Customer Reviews

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

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Within the 900+ non-fiction books about information, intelligence, emerging threats, and national security that I have reviewed for Amazon, I count many of Noam Chomsky's books. As with others, there is some repetition here, and he could have done a better job of reviewing the function and purpose of the state before labeling the U.S. a failed state. I will say, before my concluding comment, that all of my reading bears out Chomsky's inherent correctness.

Among the points that earned a note on my flyleaf:

* US began with the genocide of the Indians, moved on to slavery, and now condones genocide across Africa and elsewhere.

* Quotes CIA Bin Laden analyst with appreciation in noting that all the US has to do to stop the problems in the Middle East is wean itself from dictators and cheap oil, remove its forces from the Muslim lands, and stop predatory capitalism. Hmmmm. There just might be a moral point in there someplace!

* Chomsky asserts that history documents that preventive wars usually bring about the outcomes they ostensibly seek to stop, and does very very well in detailing how the US invasion allowed hundreds of missile and weapons sites to be looted, moving many of the components of weapons of mass destruction into unfriendly insurgent hands--precisely what we allegedly sought to prevent.

* The author recounts the varied facts that have emerged on how the US specifically sought regime change, the British (at least those with integrity like the Foreign Minister who quit) refused to go along with that, so Blair and Bush together concocted pretexts.

* Chomsky confirms in this book what I have seen myself, which is that the only part of the US Government that is "at war" is the U.S. Army and select portions of the U.S. Air Force. The rest of the government is NOT at war, and simply pursuing business as usual. Our war on terrorism is ineffective in the sense of capturing specific terrorists, and counter-productive in the sense of producing tens of thousands more--as Chomsky recounts in the book citing RAND and other studies, 85% of the "foreign fighters" in Iraq were mobilized and radicalized by the US invasion of Iraq.

* Chomsky is provocatively on target when he anticipates the emergence of a Shiite regional power based on Iran that includes the Shiite controlled regions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia--and in the latter, that happens to include the most productive oil fields--in short, the extremist Republicans' worst nightmare.

* Chomsky harps, no doubt with reason, on the long record that the US has in sponsoring crimes against humanity including regime changes that are against democracy (Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, the list goes on) and in favor of dictators who will protect US private investment as the expense of the public interest in their own countries.

* Chomsky focuses a portion of the book on the crimes by Israel against the Palestinians, although he does not appear to balance this by noting how ill-treated the Palestinians have been by all the Arab nations. He emphatically and deliberately identifies Bush with Hitler in that the two share a strain of "demonic messiaism" and rely on "the big lie" that (if repeated often enough) will fool the people. Goebbels would be proud of his kin in the White House, Karl Rove.

* Chomsky concludes the book by discussing the "democratic deficit" in the USA, and while he is very much on point, he wanders somewhat. For a better appreciation of why we allowed the extreme right to take over and ruin the country, I recommend Jacob Hacker's OFF CENTER: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy as well as other books on my democracy list. As a moderate Republican, I can certify that the Republican party today is run by thieves, lunatics, extremists, and -- in the case of John McCain -- born again Bushophiles.

This book is, like, most of his books, a very long Op-Ed but with good footnotes. We need to move toward more analysis and toward finding solutions. Inspired by Chomsky and others, I am in the process of developing a monograph that takes the top ten threats to global and national security identified by the High-Level threat panel of the United Nations (with LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft as the US representative), and showing that 80% of the information we need to understand and address those threats is open source information (OSIF), not secret information, on which we spend $60 billion a year. At the same time, we are spending $500 billion a year on a heavy-metal military and missile defense, when in fact inter-state conflict is only one of the ten threats, or 10%. We are not, as a nation, trained, equipped, nor organized to do poverty, infectious disease, environmental collapse, civil war, terrorism, or translational crime. America is in effect, two Americas: a nation of sheep living for their next six pack, and a very small exclusive group of perhaps 10,000 really rich people dominating Wall Street, the energy companies, and a handful of other major corporate networks. They are busy looting the Republic on the false assumption that they will be able to retire to gated enclaves. They simply do not understand that within twenty years there will be no place for them or their heirs to hide, and this will all come back to haunt them.

I would also say that I am more optimistic than Chomsky. Collective Intelligence and a Citizens Party (as a second home party, non-rival) are emergent, and technologies are coming out that will help eliminate poverty and infectious disease while stabilizing the environment and population. What we lack right now is moral strategic leadership. It is my hope that Bush-Cheney have radicalized enough of the world so that we might thank them in 2008 for making possible the return of balanced centrist coalition leadership.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It

This first part is not a review of the book, but more a diatribe over something that bothers me about some of the reviews I have read on Amazon. I will give a brief review of my own afterwards.

