Customer Reviews

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II--Updated Through 2003

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is perhaps the best political book I have read, certainly the best on US foreign policy I have seen anywhere. Every American needs to get this book and investigate what it says. If they doubt its truthfulness they can look in other places to find further information, but the plain fact is most Americans would not know 99% of what is in this book...and they have to or our "democracy" is a joke. Even if this book is biased, a biased view that can be investigated is better than total ignorance. However I do not think this book is that biased to begin with, most of the actual facts exist in thousands of other books, they have just never been brought together so effectively.

While there are a lot of books out there on the evils of American foreign policy, this is the only one I have seen that goes through country by country, state by state to show how we intervened, year after year. There are other books by authors such as Noam Chomsky that may contain more detail and analysis, but none are as complete or are ordered so well.

After you read this you cannot help but put foreign policy as the main issue you care about in politics. Sure domestic issues are important, but what can that compare to us literally participating in the killing of thousands, and in some cases millions overseas? How can you even weigh domestic concerns compared to supporting torturing dictators for decades? The fact is our foreign policy is not that of the Nazi's, it differs in one very important way: we have gotten away with it for 50 years.

This book will give you as ugly a view of America as there is, but if you want to improve things (if thats even possible anymore) you need to start with the ugly truth.

Written by a former State Department employee, the author's wealth of knowledge and experience are thoroughly impressive, and this book is very easy to read and follow. Beginning at the end of WWII, the author lists, by country, US military involvement in chronological order. Readers will find the consequences - some of which are being seen today - profoundly interesting.

Another reviewer mentioned that the book had a "blame America first" slant, but I sincerely doubt that reviewer read the entire book. While the book does specifically mention US involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in places like Iran, Chile, and Indonesia, these incidents are generally known now. The people responsible are blamed, not the American people who were not privy to such Washington secrets.

It is interesting to read why Washington powerbrokers chose military intervention: In some cases bowing to political interests, in other cases with fine intentions, in most cases not foreseeing the negative consequences for the US and the world.

This book provides a concise background for the state of the world today.

It's a dense and heavily footnoted book, but turns out to be exceedingly readable. Pick any chapter at random and one can sit down for a smart 15-minute history lesson. I find Blum's book superior to others in the same field such as Chomsky. Blum throws in small doses of sarcasm and black humor even. He is merciless and sharp... I'm sure some would call it "slanted." However, considering the facts (or purported facts), one can see why the author is so relentless. Blum is fighting a tide of Americans growing less and less conscious of history, and this history, which has strongly shaped our present culture and political climate, was always propagandized, obscured, or swept under the rug as it unfolded. It is a subject of the highest importance, and Blum handles it admirably. Buy copies for your friends and enemies.

Over-all, this is a very precious book, and an essential reference on the history of US intervention, both military and clandestine or covert.

As a former Marine Corps infantry office and former clandestine services case officer, and as an avid reader of non-fiction, I will gladly state on the record that this author has it largely right.

I took off one star because the book has NOT been properly updated. The list of U.S. military interventions still ends in 1945, only the the CIA assassination plot list has been updated.

There are other books that complement this one--everything by Noam Chomspky, Derek Leebaert's "The Fifty-Year Wound," Chalmers Johnson on "Sorrows of Empire," Robert McNamara et al, "Wilson's Ghost," the DVD "Why We Fight," Ambassador Palmer's "The Real Axis of Evil" (on the 45 dictators we SUPPORT), and--with respect to the ignorance of America about reality, the two books, "Fog Facts," and "Lost History." See also Marine General Smedley Butler's short but hard-hitting work, "War is a Racket."

While I take the author with a grain of salt and do not appreciate his collaboration with Phil Agee, who betrayed his oaths to the US, whatever his reasons, on balance this book is an essential reference for anyone who wishes to understand why the rest of the world is beginning to conclude that we are the worst of all evils in our foreign policy behavior and misbehavior.

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Why We Fight
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
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
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

This has got to be the definitive book on US foreign policy since WWII. Blum goes through how the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking, producing pornography, providing handbooks, materials & encouragement for torture, how the military did chemical & biological tests on the general public, etc. It's all written in a ridiculous amount of detail, mainly citing sources that use internal government documents, or the writings of people in the 3rd world who got bombed nonstop. & yes, at times the author uses sarcasm & black humor, which greatly helps with readability, since the reading could easily become very heavy without it.

Here's my favourite quotation, from the end of the Vietnam chapter:
"The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films, documentaries, television series... played and replayed in every Western language; there have been museaums, memorial sculptures, photo expositions, remembrance ceremonies... Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?" (p.133)

& another, re: Operation Desert Storm: "Tanks pulling plows moved alongside trenches, firing into the Iraqi soldiers inside the trenches as the plows covered them with great mounds of sand. Thousands were buried dead, wounded, or alive." (p.334)
I had read about that elsewhere but wondered if it were actually true. The sources are the LA Times and Washington Post. It occurred on Feb 24-25, 1991.

Anyway the whole book is jam-packed with such quotations. Every chapter is really like a book within a book there is so much information.

"The greatest purveyor of violence on Earth is my own government." Martin Luther King Jr.

This is still true in 2006.

