Customer Reviews

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

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 ..."

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.

A must read for everyone, 1.27.05 Reviewer: Paul, CA USA) - This book is not just a person's opinion. All claims are substantiated with intricate detail through the sources referenced. Therefore, it is a must read for every American to better understand our foreign policy and the effect it has on world affairs and world reactions. By reading this book, one would understand that if the US is going to truly lead the world through justice and not just pay lip service, then it needs a major overhaul of its policies, both foreign and domestic.

I find the visceral reactions against this book understandable since it attacks so many "common sense" beliefs of the average American. I think the other reviewers have already pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of this book, which, in a nutshell, are these: this book contains information that Americans SHOULD know, but that's it's presented in a polemical, somewhat hysterical tone, and it draws conclusions that merit a LOT more argument. however, Americans, you SHOULD be aware of what this book contains. for pete's sake, when will you folks wake up?

Additional comments: (...)

-re: the lack of coverage of some of these issues in the media, schools, etc.
Raise your hand if you've heard the story about George Washington and the f%^&*$%g cherry tree (which is not true, by the way). Now raise your hand if you knew the U.S. supported the Khmer Rouge. Which is more important?

-one-sided?
Yes. But at the same time, there are some things that there is just no justification for. categorical imperative, "what would jesus do?" time, folks. For example, I don't really need to know the rationalizations for blowing poison gas over San Francisco or Winnipeg (true and undisputed by the Pentagon). They just do not have the right to do that. Nor am I interested in the Pentagon's rationale for telling a bunch of soldiers, "Okay, now you just hang out here for a while and we'll come get you later," and then bombarding them with radioactivity to test how it would affect them. They simply do not have the right to do that. again, this is one of the things in this book that remains undisputed.

-A final note:
I'm an american living overseas. therefore, i'm not surrounded by the massive propaganda you are all surrounded by right now, and let me tell you that many, perhaps most, people in the world fear and/dislike the U.S. government. it's because they're jealous? please. if it were jealousy of wealth and all that good stuff, they are plenty of other countries that have high average living standards (Canada, Western Europe, Australia, N.Z., Japan) and also manage to provide such luxuries as health care for ALL their citizens. In fact, Canada ranks the highest in the U.N.'s development index and has for the past 11 years (what? ahead of the "greatest country in the world"? yes!). so why aren't people smashing planes into Canadian buildings? simple--they don't stick their noses into every single other country's business.

-in conclusion:
so if you want to be pssed off at somebody for Sept. 11, by all means be angry at bin Laden and those religious nutcakes the Taliban. but to be fair, you might also want to think about some of the things in this book and ask yourself if the people who have been harassing, oppressing, and humiliating the rest of the world for the past 50 years don't also share quite a bit of the blame. oh, and to those simpletons who i'm sure are thinking, "love it or leave it, buddy!" I've already left, along with more people than you might want to believe (about 250,000 last year-an average year).

This book isn't Blum's best, however it is still very informative and well-written. You can find out the following things:
-- excerpts from training manuals with titles like "A Study of Assassination", "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual", "Psycological Operations in Guerilla Warfare (p.43)
-- a list of assassination attempts on foreign leaders (p.38)
-- chapters on depleted uranium & cluster bombs
-- the US government used/tested chemical/biological weapons in: the Bahamas, Canada (can't forgive my government for allowing that...), China & Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Panama, Cuba (p.103)
-- the US government tested chemical/biological weapons on its own people in Watertown (NY), San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Louis, Washington DC, Florida, Savannah, Avon Park, NYC, Chicago as well as deliberate releases of radioactive material (p.113)
-- the US government encouraged the use of chemical or biological weapons by other nations (p.120)
-- a list of countries that have used torture, with handbooks, encouragement, etc provided by the CIA (p.50)
-- the US government has been 'spying' on the rest of the world via the super-secret Echelon system & other stuff (p.200)
-- during Operation Desert Storm the Iraqi Kurds got hold of 18 tons of Iraqi government documents which are now on public display at the U of Colorado @ Boulder (p.213)
-- similarily, after the Berlin Wall came down, the CIA got hold of the top-secret archives of the Stasi, East Germany's intelligence agency, and refused to return it for 9 years. Clinton wouldn't even discuss it with Schroeder. (p.212)
-- a list of CIA narcotrafficking operations, when they worked with the mafia, organised crime, etc (p.218)

