Rating: 
Summary: Crucial reading
Review: This is probably the best book I've seen on the 'War on Terror." It's clearly argued and well documented. Others have already discussed the books strengths so I won't go into them here, but there is one problem I have with it. For all his research into the history of the United States' constant flaunting of international law, he fails to draw the logical conclusion from it: the United States will not obey any law that it does not want to. From the local to the international level, laws are only as good as they are enforceable; otherwise, they're just words on paper. To put it another way: political power grows from the barrel of a gun, and the US has the most and the biggest guns so there is little reason to believe, as Mahajan and others like Noam Chomsky do, that an international body can somehow compel the US to do anything. Before we start looking to the UN for solutions, we should see what it's track record has been when it comes to preventing or facilitating US militarism and we'll find that it consistently does the latter. Is that simply due to weak-spined political leaders? I don't believe so. It's because the US is such a cornerstone of international capitalism, that its role has to be preserved for the system to keep functioning, even at the short-term expense of other nations. What that implies for social justice movements is that we must be brutally honest about our country and its social-economic system, and I think any debate has to start with this premise. Despite that, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good understanding of the US government's post-9/11 actions, both domestically and inrternationally.
Rating:
Summary: Crucial reading
Review: This is probably the best book I've seen on the 'War on Terror." It's clearly argued and well documented. Others have already discussed the books strengths so I won't go into them here, but there is one problem I have with it. For all his research into the history of the United States' constant flaunting of international law, he fails to draw the logical conclusion from it: the United States will not obey any law that it does not want to. From the local to the international level, laws are only as good as they are enforceable; otherwise, they're just words on paper. To put it another way: political power grows from the barrel of a gun, and the US has the most and the biggest guns so there is little reason to believe, as Mahajan and others like Noam Chomsky do, that an international body can somehow compel the US to do anything. Before we start looking to the UN for solutions, we should see what it's track record has been when it comes to preventing or facilitating US militarism and we'll find that it consistently does the latter. Is that simply due to weak-spined political leaders? I don't believe so. It's because the US is such a cornerstone of international capitalism, that its role has to be preserved for the system to keep functioning, even at the short-term expense of other nations. What that implies for social justice movements is that we must be brutally honest about our country and its social-economic system, and I think any debate has to start with this premise. Despite that, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good understanding of the US government's post-9/11 actions, both domestically and inrternationally.
Rating:
Summary: Why do they hate us? Do you really want to know?
Review: Why do they hate us? It's because they hate our freedom - was the picture painted by the media and the US government. It was a nice, comfortable idea (this line from book). If you delve into this question a little further, you will soon realize, "they" probably don't care how you live inside your country, and they might actually care more about what the US government is doing outside the US. We obviously don't sympathize with the brutal and senseless actions of the fanatics that caused 9-11. However, the actions of the US government cannot be justified either. The bombings took a lot of innocent lives and will continue to do so for several years from starvation, disease and even unexploded bombs. War as we know is death for the people who live there. What's very bothering is that a lot of people believe that this war was and is justified. A lot of people believe the lives of children and innocent people are justified. If you want to get an idea as to why they hate us, and whether or not the war can be justified, this book will give you a great insight. The book also talks about how the war on terrorism is affecting our daily lives here, our future, and what we can do to help. The book presents a lot of facts after thorough research, analyses and suggestions as well. Being aware is in itself a great help we can do to ourselves.
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