War and Politics Books

Few Americans, who lived in the 1960's, will ever forget the grotesque spectacle appearing on the evening television news as Vietnamese Buddhist monks (and nuns) regularly burned themselves to death in protest of government policies they believed were bringing about the destruction of their country. In The Lotus Unleashed, an absorbing account of those times, Dr. Robert J. Topmiller examines the complex political climate in then-South Vietnam during the years immediately leading up to the massive increase in U.S. ground troops there. The author provides a plethora of new information about this popular Buddhist led-movement which was intent on establishing a freely-elected government in South Vietnam; one free of American occupying forces. In addition to his meticulous research, Topmiller interviewed surviving leaders of the Buddhist Peace Movement; an often difficult and risky task, since many were at the time still under suspicion, or house arrest, by the current government.

The Lotus Unleashed makes sense of the chaos occurring within South Vietnam in the mid-1960's, as seen not only in the bitter dissension between, and within, South Vietnam's political, religious and military organizations, but also between the U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces stationed there.

Lessons, seemingly relevant to our current foreign policy, leap from the pages. Perhaps the most important of these derives from a consistent misinterpretation and mistrust by U.S. policymakers with regard to the motives of the Buddhist protesters, and other non-communist nationalist factions, who opposed the government in Saigon. This lesson, in its simplest form, might read: Because a faction does not support us, it does not necessarily mean it supports our enemy.

Topmiller sheds much new light on this crucial point in our history and presents a compelling argument that the Buddhist Peace Movement, far from being an inconsequential player in the larger struggle between the United States and Soviet Union for hegemony in the region, may well have been the last practical opportunity to avoid the ensuing tragedy that eventually cost the lives of over 58,000 Americans and nearly 3 million Vietnamese. As I finished this extraordinary book, the words of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier came to mind:

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been!"

This new book on the American-Vietnam War, writes Robert J. Topmiller, "contains few American heroes but focuses instead on the enormous sacrifices of Vietnamese Buddhists to halt the conflict." In the end, the conflict caused 58,000 American and 3 million South and North Vietnamese deaths.

"The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966" marks the culmination of one historian's decade-long endeavor to tell the story of America's longest war from the perspective of those South Vietnamese Buddhists "who risked everything for peace." The author, an alumnus of Central Washington University, is a Vietnam War veteran and a history professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

Topmiller asserts that America's defeat in Vietnam ultimately resulted from the illegitimacy and unpopularity of successive South Vietnamese governments, which aside from being dictatorial were dependent on and subservient to a warring foreign power, the United States. Above all, he writes, most South Vietnamese wanted peace and independence.

Examination of the Buddhist Peace Movement, Topmiller argues, typifies both "the ambiguity felt by Vietnamese over the American [Cold War] crusade" and "America's frustration over its inability to influence events in South Vietnam." The Buddhists, who hoped to establish peace and democracy and to eradicate poverty and injustice, represented the most significant non-communist group that challenged the South Vietnamese government.

The Buddhist Movement's first defining moment came in June 1963 when an elderly monk protested his government's religious persecution by setting himself on fire. Photographs of the self-immolation and the government's repression of Buddhist protesters galvanized American and world opinion against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated in a November coup.

As Topmiller emphasizes, the toppling of Diem did not work in favor of the Buddhists' drive for peace and nationalism. Instead, it created a political power vacuum filled by South Vietnamese generals, who permitted increased American intervention and an expansion of the war against communist North Vietnam. Washington secretly opposed the Buddhist objective of a populist government because it risked instability and possible cooperation with local communists, and at best, such a course would lead to a "neutralist" approach to the Cold War.

The United States found it increasingly difficult to maintain stability in South Vietnam, a country plagued by interest group factionalism and regional divisions.

Topmiller illustrates this vividly by reconstructing the 1966 Buddhist Crisis in Danang, where U.S. Marines attempted to prevent fighting between their military ally, the South Vietnamese Marines and Air Force, and Buddhist and student protesters, who were aided by dissident South Vietnamese army units. At one point, South Vietnamese fighter planes "accidentally" strafed and injured eight U.S. marines in Danang. A livid U.S. Marine general ordered American fighters to fly over the Vietnamese planes to forestall further strafing. Upset with this adverse action, the South Vietnamese launched additional planes to fly over the American jets. This retaliation only caused more U.S. planes to take to the air. Finally, "after more stern warnings" from the Americans, the Vietnamese Air Force "backed down."

