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on 16-07-2002 17:36
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Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated
By Gore Vidal
Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books
160 pp
$10.00
Reviewed by Khalil Abdel Alim
Gore Vidal who has written twenty-two novels, five plays, many screen plays, more than two hundred essays and a memoir is an American political and social iconoclast. He continues on that path in this small book about the current political atmosphere in the United States.
His acerbic essays strip away the spin and emotionalism about contemporary American foreign policy and recent events and presents facts, unpopular but true. Following the scientific principle that actions beget other actions he explains why America is hated, maligned, and attacked. The title is from a description of American foreign policy by historian Charles Beard.
Vidal reports that for several decades American media has demonized the Muslim world. President Bush added official sanction to that policy when he told a joint session of congress;”They hate what they see right here in this chamber. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
Mr. Vidal compares the Christian establishment in Jerusalem in the 10th Century to Americas Gulf War pretext to occupy Saudi Arabia. He writes of Saladins liberation of Jerusalem his conquest of Egypt, his annexation of Syria and his “purification” of Islam. Vidal cites the fact that many in the Muslim world see Osama bin Laden as an heir to Saladin. It is very surprising given Mr. Vidal literary acumen that he uses the very outdated misnomer-Mohammedan-to describe Muslims.
Gore Vidal’s writing style is lucid but he is little heavy handed with his sarcastic humor. He criticizes the Bush administration that he claims is adept only at exempting the rich from taxes. But he also pans the Clinton administration for beginning the current erosion of civil liberties with its signing into law the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that gives the Attorney General to use armed services against civilians-nullifying Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and selectively suspends writ of habeas corpus.
Vidal quotes an article that was written by Princeton professor emeritus, Arno J. Myer after last year’s violence in New York and Washington, DC that he could not get published in the United States but was published in the French newspaper La Monde. Mayer wrote since 1947 the United States has perpetrated state terror against the third world including the subversive and overthrow of governments, political assassinations, and surrogate death squads. He said that the U.S. planned the assassination of Lummba and Allende and failed in attempts to do likewise to Castro, Khadafi and Sadam Hussien. He charges the U.S. with vetoing all attempts to stop Israel’s violations of international agreements and U.N. resolutions and its practice of preemptive state terror.
Vidal compares what he calls recent restrictions on civil liberties in the U.S. to policies implemented in Germany in 1933 by Hitler after the Reihstag fire that his forces lit.
Gore Vidal accuses the American government of having an “enemy of the month club” to document his claim he lists 19 pages of American armed conflicts dating from Kosovo (1999) back to the Berlin Airlift (1948-9).
The book includes a report written by Vidal for Vanity Fair in 1998 entitled “Shredding the Bill of Rights”, read by Timothy McVeigh who was on Death Row. They began to correspond and McViegh invited Vidal to be his guest at his execution. The author in his report with sardonic humor makes the very serious case for claims of the erosion of the provisions of the Bill of Rights.
His report-essay on the documented abuses of government agencies- FBI, IRS, ATF and Drug Enforcement Agency is frightening. Vidal’s “little book” also reveals some doubts about the true role of Timothy McVeigh’s role in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
The fact that this book and other articles by the author were published offers hope for our survival of the dangers of which Mr. Gore Vidal writes and warns.
Last update : 16-07-2002 17:36
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