I have read so many one and two star reviews of Chomsky's works that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual book being reviewed that it begs the question of whether or not the reviewer even read the book. Here is an example of this taken from a review by Mark bennet for this book, "[Chomsky] takes almost 700 pages to say close to nothing of use." Now, for me 320 pages do not qualify as "almost 700 pages". Seems like the kind of mistake made by someone unfamiliar with the actual work.

Another reads, "Chomsky and his ilk lick at the midsection of any machete wielding psycho with sufficient anti-American credentials." Wow, a very scathing dissection of the themes and conclusions of Chomsky's works from this reviewer. How could Chomsky write again after being discredited to this extent?

I could go and write reviews for books I have not read by Ann Coulter's or Sean Hannity's books that would even be more cogent than this slander, but I don't because that is intellectually dishonest. If I am going to review a book I will make sure to read it first. It's only common courtesy that every book reviewed should be read first, and I hope this practice becomes more common.

I apologize if I have simply wasted space here. Now for some brief thoughts of my own about this book.

I was skeptical coming into this book, but found the themes to be enlightening if not a little disconcerting. The fact that this country's policies are directed for the benefit of an exclusive elite while the rest of the masses are forced to bear the brunt of this policy is proven by the increasing numbers of Americans falling below the poverty line. Government domestic and foreign policy is directed at maintaining American hegemony abroad while maintaining the status quo here at home. The U.S spends millions of dollars abroad every year in an attempt to influence the elections of other nations; while here in the U.S. 30 million people do not have health coverage, millions of children are malnourished and American's wages have remained stagnate.

After reading this book I went back and checked out several sources and have read several of the books cited by Chomsky, and I have yet to find any discrepancies between how they are used in Chomsky's work and the original context. This is where any attack should be directed against Chomsky either the scholarship or the conclusions. The personal attacks that fill the reviews here on Amazon are the work of simple minds, but then again it's hard to mount a coherent attack on the scholarship of a book when you have failed to even read it.

Most people who see the danger and evil of the course that the United States has taken under Bush II imagine that it is an anomaly in United States history. With brutal efficiency and undeniable facts and logic, Chomsky's latest book destroys that illusion, and by so doing snuffs out the last faint glimmerings of hope that the trend might be easily reversed. It is concentrated reality in a single dimension. Don't read it if you are unwilling to have your world view changed.

If you are like me you will find Chomsky's message difficult to accept emotionally, but impossible to deny intellectually.

"One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: "They present solutions, but I don't like them." In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the United States have already been mentioned:

1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court

2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols

3) let the UN take the lead in international crises

4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror

5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter

6) give up the Security Council veto and have "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind," as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centers disagree

7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending.

For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy. To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on such matters because of another feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known...

Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness and despair, reality is different...Opportunities [to promote democracy at home] are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations."

Noam Chomsky
FAILED STATES
From the Afterword

You may never find a book that starts off as deeply angering, becomes by the middle as powerfully saddening, and by the end as incredibly inspiring as this one. In using the political adjective "failed states"--coined by the Republican administration for countries with plunderable resources or strategically shatterable alliances with fragile or non-existent democratic institutions--to define OUR OWN ountry, Noam Chomsky analyses the "deficit of democracy" that currently exists in the United States of America, as we hit high speed in a moral and democratic decline surpassing the lows of the Reagan administration. His analysis of the linguistics of fear, hypocrisy and deceit, co-opted from the Public Relations and advertising industries and made a part of the political and cultural lexicon, will ultimately change your entire way of looking at our country and its (actual) leaders--and its direction, regardless of your previous political views; left, right or center. Business Week once said about Noam Chomsky, "Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening." This is the understatement of the 21st century--a century that may no longer belong to America, as we follow the footsteps of Imperial Rome, but still tear open a painful path to our own redemption.

Read this; read this now.

Well I can see the right-wing trolls are starting to come out in an attempt to spam these reviews. It should go without saying but here goes: Please at least read the book before you put up an ignorant, hate filled, moronic review.

If you've read Noam Chomsky's previous work then you know what to expect here. Another stunning and brilliant critique backed up by meticulous research and fact. Chomsky destroys U.S. foreign policy, the Bush administration's "noble intentions" and the conflict in Iraq piece by piece. Using history and a strong documentary record he looks at our history of conquest and places Iraq in the middle of it.

Needless to say this is absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand our country's military policies and current position in the world. I cannot recommend this important work highly enough.