Nevertheless, by the end of 1966, the U.S-backed government in South Vietnam forcefully subjugated the Buddhist Peace Movement. Topmiller suggests that the Buddhist Crisis may have represented a missed of opportunity for peace and a chance for the United States to avoid a humiliating and tragic defeat.

His well-written narrative and nuanced understanding of South Vietnamese and American motives and actions are the result of painstaking research in the United States and Vietnam, including interviews and correspondence with key actors.

With the United States at war in the Middle East, Topmiller's book serves to remind us of the challenges and pitfalls of American involvement in far-flung conflicts.

Dr. Topmiller examines the Vietnam War and the subsquent US involvement not solely from the stance of a proxy US vs. Communism war, but allows for the agency of the Vietnamese people in respect to their own history.

His illustration of the Buddhist movement in Vietnam, not as a sideshow, but as a legitamite third force in the struggle allows Americans today a deeper understanding of this very emotional episode in our history.

Dr. Topmiller's study of the conflict between USMC and US Army leadership throughout the conduct of the American military action adds a further vital lesson for the American people in our current age of increased military intervention. The most notable praise this book received was from Daniel Ellsburg who noted that Dr. Topmiller was able to find material about the war that Ellsburg himself was unaware of.

Any serious student of the history of Vietnam, the American War in Vietnam or American History needs to read this book.

"Although two decades have passed since US combat soldiers left Indochina, Americans are still telling lies about Vietnam." So begins Robert Buzzanco's invaluable book on the military opposition to the Vietnam war. As Buzzanco points out in his introductory chapter, it is not necessarily true that the military is more hawkish and militarist than its civilian leaders. In fact they were often more open to compromise and negotiation in the early days of the cold war than many American diplomats, and actually suggested non-involvement in the opening days of the Korean war. Some of the officers Buzzanco discusses, such as General Ridgway and Shoup rejected intervention in Vietnam altogether. Most often however a large number of officers realized that plans were flawed and that victory was unlikely, but by playing bureaucratic politics they could foist the blame on the civilians and on their service rivals in the army.

The result was that over and over again officers raised the same unalterable points. You cannot bomb the North into submission, and you cannot defeat the NLF in the South with the corrupt and incompetent Southern regime we possess. Of course, much of this was the army, the navy and the air forces criticizing the other services plans. But as it turned out they were right and Buzzanco shows that the army was not stabbed in the back. A review of America's long involvement should help demonstrate this. In 1947, General George Marshall said that the French "have no prospect" of success in Vietnam. Five years later the Joint Chief of Staff were unanimously opposed to committing any American troops into Vietnam. General Matthew Ridgeway's opposition to assisting the French after Dien Bien Phu was crucial to the Geneva Accords.

Flash forward ten years and Johnson's decision to expand the war. 1964 is a year filled with concerns over the collapse of the South Vietnamese authority, concerns about NLF strength, and strategic dithering. It is important to point out that Westmoreland, along with other officers like Wheeler, Johnson, and MacDonald opposed an all-out air war because they believed the Southern regime was too fragile to survive VC counterattacks. Pacification was dying and in only about 20% of the villages were the residents willing to provide RVN officials with information about the Viet Cong. In 1965 the war escalates. The army Chief of Staff suggests US military involvement will last at least five years, and could go as long as 20. "In I Corps, where the Marines were deployed, `the communist guerrillas enjoyed essentially uncontested dominance over most of the rural population,' they [the Corps] admitted." Conservative critics have blamed LBJ for not supporting an all-out air war. But at the time army leaders were divided about the effectiveness of such a strategy. Westmoreland thought that an air war would be ineffective as long as the situation of the South was on the verge of collapse. Westmoreland and Taylor were surprised at how often the White House took the initiative in demanding the offensive.

1966 and 1967: the officers quarrel about attrition, the air war and reinforcement, each pointing out the flaws in the other's arguments and nobody really very optimistic about a solution. "Admiral Sharp...pointed out that the United States had already caused heavy damage to most of the important military targets in the DRVN by August 1965, yet no American commander was suggesting that such measures had significantly altered the military situation in Vietnam." In response to the full-scale American invasion, the Vietcong and the PAVN were stepping up their recruitment and matching the Americans. Meanwhile Maxwell Taylor pointed out that the ARVN was shirking its duties, when the whole point of intervention was supposedly to stiffen their spine. Various officers called for more reinforcements and more troops. Even though they could make no promise that this would have any real effect, it could give them an alibi after an American defeat. In January 1967 the MACV found that it had underestimated VC and PAVN major unit attacks by a factor of four. Despite much blather about having their hands tied, the air force and the army culpably failed to protect their bases from guerrilla attacks.

