliberate corporate confusion. Strongly recommended. Was this review helpful to you? *****Oil, War and the Coming Depression, February 12, 2005 Reviewer: A
customer
from Calgary, AB, Canada Even
if the propaganda-prone U.S. media refuse to face reality, ("There is
none so blind as those who will not see"), the control of Middle East
oil and the protection of Israel are the fundamental rationales for the
neocon Bush administration's military adventures in that part of the world. Chapter
7 of "The New American Empire" (The Strategic Importance of Oil) makes
it perfectly clear that the Bush administration is not in Iraq, against the
wishes of the Iraqi citizens, for any grandiose mission of freedom and
democracy, but rather to secure the immense oil reserves of the region. Iraq
had to be occupied in order for the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Pentagon to
establish permanent military bases in that country and, from there,
intimidate the bordering countries of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran.
Economist Tremblay is right on the button with his analysis. The
illegal American war of aggression against Iraq is also an indirect war
against Europe which is the largest importer of Middle East oil and which
accounts for 45% of Middle East imports of goods. Indeed, what the
warmongering neocons in the Bush administration want to avert above all is a
move by Middle East and OPEC oil producers to cease using the U.S. dollar as
a benchmark currency for their exports and elect instead to rely on the euro
currency. There
is, of course, a precedent for that. In the fall of 2000, Saddam Hussein had
announced a conversion of Iraq's oil exports from dollars to euros. In April
2001, he went even further and threatened to impose an oil embargo on the
Western countries supporting Israel. This was too much for the Bush White
House's oilmen, and the convenient pretext of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11
provided all the cover needed to proceed with the illegal invasion of Iraq,
on March 20, 2003. As
a matter of fact (not reported in U.S. media) one of the first decisions of
the new American-led administration in Iraq, in June 2003, was to make sure
that Iraqi oil sales for the international markets were once again
denominated in US dollars, and not in euros. Now,
in 2005, an even greater challenge to U.S. financial and dollar hegemony is
arising and it is coming from Iran. This country not only requires to be paid
in euros instead of dollars for its oil exports (and this, since the spring
of 2003), but it also has the "audacity" to want to establish an
euro-denominated international oil-trading exchange in Tehran, as early as
March 21, 2005, or, at the latest, in early 2006. Such
an euro-oil exchange would be a tremendous shock to dollar-denominated
international oil markets and would represent a direct challenge to the
supremacy of the American-controlled (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley)
London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and of the New York
Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). If OPEC countries move from dollars to euros,
the financial consequences for the London/New York nexus will be very
negative, while being of course very positive for the main euro financial
center (Paris/Frankfurt). Such are the stakes behind the curtains of the
military conflicts in the Middle East. Those
in the U.S. media who keep repeating that oil has nothing to do with the U.S.
war in Iraq are either ignorant or fools. Their disinformation only serves to
camouflage the neoconservatives' plan to control the Middle East for its oil,
for the financial supremacy of the dollar and for the sake of the almighty state
of Israel. Now that a war against Iran is in the making for the same reasons
that there was a war against Iraq, and with even more expected disastrous and
catastrophic results, one wonders when the U.S. media will start telling the
truth to the population. A
war against Iran, a country of 75 million inhabitants, would not only fuel
more al Qaeda Muslim terrorism, but it could easily trigger a worldwide
economic depression. This
is easy to understand. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, where all the Persian
Gulf bound oil tankers must pass on their way to world markets. An American
attack on Iran, or even one carried out by Israel, would surely shut down the
Strait of Hormuz and would precipitate a world energy crisis on the magnitude
of the 1973 crisis. - Oil prices could spike up to $100 a barrel, the U.S.
dollar would tank, interest rates would sky-rocket and the stockmarket would
collapse. - The long-feared Bush depression would be on its way. There are very few books that address such fundamental questions.
"The New American Empire" is one of them. This book is a
meticulously researched attempt to explain the complex reality behind the
Bush administration's misconceived plans for world supremacy. Give it a
thumbs up. Was this review helpful to you? THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE and this website are
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