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Gore Vidal

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated Paperback – April 10, 2002

by Gore Vidal (Author)

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The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age. - Washington Post Our greatest living man of letters. - Boston Globe Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe. - Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books.

Print length

175 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 10, 2002
Grade level

11 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

5 x 0.44 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

156025405X
ISBN-13

978-1560254058
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this collection of essays, noted novelist and critic Vidal turns his acerbic wit on the United States. Never shy about expressing his opinion, Vidal questions U.S. assumptions regarding the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings: "That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with." His critique of the coverage of September 11 is slim, mostly centering on already reported truisms about why many in the Muslim world sympathize in some way with Osama bin Laden. Some readers, however, will share his unease with the willingness on the part of the American government and the American people to put concerns for civil liberties on the back burner during the war on terrorism. Vidal's criticisms of McVeigh, with whom he struck up a correspondence and a relationship, is more detailed. In Vidal's view, it is unlikely that McVeigh was solely responsible for Oklahoma City, and he saw himself as a martyr for a libertarian cause that would rescue America. But in this book, the tone is as important as the text. Vidal gleefully skewers American capitalism and the role of the religious right in American politics at every opportunity. Critics of American policy and American life, as well as those prone to conspiracy theories, are likely to find a lot of fodder. Many will not be surprised that Vidal's views have not received a wider hearing a piece on McVeigh was rejected by Vanity Fair, another by the Nation but even at his most contrarian, Vidal's writing is powerful and graceful.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Vidal couldn't find an English-language publisher for the first essay in this collection, his response to September 11, until it became a best-seller in Italy. He argues that Osama bin Laden's attack on America pales in comparison to the government's attack on American civil liberties since September 11. Vidal views the unwinnable wars on terrorism and drugs as the government's excuse to implement a police state, which he repeatedly compares to Nazi Germany. With his trademark wit and imposing intellect, he attacks everything about the Bush administration's response to 9/11, from the president's characterization of terrorists as "evil" to the war in Afghanistan. The clever, thoughtful diatribe is sometimes overwhelmed by tangents (at one point, Vidal ridicules Barbara Bush as a George Washington look-alike, which hardly seems relevant), but the essay is compulsively readable. The remaining essays in this slim volume have been published before and address Timothy McVeigh and the bombing in Oklahoma City. In a surprisingly convincing argument that McVeigh might not have been behind the bombing, Vidal weaves conspiracies from the Opus Dei order of the Catholic Church to Waco. These essays are held together by Vidal's belief that we must take the McVeighs and the bin Ladens of the world seriously and not dismiss their actions as simply "evil." Vidal fans will find everything they love here: these essays are witty, often convincing, and pull no punches. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Vidal writes with verve, passion and style that complements [his] controversial views." -- Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 2002

"[Vidal] provides plenty of examples to sustain his shimmering abhorrence for current American politics...Challenging as ever." -- Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2002

From the Back Cover

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed unpublishable in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following both September 11th and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers." "None of these explanations made much sense, but our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with. We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time in getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought it useful to describe here the various provocations on our side that drove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts." "The awesome physical damage Osama and company did us is as nothing compared to the knock-out blow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991 combined with the recent request to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors and undocumented immigrants without due process." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September 11th terror attackswill be American liberty?"Once alienated, " Vidal writes, "an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost." Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.) noted that Vidal's "United States (Essays 1952-92) is one of the great American books of the twentieth century." It won the 1993 National Book Award."Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters." -- Boston Globe"Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe." Harold Bloom, New York Review of Books

About the Author

Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. Winner of the National Book Award for United Sates: essays 1952-92, Vidal lives in Los Angeles.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Nation Books (April 10, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 175 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156025405X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560254058
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.44 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #309,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #137 in War & Peace (Books)
- #277 in Historical Study Reference (Books)
- #315 in History Encyclopedias

Customer Reviews:
172 ratings

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Gore Vidal

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Gore Vidal has received the National Book Award, written numerous novels, short stories, plays and essays. He has been a political activist and as Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat in a half-century.