Finally, 1968. Supporters of the war have argued that the Tet offensive was in fact a glorious American victory. But an obtuse and biased media convinced the American public the opposite. In fact, as Clark Clifford pointed, at the time many senior military leaders were on the verge of panic. As low morale, drug abuse, and fragging ravaged the American army, Westmoreland partially admitted the obvious: the Communist goal was not to expel the Americans, but to undermine what southern faith remained the RVN's government and army. The average ARVN battalion strength was at 50%, and it had lost one-quarter of its pre-Tet strength. Even hard-line senators such as Stennis and Jackson were beginning to waver, while pacification and counter-insurgency had been ravaged. Vann, Lansdale and others pointed out ARVN Corruption, intense popular opposition to American destructiveness and the culture of euphemism and denial at military headquarters. The one flaw in this book is that more is not said about the post-1968 war, though the government has made sure that primary documents are much less available. Based on 62 sets of private papers and oral histories and firmly well documented, this is a book that will be read for years to come.

Buzzanco's carefully researched and seamlessly written examination of military dissent in pre-Tet Vietnam rocks the boat tactfully--but thoroughly. Buzzanco conclusively lays to rest a great many myths about civil-military relations in the Vietnam era, and about the nature of the military conflict itself. This is not a book about guerilla tactics, comaraderie, or the horrors of war. Buzzanco tacitly accepts the profound emotional impact of Vietnam. His focus is on the high politics of waging a costly and highly unpopular "proxy" war. Many senior officers in Vietnam, including Matthew Ridgeway, John Paul Vann, and others, were tenaciously and vociferously critical of the war. Others were "true believers." Still others cynically hedged their bets in an effort to promote service and personal ambitions.

Following the 1968 Tet offensive, Buzzanco reveals, most civilian and military leaders recognized the futility of the conflict and wanted to get out of Vietnam. Unable to do so, however, they participated in mutual recrimination and propagandizing. The result was a web of myth that pervades U.S. civil-military relations even after Desert Storm; which was, perhaps, reinforced by Desert Storm.

Buzzanco's brilliant scholarship is a compact, unsettling, enlightening exploration of the defining Cold War conflict, and its enduring legacies.

How many Americans know that the most revered leaders of our modern military (among them Ridgway, Eisenhower and Marshall) advised against intervening in Vietnam?

How many know that in 1949 the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a policy paper stating that military involvement in Indochina would be "an anti-historical act likely in the long run to create more problems than it solves and cause more damage than benefit"?

How many know that in 1967 the Joint Chiefs of Staff threatened to walk out on the president if he didn't call off military involvement?

My guess is that most Americans still believe that the majority of military leaders favored intervention and "were not allowed to win."

As Buzzanco makes clear, if that belief prevails in spite of the facts, Americans will have learned nothing from the tragedy that we call the Vietnam War. And given the current political and military situation, what we have, or haven't, learned has never mattered more.

In a masterfully concise and thorough way, Buzzanco assembles the most important but previously scattered findings about America's involvement in Vietnam. He is among the rarest of authors -- a readable scholar, one who can write for the masses. And the fact that he's a scholar is important. Journalists, who usually write the readable stuff, have lost too much credibility with the American public.

Upon finishing this relatively short but remarkably full account, all I could say was, "Finally!" The research and documentation to support Buzzanco's findings have been accumulating for years. As someone with a history degree who has tried to keep up, I applaud his ability to exhume, organize and present the essential and long buried information.

For those who demand more, there are reams of source material. For those who have been looking for a clear and credible synopsis based on what we now know, this is it.

I continue to hope that the publisher and the attending media will place it where the masses can find it.

The Walker family is the cause of nine Americans and five Montagnards to die in Laos. Any one in SOG will find out why the NVA had top secret limdis Information that was used to ambush Recon Teams and Helicopter Air Studies people, here is the answer !

