Customer Reviews

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(74)

 

 

I personally do not agree with "necons" like Perle. I think that their talk of democracy in the Middle East is an admirable goal, but when you really look at their writings and silence on particular issues, you're left with nothing more than a desire to control the Middle East...just in a more aggressive, proactive way.

Two things that immediately jumped out at me from this book:

(1) No index. I'm still baffled by this. I've never come across a book on politics/foreign policy that doesn't have an index. Why isn't there an index here? Its absence may not mean anything, but it is baffling nevertheless.

(2) Next to no cited sources. This is probably a result of the fact that this book is a polemic if it's anything. Still, you'd think the authors would want to put as much scholarly weight behind this book as possible.

Beyond that, this book does not represent the type of strong thinking I've seen from both authors in other forms. I disagree with a lot of what they've said, but before this book I would have called each intellectual/policy heavyweights. This book seems like they weren't even trying. It seems almost immature at times. If I had read this book without seeing the authors names, I would have been shocked to find out it was Perle and Frum.

Finally, the main reason for not liking this book is that the authors are suggesting the type of foreign policy that ultimately makes this country weaker. Iraq has demonstrated the limits of American power and that we do need help with some of our goals. Perle and Frum appear to be thumbing their noses at the world here. They come across as being very arrogant. It is this type of attitude that makes others not want to help us, which makes our job much harder than it should be.

Well, we haven't heard much lately (as of March 1, 2006) from these two bellicose neocons, have we? I read this book when it first came out, but events of the past few days (e.g. the initiation of categorical civil war in Iraq; the renunciation, abridgement, or disavowal of Neoconservatism by its very founders and leaders) has lead me to think back on the time I wasted reading this glorified pamphlet.

Beyond their own inadequacy-driven ideology, the authors obviously have no idea what they are talking about. For instance, they cite as their gauge of public opinion in the Islamic world the antiquated idiom of "the coffee-houses of Damascus and Cairo"; as if they were writing in 1938 rather than the internet-wired beginning of the 21st century. But no, it couldn't be 1938, because according to Pearle and Frum, history in the Middle east begins in 1979, with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the taking of American hostages by Islamic radicals of that country. After reading the book I looked back through it for confirmation of this startling impression, and was able to find no specific mention of any event in the entire region predating that year. What about the CIA's overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadeq government in Iran in 1952, and their installation of a medieval monarchy in its place? - apparently not worth mentioning; - couldn't possibly have had any bearing on Iranian attitudes and motives as they disposed of their Shah and lashed out at his American sugar-daddies. Similarly, while the authors do note the existence of the state of Israel, they fail to explore any aspect of its controversial establishment and expansion.

Apart from the book's countless factual errors, outright lies, and generally nefarious motives, this willful dismissal of crucial history stands as the most compelling reason to stay away from this intrinsically worthless book.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. ... the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself."
Cicero, (106-43 BC)

Don't look now, but the fascist wagon is rolling and gaining speed. And the Neocons in Washington and in Jerusalem are behind this worldwide movement toward fascism.

Perle and Frum are only the visible cogs of this infernal machine. They take care of the propaganda side. Their mission: Persuade us that we need to fight the Muslims, Israel's perceived enemies, -one billion and a quarter of them. For that, we need to give up our liberties and possibly our lives and our children's lives.

Meanwhile, what do they recommend our government to do? Nothing less than suspend the U.S. Constitution and impose a whole series of "measures" to "protect" us: National ID cards, internal passports, "limits" on the right of free speech, the compilation of dossiers on millions of potential "subversives", ...etc.. In other words, turn fascist. It's no wonder that the apocalyptic religious Right has allied itself with this Neocon coterie: They all want to hasten Armageddon and the end of the world.

Our greatest threat does not come from the Muslims (excluding al Qaeda), but from the Neocons who have practically taken over our government. That's the insidious threat that's so hard to defend against.
This book is the proof that we better wake up. This is a blueprint for fascism and perpetual war.

David Frum and Richard Perle actually wrote a book that urges the United States to eliminate all of Israel's enemies (Syria, Iran) and abandon support for a Palestinian State. The book reads like a hysterical satire of neoconservatism, their aggressive and fantastical war ideas so absurd and blatantly in the service of Israel that I quite literally convulsed with laughter.

What is most amazing is that two educated people were foolish enough to write such a book while America is currently bogged down in a deadly Vietnamesque war of neoconservative making. You would think these guys would have the good sense to quietly limp off the playing field of ideas and retreat to their air-conditioned offices at the American Enterprise Institute where they could reinvent themselves as experts on healthcare or education and gracefully detach from the failed Israel First movement.

But no, they instead choose to show up on Hardball or the op-ed pages of the The Weekly Standard, stubbornly and improbably pushing for an invasion of Iran and Syria. Two solipsistic eggheads who never served in the military, so determined to protect Israel that they're willing to sacrafice American lives, American values and American money. These Zionists are nothing more than sick and soulless traitors. Nefarious, demonic vampires who lack judgement, wisdom and empathy. What baffles is their pig-headed audacity: thinking they can crank out an Israel First book like this and actually convince the American people that we should attack Iran and Syria (two countries that do not in any way threaten the United States).

