Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq by Michael Scheuer
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Book Reviews of Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq
Book Review: Right on blowback, wrong on savagery.
Summary: 3 Stars
Scheuer has long been arguing that Arab violence against the United States is "blowback" for US policies. It's not a matter of Muslims hating our freedoms or passages from the Koran inciting them; but rather, they hate that U.S. policy planners have supported a brutal occupation of Palestine (which degrades the security of both Israelis and, obviously, Palestinians)Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - Without Supplemen, we've propped up vicious dictators in countries like Saudi Arabia The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, and we imposed sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq Iraq Under Siege, Updated Edition: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War. Scheuer sites policies that go back to 1973, but U.S. aggression in the region goes back much further. Authors like Stephen Kinzer point to 1953 as a pivotal moment, with the U.S. overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Few are aware of the history of U.S. intervention in places like Lebanon, books like Seeds of Hate: How America's Flawed Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad provide insight. And documentaries like Our Own Private Bin Laden illustrate how we gave birth to the militant Muslims. The West's meddling in the region, including Britain's, goes back even further.
Scheuer suggests that we in the U.S. have a "pacifist" media. He must have a different cable system than I do, because I regularly see warfare being glorified in movies like "Blackhawk Down" and on channels like the Military Channel. The military is the subject of idolatry during sporting events and in programs like JAG and others The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture. Then there are all the video games that serve to train kids to be killers, as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman points out in his book, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence
Scheuer also feels the intelligentsia is "pacifist," yet it is often there to promote our permawar Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship.
Lastly, Scheuer feels the U.S. military hasn't applied enough savagery to defeat the people responding to our state terror. How many hundreds of thousands of people dead, even more wounded, and millions of refugees would he like to see? I would like for U.S. citizens to break free from various delusions and work toward less pathologically violent policies that are allegedly committed in the "national interest," but which actually serve corporate interests Why We Fight.
Book Review: An important if uneven book
Summary: 4 Stars
Michael Scheuer provides a useful review of the our foreign policy errors which now, more than ever, threaten the security of the USA. The author's
emphasis on the regrettable uncritical support for Israel by the USA leadership since 1973 is well placed and argued. His brief on this issue is informed and documented. But the author shows major inconsistency in arguing that Bush I should have gone on to Baghdad after the repelling of the invasion of Kuwait when in another part of his book he is persuasive that Bush II's invasion and destruction of Iraq destroyed the effective Iraqi and Syrian wall against movement of Al Quaeda westward to the Mediterranean. One can't have it both ways. Mr.Scheuer is correct that lifting the USA's (and the EU's) boot from the Muslim neck would neutralize Al Aquaeda's appeal and achieve major healing of relations with the indigenous people's of the Middle East.
Book Review: Chimpanzees can type.
Summary: 1 Stars
If you've misplaced your copy of Mein Kampf and want to read something that would make Hitler happy, here's your book. Right up there with Pat Buchanan's latest screed, this book is comforting in it's reliable idiocy. Let me make my position clear so that the above does not sound left wing:I'm voting for McCain.Book Review: Many points should be no-brainers, criticizes about everyone
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a wise, irritating, condemnatory, even funny book written by someone who knows his stuff and has a fine sense of the bizarre, and ignorant, and even humor! Apparently his main point is that shallow willful ignorance, a gloating sense of cultural superiority, in step with obviosuly inane and dangerous foreign mishaps and disasters, have caused Islamic terrorism. Why do they hate us? Not because of our elections, "superior culture", (though this is surely debatable), or our love of freedom. Simply our occupation and wars in the Mid East, never ending support of Israel, and not just minding our own business over there! Obviously with oil, this is a near impossibility, but still his point is well taken..So what do we do? Though acknowledging our catastrophic mistakes, first and foremost invading Iraq, we should show real mettle, resolve, and basically stop pussyfooting around with the strongest military in the world. The numbers (reproduction rates) are against us, and he says we should learn from our mistakes, unlike the Europeans, and other soft power types out there. Quite a contradiction, and it sounds good, but the author, though leading us along with some great quips and criticisms, and knocking just about everyone out there, of any political stripe, seems vague about the obvious question."So what do we do about this mess?" For this simplistic approach, and an inability to find anything right about we in the USA have attempted, only 4 stars, though it was a great read, with many. many fine ideas and criticisms. Book Review: Some good, some not so
Summary: 3 Stars
Having lived in the Middle East, I concur with most of the author's assessment of what one might call the "Muslim mindset." I cannot, however, agree with his political and moral assessments. He heaps blame on Clinton for not responding to terrorist acts, but fails to condemn Reagan for the initial (and fatal) decision to withdraw our troops from Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks.
His suggestion that fire-bombing Kabul and Kandahar (killing many hundreds of thousands of innocents) would have been an appropriate response to 9/11 is sickening. If we're going to become barbarians ourselves, what's the point?