Customer Reviews

Boomerang!: : How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America

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This is a country-by-country chronicle of how American covert wars throughout the Middle East have come back to haunt us, creating plenty of enemies.

Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1970s was helped by a CIA decision to assassinate one of his predecessors, General Abdel Karim Qassim. In Syria, the CIA sponsored a 1949 military takeover, the first of over a dozen coups in the next 20 years. American oil companies felt that an independent Syria was not in their interests. Sudan has been involved, off and on, in a bloody civil war for almost 50 years. Oil just happens to be a factor in this ongoing slaughter.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has ruled with an iron fist ever since the 1982 assassination of Anwar Sadat, his predecessor. Mubarak uses billions of dollars in US military aid to beat and torture opposition politicians and journalists, many of whom have died in custody. Press restrictions are widespread. Egypt is viewed as a well-bribed client state of the US. The military in Turkey, a US ally and fellow member of NATO, has been one of the biggest human rights abusers of the last decade.

America has always looked for a surrogate policeman in the Persian Gulf, to keep an eye on the huge oil reserves. First, we armed the Shah of Iran, ignoring his repression, until he was overthrown. Then we armed Iraq, ignoring Saddam Hussein's repression, until he became too powerful, and a major war was needed to destroy his arsenal. Now, America is arming Saudi Arabia, ignoring their repression, creating a generation of militants determined to overthrow the puppet regime propped up with American money.

Part of the blame for all this can be laid at the feet of Great Britain. They were the colonial power for much of the first half of the 20th century, and had a tendency to draw national boundaries while ignoring an area's ethnic makeup.

Arab hatred of America has less to do with our freedoms and diversity than with our illegal involvement in another country's internal affairs. This book easily reaches the level of Must Read. It's very interesting, it's easy to read and it is full of information that won't be mentioned in the mainstream media.

The book is clearly written, organized by region, brief yet to the point. I chose it as a starting point in beginning to understand US involvement in the Middle East. I found the information conscise and heavily footnoted. I appreciated the footnotes as I looked up additional information on the internet. The information was easy to grasp for a broad understanding. This book was quite helpful to me in going on to read other books which discuss matters at a deeper level. I would recommend it to another person not well versed in the politics of the middle east -US relationship.