The irony in all of this is that Jews around the world want to keep Israel strong and safe partially because if (God forbid) another Holocaust happens there will be safe haven for them. However, nothing creates stronger Anti-Semitic feelings than Americans feeling like Jews are manipulating the levers of American power in the service of Israel. You would think that Frum and Perle know this themselves but their astonishingly ridiculous book proves otherwise.

Oh, well, Neoconservatism is dead. This book provides some laughs before the celebratory funeral. Frum, Perle, Kristol, Abrams, Rhode, Feith and Wolfowtiz -- their place in history is final. They will go down in the Grand Hall of Historical Shame as the Zionists within America who pushed the United States into a pre-emptive war for Israel's benefit. Eggheads without wisdom. Idealogues without judgement. Warmongers without restraint.

And when they're dead and condemned to their own little sinister cells of Hell we can all applaud and breath easy and thank God for one beautiful thing: America without neoconservatives.

To clarify, a "neocon", or neo-conservative, can best be described someone who would have been called a liberal 30 or 40 years ago (or maybe was a liberal), but is now considered a Reagan/ GW Bush style of conservative. In foreign policy they can be characterized by ambitious and optimistic ideas. Frum and Perle, two of the leading minds in the neocon movement, describe this foreign policy brilliantly. Their bold ideas about the war on terror and nation building are not founded on any desire for war just for the sake of war. They are founded on idea that by replacing terrorist regimes with democracies, we can end much of the conflict in the world today. After all, when did any two democracies ever go to war? Never. And which democracy did the 9/11 hijackers come from? In short, it's a thought provoking and optimistic book, a must read no matter which side you're on.

I completely agree with Perle and Frum. AS a refugee from Libya, during the Arab Israeli War of 1967, I seen this all coming. Al Qaeda will never give up, CNN ran a story about it on 1/11/04 and said the same thing. Radical Islam will never give up, we don't listen, at our own peril. Something is wrong with the Liberals in this country, they want to turn us over to radical Islam, I for one, never want to live under a government controlled by them. I have seen what it can do and it terrifies me. Our worst nightmare is on our doorstep.

[...]David Frum and Richard Perle, in An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, claimed falsely to have defined the conservative view on American foreign policy.

Frum, a Canadian citizen until shortly before the publication of this book, is a chickenhawk who attacked real conservatives for not supporting endless wars in his National Review article, "Unpatriotic Conservatives".

Richard Perle is a Democrat whose name continues to surface in political scandals.

In the book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Seymour Hersh revealed that the FBI had wiretaps of Perle, while a foreign policy aide to the Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, passing classified National Security Council documents to the Israeli Embassy.

While Perle served as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, on July 10, 2002, Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec made a presentation advocating an American invasion of Saudi Arabia, the seizing of oil fields, and the confiscation of financial assets if the Saudis continue to support anti-Western terrorist networks (Jack Shafer, Slate, August 7, 2002). In "Lunch with the Chairman" (The New Yorker, March 17, 2003), Seymour Hersh revealed a meeting in France between Perle and wealthy Saudis (Adnan Khashoggi and Harb Saleh al-Zuhair). While Perle labeled Hersh a terrorist for revealing a meeting to find diplomatic alternatives to invading Iraq, Hersh suggested that the meeting was more likely related to Perle's involving the Saudis in his Trireme Partners venture capital group to profit from the Iraq War and from homeland security spending.

On page 282, Frum and Perle included the Iranian Communist MEK (Rajavi Cult) as a United States Department of State designated terrorist organization. The MEK has murdered American military officers and Rockwell International employees in Iran. In 1991, to repay Saddam Hussein for providing Camp Ashraf and other military camps in Iraq and for heavy arms and ammunition, the MEK launched Operation Morvarid to kill large numbers of Kurdish children, women, and men, including by running over them with MEK tanks. On January 24, 2004, Perle was a paid speaker at a Washington Convention Center meeting of more than 3,000 MEK supporters. Professor Raymond Tanter, a prominent MEK supporter, introduced Perle.

On page 109, Frum and Perle described the MEK (without naming them) as "... a brave band of Iranian dissidents ...." On page 113, they compared the State Department's opposition to the MEK with earlier attempts to stop American support of freedom movements in the Eastern bloc of the Soviet Union. On page 114, they urged America to "toss dictators aside" whenever America has the power and the interests to do so. On page 275, Frum and Perle concluded: "And now that America has become the greatest of all powers in world history, its triumph has shown that freedom is irresistible." Nothing could be further from the truth. America invaded Iraq to control the oil fields and to make an example of Saddam Hussein for his 2002 demands to be paid for oil in Euros, not in American dollars. Iran followed this example in 2003 and has announced plans to open an exchange for trading oil (competing with New York exchanges) in Iran in 2006. America's wealth and power depend heavily upon the rest of the world. The government of Communist China alone holds enough American dollars to enable it to hurt the American economy at any time by dumping those American dollars and by ceasing to make new low-return investments in America.

