17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deserving of as wide a readership as possible, July 14, 2002
This review is from: The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (Paperback)
The New Crusade: America's War On Terrorism is a very serious treatise by peace activist Rahul Mahjan on current events which focus on the September 11 attacks and the consequent war in Afghanistan. The New Crusade also addresses the issues of American policy in Israel and Palestine, Iraq, humanitarian intervention in Somalia and Kosovo, and more. Scathing in its indictment of the US government and IMF for such advocations as denying AIDS drugs to third-world countries (unless sold at inflated prices no third world nation can afford) and demanding privatization of scarce water resources, as well as gauging how September 11 changed America and the world, The New Crusade is a sober, thoughtfully argued presentation not to be taken lightly and deserving of as wide a readership as possible. This is a highly recommended and welcome contribution to the current national dialogue regarding our "war on terrorism".
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25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why do they hate us? Do you really want to know?, May 20, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (Paperback)
Why do they hate us? It's because they hate our freedom - was the picture painted by the media and the US government. It was a nice, comfortable idea (this line from book). If you delve into this question a little further, you will soon realize, "they" probably don't care how you live inside your country, and they might actually care more about what the US government is doing outside the US. We obviously don't sympathize with the brutal and senseless actions of the fanatics that caused 9-11. However, the actions of the US government cannot be justified either. The bombings took a lot of innocent lives and will continue to do so for several years from starvation, disease and even unexploded bombs. War as we know is death for the people who live there. What's very bothering is that a lot of people believe that this war was and is justified. A lot of people believe the lives of children and innocent people are justified.
If you want to get an idea as to why they hate us, and whether or not the war can be justified, this book will give you a great insight. The book also talks about how the war on terrorism is affecting our daily lives here, our future, and what we can do to help. The book presents a lot of facts after thorough research, analyses and suggestions as well.
Being aware is in itself a great help we can do to ourselves.
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crucial reading, February 20, 2003
This review is from: The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (Paperback)
This is probably the best book I've seen on the 'War on Terror." It's clearly argued and well documented. Others have already discussed the books strengths so I won't go into them here, but there is one problem I have with it.
For all his research into the history of the United States' constant flaunting of international law, he fails to draw the logical conclusion from it: the United States will not obey any law that it does not want to. From the local to the international level, laws are only as good as they are enforceable; otherwise, they're just words on paper. To put it another way: political power grows from the barrel of a gun, and the US has the most and the biggest guns so there is little reason to believe, as Mahajan and others like Noam Chomsky do, that an international body can somehow compel the US to do anything. Before we start looking to the UN for solutions, we should see what it's track record has been when it comes to preventing or facilitating US militarism and we'll find that it consistently does the latter. Is that simply due to weak-spined political leaders? I don't believe so. It's because the US is such a cornerstone of international capitalism, that its role has to be preserved for the system to keep functioning, even at the short-term expense of other nations. What that implies for social justice movements is that we must be brutally honest about our country and its social-economic system, and I think any debate has to start with this premise.
Despite that, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good understanding of the US government's post-9/11 actions, both domestically and internationally.
Addendum: for further confirmation of Mahajan's concerns about of domestic anti-Arab hysteria , see Jill Malter's review of this book on August 5, 2005. In it she says, among other things:
"Sami al-Arian! For those of you who don't know who he is, he's on trial for having been the North American leader of Islamic Jihad, a notorious terrorist group that has claimed "credit" for attacks that have killed at least 100 people in Israel and the disputed West Bank territories. He's also accused of having played a crucial role in writing the Jihad's constitution, raising money for the Jihad, helping other Jihad leaders enter the United States, and planning an extensive espionage operation.
If there were just one person the United States ought to have been firing from their position, arresting, and putting on trial, it might well have been al-Arian. He's not the right person to try to defend by claiming anti-Arab racism! He's not the right person to try to defend by implying that his only crime was that "in his youth" he made 'an intemperate speech.'"
Notice how she points out that he's 'on trial' and 'accused' of certain activities in the first quoted parargraph above. Nothing proven yet. Then in the second paragraph she basically pronunces him guilty and says it was right for him to be treated the way he was.
Here are some other facts: the unjust perscution of Al-Arian was exposed in a salon.com article on Jan. 19, 2002 - it's still online. He did work with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the early 1990's but that was legal since the PIJ had not been put on the terrorist watch list until 1995. In 1996 the university itself investigated the charges and found no evidence to support the allegation that Al-Arian was involved in, or supported, terrorist activities. And in 2000, a judge addressed the charges and found there was "no evidence" that either of Al-Arian's groups were fronts for militant Palestinian terrorist groups.
On December 6, 2005 he was found not guilty of funding terrorism at his Federal District Court trial in Tampa.
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