Customer Reviews

Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Professor Chernus deserves a much wider readership for his analysis. He ties evangelical theology and neo-conservative philosophy together and shows the influence of each on our country's leadership throughout the past decades.

I was jolted and revolted at the blatantly arrogant imperialism of the leading neo-conservative intellectual writers quoted throughout this book. If the administration had not been "thumped" by the voters since the publication of "Monsters", I would have found it too depressing. As it is, I hope that more people will read this and spread the word.

I was disturbed (before reading this account) that the president could continue making speeches that claimed that our enemies hated freedom, and we loved freedom, and that's why we were fighting...and that the public swallowed this rhetoric. Prof. Chernus explores how these labels get adopted and what they come to mean. I found it to be an eye-opening exercise.

The key premise of the book is that our current leaders are all working from a myth that we Americans are heroes fighting against evil, and that we keep assigning new villains to sustain this fiction. When our government starts fighting fantasy wars instead of actually using the military to be prepared to defend the country, we are in trouble.

I was disappointed in the weak suggestions at the end for a solution to the problem. I am sympathetic to the peace movement, but I think there are times to be fighters, based on clear-headed reality-based decisions.

The most important point is that the U.S. verges on becoming the villain when it bullies the rest of the world to try to enforce its dominance. I hope this book contributes to a movement away from Pax Americana imperialism.

Through writings of a wide range of intellectuals and speeches by G.W.Bush, Ira Chernus gives a compelling overwiev of today's ideological trends in US policy making.

Although 9/11 and Iraq are duly mentioned in various sections, Ira Chernus does not spend much time on specific events rather, focuses on the philosophical driving force behind them. Much of his attention is devoted to the neoconservatives who, even today, seem to have an almost exclusive influence on US foreign policy. He reveals step by step, how "... Conservative moralists fuse politics, nationalism, culture and religion into a single arena...". The role of Evangelical Christians and liberal internationalists in this process is briefly but succinctly discussed.

Overall, he suggests that by reducing important questions to Biblical simplicity, the government has successfully maintained fear as the determining feeling in the American society.

Reading the passages from the neocon thinkers, I got cold shivers, as they twisted the noble concepts of Freedom, Democracy, Justice and Morals to paternalistic, self serving tools for their hegemonic ambitions. I may have questioned the accuracy or context of some of the quotes, had I not read the Project for the New American Century's report, Rebuilding America's Defenses that apparently staked out US foreign policy since its publication in September, 2000.

In summary, anyone who is in the majority camp of ideologically uncommitted, or who has even the slightest doubt about the purity, rightousness, unselfishness and piety of today's US foreign and domestic policy, should read this book to be able to reevaluate whether their view of the country is correct.