I was surprised by two things with the book. The first was the large number of spy's, or more accurately greedy unscrupulous people with high security jobs, that the book details. The second is just how dumb many of them were. The authors detail out the large number of spy's that have worked against the U.S., primarily during the 1970's and 1980's. The authors also give the reader a nice, but brief history of espionage against the U.S. and details of how many of the organizations that these people were part of. The reader also gets a nice look at the actual techniques that were used to both spy and catch the traitors. Again here I was surprised at just how lax the security procedures were that allowed so much damage. How people could walk out of the CIA and FBI daily with brief cases full of top secret documents is beyond me. Is there not a security guard that could be posted at the door?

I have read about many of the more notable spy's over the past 50 years, but I had not heard of maybe half of the people detailed in the book. You will be surprised at just how many people grab a few secret documents and head off to the local Russian embassy for the dirty version of lets make a deal. The fact that so many of these guys, yes most of them are men, get caught after only receiving a few thousand dollars speaks to the overall intelligence of these James Bond emulators. I mean these guys could have walked around with a blue wind breaker with yellow lettering that said SPY and they would have been less obvious then what many of them did. What concerned me was just how stupid many of the guys were, almost to the point of wondering how they even got their jobs in the first place. The reason this concerned me was if these are the guys getting caught maybe there are multitudes of competent spy's out there that we will never find out about. Also just how bad is our security that these intellectual duds were able to game the system and walk out of the building with the family treasures.

Overall I found the book well written and interesting. The authors were able to keep the pace of the book lively and limit the amount of dull overly detailed descriptions of legal proceedings. I found the book a rather large eye opener and would recommend it to anyone interested in national security or espionage. It also gave me more then one or two laughs at just how hapless these guys were. In some cases it was the key stone cops meet Tom Clancy.

Roughly 100 American traitors, most of them within the U.S. defense establishment, are itemized in this book, the only such over-all review I have encountered. As I have said on several occasions that I believe we have at least 500-750 additional cases of espionage to discover, at least half of them controlled by our "allies", this book is for me a helpful reminder of the true pervasiveness of betrayal in a Nation where opportunism and financial gain often outweigh loyalty and principle.

Napoleon for Dummies a real winner!

J. David Markham's latest book, Napoleon for Dummies, is the perfect book for someone who wants to get the lowdown on Napoleon. It combines outstanding scholarship (Markham is a top international Napoleonic scholar and award-winning author) with the easy reading style associated with the Dummies series, and takes the reader beyond the stereotypes and to the real Napoleon. If the rest of the biographies in this new series are anywhere as good as Markham's biography of Napoleon, then Wiley Publishers will have created a real winner.

The first thing you discover when you read Napoleon for Dummies is that it really isn't for dummies at all. It is for people who enjoy a good read and would like to find out more about Napoleon. As one would expect, Markham writes in an easy, accessible style that should appeal to all readers. The book is well-organized and easy to follow. In his introduction, Markham explains why we should even care about Napoleon, giving examples of why that great man was important both to people of his time and to those of us living in the 21st century.

In successive chapters, Markham traces Napoleon's life from his early days on Corsica to his career-ending defeats and exile. Throughout this discussion, Markham points out both good and bad decisions, and does not hesitate to call some of Napoleon's actions into questions. It is also clear, however, that Markham sees Napoleon as a positive force in history. But this feeling is based on careful analysis of Napoleon and his legacy, an analysis which is easy to read and important to understand.

Markham next turns to a discussion of some of the innovations associated with Napoleon. Now the book becomes a bit more like a traditional Dummies book, providing the reader with a ready reference to various aspects of Napoleon's contributions. Markham discusses such issues as Napoleon's military innovations, his approach to politics and governing, his economic and legal contributions, his promotion of religious freedom, his diplomacy and his contributions - intended and unintended - towards a united Europe.

For many people, the story of Napoleon is one of romance, and Markham does a wonderful job telling the story of Napoleon's loves. We learn of his two wives, Josephine and Marie Louise, and we also learn of Napoleon's earliest loves, his mistress in Egypt and, perhaps most romantic of all, of his Polish mistress.

In the tradition of Dummies books, Markham closes his discussion with several chapters in a "Part of Tens" section. These include interesting discussions of Napoleonic battlefields, additional references, a time line and maps. The chapter in this section that I found most interesting was the one where Markham discusses a number of pieces of advice that he would have given to Napoleon (with, of course, the great advantage of hindsight).

In short, if you want to read a really good book on Napoleon, or if you just want to read a really good book, I highly recommend that you try Napoleon for Dummies.

