413 of 502 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Impossible to Review Objectively, February 28, 2003
First, remember that you are unlikely to find completely objective reviews for this book, but that's okay because of its extremely political nature. Blum is a polemicist, meaning he wants to create controversy and hard feelings in order to make his point. And yes the basic political angle of his work is leftist on the surface. However, he does have plenty of criticism for Clinton and the Democrats, so Blum's political persuasion might be more accurately described as social anarchist, as he distrusts all government and politicians and believes all power should be in the hands of the real people. Such sharp politics will rile up readers of any stripe, making objectivity hard to hang on to.
Regardless, most of this book contains extremely useful and relevant information on US chicanery and violence around the world. Despite the constant predictable sloganeering about freedom and democracy, the US has always been more concerned about preserving corporate interests and a hegemonic domination of power, with an ideology that is unyielding and destructive. Entire peoples and nations around the world have been ruined and exploited. This is why people around the world hate us, not because of a vague dispute with a vague concept like freedom. But anyone who makes that accusation will be given the narrow-minded but still harmful label "Un-American" and will be ignored, if not persecuted. That's what makes Blum's work important to read, and he mostly provides sharp evidence. Unfortunately his polemic style often descends into sarcasm, damaging his credibility, and he tends to rely on lists rather than deeper insights. Meanwhile the entire book is almost sunk by the mind-numbing final chapter that is merely a list of social problems and crimes that Blum disagrees with, offering little connection to the focus of the rest of the book.
That's about as objective as I can get with this review, given my own personal politics.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant survey of US foreign policy, December 15, 2006
This is an indispensable guide to the domestic and foreign policies of the US state. In Part I, Blum analyses the US state's use of terrorists, particularly those who fought in Afghanistan, and its use of mass murderers like Pol Pot. In Part II, he analyses the US uses of weapons of mass destruction - bombing, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, chemical and biological weapons. In Part III, he analyses the US role in the world, its relationships with democracy and elections.
He looks at the notion that 9/11 is explicable only in terms of evil. He cites the Pentagon's own Defense Science Board, which quoted, and contradicted, Bush when it said, "Muslims do not `hate our freedom', but rather they hate our policies." He writes, "This idée fixe - that the rise of anti-American terrorism owes nothing to American policies - in effect postulates an America that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous world, a benign United States government peacefully going about its business but being `provoked' into taking extreme measures to defend its people, its freedom and its democracy."
He writes, "Throughout the period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations - systematic, routine torture; legions of `disappeared' people; government-supported death squads picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and other groups, shot down in cold blood. The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras. Not even Cuba's worst enemies have made serious charges against the Castro government for any of these violations ..." Now the US state is encouraging Florida-based Cuban anti-communist terrorists to help Venezuelan fascist to overthrow President Chavez.
Blum concludes that, to the US state, "'democracy', at best, or at most, is equated solely with elections and civil liberties. Neither jobs, food or shelter, nor education or health care are part of the equation. Thus, a nation with hordes of hungry, homeless, untended sick, barely literate, unemployed, and/or tortured people, whose loved ones are being disappeared and/or murdered with state connivance, can be said to be living in a `democracy' ... provided that every two years or four years they have the right to go to a designated place and put an X next to the name of one or another individual who promises to relieve their miserable condition, but who will, typically, do virtually nothing of the kind ..."
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69 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
APPALLING, SAD, AND SO VERY TRUE, January 23, 2006
I read this book in pretty much one sitting (no new information here for me personally) and was simply more surprised than anything else to find it not only in print but the center of much attention, primarily via the unusal conduit of Osama Bin Laden. The book details and documents the rather amazingly sad state that American foreign policy has arrived at since the end of WWII. The gov't has indeed caused much misery and bloodshed around the world with deaths running into the many millions. I have seen some of the results of this myself firsthand, particularly in Asia, while visiting refugee camps on the Thai border. I have lived and worked in many countries (including Arab countries) over the years and watched and felt the horror and dismay of many peoples grow into hate. They don't hate our culture or even dislike the average rank and file American or resent our prosperity but they hate and loathe what our government does in our name in so many foreign lands. [...] I earnestly hope that this book does something to alleviate this ignorance. The book has some flaws but a great deal of well documented truth that cannot be ignored. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Balkans and now poor Iraq and a bit here and there in between. A majority of those who make policy decisions have never lived outside of the country and in almost all cases cannot even speak or understand a foreign language. While it is plain that the author's viewpoint is liberal it is also equally plain that both political parties are very much to blame. This is also very much the type of book that the conventional media loves to suppress.
Perhaps it is time for another movie, "The Even Uglier American".
It appears that "The pleasure of hating makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence and famine into other lands." Buy this very interesting and well written book, read it and weep.
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