Customer Reviews

Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil

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Jim Bovard, in the words of the Orange County Register, is "Washington's most hated truth-teller." In his latest book, _Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil_, he sustains that long-standing reputation with surefire dignity and aplomb.

You get a feeling about a book and its author, when, in the book's very first sentence, he rivets you to your chair with jackhammer force by stating that "the war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new millennium." The rest of the book falls out from that thesis, as Bovard takes the reader on a journey through the war on terrorism, starting with the mostly forgotten Reagan crusade, and onward through to the Bush cabal.

Jim Bovard is, without a doubt, the best political researcher-writer in politics today. While most writers add a few footnotes to their writing, Bovard adds some first-rate writing to his immaculate set of footnotes. He doesn't make wild judgments or blanket allegations; he provides an encyclopedia's worth of timely quotes laid out in chronological fashion to funnel the reader through an extensive framework of US government double-dealing, coercion, corruption, and propaganda milling.

Perhaps the most unforeseen and brilliant facet of Bovard's chronology is his application of the war on terror's inauguration as being firmly planted in the Ronald Reagan camp. It's as if he expected the reader to forgive and forget, or at least not conjure up those deep-rooted memories in light of the Bush administration's tyranny spree.

Buy this book. No matter what your views; right, left, center, or indifferent, you won't be disappointed.

On the dust jacket of his new book, author James Bovard quotes Attorney General John Ashcroft's chilling words regarding the costs associated with the raging war against terrorism. Ashcroft claims, "Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty...will only aid terrorists as they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends". Such is the poisonous atmosphere created by the current administration and its utter disregard for the civil liberties and precious personal freedoms of average Americans. This then, is an extremely well written book that exhaustively details the manifest ways in which the Bush administration has misused and abused its power and privilege in what is obviously the most blatant grab for exclusive executive power in the last two hundred years.

Characterizing the war on terror as the single most aggressive growth industry of the new millennium, Bovard boldly documents the specifics of the Bush' administration's war against its own people through the implementation of a wide range of anti-democratic measures to ensure its hold on power and to use the rationale of the war on terror to pursue a plethora of totally unrelated neo-conservative goals. For Bovard, the current range of executive branch actions against terror has more to do with ensuring its own survival in an abrasive political environment than it does with combating the actual terrorist threat. Every action taken is done with public assurances it is being done with scrupulous and diligent concern for protecting individual rights and personal privacy, when in fact the administration then eschews any and all efforts to oversee or surveil its constitutionally questionable actions and policies. It misrepresents the actions of its agencies such as the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security at the same time it seeks to extend its ability to monitor and control the civil liberties of its innocent citizens.

Much of the book centers on the specific ways in which the tyranny of the established order attempts to justify its own actions by portraying them as being taken in the public interest. Yet rather than commit sufficient funds for enhancing internal security or bolstering first responder capabilities for cities, states, and municipalities at risk of terrorist strikes, they engage in the single largest tax-refund program for wealthy Americans since the initiation of the federal tax code in the 20th century. They exaggerate victories and minimize failures, and use "bait and switch" tactics to sell a war in Iraq by claiming Iraq posed a clear and present terrorist danger to the United States. The Bush administration constantly conjures up references to freedom and liberty, yet supports many governments that are both anti-democratic and authoritarian to their own citizens.

Most provocatively, Bovard shares a wealth of documents and sources showing how a group of neo-conservative intellectuals have hijacked the means of governance for their own ideological and self-interested purposes. Several of the insiders are prominent Zionists like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who seem to view the current questionable and sometimes brutal military and political tactics of the Sharon government in Israel against the Palestinian refugees in the so-called territories as an ostensible model for how to manhandle and subjugate the truth into a tool to help fashion their own agendas through astute public relations and incredible `chutzpah' in terms of political spin of the situation. Thus anyone disagreeing with neo-conservative doctrines is accused of tacitly suspect patriotism. More worrying is the seeming unilateral agenda of the administration for remaking the world into a form more congenial to American corporate interests. In Bush's view, American hegemony and American service to democratic ideals seem to be the same thing. This is an important book, and one that honestly deserves your most earnest attention. Enjoy!

I became interested in "Terrorism and Tyranny", by James Bovard, after his appearance on C-SPAN's "Booknotes" program.

The author provides an incredible amount of documentation to back up the book. It delves into how the USA-PATRIOT Act has done serious harm to our civil liberties, and it uncovers the new attitude of the government in the days since 9/11.

"Terrorism and Tyranny" is a warning to all of us that more government power and surveilance doesn't necessarily mean a safer nation, and that sweeping government reform like the USA-PATRIOT Act can potentially have devastating consequences to the freedoms that we all enjoy.

This book is a very fascinating read, no matter which side of the political spectrum you belong.

Yes, be afraid of your government. Bush and Ashcroft and the whole lot of them have seized on the horror that was September 11th to make a full-scale frontal assault on the personal liberties of each and every one of us. James Bovard, yet again, holds their feet to the fire. "Terrorism and Tyranny" is a stark and coherent warning to the country about the state of the "war on terrorism".