The For Dummies series made a brilliant choice in choosing J. David Markham to write this Napoleon for Dummies. Although this book is by its nature a popular history, its author is nonetheless one of the world's most internationally recognized Napoleonic scholars. Markham's writing style is easy to read and he covers his subject in a way that is both informative and fascinating. He gives excellent coverage to the normal topics covered in a biography of Napoleon, and adds significant "in depth" discussion of other topics as well. Throughout it all, Markham gives the reader the best over-all portrait of Napoleon that I have seen in any biography of one of history's most interesting and complex leaders. Markham includes some 70 Napoleonic images from his personal collection of historical artifacts, which makes the book all the more interesting and useful.
In his book, Markham provides a concise overview of Napoleonic religious freedoms and liberties that focuses on the Concordat with the papacy and the promotion of Jewish freedom. He also discusses how Napoleon "tried to negotiate a peace with Great Britain [in 1811], anticipating that her difficulties with the United States might make her, finally, willing to come to terms with France," but again these negotiations also failed. Had Britain and France made peace, war with Russia might not have been necessary, as Russia would no longer find itself raising concerns over the Continental System. And so, Napoleon found himself in the unfortunate position of having to militarily enforce the 1807 peace agreement. We can see from the above series of events and diplomacy that while Napoleon long regarded Europe as a singular entity, his plan to unify Europe had an amorphous and constantly developing nature that could not have achieved a more definitive or concrete direction until after all of Europe, including England, would have been pacified in the years following the crucial year of 1812.
In that year, the notion of Napoleon as a sort of reincarnation of a certain Macedonian conqueror reemerged. David Markham explains that in 1812, "some thought Napoleon would not stop with Russia. These people believed that after Napoleon defeated Russia and once again secured Alexander's friendship, he would follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and march all the way to India." But as we know, in spite of Napoleon's battle victories and occupation of Moscow, peace overtures to Tsar Alexander and Field Marshal Mikhail Kutusov were met with silence, and 1812 proved to be a disastrous year for Napoleon.
Considering the title of my master's thesis (Napoleon's European Union: The Grand Empire of the United States of Europe), I especially appreciated Markham's succinct overview of Napoleon's vision of a United States of Europe in his chapter titled "Creating a New United Europe." The visual evidence includes a medallion showing "Napoleon (wearing the laurel wreath crown of the Caesars) and Charlemagne together" that is particularly revealing of Napoleon's effort to identify with past emperors in European history and synthesize elements of their imperial iconography.
I am especially pleased to see that Markham included sections on Napoleon's religious policies and vision of European unity (Napoleon for Dummies), as well as comparisons of Napoleon to earlier leaders like Alexander the Great (Road to Glory). I do hope that Markham gets to do a Julius Caesar for Dummies book as well, and it would be great if eventually they come out with for Dummies books on Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and even Napoleon III! I think that when I am a professor I will indeed use this as a reference book for my students. It's easy and enjoyable to read and I think that it would work quite well, particularly for undergraduates. It must have been fun to write! I hope that it sells well!

I'm not a historian, I'm a musician who studied French in high school and college. I bought this book because I was curious about the relationship between France and Denmark during the Napoleonic years. I honestly could not put the book down and couldn't talk about anything other than Napoleon for several weeks after I read this book. Markham's conversational and humorous approach is very engaging and I found it so refreshing to hear something other than the British or American point of view.

The second edition of NAZI GERMANY AND WORLD WAR II offers an articulate, balanced, comprehensive, and generously illustrated edition of the Third Reich from Hitler's birth in 1889 to the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. The first six chapters deal with Hitler's rise to power and his regime's policies to the outbreak of war in 1939; the last five chapters detail the war and the Holocaust. As the title suggests, World War II, which is the logical outcome of Hitler's racial ideology and the central event of Nazi history (and of world history from 1939 to 1945) is given extensive coverage. The heart of the book is a well-told narrative that emphasizes political history and war, but there is enough interpretative and analytical material, as well as coverage of cultural, economic, intellectual, and social topics, to justify the book's description as a comprehensive survey.

The second edition, which incorporates the most current research and suggestions from students, colleagues, reviewers, and other readers, contains an extensively revised chapter on the Holocaust, highlighting recent controversial interpretations. Readers will find new material on popular support for and resistance to the regime's murderous racial policies and expanded coverage of the war, including the unprecedented massacres of soldiers and civilians on the Russian front,the deadly bombing of Germany, the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and the final destruction of the Third Reich. Excerpts from primary sources placed in text boxes--authentic, sometimes plaintive voices from the period, some from well-known figures but more from ordinary people, including children--are a completely new feature of the second edition.

