Book Review: Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens

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4-04-06, 9:17 am



Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas
by Lawrence Pintak Pluto Press


BUSH and Blair have recently reaffirmed their commitment to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in particular, and to the idea of foreign intervention in general.

Now, even with the help of a highly qualified psychiatrist in the family, I am not prepared to say that the odd couple are bonkers, though the case could be made.

It does seem to be clear that the Bush-Blair axis is increasingly paranoid, megalomaniacal and divorced from reality.

As Iraq, for example, descends into fundamentalist terror, with increasing US and Iraqi torture and persecution of women, a collapsing infrastructure, criminal gangsterism, institutionalised corruption and civil war, the George-and-Tony double act tells jokes about democracy and freedom - and they desperately need a new gag writer.

There is now a massive literature about 'what went wrong' - as if an illegal war and occupation of a proud Arab country ordered by someone with the intellectual grasp of George W Bush could ever have gone right.

Lawrence Pintak, a veteran of 30 years in journalism and now at the American University in Cairo, has produced an account of the post-September 11 world situation - one more in a long list. All the usual suspects are here - the role of the US and Arab media, the US protection of Israel, the wars, the role of the US in the world and what is to be done.

The book is well written and well researched, reminding us what we are up against.

Pintak quotes the Christian evangelist Pat Robertson saying that Muslims are worse than nazis, secretary of state under Bush senior Laurence Eagleburger saying that 'you have to kill some of them, even if they are not immediately directly involved' in terrorism and Christian columnist Ann Coulter saying that 'we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.'

Pintak notes the increased flow of information in the world and how 'America is badly losing the war of ideas.' What is to be done?

The US must address the question: 'Why do they hate us?'

Pintak answers, resoundingly enough and with no originality, 'it's the policy, stupid.'

This is the problem. Are the Bush president and the Blair house servant so witless that they imagine that, by bombing countries, incinerating their people, torturing the survivors, stealing their resources and smashing the infrastructure, they will win hearts and minds?

Or are they not that witless at all, deliberately contriving a bloody chaos that can never yield another coherent anti-US state and which remains helpfully entertaining for US sadists and usefully lucrative for the US makers of weapons of mass destruction?

Whatever the truth, Pintak parades many of the salient facts and makes many of the familiar suggestions.

He points out that the US is spending 5 billion dollars a month on the Iraq war, but he doesn't wonder where it's going.

There are powerful US corporate individuals, close to the Bush administration, who are happy enough with the current arrangements.

I can hear their belly-laugh when Pintak urges that US co-operation should replace confrontation, that the US 'must learn to listen as much as it speaks.'

His commentary is lucid, informed and sensible. But, these days, words seem powerless. If the pen were truly mightier than the sword, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Blair, Straw, Reid and the rest of the murderous gang would be in jail - unless insanity were accepted in mitigation.

From Morning Star