Rating: 
Summary: Vidal gives Flesh and Blood to cartoons
Review: Everything by Gore Vidal should be read. He is our last great literary man. After September 11th, I looked in vain in the usual places- The Nation, New York Times, Slate- for Vidal's response to the attacks of the 11th, but found nothing. Now I know why. His essays were rejected for publication. His opinions weren't the correct ones. They were too controversial during the flag waving and drum pounding that was going on. But here it is at last!
Vidal looks at Bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh in his book. Some of the McViegh essays were previously published in his last essay collection, The Last Empire. If you are tired of reading that the attacks on America only took place because the United States is good and they are evil, read this book. Our happy land attacked by the Devil's minions should not be the accepted explanation. Vidal looks honestly at Bin Laden and McVeigh and erases the cartoon images and reasons we have been given of both the men and their attacks.
Some readers/reviewers have been offended by Vidal's willingness to look at the motives and philosophies of these evil ones (and other reviewers seem to be rabidly writing with the foam from their mouths). But how else are we supposed to know the facts and reach an adult understanding of their actions? Without understanding- or at least listening- we can not do anything to stop future Bin Ladens and McVeighs. Indeed, our current actions, as Vidal points out, only ensure that we are manufacturing more true believers.
Vidal's book won't change policy or give us back real journalists, but knowing that it's out there and will be read is something.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent view point
Review: An opinion very well known outside of US, the rest of the world attempts to look at why the US is behaving the way it does... for the first time an American has the courage to write about it. An example of independent and intelligent thinking.
Rating:
Summary: A Much Needed Voice
Review: Gore Vidal has long been a favorite author of mine, and one of my favorite social critics. His latest book, which focuses on post-9/11 America is a much needed voice in the din of jingoism that has arisen in the months following the attacks. While the questions he asks and the points he makes will surely be unpopular in an American where so many now march in unquestioning lock-step with the policies and decisions of our leaders - in a war without an identifiable enemey (terrorists, being nameless, faceless and therefore capable of being anyone, anywhere) and without an identifiable, tangible goal or end - they bear saying, and must be understood and soberly addressed if there is any hope of for humanity, let alone for America. Vidal will surely be excoriated, called names, and perhaps worse. Still, it is gratifying to know that in a time of hysteria and emotionalism, some are still capable of analysis, still willing to challenge the national group-think, and ask the questions that no one wants to here but that desperately need answering.
Rating: 
Summary: An important voice
Review: We of a certain political bent welcome the viewpoints of learned observers such as Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky among precious few others. This short book puts a magnifying glass on the recent events post-9/11 as well as the McVeigh drama. Vidal has some pet topics, which find their way into this work, but for the most part the book is a sober coherent look at the role of the U.S. in the world today and the very shaky hands that are at the wheel.
