Theater of War [Hardcover]

Lewis Lapham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2002

A critical look at America's new war by the author Annie Dillard calls "one of our most brilliant writers and thinkers."

Nothing will be the same after September 11. This is the wisdom offered and widely received since the announcement of the war on terrorism, a permanent war declared on both an unknown enemy and an abstract noun. But in Theater of War, Lewis Lapham shows with customary intelligence and wit that the recent imperial behavior of the United States government is perfectly consistent with the practice of past administrations.

Finding skeptics in the battle against evil has been a rare achievement. For example, as Lapham points out: "Ted Koppel struck the preferred note of caution on November 2 when introducing the Nightline audience to critics of the American bombing of Afghanistan: 'Some of you, many of you, are not going to like what you hear tonight. You don't have to listen.'" Unpopular opinions seldom make an appearance on the network news, and during the months since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the voices of dissent have been few and far between. Lewis Lapham is an exception. Almost alone among mainstream political commentators, he has had the courage to question the motive and feasibility, as well as the imperial pretension, of the Bush administration's infinite crusade against the world's evildoers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Harper's magazine editor Lapham (Money and Class in America) comes out doing the sarcastic equivalent of swinging in this collection of diatribes against incompetent hypocrisy in the media and government: "Maybe it's a trick of memory or a sign of age, but when I watch President George W. Bush threaten a White House television camera with a promise to punish the world's evildoers, the call to arms sounds like the sale pitch for an off-road vehicle or a lite beer," he writes in one of 14 jeremiads, published in his Harper's "Notebook" column between October 2000 and March 2002. Unfortunately, just as the above quote provides a double dose of self-doubt at the beginning and nowhere near enough wallop at the finish, most of these pieces, including an introductory tour of the last 50 years of U.S. foreign policy and small wars, lack laser-guided punch. At his best, however, Lapham summarizes and asserts his version of fin de siecle politics. Some of his post-September 11 remarks hit home, e.g., when he cites Alfred North Whitehead in arguing that the business of the future is to be dangerous. He wisely observes that "all societies, like most individuals, are always in some kind of trouble" and acutely concludes that it isn't trouble that kills, but rather "the fear of thought and the paralysis that accompanies the wish to believe that only the wicked perish." But such moments are difficult to pick out of the often diffuse text, and while criticism of the president has been somewhat muted, readers sympathetic to Lapham's point of view will wish he had gone even further out on a rhetorical limb.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Among the wittiest, most lucid stylists in the business....None of his observations proves to be anything less than prophetic. -- Boston Globe

Intelligent insight...for those who are tired of the endless cruise-missile rattling and Clint Eastwood-speak emanating from the White House. -- Washington Post

Rarely are hard-won insights so bluntly and so perceptively put. -- The New York Times

Stands out. -- Newsweek --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: New Press (September 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565847725
• ISBN-13: 978-1565847729
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,861,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Voice in a Crucial Period, October 22, 2002

By 

William Hare (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Theater of War (Hardcover)

Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham is providing to his period of history what Thomas Paine contributed to the crucial final 25 years of the eighteenth century, intelligent dissent intent on generating needed change. His "Theater of War" sounds an alarm against draconian measures such as the Patriot Act with its suffocating Orwellian overtones. In the aftermath of 9-11, when 3,000 lives of Americans were tragically lost, the U.S. government launched bombing assaults in Afghanistan which left 3,500 Afghan peasants dead. Lewis Lapham is the kind of American who mourns the deaths of the Afghan peasants as well as those lives tragically lost in 9-11. He seeks to get a fix on a runaway presidency in which pre-emptive strikes are offered as a policy option, all too often ignoring the consequences of such a posture internationally. It is time to reassess our policy priorities and Lapham's is a dissenting voice providing constructive input into that vital arena.

Lapham recognizes, and stresses repeatedly, the need for examining the ultimate consequences of today's actions. The peasants who die in a foreign land must be remembered today. The impoverished who remain alive need positive reinforcement, as the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Alliance for Progress of John F. Kennedy provided. The rhetoric needs to be cooled, discussion needs to prevail over aggression, and purposeful policy positions addressing the issues of international conflict as well as poverty need to be advanced with a clear voice. As Lapham asserts, a Big Stick policy will only backfire in the long run as America becomes increasingly hated. He suggests a much better road to travel.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well-written critical look at events before and after 9/11, September 10, 2002

By 

Jerry L. Faust (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Theater of War (Hardcover)

This small book contains the exquisitely written prose of a man prone to ask serious questions about the state of American democracy and military response to 9/11. The author points out less-than-obvious peculiarities of public life: if corporations are free to plunder the environment, why are private citizens not free to express themselves through art without fear of censorship ? Why are dissenting viewpoints given scant attention by a press that considers itself the vanguard of a free democacy?

I cannot recommend this little tome highly enough!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Collection, July 13, 2004

By 

Jason Rinka (Wilmington, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Theater of War (Hardcover)

Regular readers of Harpers magazine will already be familiar with most of the essays in this collection. That said, having them in one tome does much to enrich the power of the individual pieces. Laid out chronologically, the essays chart the march to war in Iraq and the early aftermath of the battle from the earliest days after September 11th. For those of us opposed to both this administration and the conflict in Iraq, Lapham's frustration and disbelief at the cynicism of those that would exploit 9/11 for political gain mirrors our own.

My personal favorite in the collection is the essay that draws parallels between the current conflict in Iraq and Athens during the Peloponnysian war. It's a masterful linking of past and present conflicts and an astute observation of the behavior of men with more power than sense.

So, obviously, I highly recommend the book. No, it is not evenhanded. Lapham obviously has his point of view, and the point of these essays is to make it clear. In a country so polarized as ours is today, arguments from one side fired at the other seem to have little to no impact- I can recommend this book to conservatives to see where the anti-war arguments come from (the arguments are very erudite and well made), but that would probably be as futile as lending me "Deliver Us From Evil". Nonetheless, Lapham is an excellent writer, and worthy of the editor of one of America's greatest periodicals.