| Rating: | |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Other |
| Author: | Wiliam Blum |
Ever meet a hit man? If not, then consider living in his political equivalent: The United States. In Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, find out how the U.S. sentences blasphemers to death--that is, people and governments blaspheming the "holy objectives of American foreign policy." William Blum supplies us with the facts about:
* Why terrorists keep picking on the United States; * The numerous foreign leaders whose assassinations were plotted by the U.S.; * How the U.S. supported Pol Pot but helped incarcerate Nelson Mandela; * The U.S. government's extensive connection to torture; * How the U.S. has been a haven for foreign terrorists and human rights violators; * The War Crimes Tribunal that will never be: How the U.S. squelched the charges of war crimes against its own and NATO's leaders in 1999; * How the U.S. has perverted dozens of foreign elections; and much, much more.
With information such as this available in the public realm, Blum asks, how does the United States get away with it?
A major reason, he concludes, is the world's long-running love affair with the mystique of "America", the world's adoration of what it believes to be the relentless devotion to the cause of freedom and human rights that is America. This adoration has not been of immaculate conception but stems, rather, from the United States as the inventor and perfecter of modern advertising and public relations. The United States is the world's only information superpower -- and, according to Samuel Huntington in the journal Foreign Affairs, the United States is a "rogue superpower," at that.
Blum also theorizes about why this cruelty is so inherent in U.S. foreign policy. He relates it to the "Peter Principle": "...in a foreign policy establishment committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary, employees tend to rise to the level of cruelty they can live with."
In Rogue State, learn about decades of ubiquitous U.S. cruelty, kept -- remarkably -- from penetrating world consciousness or shocking world conscience. Though President Clinton calls America "the world's greatest force for peace", William Blum shows that our Rogue State is really a marauding Western brute.
Praise
"Bill Blum came by his title easily. He simply tested America by the same standards we use to judge other countries. The result is a bill of wrongs-- an especially well-documented encyclopedia of malfeasance, mendacity and mayhem that has been hypocritically carried out in the name of democracy by those whose only true love was power." --Sam Smith, Editor, The Progressive Review
"Whatever we think we know about U.S. foreign policy, Rogue State makes it clear that we don't know nearly enough. This book's grisly content may seem to require a strong stomach, but reading its words is nothing compared to what has been done -- and keeps being done -- with our tax dollars and in our names. Whether we read Rogue State as a historical narrative or use it as a reference book, William Blum has put together a horrifying and infuriating piece of work. The footnoted information between these covers is enough to make any awake reader want to scream with rage. This is a truly subversive book because it demolishes the foundations of basic illusions about the United States of America as a world power." --Norman Solomon, author and winner of the George Orwell Award