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Summary: Agree with it or not, a message we need to hear
Review: Gore Vidal has been a pain in the establishment's keester for fifty-odd years, and his gadflying has gotten sharper, pithier, and more valuable with the passing of each year. In this latest collection of essays, he dares to say something that many Americans are uneasily beginning to suspect but haven't yet dared to utter out loud: the reason "they"--the terrorists--hate us "so much" is at least partly because we're sometimes...well...hateable. Vidal's *Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace* collects a handful of his recent essays ranging on topics from the presidential election of 2000, to homegrown terrorism a la Timothy McVeigh, to the moralizing conservatism of mainstream America, to an open letter to the FBI on whether McVeigh was acting alone. All of these pieces have been published previously, and indeed, some of them appeared in Vidal's last collection of essays, *The Last Empire* (2001). What's truly new and exciting about this book is its lead essay, hauntingly entitled "September 11, 2001 (A Tuesday)". Vidal tells us in his Introduction that the piece was originally commissioned by "Vanity Fair," but was refused publication because the editors thought it too inflammatory. Inflammatory it unquestionably is, because in it Vidal argues for a thesis that is unpopular at the moment but just may make more sense as time goes on: that horrible as the terrorist attacks on the Trade Towers was, the Bush administration's high-handed wrestling to the ground of civil liberties in the attack's wake is worse. Vidal argues that the waging of war by the "Pentagon junta" is but another example of the U.S.'s misguided tendency to "wage war to perpetuate peace"--a misbegotten policy that has earned the violent dislike of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh as well as the diplomatic disdain of much of the world. (At the end of the essay, Vidal provides an instructive 20-page account of U.S. military operations since 1949.) Vidal agrees that bin Laden needs to be brought to justice, but he argues that a police action, not all-out war, is the answer. The cowboy-style military campaign is only bound to make a bad situation worse. It may snuff out bin Laden (although even this isn't guaranteed), but as is the way with military actions, will inevitably generate more anger and resentment. This book is bound to infuriate many American readers, even though I understand it's been a best-seller in Europe. I'm not sure I agree with everything Vidal has to say. Occasionally he's long on accusation and short on evidence. But the book deserves reading if for no other reason than it has the courage to ask us not to take for granted the virtue of our foreign policy in general and our reaction to terrorism in particular.
Rating:
Summary: A valuable book, especially in these times!
Review: Although one wishes that this was one long essay instead of several, thi sis still avery valuable book that more Americans should read, but probably won't. With all of the current war hysteria, this is a sobering look at why we got to where we are now and why much of it could have been avoidable if only our policy-makers and mass media really told us the truth about what's going on in the world and the repercusions of many of our foreign policies, finally coming back full force upon the U.S>!
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Summary: Ask a Foreigner
Review: Great book, if you want to know why Americans are hated, ask a foreigner! Behind your backs, Brits, Canadians, Australians,and other Commonwealth country citizens share our dislike for Americans. "Typical American" is what we say when you are being typically loud, ignorant, and domineering.
So what do you think other non English speaking countries think?
The problem is Americans rarely travel outside the US (except to make war), few citizens hold passports, and your Media rarely gives a balanced view of other countries.
In the meantime your government and military is trying to take over the world - over 200 aggressive actions since WW2!
Your country is out of control, lead by a president who is under the control of oil and military industies, and on course for a massive economic crash.
We "foreigners" hope it happens soon, and that Iraq becomes the quicksand as compared to Vietnam's jungle, that breaks America's neck!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome reading!!
Review: Gore Vidal is brave, blunt, honest, and remarkable as ever. His book "Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace" will provide you with a jarring experience that will leave you flabbergasted.....
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Summary: Vidal against the US government--but is he right?
Review: Some of this book is about Osama bin Laden and the war on terror, and some of it is about Timothy McVeigh. Vidal finds some similarity in their motives. But this is not so much a defense of McVeigh (or bin Laden) as it is an "appreciation"--that is, an appreciation of their frustration with the (sometimes) violent behavior of the United States government.
There are seven "chapters" (they are not numbered as such) amounting to seven essays by a past and present master of the form. Some of the material appeared in Vanity Fair or The Nation, and some of it was--Vidal suggests--not published because of prior censorship (after 9/11) by the corporate-sponsored American media.
Vidal argues (1) that McVeigh did not act alone; (2) he was not crazy or mentally deranged; and (3) what he did was at some level understandable. With the same logic, one could say that what bin Laden and Al Qaeda did was understandable; indeed Vidal intimates as much. He quotes McVeigh's psychiatrist as saying that McVeigh killed all those people in Oklahoma City partly in revenge for what the Janet Reno-led feds did at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and partly "to make a political statement about the role of the federal government and protest the use of force against the citizens." (p. 104)
Consequently, from his summer villa in the south of Italy, the one-time enfant terrible of American letters sees McVeigh and his heinous crime as a consequence of what our government is doing to us. He writes that "Since V-J Day 1945...we have been engaged in what the historian Charles A. Beard called 'perpetual war for perpetual peace.'" He adds that "each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us."