Photo by David Shankbone (Photographer's blog post about the photo and event) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

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4 star		28%
3 star		10%
2 star		1%
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Anastasia McPherson

Reasoned Critique of American Policy

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2013

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I heard about Gore Vidal's "inflammatory" essay about 9/11 long before I actually read it. The consensus seemed to be that Vidal had succumbed to senility of some sort, a bitchy old queen in his dotage subscribing to conspiracy theories on the level of Loose Change. Instead of a screed, I got a well reasoned attack on America's foreign policy and how that policy may well create terrorists - all so the US has the excuse to fight them. The ultimate benefit of the war on terror is a corporate sponsored government that no longer represents the people, the institutionalization of greed and corruption, the dismantling of America's Bill of Rights and the further entrenchment of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke so eloquently against.

Can anybody observing the current state of the world argue that this isn't our current state? And given that and that this benefits a very specific and small group of powerful people, that those people in fact conspire to keep things this way? If anything, Vidal was measured in his attacks on the wars on terror and drugs and how this benefits multinational corporations and the people who control them. We are no longer governed by our representatives, bought as they are via corporate donation and sponsorship, but by corporate megaliths whose interests may not even reside in the United States. The essays with these themes provided a lot of food for thought and read easily with Vidal's trademark wit.

The essay on McVeigh was slightly harder to get a handle on. Just why did McVeigh participate in the bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City, if indeed he did and if he did not, why did he take the blame for it? Vidal doesn't provide any answers, easy or otherwise, except in one instances where he muses that McVeigh was born in the wrong era - that his was a personality that needed a cause to which he could dedicate his entire existence such as the abolition of slavery or the fighting of a "moral" war but instead he is stuck in our current era of confusion, helplessness and apathy. That rang true, but did little to explain why a person of such fierce morality would or could condone the collateral murder of innocents even as part of a military target as an act of war. McVeigh remains a mystery, though Vidal once again provides questions to ponder.

All in all, a solid and occasionally brilliant collection of previously printed essays. I highly recommend Vidal for his wit, erudition and content; as an essayist he really does have it all.

18 people found this helpful

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Park Burrets

Truth Telling

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2020

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Vidal really knew his American history...He does have a way with words...
It's so refreshing to read a book that can discuss serious topics without being shouted down by someone having a hissy. He talked about Timothy McVeigh's motivation. Being able to understand why people do terrible things is important to help prevent similar events in the future.

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2003

Verified Purchase

In this book, Gore Vidal explains his opinions on why the American government has come to be hated by millions across the world and even quite a few within America itself. He chooses the cases of Bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh to illustrate his points. He doesn't defend the actions of these two, but he makes the case that they were both provoked by the actions of the American government.
First in the case of Bin Laden, he focuses on the American government's interventionist streak. Bin Laden is a man who was trained and supported by the CIA during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and he subscribes to a fundamentalist form of Islam which is supported by the ruling Saud family which in turn is supported by the US government. Basically we make our own villians these days. Also he points out that many people in third world countries feel that having America or American supported troops in their country to do the bidding of corporate America is just humiliating. As the poverty becomes worse, people will just become more desperate. He makes the case that we should at least pretend to care, but too many Americans are caught up in their own minor problems to see that other people have it worse.
In the case of McVeigh, he thinks that Americans are becoming increasingly desperate due to the infringement of our freedoms, the build-up of a fascist-like police state, and the abuses of corporate America. As Americans see their rights slipping away and come to feel more and more powerless in a corporate sponsored government, the will increasingly rebel in the future (although this seems to have been put on the back burner since we're focused on foreign terrorists now). He makes the case that McVeigh was directly provoked by the government attack at Waco. Basically he says that as long as the government treats the people violently, the will respond in kind. Monkey see, monkey do.
Gore Vidal makes some very good points, and even if you don't agree with him, it's very interesting to read. I recommend you try it.

11 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

great

One person found this helpful

Big Sam

Best analysis on US A

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2019

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Excellent piece of work, brilliant read.

Jim123

Great read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2012

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Upon hearing of Gore Vidal's death I bought this book not quite knowing what to expect, despite reading the reviews here.

This book ended up being one of the best books I've read for a long time.
The author's insight and intellect are simply brilliant.

But most of all he challenges the common stereotypes and assumptions we all carry due to media manipulation.
Reading this book will open your mind, and change how you think regardless of whether or not you actually agree with what he says.

Enjoy!

3 people found this helpful

cire

A book you can not put down.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2015

Verified Purchase

A truely earth shattering expose of what we always thought but did not dare to believe. Gore is accurate and yet makes the serious business of Government both worrisome and amusing leaving us with no doubts about those leaders who are mismanaging the worlds major Nations.

One person found this helpful

Frieda Alexander

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

GOOD

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