Book Review

Blogger has been acting up lately, so I'm not posting daily.

Just wanted to give a quick book review.

Rough State - I finished this about a month ago while in South Africa. This is the book Osama Bin Laden referenced in his most recent tirade. After that "speech" aired, the book went from languishing at 22,595 on the Amazon list to number 25, quite the leap. I wanted to see what the hype was about. The book, which looks at American foreign policy since WWII, reads like an extended master's thesis by someone who regularly attends Star Trek conventions.

Actually I liked the book, though at times difficult to slog through. After reading all the horrible things America has done (particularly in the name of the Cold War), you will feel ashamed that we elected such villians to lead our country. It certainly sets the foundation for why America is so reviled around the world, we have done some pretty crummy things - at one stage in the book, the author puts in America's voting record in the UN, man were we scuzzy! When the rest of the world (except Israeli) voted yes for basic human rights to the Palestinians, we voted no. When the rest of the world voted yes against working with an apartheid South Africa, we voted no. When the rest of the world voted yes to limiting nuclear testing, we voted no. It goes on for over 15 pages, very sad.

Majority of the book is devoted to our Cold War antics, which after you read you are amazed that the 9/11 terrorists were not from Latin America, cause Lord do they have a hell of a lot of reasons for hating America. We have screwed over that part of the world in inrrepreable (sp) ways. Cuba may have a communist regime but at least they didn't overthrow democratically elected officials in Chile in order to install baby-killers, all in the name of fighting the big bad U.S.S.R. What was the point in fighting the Soviet Union if we behaved exactly like them?

While I don't believe in all the theories in the book, I do think it is a good read in explaining anti-American sentiment. If more Americans realized what was being done in our names, we would have a complete over-haul of Washington and our foreign policy.

Probably what bothers me most is that the good intentions and deeds done by Americans (and I believe most Americans are good people at heart) can be so dwarfed by the enormous evil things our leaders do or did. This is wrong to both the people of those countries and even worse to us Americans! We are not like that - reminds me how fanatic Muslims ruin it for the rest of us in the religion, similar.

Read the book, discuss it, vote - its the only way change will happen and change is the only true way we will fight terrorism.