and so on... Pretty much all of Blum's footntes include mainstream media, academic journals, official government documents (declassified or public), and so on. None of this looks like paranoid "conspiracy" stuff when you look at where he finds out these things that he says. This book is the perfect antidote for people who are tired of the same-old "mainstream" stuff we see on TV, or who are wondering if, say, the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is an exception to the rule or is just another typical incident. It's not Blum's 'piece de resistance' (Killing Hope) but it's still pretty good.

Rogue State 3rd edition, by William Blum

William Blum left the State Dept. in 1967 because of his opposition to the US war on Vietnam. He became a freelance journalist in Europe and the Americas. His story on how the Reagan Administration gave Iraq material for chemical and biological warfare capability won a prize in 1998. The first edition of this book was inspired by the brutal US bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, an example of the New World Order. The 'Introduction' says that claims of an International Communist Conspiracy were used to advance American Imperialism around the world [and to supplant British and French colonies].

Page 3 tells how the US used military personnel in testing poison gas, biological weapons, radiation experiments, etc. Agent Orange is the best known example. Soldiers were forced to take unproven medicines that caused lingering illnesses (p.4). If the US government does not care about the health and welfare of its own soldiers, what will they do to foreign peoples (p.5)? The amorality of government leaders is shown on pages 5 to 7. Blum says these cruelties are needed to implement out foreign policy. He contrasts the reality of bombing Yugoslavia to the fantasies of the Establishment (pp.9-10)! Blum does not mention the "brain washing" from an early age that creates these disconnections from reality (see page 12).

American foreign policy is designed to benefit American corporations now or in the future (p.16). Foreign enemies are needed to justify the Military-Industrial Complex (p.19). There is a revolving list of enemy states that recall George Orwell's "1984" (p.20). The alleged threat of a Soviet invasion or nuclear attack were imaginary nonsense (p.21). Any government that will not be exploited by American corporations is considered to be EVIL and a target for bombing and destruction (p.24).

Blum notes that liberated peoples established Truth Commissions to record crimes committed by their governments. This book attempts to record the crimes of the US government in its 27 chapters. Part I lists the US involvement with terrorists and human rights violators. Part II lists the US use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Part III tells how a "Rogue State" is attacking the rest of the world.

These chapters will not surprise or shock anyone who knows what has been happening since the end of WW II. Only people who ignore the events by watching tabloid TV, shows and entertainments, and listen to talk radio will be shocked and likely to be "in denial" by this list of criminal actions. I would point out that one effect of these policies over the decades has been to impoverish wage-earners through lower wages, a devalued currency, and higher taxes. Manufacturing jobs are becoming as rare as when America was a colonial country. Does oppression abroad require oppression at home? What can you do about it?

Note how many of these events date back to FDR's time (if not before). This book suggests that freedom at home will prevent imperialism abroad. What do you think? If you can't read the whole book just read Chapter 27 about the state of the nation. "The Monster is loose" - Steppenwolf.

Anyone who attempts to dismiss the information in Rogue State as "common knowledge" either has not read the book or is intentionally trying to deceive. And anyone who could read this book without being horrified and enraged has some serious psychopathological problems.

The bloodthirsty genocides, war crimes, and appallingly sadistic state terrorism of the United States government and military revealed in this book are totally unknown to average Americans. If these crimes were common knowledge there would be total revolution and our oppressive dinosaur of a government would be forced into extinction at last.

But no, Americans are always the last to know about what our evil government and military are really up to. Why? Because most Americans are abject fools who can't kick their mentally and morally retarding addiction to the mainstream mass-media drug.

The U.S. government knows this very well, encourages it and exploits it for all it's worth. As William Colby, former Director of the CIA, once admitted:

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

In "Rogue State" William Blum points out that the corporate mass-media and PR propaganda campaigns have done a superlative job of covering up, distracting from and just plain lying through their teeth about America's ongoing crimes against humanity.