Terrorism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Those who practice it, Mr. Bovard shows, can slide from "freedom fighter" (and eligible for enormous support from you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer) to "terrorist" in the time it takes to bite that hand that feeds them. Osama Bin Laden was always a "terrorist", even when he was a "freedom fighter" doing America's bidding. See Castro. See Hussein. Mr. Bovard's charge that the American military is being mis-used in the service of wealth rcalls former Marine General Smedley Butler's lament that he was, in a career that saw him win two Medals of Honor, "...little more than high-class muscle in the service of the rich". General Butler wrote that in the 30's; it is apt today.

Enemy combatants scooped up on the battlefield are locked away, basically forgotten, and denied funamental due process. That might be in in accord with the Geneva Convention so those people don't have much of a case. But American citizens arrested in America? Locked up, denied access to family and lawyers? For years, with no end in sight? This is wrong, as wrong as the jingoistically named "Patriot Act", an odious a piece of legislation that must have been passed before anyone bothered to read it. They, the ubiquitous, faceless "they", can now subpoena our school records, phone records even our library records, by merely showing that the investigation is "...related to terrorism". Gone is probable cause. Gone is reasonable suspicion. One of Ashcroft's minions wants to go fishing and your entire life can be laid bare. And woe betide the recipient of such a subpoena, a librarian, say, who tells you that your records have been grabbed; that is now a crime.

Frightening, frightening, Big Brotherish sufff that Mr. Bovard wants us all, left, center, right, to rise up against. "Terrorism and Tyranny" is well, researched, well documented, and well written by a true patriot.

I really wish I could give this book five stars. It treats the most important political issue in the United States, the war on terrorism, arguing one side of the question, "Is it worth it?" Bovard is clearly on the "no" side, methodically comparing the value of invading Iraq, allying with Israel, Russia, and Pakistan, and unfettering law enforcement as part of the "war." He highlights the minor benefits and dramatic consequences, and lambastes the Bush and Clinton administrations for their incredibly poor grasp of how to prevent terror. You will be shocked at how callous and misleading the U.S. government (both Democrat and Republican) has been in the face of its own brutal misdeeds. Unfortunately, the author's anger leaks into the otherwise "just the facts" text, and the occasional overdone metaphor weakens the impact of the thousands of documented, footnoted references. Still, absolutely worth reading, if only as an antidote to the continuing phony drumbeat of "war," "freedom," and "terrorists" coming from the White House.

This is not a book that gives you a good feeling. James Bovard has unleashed a relentless and powerful expose of government abuse and mismanagement since 9/11. The Feds have made use of that tragedy to maximize their power over citizens' lives and trample the constitution. The "war" on terror, as if it were possible to defeat a concept, has allowed George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, and their neoconservative cronies to consolidate power, force their ideology on the rest of the world, and adopt a strategy of continuous warfare anywhere on Earth where there is mere "suspicion" of terrorism. Government oversight and constitutional checks and balances have been eliminated by the administration's claims of national security and the need for secrecy. Dissent and criticism have been crushed under a wave of flimsy morality consisting of little more than vague buzzwords like "democracy," "safety," and the badly distorted "freedom." As Bush and Ashcroft have both said many times, "either you're with us or against us."

If you think Homeland Security and the War on Terror will really bring freedom and safety to Americans, think again. Bovard judiciously (and sometimes repetitively) analyzes how the Patriot Act and other homeland security codes have deprived you of many of your First and Fourth Amendment rights. And the book is exhaustively cited and researched - I count 2065 endnotes for 353 pages. Bovard proves with little doubt that under the Bush administration's lofty rhetoric of freedom and safety, they have actually fomented a radical consolidation of power that will do little to end world terrorism, but will do a lot to trample American freedoms, while increasing hatred toward the US from around the world. While Bovard sometimes loses his cool and isn't always levelheaded, he raises some very troubling questions here about who the tyrants really are. Your government wants you to remain in the dark about what is really going on. But that's not freedom, it's ignorance. It is the duty of Americans to stay informed and not just swallow what the government dishes out. [~doomsdayer520~]

James Bovard's "Lost Rights" was very influential in the formation of my political ideology, yet after 9/11 I fell into the trap he repeatedly decries in "Terrorism and Tyranny": to trust with more power the government whose bureaucratic incompetence failed to avert 9/11 with the power it had in the first place.

Anyone sick of the current political debate in this country, polarized between Leftists who believe America is evil and conservatives who think it is divine and immune from criticism, ought to read this book. Bovard stakes out the middle, libertarian, ground.

A compelling compendium of evidence marshaled together in one book that can serve as an indictment of Bush's "War On Terrorism", "USA Patriot Act", and "Homeland Security". Meticulously researched and presented. Ridicules "weapons of mass deception" and "faith-based intelligence".

Bovard sounds an alarm that apparently nobody is listening to. Unfortunately he fails to present a viable plan for evacuating or saving the building.

Becoming a victim of terrorism is a risk; being subjected to tyranny at the mercy of a government that has usurped unlimited powers is a certainty. In the name of "freedom" our government tramples on our civil liberties while engaging in misguided adventures abroad.