Killing Hope has nothing to do with wacko conspiracy theories. It's history. Untold, untaught history--but fact, not fiction.

"Read the history of the place where you're living/and stop letting corporate news teach lies to your children." Immortal Technique

This book is an encyclopedia of the terrorism, assassinations, and covert wars the US government has committed around the world since WWII. Other reviewers will undoubtedly deny this books factuality. In fact, Mr. Blum. a former CIA station chief, fought an extensive legal battle with the CIA over his right to publish it. The court's decision was to allow publishing, but that the proceeds of all sales would be given to the CIA! So, as Mr. Blum says, don't buy this book, borrow it from a friend or a library.

WHY DOES THE REST OF THE WORLD HATE US (except for the world's wealthy elite)? This book helps dispell the myths of "islamic fascism," "anti-americanism," and other lies that perport to explain those that oppose the US government and the corporations it serves. Unlike what you hear on FOX News, those who oppose US global dominance DO have good reasons. Usually it's because our government tortures and murders their families.

What HOPE is the US Govt. and the world's wealthy elite trying to KILL? The threat of a good example alternative to unbridled capitalism (iow nothing in life has value unless a dollar amount can be attached to it). Ever wondered what Washington has against poor, unthreatening Cuba? Or why the US supports brutal dictatorships around the world (Columbia, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan etc.), and opposes genuine democracies (Venezuela, France). Or how about why Americans have been taught to oppose universal health care, or free university education (hint, these ideas make people more important than profit).

For those who claim to be history buffs, I challenge you to read this. You don't know squat about modern history unless you understand the episodes described in this book.

Read this to understand why the population of the US must learn to think for themselves, before "our" government destroys the world for profit. Make no mistake, the survival of humanity, and certainly our prospects for peace and happiness depend upon the American public not continuing down the road first trod by the "good Germans."

Of the many books I own, I consider this without a doubt one of the most important. "Killing Hope" has been a cornerstone in my library of books that help me make sense of the world. It has been helpful since I first purchased it, and its usefulness increases with each new headline that comes to pass regarding foreign relations. I first read this my senior year of high school, and it helped me to know why al-Qaeda flew planes into landmarks. I re-read this revised edition in 2004, a year after the United States invaded Iraq and almost three years after Afghanistan, just to re-confirm what I already knew: It was all a monumental lie. "Killing Hope" is especially close at hand now thanks to the buildup of events in Iran. With each new passage comes the re-emergence of anger and frustration towards what our government is doing in our name, and the fact that regardless of how many people read this, it won't contribute a single iota of difference. People are too brainwashed and propagandized now to be able to make sense of the fact that everything around them is a manufactured illusion, and worse, they don't want to see past it. One only has to see the mechanized smear campaign beginning on Blum following Bin Laden's plugging the companion to this, "Rogue State", to understand that change will never come about. Despite this, it is a book I urge people who want to know the truth to seek out. Even though it won't make much difference nationally, it will make a huge difference for one on a personal level. It did for me anyway. Validity in such a work is often questioned, yet Blum's sources hold up when checked, and the dossier of supplied endnotes goes a long way to helping establish its credence. It will forever change the way you see things, and it will break your heart, not only because of what has been done worldwide, but because a book so problematic and capable of bringing about the needed change will be ignored and slanderized. A collossal, upsetting, very troubling book, one I cannot reccomend highly enough.

Also, I apologize for having to resort to the kid form, but some account issues have rendered it necessary.

This book deserves ten stars because it's one of the most important books ever written. From this work one learns that the CIA, and officials from the U.S. Military and Government (including Presidents) have been complicit accomplices (directly or indirectly) in the deaths of at least a million people. So, so much for the U.S.'s War on Terror...members of our government have been acting as a terrorists for some time now! And others around the world know this. I would suggest that for a more in-depth reading experience, refer to the footnotes at the end of the book
while reading each chapter. This helps you find credible sources for any independent research you might want to do on your own and also let's you know where the author is getting such valuable information. The book is well documented. William Blum has done excellent research.
Read and be sad, angry, dumbdfounded, disturbed, or enlightened.

This is a most valuable book that details the criminal actions of our CIA. It tells the story that is never quite taught in our high school (or college) history books and is not "fit to print" in the, supposedly liberal, New York Times.

From our well-known destablization efforts in Chile, Cuba, and Guatemala to almost unknown operations in places like France, Australia, and Uruguay. This book, with meticulous detail and backed by well-researched material, provides the reader with a devastating array of much needed information. Even in places where I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the CIA had done, like in Chile for example, I was presented with many things I had no idea about: planting false articles in newspapers, serving as anti-Allende propaganda, disseminating what they knew were lies, economic destablization, it's all there and it's all pretty outrageous.

It is our duty to know what is done in our names. And this book goes a long way in allowing us to achieve this. We can't change the past, but we can understand the anger of much of the third world and we can try to create a better one in the future.

The one-star review by "A Christian American" to be seen among these reviews is per se the very best demonstration of why every person in the USA ought to read this book, as well as Howard Zinn's People's History. It's hard to believe that anyone claiming to be a Christian could express such diabolically selfish, racist,opportunistic values. Shall we perhaps conclude that the review is a parody?