Fortunately the U.S. government hasn't gotten total control of the book publishing industry. Not yet. So, for now, we still have access to books like William Blum's, wherein he summarizes the American holocaust very well:

"From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

Common knowledge? I don't think so!

"Rogue State" is divided into three parts. Part 1 is titled "Ours and Theirs: Washington's Love/Hate Relationship with Terrorists and Human-Rights Violators." There are chapters which detail how the U.S. government has trained and equipped terrorists all over the world, from the anti-Castro Cuban exiles of Miami to the Afghan mujahedeen. Another chapter reveals that, like the mafia it truly is, the U.S. government has committed brutal assassinations of political leaders all over the world, from Patrice Lumumba of the Congo to Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. And it has attempted many more, sometimes repeatedly, as in the case of Fidel Castro and Muammar Qadhafi.

CIA officials think this is all very funny. They like to joke that their assassinations are "suicides involuntarily administered," to be carried out by the Agency's "Health Alteration Committee."

The most disturbing chapters in this section detail how the CIA and the U.S. Army use torture against our fellow human beings. If CIA officials think assassinations are funny they must find torture absolutely hilarious. The U.S. government not only routinely practices torture, it trains torturers all over the world. The "School of the Americas" in Ft. Benning, Georgia, for instance, is devoted to the training of torturers from all over Latin America.

In chapter five there is a quote from a Honduran torturer named Jose Barrera in which he says of his victims:

"They always ask to be killed. Torture is worse than death."

Americans need to face up to the fact that the U.S. government and military are on more than friendly terms with evil people like this. The U.S. government trains them, pays them, equips them and supports them in every way. Nothing proves more conclusively that the United States government and military are thoroughly evil.

Part 2 is titled: "United States Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction." The first chapter here details the bombing campaigns with which America has slaughtered people with all over the world from Korea to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia and many more places. The remaining chapters in Part 2 describe American use of Depleted Uranium weapons, cluster bombs and chemical and biological weapons. Also mentioned is the fact that the U.S. has sold chemical and biological weapons to other countries -- Iraq being one of the more outstanding examples.

Part 3 is titled: "A Rogue State versus the World." Chapter 17 gives brief summaries of every major U.S. government/military campaign of genocide, state terrorism and subversion, from China in 1945 to Yugoslavia in 1999. Mr. Blum's earlier book, "Killing Hope," goes into more detail on many of these countries, but "Rogue State" lists a larger number of cases.

The remaining chapters describe how the U.S. government has destroyed democracy by perverting elections around the world; been involved in the kidnapping of numerous people and the looting of various countries; how the CIA is the world's greatest drug smuggling organization (heroin and cocaine); how the U.S. government has the technological ability to keep the entire planet under permanent surveillance; how the U.S. has routinely voted against and vetoed many good U.N. resolutions that virtually every other country in the world has supported.

What nation is the greatest, most ruthlessly predatory "Rogue State" on the face of the planet? The public, historical record, compiled in William Blum's extensively researched book, makes it very clear.

The United States of America is the greatest terrorist nation on Earth.

This book is one of those that I keep having to purchase and repurchase. Every time I get into a discussion about the infallibility of the United States with someone, I "loan" them a copy of this book. And it seems like I never get it back (the other book I keep giving away is Peter McWilliams' Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do).
This is a slim book and I would have liked much more background information and detail on a number of issues, but it does detail some of the less-than-perfect moments in recent American history. In particular, it contrasts America's lip service to freedom and democracy with our support of totalitarian and often brutal regimes (Chile, El Salvador, Iran and Panama to name a few). The other part I found interesting was the part about the US involvement in the UN and how we have frequently vetoed measures that would benefit the rest of the world in order to further our own interests.
If you can accept the premise that the United States is not perfect, then this book is an eye-opener. If you think our country is infallible, this book will just make you mad.

The book should be read as a good counterbalance to the "the US is the superhero who frees the world" view. More generally, it is a criticism of ANY imperialist foreign policy (England, France, Germany, Russia, and any other state that became superpower did it), and so of the way the world has been ruled for centuries with states always on the verge to grab each other's throat.
Another good book is "Killing hope," which is vastly documented and more detailed.