Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated

From Publishers Weekly In this collection of essays, noted novelist and critic Vidal turns his acerbic wit on the United States. Never shy about expressing his opinion, Vidal questions U.S. assumptions regarding the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings: "That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with." His critique of the coverage of September 11 is slim, mostly centering on already reported truisms about why many in the Muslim world sympathize in some way with Osama bin Laden. Some readers, however, will share his unease with the willingness on the part of the American government and the American people to put concerns for civil liberties on the back burner during the war on terrorism. Vidal's criticisms of McVeigh, with whom he struck up a correspondence and a relationship, is more detailed. In Vidal's view, it is unlikely that McVeigh was solely responsible for Oklahoma City, and he saw himself as a martyr for a libertarian cause that would rescue America. But in this book, the tone is as important as the text. Vidal gleefully skewers American capitalism and the role of the religious right in American politics at every opportunity. Critics of American policy and American life, as well as those prone to conspiracy theories, are likely to find a lot of fodder. Many will not be surprised that Vidal's views have not received a wider hearing a piece on McVeigh was rejected by Vanity Fair, another by the Nation but even at his most contrarian, Vidal's writing is powerful and graceful. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Vidal couldn't find an English-language publisher for the first essay in this collection, his response to September 11, until it became a best-seller in Italy. He argues that Osama bin Laden's attack on America pales in comparison to the government's attack on American civil liberties since September 11. Vidal views the unwinnable wars on terrorism and drugs as the government's excuse to implement a police state, which he repeatedly compares to Nazi Germany. With his trademark wit and imposing intellect, he attacks everything about the Bush administration's response to 9/11, from the president's characterization of terrorists as "evil" to the war in Afghanistan. The clever, thoughtful diatribe is sometimes overwhelmed by tangents (at one point, Vidal ridicules Barbara Bush as a George Washington look-alike, which hardly seems relevant), but the essay is compulsively readable. The remaining essays in this slim volume have been published before and address Timothy McVeigh and the bombing in Oklahoma City. In a surprisingly convincing argument that McVeigh might not have been behind the bombing, Vidal weaves conspiracies from the Opus Dei order of the Catholic Church to Waco. These essays are held together by Vidal's belief that we must take the McVeighs and the bin Ladens of the world seriously and not dismiss their actions as simply "evil." Vidal fans will find everything they love here: these essays are witty, often convincing, and pull no punches. John Green Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Vidal writes with verve, passion and style that complements [his] controversial views." -- Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 2002 "[Vidal] provides plenty of examples to sustain his shimmering abhorrence for current American politics...Challenging as ever." -- Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2002 The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed unpublishable in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following both September 11th and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers." "None of these explanations made much sense, but our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with. We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time in getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought it useful to describe here the various provocations on our side that drove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts." "The awesome physical damage Osama and company did us is as nothing compared to the knock-out blow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991 combined with the recent request to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors and undocumented immigrants without due process." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September 11th terror attackswill be American liberty?"Once alienated, " Vidal writes, "an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost." Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.) noted that Vidal's "United States (Essays 1952-92) is one of the great American books of the twentieth century." It won the 1993 National Book Award."Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters." -- Boston Globe"Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe." Harold Bloom, New York Review of Books Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. Winner of the National Book Award for United Sates: essays 1952-92 , Vidal lives in Los Angeles. Read more