The neo-conservatives (neo-Trotskyites) have lied, too, about wanting to export democracy. Professor Claes Ryn's book, America the Virtuous, explained the similarities between neoconservatives and the Jacobins (French Revolution Reign of Terror terrorists) who wanted to export their radical brand of guillotine mob rule to the rest of the world.

Readers will understand this book better by reading first the book of another neoconservative, Michael Ledeen: Machiavelli on Modern Leadership. Machiavellian politicians attempt to gain power by using expediency, deceit, cunning, or unscrupulous actions. Jacobins, communists, and fascists committed atrocities based upon the shared belief that the ends justify the means. By contrast, free-market libertarians believe that the means justify the ends. In Christianity, the Golden Rule of Jesus stands in total opposition to the neoconservatives who worship at the altar of Machiavelli. Unfortunately, the godless chickenhawk neoconservatives have been able to dupe large numbers of soldiers from Christian families to die in the Middle East to enrich and to empower the neoconservatives.

MEK supporters placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times on January 15, 2003 thanking 150 members of Congress who signed the Iran Statement. By their support for the communist takeover of Iran by the MEK, the neoconservatives' red, Trotskyite roots are showing again. Irving Kristol ("Memoirs of a Trotskyist") and some neoconservatives have written openly about their Trotskyite roots and permanent revolutions. Other neoconservatives remain in denial (see: Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, "The Neoconservative Invention", May 20, 2003). For a truly conservative view of the National Review, read John McManus' book William F. Buckley, Jr.: Pied Piper for the Establishment.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican-Florida), who circulated the Iran Statement for the MEK, has more than 300 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives for her Iran Freedom Support Act (H.R.282). Senator Rick Santorum (Republican-Pennsylvania) sponsored the Senate version (S.333).

The best way for America to win the war on terror is to vote out of office all of the evil neoconservatives in the Democratic and Republican parties. If Americans continue to support the hard-line, Machiavellian neoconservative foreign policies of this book, then America will experience endless wars and an economic depression.

This book alone provides absolute proof that the whole "NeoCon" movement is nothing but a front for Communism. Their goal is an Orwellian 1984 dictatorship for America under the cloak of "Oh this protects you from terror". National I.D. cards? Why not just stamp a bar code on our heads at birth, Frumsky? What's "Conservative" about anything from this warped vision for our future?

The bottomline is that Perle and Frum are nothing but dressup Republicans whose true identities remain completely Trotskyite like so many of the other NeoCons from this disgusting "New Wave Republicanism"

And since when did Israel become the 51st State? I find it hard to believe that Middle Americans want their sons to die in Lebanon or Syria for the benefit of Israeli Imperialism.

An end to evil? Sounds a bit utopian to me. What the authors propose is simple: war without end against terrorist states-e.g. Iran, North Korea, Saudia Arabia, etc... Ultimately, this will be costly beyond imagination, both in blood and money. As we have seen in Iraq, "regime change" is more difficult in practice than theory.
This is not to say the book is without value. Frum and Perle do make some constructive suggestions regarding our failed immigration policies. It's probably worth checking out of the library, but it isn't good enough to justify the price.

"I believe demoloshing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk"
- Defense policy Board Member Ken Adleman, 2/13/02

"Simply Stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of Mass Destruction"

-Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/26/02


"We do know that (Saddam) is actively pursuing a Nuclear Weapon."

- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, 9/10/02


"It is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you kow, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months."

- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2/7/03

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - Cheney 3/16/03

"We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." - Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, 3/27/03

"We know where the weapons are. They're in the area aaround Tikrit and Baghdad and East, West, North and South somewhat." - Rumsfeld, 3/13/03

"Iraq will not require sustained aid." O.M.B Director Mitch Daniels, 3/28/03

"Major combat operations have ended." - GWB

"A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush." - Pentagon Advisor Richard Perle, 9/22/03

"I don't know anyone in the executive branch of the government who believes it would be appropriate or necessary to reinstitute the draft." Rumsfeld 2004-

The last one is the only statement that hasn't been totally contradicted in reality by now. Let's hope it never is.


And those "Free Elections"? Don't think for a minute that those weren't a sham too. If the neo cons want to "El Salvadorize" Iraq as they've said, they are likely rigging the elections (as they did in El Salvador) and killing opposition to whichever candidate they prefer.

Just remember, in 1968 the Press was all over the "free elections" in South Vietnam which installed a DICTATOR- Diem. If we want "Democracy" so much, why not in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Pakistan (the list goes on and on)?

That's because we dont want Democracy dummy..

Read more than one newspaper and watch more than Fox News and investigate yourself and you'll see this. Its too bad there's so many ignorant people around.