Noam Chomsky's writings are the real "No Spin Zone." Most all other commentators are either blatantly serving the Powers That Be, or else spinning some sort of lesser-of-two-evils compromise. By simply telling the truth for 40 years, Noam Chomsky has become the closest thing we have to an Old Testament prophet, speaking truth to power with no holds barred. "Oh God, pride of man, broken in the dust again..." This latest installment of Chomsky's patient and relentless skewering of imperial propaganda of course has plenty of material to work with since his last in 2003 (HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL) -- the preventive war doctrine, the illegal prisons and torture scandal, and all the other accumulating crimes of the Cheney/Bush Faction.

And since reading is not enough, we should do our best to force the Senate to produce the follow-up report on the Iraq invasion intelligence, the report that they promised before the election, the one that exposes the lies and distortions the government used to justify the war. That, of course, is a high crime if there ever was one.

Now, on top of everything else, Cheney/Bush is threatening to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. Chomsky is obviously more relevant than ever. The Empire is moving to secure control of the oil, and truth and morality are minor obstacles in its path.

In this brilliant new book, Chomsky examines the US state and its credentials as a democracy. He concludes that it abuses its power and assaults democracy at home and abroad. He shows how it regards itself as `beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence'.

He looks at `the increasing threat of destruction caused by US state power', when it opposes a Palestinian state, supports Israel's illegal occupation and settlements, illegally attacks Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and threatens Iran and the DPRK.

The US state asserts that it alone has the right to attack whoever it wants. In response, the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change concluded in 2004, "the risk to the global order and the norm of nonintervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted."

The US state also insists that it alone has the right to develop nuclear weapons. So in November 2004, it cast the sole vote against the proposed Fission Material Cutoff Treaty. 147 states voted for it and two abstained, Israel and Britain. Blair's representative ludicrously claimed that the resolution "divided the international community at a time when progress should be a prime objective."

Chomsky quotes some surprising people who recognise that other nations have the right to develop nuclear power and nuclear deterrents. Henry Kissinger, when his friend the Shah was misruling Iran, said, the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."

South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun said, "North Korea professes that nuclear capabilities are a deterrent for defending itself from external aggression. In this particular case it is true and undeniable that there is a considerable element of rationality in North Korea's claim."

As in all Chomsky's best books, he deploys an extraordinary range of references, brilliantly exposing official lies. Once again, he has produced a timely and useful book.

This book is a devastating polemic against U.S. Foreign Policy that ought to infuriate all sides of the political spectrum. The most controversial chapter in the book, however, is probably the last chapter whose central argument is that what the author identifies as an elite minority made up wealthy families and large corporations really run the U.S. and that, "...elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population..." He would have approved President's Eisenhower's warning against the power of the military-industrial complex. Nonetheless the main thrust of this book is critiquing U.S. foreign policy.

In the 1950's the then CEO of General Motors, Charlie Wilson, remarked famously that "What was good for General Motors was good for America." Far from causing outrage this remark was accepted as pretty accurate and Wilson subsequently became Secretary of Defense. The underlying, and unstated, premise of this book is that American Foreign Policy is predicated on the American belief that what is good for the U.S. is good for the world. This naïve belief is the root cause for what Chomsky calls America's self exemption from obeying international law, adhering to formal treaties, and abstaining from unprovoked aggression. In Chomsky's view U.S. history is largely a story of the U.S. concealing its drive for power and corporate profits behind high flown claims to altruistic motives the latest being the promotion of democracy in the Near East. Early on in this book, the author provides a fairly rigorous definition of failed states and then proceeds to show that the U.S. itself actually fits the criteria of a failed state.

The book's author, Noam Chomsky is a well known anarchist and public intellectual. He also happens to be one of the few truly original thinkers of the 21st Century and, even rarer, a practicing philosopher. Weather you agree with him or not he is well worth reading. This book may make you mad, but it will also make you think.

In my lifetime no writer has so radically changed my view of the world as much as Noam Chomsky. Using overpowering facts, untouchable logic, countless examples, and even a little sarcasm he exposes American for what it really is. That being a rogue country with two main goals: crushing of democracy and advancement of big business. These motivators show up in nearly everything this country does, including their imperial ambitions, installation of dictators worldwide, overthrowing of democratically elected leaders, crushing of human rights here and especially abroad, demolishing of labor movements, and covert operations to make sure other countries elections are seen as illegitimate. It is depressing and a bitter, nasty pill to swallow, but to ignore it is to endorse it. Here Chomsky takes as his thesis the idea that America has become a failed state because they refuse to protect their population from immediate danger, most notably global warming and nuclear disaster. And as usual he makes his point quite clear. The book is heavy lifting, Chomsky plays for keeps and is not interested in sugar coating his message. But even if you only read one chapter, this book should be required reading for all thoughtful Americans.

