6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A strong survey of not only American and Islam ideas, but how misreporting has emphasized differences, September 4, 2006
This review is from: Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam, and the War of Ideas (Paperback)
The actions and reactions of the U.S. before and after 9/11 has done little to improve its standing in the world, especially in Muslim-populated nations around the world, and Reflections In A Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam And The War Of Ideas probes the basic differences between perceptions of Americans and Muslims around the world. It comes from a veteran CBS news correspondent with strong connections to these world communities, reflects his journalistic experience, and proves a strong survey of not only American and Islam ideas, but how misreporting has emphasized differences.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, an accurate and unbiased account of US foreign and media policies after 9.11. !, April 20, 2008
This review is from: Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam, and the War of Ideas (Paperback)
As far as I'm concerned there are far too many biased books on this important subject of US foreign policy and the impact that the mass media corportation have on public and especially US opinion. The author shows with concise logical arguments and insightful examples how "news reporting" is done in the USA, especially with regard to anything that's considered Arabic or Islamic. Its interesting to find out for example that ever since the clash of the US government with the Barbari pirates back in the 1820s that the images constructed of that region and its people were extremely biased. Later when the US became a world and Superpower after the 2nd World War, the mass media outlets virtually began a tacit conspiracy to construct a image of Arabs and Moslems as weired, backward and irrational people, that blindly followed their "aggressive, and expansionist" religion: Islam. The cultural biased disposition can be seen anywhere in the US or for that matter in the West, whether on TV, in newspapers or on the radio. Only the Internet provided a somewhat more balanced account, due to its decentralized natured.
Pintak does an excellent job (especially as an American) who tells us vividly that the atmosphere and response to 9.11. was preprogrammed, since the US public has been conditioned, ever since the end of the Cold War to see everything islamic as alien, dangerous and subversive, if not downright terror bound. He calls this propensity and almost habitualized way of acting by Americans as referring to the Others. It was also thus, no coincidence that after the sudden demise of the Soviet Union, many government officials and especially the military industrial complex in the US was desperately looking for a new enemy to replace asap the former well serving enemy image of the S.U. and communism. It is also well known that the US economy ever since the 2nd World War has not only been dependent on the military industial complex (m.i.c.) but that it can actually no longer survive without it. Without the lucrative and massive orders that it places consistently every year, the economy would almost immediately spiral into a recession at the very least if not depression all together.
This book does an excellent job of explaining how the false and deliberate misreporting has implanted a new type of enemy in the minds of the US public. Similar to what occured during the Cold War, when Americans saw Russians as the enemy, they are now seeing anything associated with Islam or Moslems as the enemy. 9.11. and the War on Terror has only made things far worse, and created an atmosphere of fear and suspiciousness in the US and the West. Where the Bush administration has severely curtailed civil liberties and turned the country into a big brother surveillance society. It has been said that if people give up their freedom for the promise of protection, they'll lose both. This is precisely what is happening in the US, where a worse big brother state has been errected than what had existed under the McCarthy years back in the early 1950s when the Russians were turned into enemies, that had been the World War II allies of the US. Interestingly enough the same pattern or relationship existed between the radical Moslems and their Jihad movement against the Soviet's during the Afghanistan war that lasted from 1979-1989 because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in late 1979. Here also the soon to become new enemy was the ally of the US that even helped significantly to bring down the Soviet Union, that to many was the last empire in the world.
This book is very useful in showing how among other things a deliberate government and media policy has conditioned people in their views with regard to anything islamic. The successive US governments and the mass media have worked hand in hand to construct a false biased enemy image of the Others. This makes it on the one hand easier to surpress any dissent in the USA to the precarious US foreign policy that Washington has been following ever since the Cold War began with regard to the islamic countries. On the other hand it fuels the so called "War on Terror" that simply polarizes the world once again, as it had been during the Cold War, which benefits a few huge corporations of the big business establishment and the military industrial complex. If this "War on Terror" is not to become an "endless" war the US government as well as the mass media must change their dispositions toward the islamic countries considerably, or else in a worst case scenario we might really one day have something akin to the Crusades in the atomic age, that could lead to a disaster for humanity.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