In this brilliant book, James Bovard shows how Bush has twisted the legitimate war against the Al Qa'ida terrorists into a war to extend US state power, trampling both the sovereignty of other nations and the liberties of the American people.

The USA was attacked not because it is free, as Bush monotonously claims, but because the US state attacks and intervenes abroad, particularly because it backs dictatorships in the Middle East, has bases in Saudi Arabia, and supports Israel's occupation of Palestine.

Chapter 3, `Blundering to 9/11', details the US state's failure to protect Americans from terrorism. Before Sheik Abdul Rahman's group bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993, the FBI sacked its informer, the Sheik's bodyguard, because they thought that he was lying when he warned that the group was planning a bombing in New York. Subsequently, all the federal agencies failed to take seriously the risk of more such attacks.

After Clinton ordered the bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, warnings poured in that Al Qa'ida would hit back by crashing planes into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, CIA HQ and the White House. On 6 August 2001, the CIA briefed Bush that bin Laden was determined to strike in the USA and might hijack planes to do so. Bush still refuses to release the briefing, and later released just ten pages of the Congress Joint Intelligence Committee's 450-page report on his foreknowledge and failures before 9/11.

Congressmen passed the Patriot Act in October 2001 before they had seen it (just like MPs with the Maastricht Treaty). The Act allowed unprecedented numbers of secret detentions, attacks on privacy and searches of homes (18,000 search warrants have been issued since 9/11). The state gave itself unchecked powers of surveillance of bank accounts, e-mails, medical records, phone calls, letters, lawyer-client discussions, and Internet, library and bookshop use.

All these new powers have made Americans no safer: in September 2002, two New York Daily News reporters carried box-cutters, knives and razors through eleven major airports onto 14 flights on six airlines - nobody spotted any of these banned items.

The book is full of accounts of abuses of power by the US state - attacks on the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, the freedoms of expression and assembly, and the freedom from torture. The Patriot Act created a new crime of `domestic terrorism', defined as actions `to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion'. The new Homeland Security Department told police to keep an eye on anyone who `expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the US government'. Governments around the world applaud and copy these abuses.

Bush claims terrorism is the main threat to Americans, but just one police department, Prince George's County in Maryland, killed more Americans in the 1990s - 59 (47 shot dead plus 12 killed in police custody) - than any terrorist organisation. In the 1990s, police in the USA's 50 largest county and police departments killed more than 2,100 people.

Between 1991 and 2002, international terrorists killed 8,924 people worldwide; but the US-British sanctions on Iraq alone killed more than 500,000 children. The US and British governments stopped Iraq from importing $5 billions' worth of humanitarian goods, including soap, ambulances, antibiotics and medical, water treatment and sanitation equipment. Blair took no responsibility for the deaths, blamed them all on Saddam, and then used them to justify attacking the country: he said that they died "because of the nature of the regime under which they are [sic] living. Now, that is why we're acting."

After 9/11, Bush first attacked Afghanistan, not terrorism, killing 5,000 civilians by bombing, rather than fighting and killing the terrorists on the ground. Consequently the leaders escaped; the USA won a battle, but not the war. Afghanistan has been abandoned: it has not been rebuilt and has not become a democracy. It has again become the world's largest heroin producer, although suppressing its heroin production was supposedly a top US priority. In 2002, President Karzai said poppy growing would stay banned: Afghan production rose by 2000% that year.

Secondly, Bush backed Israel's war against the Palestinian people (witness his $9 billion aid package to Israel in early 2003). An Israeli government minister quoted Numbers chapter 33 to justify expelling all Arabs from the Occupied Territories: God commanded the Israelites, "Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you". But the more violence the Israeli government has used, the more violence its civilians have suffered. More Israelis have been killed since Sharon became Prime Minister than in the 1967 War. And occupation corrupts: Rabbi Yaacov Perrin said, "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." Israeli soldiers are under orders never to shoot at Israeli settlers, even those killing unarmed Arabs: the IDF commander in Hebron disclosed, "the instructions are not to shoot at Jews because Jews are not the enemy."

Third, Bush attacked Iraq, all the while saying, `if war is forced upon us ... ' He claimed that Iraqi WMD threatened the USA, but as General Kamel said in 1995, "All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed." Bovard sums up Bush's policy as `defrauding the nation to war'.

We need to defeat Al Qa'ida, but Bush and Blair's wars of aggression are strengthening the forces of terrorism, not weakening them.

James Bovard has mastered the art of unraveling the political game playing and has stripped the Beltway bare. There is no partisan grand standing to be found here and his conclusions are drawn based on solid research. When Dwight Eisenhower stated:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

It may have been difficult to fathom how profound this statement was. Bovard's book gives some indication of why the American public should have heeded the warning through the years.

Perhaps, the most interesting chapter to be found here - speaks on state sponsored terrorists around the world world who receive American aid. Peculiar how governments run by terrorist regimes are allies in one decade but "murdering terrorists" the next.
From Reagan's initial War on Terror to the current one, Bovard shows us how the Armed Forces have been used as a tool for the political elite.

It is indeed a sombering event when US soldiers and innocent civilians die, for them to have died primarily for political and corporate expediency is tragic.

This book is a must read for all Americans.