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on 02-04-2003 01:00
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By Gore Vidal
Thunder Mouth Press/Nations Books
PP. 197
$11.95
Reviewed By Khalil Abdel Alim
Gore Vidal is a modern iconoclast, a contemporary Cassandra. He strips away the illusions that most Americans hold about the purity of our political system and government. He documents the debacle of the 2000 presidential election and the power grab executed by the Bush cabal. He describes it as, "The current Junta in charge of our affairs, one not legally elected, but put in charge of us by the Supreme Court in the interest of the oil and gas and defense lobbies..." In his opinion, the American government is not only hated by foreign nations with whose lives America has interfered, but by its own citizens whose lives it has also interfered with.
"Dreaming War" raises questions about the conspiracy involving government agencies, the CIA and Israel in the September 2001 attacks; sentiments that others, including New Jersey poet laureate Amir Baraka, have been scorched for.
He includes a discussion on how the skirmish in Afghanistan was planned as a part of the extension of the American Empire long before angry Arabs engaged in a manifestation of "Blowback" - the consequences of Americas actions abroad - in their retaliation against America for its historical attacks and plunder of other lands especially those of Muslims and the Middle East.
With historical documentation, he reveals that President F.D. Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In another heretical revelation, he reveals that President Truman dropped two atomic bombs on the yellow people of Japan not to save American lives or shorten the war - the Japanese were already suing for peace - but to frighten his white ally Stalin.
With his clever style of word, smiting Vidal combats his critics, of whom there are legions, and puts them to flight. He was once described by a network anchorperson as being "acerbic-acid tongued."
Vidal is a perceptive social critic but not Delphic when he points out that there are more than a million Americans in its prison system that was described by a Scandinavian Commission as, "barbarous for a supposedly First World country." He adds that 58 per cent of the federal prisoners are not dangerous criminals, but sick people guilty of drug offenses.
He charges that the Bush administrations recent pursuit of empire was planned long ago. He also points to the oil industry connections of Rice, Cheney, and others in the administration and their lust for oil that truly motivated Afghanistan and now Iraq.
This small book that he calls a pamphlet would not have seen a typesetter were it written by less a literary figure than Gore Vidal. Who currently resides in Italy which is supportive evidence for those who call him un-American. It is a collection of some original and some reprinted essays that the author has written in the last few years.
Vidal inadvertently contradicts those who try to compare the slaughter in Iraq to World War II when he points out that it took 30 days to capture Iwo Jima at a cost of 6,821 mostly young marine lives while the first Gulf War had less than 200 casualties many of them fratricidal as of date less than 75 reported in Iraq with many of them likewise from self inflicted attacks.
Gore Vidal waxes prophetic when he writes of most of Europe’s aversion to the current imperial adventure against Islam in Iraq: "Although the United States may yet, in support of Isreal, declare war on 1 billion Muslims, the Europeans will stay out. They recall 1529 when the Turks besieged Vienna not as guest workers but as world conquers. Never again."
He also writes of Americas South American sector of Empire as exemplified by its interference in Guatemala to prevent that government from rightfully taxiing American-owned United Fruit by overthrowing a democratically elected government. And the CIAs overthrow of democratically elected leader of Chile, Allende.
One thing that Vidal validates is Americas wonderful freedom of speech. Only in America.
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Khalil Abdel Alim is a Huntsville free-lance writer.
Last update : 02-04-2003 01:00
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