In support of this contention, Vidal lists all the military operations that America has been involved in since WWII beginning with the Berlin Airlift (1948-49) to the bombing of Kosovo in 1999. It takes 20 pages to list them all. They include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, operation "Desert Storm," and the various "drug war" operations, and even some continental US operations with which I am not familiar. He credits the Federation of American Scientists with compiling the list.
It can be seen that this interpretation of American foreign and domestic policy is straight out of Orwell's 1984 in which Big Brother, in order to perpetually solidify his power and keep the citizenry in constant fear and distraction, maintained a state of constant war with a foreign enemy. This psychology works well on the tribal mind that we all share. We consciously and subconsciously feel that first comes defense of the nation (our tribe right or wrong!) against foreign enemies, and then, and only then, do we turn our attention to what our government is doing to us. However, if the war is perpetual, then we never confront our leaders because to do so would be unpatriotic. Vidal notes that only congresswoman Barbara Lee of California voted against giving President Bush additional powers to fight terrorism.
This mass psychology seems so simple and so totalitarian that we cannot believe (1) that it fools anybody, and (2) that our democratically-elected government would dare to use such a tactic. But Vidal is here to assure us that it's real, that the totalitarian state is in the making right before our very eyes. The culprits are the masters of corporations who have acquired the ability to buy and keep all politicians so that they might do the corporate bidding. Vidal notes that the present Bush administration is just the current instrument of this conspiracy (a somewhat unplanned, de facto and unconscious conspiracy, by the way) of socially conservative Christians, empire-dreaming neocons, and the corporate power structure. He observes, "The Bush administration...[is] eerily inept in all but its principal task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes..." while it goes about its "relentless plundering of the Treasury..." (pp. 10-11) I guess I should observe that this is in some sense "fortunate" since Bush's general incompetence will probably prevent him from being the first dictator of the United States--not that he doesn't otherwise have the Right Stuff.
Okay, the real question here is, what if Vidal is right? Are we headed the way of Imperial Rome, toward dictatorship and the inevitable decline and fall? Will our children and grandchildren live in a country under heavy surveillance while their standard of living plummets because of the weighty burden of maintaining an empire from which we gain little tribute, an empire maintained at a frightful cost in dollars and lives lost?
Personally I already see the decline of American power and influence. Already, as the Euro rushes past us in value (drug dealers in Latin America are reported as now preferring the Euro to the greenback--will Japanese investors be next?) we can see our civilization crumbling with the potholes in the streets, the growing slums of our cities with the homeless at nearly every downtown corner, with a looted treasury, a frightfully weak dollar, and a soon-to-be worthless social security. Who is watching the store? It used to be said that when the democrats get into office they give it away, while the republicans steal it. Now it would appear that there is little difference between one party and the other. There is only the subversion of democracy by the power elite. And how long can this republic in name only exist hated by most of the rest of the world? Shame, shame on you, our cowardly bought and sold politicians!
Okay, maybe the case is being overstated. (Whew--I hope so!) But I recommend you read Gore's rant as an introduction to this scary point of view and decide for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Just in time!
Review: A few years earlier and he would have been tarred and feathered (essentially what is said in the intro). This book only gets two stars because too much time is spent Bush-bashing and not enough is spent sharing the responibility. He contends that 9/11, McVeigh, anti-americanism, and every other problem with the world can be solely blamed on the United States and her military. As is typical in America hating novels no credit is given to the hundreds of humanitarian missions or defensive actions the US embarks on, and Americans pay for, each year; as if those missions do not count into his elaborate equation of why people hate the US.
If the fact that this novel was first published in Italian doesn't say enough. Gore isn't interested in solving problems within this country, or any other for that matter, this book is focused on America-bashing and stereotypical Bush-bashing.
Sorry to say, this book was a waste of my time.
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