Students and other readers, whose suggestions and enthusiastic reception of the book, have helped encourage me to write a second, and, I hope, improved edition. They reinforced my conviction that the story of Germany's descent into hell under the Hitler regime will always need to be told.

I have taken the class with Dr. Wall and the text is excellent. It covers and enormous topic in a concise and methodical way without being bogged down in infinite detail. It reads well and has a wealth of facts and data as well as a bibliography that is very thorough. Dr. Wall continues to be one of the finest teachers in the state of Colorado and an asset to his students. The finest compliment I can offer is that I kept the book after the class, adding it to my personal library of excellent works.

The second edition of NAZI GERMANY AND WORLD WAR II offers an articulate, balanced, comprehensive, and generously illustrated treatment of the Third Reich from Hitler's birth in 1889 to the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. Although there is no formal division, the organization of the subject matter and the degree of coverage given each topic separate the book into two parts. The first six chapters deal with Hitler's rise to power and how his regime's policies changed German society to the outbreak of war in 1939. The last five chapters detail the war, the Holocaust, and the collapse of the "thousand year Reich." As the title suggests, World War II, which is the logical outcome of Hitler's murderous racial ideology and the central event of Nazi history (and of world history from 1939 to 1945) is given extensive coverage. The heart of the book is a well-told narrative that emphasizes political history and war, but there is enough interpretive and analytical material, as well as coverage of cultural, economic, intellectual, and social topics, to justify the book's description as a comprehensive survey.

The second edition, which incorporates the most current research and suggestions from students, colleagues, reviewers, and other readers, contains an updated bibliography and an extensively revised chapter on the Holocaust, which highlights recent controversial interpretations. Readers will find new material on popular support for and resistance to Hitler's murderous racial policies and greatly expanded coverage of the war, highlighting the unprecedented massacres of combatants and civilians on the Russian front, the deadly bombing of Germany, the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, and the final destruction of the Third Reich. Excerpts from primary sources placed in text boxes--authentic, sometimes plaintive, voices from the period, some from well-known figures but more from ordinary people, including children--are a completely new feature of the second edition.

I was encouraged to write a second, and, I hope, improved edition by the unwavering support of the Wadsworth editorial staff and the enthusiastic reception of the first edition by students and other readers. They have reinforced my conviction that the story of Germany's descent into hell under the Hitler regime will always need to be told.

It should seem obvious by now to any who care about truth that Zionists see America as not just the savior, supplier and sugar-daddy to Israel. Indeed, Zionists see America as the servant of Israel and in their tunnel vision they see no price too high for America to pay. That is what our controlling elites have allowed America to be reduced to. The masses have a choice: a life driven by fear or by honesty.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.
- G. K. Chesterton.

_Neo-Conned! Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq_, published in 2007 by Light in the Darkness Publications an imprint of IHS Press, is a sequel to the book _Neo-Conned!_ which condemns the War in Iraq from the perspective of Catholic just-war theory. This book is subtitled "The illegality and the injustice of the second Gulf War" and consists of various essays and interviews from a wide variety of perspectives. These two books are edited by D. L. O'Huallachain and J. Forrest Sharpe. The writers, thinkers, and soldiers whose essays appear in this book range from conservative and traditionalist Catholics to paleo-conservatives to left wing intellectuals. As such, the war is condemned from a wide variety of viewpoints and positions across the political spectrum. The second Gulf War has not met the criteria for a just-war according to Catholic tradition and thus is to be condemned. The reasons why this war was fought in the first place, in a country which should be of no direct concern to the United States, are varied. Obvious reasons include the presence of oil, the role of monetary policy in maintaining a strong dollar against the Euro, and political power. Another reason involves the take-over of United States foreign policy by a clique of intellectuals known as neoconservatives. Two fundamental characteristics of the neoconservative agenda (particularly as spelled out in excellent essays by Stephen Sniegoski and Claes Ryn) include a near messianic zeal for establishing global democracy (certainly not a classically conservative agenda!) and complete allegiance to the state of Israel above all things. For example, as Sniegosky shows, following the tragedy of 9/11, Bush came to be influenced by the foreign policy of the neoconservatives (allowing his original more restrained foreign policy to be superseded) and coupled with his own apocalyptic Christian beliefs came to regard the War against Iraq as necessary. In many ways then, the War against Iraq can be understood as being fought for Zionist interests. Similarly Claes Ryn concludes that the neoconservatives are the New Jacobins, and just as their ancestors unleashed a reign of terror following the French Revolution, so they have unleashed the full power of the American military. Another interesting essay by E. Michael Jones, argues (echoing the original claims of Murray Rothbard) that the so-called _National Review_ branch of "conservativism" is actually nothing more than a CIA black operation. Jones shows how though neoconservatives often appeal to ethnics and Catholics in particular, that their understanding of things is fundamentally opposed to the teachings of the Catholic church. A final essay that deserves some mention is that of David Lutz which focuses on Christian Zionism. This essay shows how Christian Zionists have abandoned the traditional just-war theory of the Roman Catholic Church. In particular, Lutz explains how Christian Zionism infiltrated Protestantism through the teachings of Darby, Scofield, and others (and that Scofield may even have been employed by the Rothschilds in their quest for global domination). Lutz shows how Christian Zionism is fundamentally opposed to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church, and refutes the claims regarding the so-called Rapture made by some. These essays offer fascinating material which effectively shows how the "right wing" in America has been overtaken by usurpers whose policies of global democracy are anything but conservative.

