Customer Reviews

Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis

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In 'Before & After,' Phyllis Bennis has provided Americans with an essential book on 9.11. Her points are well-documented and enumerated in a clear and jargon-free language. Moreover, she discusses each of the required topics: Oil and Israel, Palestine and human rights, American and international politics, regional and world domination, unilateralism and the rule of law. She easily exposes the Bush administration as a blunderbuss implementing an overt and unapologetic imperialism while she also argues, convincingly, I would add, that the Bush administration has used 9.11 to provide coverage for a pre-existing foreign policy (unilateralism and militarism) that would not have gained widespread acceptance otherwise.

In sum, her book is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the pre-history and after-life of the horrific event and, additionally, the reasons the US will soon invade Iraq.

This book will tell you everything that you truly need to know about recent U.S foregn policy as it relates to September 11th and our involvement with Mideast countries and events. To read this book is to understand how the dominating focus of the current Bush administration is to protect and expand our oil interests in the Mideast. Any civil or international interest or action that might possibly distract from this dominant focus is cast aside by the Bush team. The mass media have not adequately informed us of the very disturbing nature of this focus and its consequences. Reading this book is essential for everyone who wants to understand where we currently stand, as a nation, as a people, and as a member of the global community. Reading this book will enable you to clarify where you stand, as a citizen of the most internationally dominant nation in the history of the world. The book is sufficiently detailed, yet very clearly written. I believe that Before and After may be the single most important book that you can read at this particular point in history.

This is a very important book for anyone wishing to be an informed citizen of today's America and the world. This book gives us the chance to understand US foreign policy and begin to change it. Becoming informed is the first crucial step. I can't recommend it highly enough. It is clearly written and very easy to read.

This is a very important book for anyone wishing to be an informed citizen of today's America and the world. This book gives us the chance to understand US foreign policy and begin to change it. Becoming informed is the first crucial step. I can't recommend it highly enough. It is clearly written and very easy to read.

I must begin with a preface, to say that I am not a fan of the Bush administration. Both before and after 9-11, it should seem obvious that the foriegn policy agenda of this administration has come into being through the proding of a group of right wing hawks. Ms. Bennis seeks to explain a brief history of American involvement in the Arab world, and then offer a critical assessment of current foriegn policy, and what might be done to change our current stance. Ms. Bennis points out the creation of Office of Strategic Influence, yet fails to follow up on her claim. I was a bit at sorts with this novel, as she seeks to demonize the American presidency through a satirical scope. I followed up on her references, which are wholly imcomplete, and found that many of the quotes and stated facts were poorly referenced and researched. From an entirely accidemic point of view, Ms. Bennis' book was quite ineffectual in persuading my thought. I was never a fan of the Bush administration, and that has of course not changed.

The United States has fought in a number of wars. And in both World War One and World War Two, there were some folks who did not want to join the army and fight. Some were pacifists. Others wanted to support the war effort, but not as soldiers. And some wanted to fight, but wanted us to be on the other side, as allies of Germany.

Well, I do not know how Phyllis Bennis would have felt about fighting against Germany. But I think she is not in favor of fighting against Arab tyranny and terror. And my guess after reading her book is that she wants us to fight, but on the other side, as allies of the Arabs who are fighting a battle against human rights (and especially against human rights for Jews and other minorities) in the region.

Bennis' description of the history of Israel is simply cheap propaganda. She lovingly dwells on King and Crane, who as early as 1919 warned of the "danger" of a Jewish state arising in the Middle East. And she explains that supporting a Jewish state seemed like a good idea to Truman, given that the only losers would be the local Arabs! That sure is a strange way to put it. Would we dismiss the civil rights movement in the United States and the idea of extending human rights to Blacks in the American South by saying that the "only losers" would be the local Whites? I hope not. I think that emancipation and human rights are good for us all. Bennis strikes me as an arbitrary racist for whom Jews deserve nothing and Arabs deserve everything. She constantly portrays Israeli self-defence as unfair. She indicates that she had high hopes for the region when the infamous 2001 Durban racism conference was held (that is a startling confession, as far as I am concerned). But right after that came 9/11, and she seems to feel that this made things worse. It makes me wonder just what she was hoping for.

There's one key statement that Bennis makes that I regard as a trademark of anti-Zionism. And it is that the Jews owned about 6% of some land in 1947. In truth, the Jews really did own plenty of Levantine land at the time of the 1947 United Nations partition. They owned something like 6% of their partition as private property. That is an enormous amount. In the region which was assigned to the Jews, the Jews were just barely a majority of the population. In territory, the Jewish partition was about 55% of what was left of the British Mandate after over three-quarters of it was given to the Arabs to form Jordan.

The Jewish population would have been far bigger had the British not come up with their perfidious White Paper of 1939, which banned most Jewish immigrants. I think it is truly vicious of Bennis to boast that the Jewish population was so small, given that the reason it was so small was that anti-Zionists kept the Jews out, in violation of the Mandate given them by the League of Nations. She's blaming the victims, big-time.

Still, I'm completely fed up with the misuse of the fact that Jews owned around 6% of some land. The implication is that the Arabs owned the other 94%. And that is absolutely false. The majority of the land was State land. And some was "Beduin land," which was not private property. In the Jewish partition, the Jews and Arabs owned similar amounts of land. You ought to look up just how much each side had.

Now, it is not really relevant whether the Jews owned 1% of the land or 99% of it. Their property belongs to them, and they are making good use of that property. If everyone had to bid for all the Middle Eastern land at auction today, the Jews would probably get all of Israel and more, or, if others insisted on outbidding them for Israel, they would probably get far more total land adjacent to Israel. What I find striking is the eagerness of some anti-Zionists to misinform their readers by implying that the Arabs owned 94% of a region that the Jews wound up with the majority of (when in fact saying this would be a blatant lie) and then using this to try to imply that there is something unfair about there being a state in the Middle East that permits Jews to have human rights.

The existence of Jews is not the problem that is causing strife in the Middle East. The main problem is the refusal of some racist and irredentist Arabs to abide human rights and their violent rejection of human rights for their neighbors. Another serious problem is the support these racists are getting from all sorts of people in the media, academia, the religious community, and international organizations. And Bennis is part of that problem.