Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators
by David Wallechinsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: David WallechinskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-05
ISBN: 0060590041
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators
Book Review: Bush a Special Case?
Summary: 5 Stars
This book would be a mere afterthought were it not for the 21st member on the list: GW Bush is entered not as a tyrant, but as a special case.
Most of the other tyrants listed, arguably would be on any list of the World's worse. Yet, even when the author's slightly left-leaning politics (which creeps in from time-to-time) are discounted, he makes a rather convincing if not compelling case for eventually adding Bush to this infamous list.
As Wallechinsky so carefully points out, the Cheney/Bush foreign policy, in addition to being ill-thought out and poorly executed, is also unilateralist and based on greasing the wheels of the military-industrial complex -- a collusion that Ike forewarned us about in his farewell address. It seems that under Cheney/Bush that collusion has not only come to fruition, but is thriving and flourishing at the great expense of American democracy and at the expense of human rights and peace in the world.
With Cheney as Bush's alter ego, he sits on his throne presiding over the Senate -- and some think that there he is also the de facto President -- grinning like a Chestershire cat all the way to bank with his share of Halliburton's nearly $2 Billion from war profiteering. This bounty is the fruit of what Cheney and Bush single-handily contrived. The Iraq war, as he points out is a war that failed by design. It is this kind of callous cynicism that caused the author to place Bush on the list.
Similarly, Mr. Wallechinsky believes also that the Bush war on terrorism is just evidence of a larger pretext being played out. The war is little more than a playground for corporate greed, corruption, and war profiteering. The war on terrorism is just another fear-based excuse for all kinds of human rights violations; political power plays, and a novel way of unleashing right wing religious morality and ideology onto the American people, writ large.
For a piece basically designed to give summaries of the bio of these tyrants, this one is surprisingly robust. The author discusses in amazing detail the Bush involvement in subjects such as the arbitrary arrest and detention of both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens, denial of fair public trials, and torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment of prisoners.
Moreover, and this is an important point, the author implies that Bush may have purposely skirted signing America up to the International Court of Justice and did so apparently with considerable forethought and malice - realizing that he and Chaney might one day find themselves as defendants before it.
Although, I am not big on Bush bashing, this addition of Bush to the list as the 21st worse tyrant was a stroke of genius and has considerable merit. Five stars for adding Bush to the list and making it believable.
Summary of Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators
Today more than ever, international headlines are dominated by dispatches from the many dictatorships that still dot the globe. Although Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been deposed, North Korea's Kim Jong-il continues to attract attention on the world stage; at the same time, other dictatorships, led by royal families, military juntas, and single political parties, persist in repressing and brutalizing their citizens without ever attracting anything like Saddam's or Kim Jong-il's level of international attention.
In this fascinating, eye-opening read, New York Times bestselling author David Wallechinsky offers in-depth portraits of each of the twenty worst dictators -- and the governments they head -- currently in power: exposing their crimes, and revealing their strange personalities and mysterious backgrounds. Tyrants also reveals the extent that foreign corporations and governments support these tyrants despite their policies.
Timely and provocative, crafted with the popular touch that has made Wallechinsky a bestselling author, Tyrants will awaken you to the criminal regimes of the present -- and pose challenging questions about America's role in curbing (or promoting) their power in the future.
The Tyrant Hall of Shame includes:
- Kim Jong-il/North Korea
- Hu Jintao/China
- Seyed Ali Khamenei/Iran
- King Abdullah/Saudi Arabia
- Muammar al-Qaddafi/Libya
- Omar al-Bashir/Sudan
- Islam Karimov/Uzbekistan
- Saparmurat Niyazov/Turkmenistan
- Fidel Castro/Cuba
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