I will admit that this book left me in something of a moral predicament. What if everything he says is true and yet my life is better because of it? What if the point of "Deadwood" is correct and the only way to build a civilization is on the back of something that is not at all civilized. The whole "Break a few eggs" theory. Plus, doesn't it say something about our freedom of speech that Chomsky's book is able to get published? Not to sounds like Sean Hannity, but aren't there a lot of countries out there in which this book would never even come close to the press? Still, there is a big gap between his book being published and the massacres we back worldwide. His valid points are never ending, but often times he gets off track. He'll start off with the 2004 election and end up somewhere in the middle of neoliberal economics. Also, the Israel/Palestine problem, one of his favorites, is given a large chunk of this book even though it doesn't feel related to the rest of the text. In it he touches on many points he has touched on before and ends up running at the mouth.

But there are other ideas here that felt fresh for a Chomsky book. The threat of the rest of the world, sick of our hegemony, and how they are starting to fight back. An honest look at Hugo Chaves, President of Venezuela, who has been shipping oil to our less fortunate (our oil companies weren't interested in a handout for our poor) so that they can heat their homes in winter. To read Chomsky is to see the world in a whole new light. You will be able to see through the lies and the deceit that are laid at our feet every day by the government and the media. You will learn why it is important now and forever to stand up for human rights because otherwise they will simply disappear. The book itself was quite good but not great. More than anything it is vital that we begin to listen to this man because if we don't we may just end up being the endangered species he sees us as. ***1/2

Chomsky writes: "Failed states are those unable or unwilling to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction, and regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law." No, he's not talking about Iran or North Korea, but the U.S. Further, despite the U.S. qualifying readily, it also claims the right to reshape other nations - imposing sanctions on or invading regimes it opposes. "Failed States" then goes on to document Chomsky's assertions.

Chomsky begins by pointing out that the U.S. condemns terrorism - but only when it is against our goals and by those opposing us. For example, we refuse to extradite an accused airplane bomber back to Venezuela, and ignore Israel's refusal to extradite an individual charged with a '97 Maryland murder.

More importantly, our military expenditures approximate those by the rest of the world - COMBINED! In fact, Chomsky sees Washington's aggressive militarism as a significant factor driving the world towards "apocalypse now. Major concerns include our drive to militarize space (opposed 178:0, with only the U.S., Israel, Haiti, and Palau abstaining), "Star Wars," attempting to block U.N. efforts to stop further production of nuclear weapons (147:1 in '04 vote; supporting India's violations and Israel's contravention), and pre-emptive strikes - resulting in making Russia nervous (building more weapons, continually moving about those it already has), and creating increased opportunities for hackers to take over a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, our Iraq invasion has provided a large training ground for terrorists, and our large tax cuts for the rich have taken priority over improving security - eg. a single freight car carrying chlorine could kill 100,000 within 30 minutes if punctured in a densely populated area. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is even trying to overturn a local ban on shipments of the most dangerous chemicals through the D.C. area.

As if that weren't enough, Chomsky also asserts that the U.S. also leads in fomenting environmental destruction - denying reality while rewarding utility etc. supporters.

The U.S. has also become an outlaw state. Violations include the Geneva Convention on torture, ignoring the World Court, renditions, abusing civilians in Falluja, large numbers of civilian deaths in Iraq and declining standards of living for those remaining, pre-war deaths in Iraq due to sanctions preventing restoration of basic public health, and the disappearance of as much as $9 billion of Iraqi oil monies (while trying to shift the focus onto much smaller diversions by others).

As for exporting democracy, Chomsky again asserts that this occurs only when it suits our purposes. For example, the U.S. supported a '02 military coup to overthrow Chavez in Venezuela - his popularity ratings are now about 80%. Similarly, we have tried to undermine election results in Iran and Palestine.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. the Bush administration ignores the will of the people as expressed by polls - eg. universal healthcare, higher taxes on those with very high incomes. Budget policy seems to consist of shifting costs to those lacking the power to vote - our children. Finally, Chomsky explains why the U.S. economy is "doing so well:" By '05 overseas earnings accounted for 40% of profit growth for all U.S. corporations, along with $2.7 trillion in stock market capitalization (held mostly by those at the top). Thus, the wealth of the lowest 40% of Americans dropped 76% from '83-'98, while that of the top 1% rose 42%.

Clearly a MUST READ!