The book begins with a foreword by Joseph Circincione and an introduction by Scott Ritter.

The book includes the following sections with essays by the following:

"An Exercise in Critical Thinking: Today's Sharpest Minds Tackle the War and its Context" - Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Alexander Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Maurizio Blondet, and Noam Chomsky.

"Driving the Runaway Train: Neocons, 9/11, and Pretexts for War" - Claes G. Ryn, Stephen Sniegoski, Justin Raimondo, David W. Lutz, E. Michael Jones, Kirkpatrick Sale, Naomi Klein, and William O'Rourke.

"The Professionals Speak: Military Reactions to Operation Iraqi Freedom" - Karen Kwiatkowski, Robert Hickson, Jack Dalton, a roundtable discussion with several officers, Pablo Paredes, Karen Kwiatkowski, and Al Lorentz.

"The Professionals Speak II: The Intelligence Community and the Intelligence Debacle" - Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern.

"The Professionals Speak III: War College Professors Apply Their Expertise" - Jeffrey Record and Stephen C. Pelletiere.

"The Professionals Speak IV: A Scientist and a Diplomat" - Gordon Prather and Roger Morris.

"Defying World Order: Reactions from the Vatican and UN Perspectives" - Mark and Louise Zwick, John Burroughs and Nicole Deller, and Francis Boyle.

"Propping Up a Dying Giant: American Economic and Military Survival Tactics" - Immanuel Wallerstein and F. William Engdahl.

"One Good Scandal Deserves Another: The Snowballing of American Lawlessness" - Gabor Rona, Joseph Margulies, Amnesty International, Joseph Margulies, Jeffrey Steinberg, Jacob Weisberg, Dan Smith, and John Hutson.

"So Much for the Fourth Estate: Our Imperial Press" - Tom Engelhardt, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, and Sam Gardiner.

"The Other Side of the Story: Honest Men Consider the Situation of Iraq" - Ayan S. Al-Qazazz, Fr. Jean-Marie Benjamin, and Milton Viorst.

"Enduring Injustice: Iraq and the Current Political Landscape" - Donn de Grand Pre, Mark Gery, and Curtis Doebbler.

"Appendices: Perspectives on Gulf War I" - Michael Ratner and John Stauber and Shelton Rampton.

These essays and interviews include excellent material to be found nowhere else. Together with the first book _Neo-Conned!_, these two books make an important contribution to the debate over the War in Iraq from the perspective of Catholic just-war theory and a condemnation of the role of the United States in that war.

This extraordinary book and its predecessor provide tremendous intellectual, moral, and spiritual ammunition for those of us who oppose this monstrous war in Iraq that has taken the lives of in excess of 650,000 Iraqis and thousands of Americans and others. Maurizio Blondet's essay is particularly poignant and revealing. If Edward Luttwak's words to Blondet are any indication many of the Neo-cons were seeking to have Iraq bombed "back into the Stone Age" as early as the First Gulf War. One thing most open-minded people will come away with from reading this book is that the Neo-cons are a far, far greater danger to America than any of their designated enemies.

All good people who can afford it should buy this book. They should also pick up a copy of THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT: OMISSIONS AND DISTORTIONS by David Ray Griffin. The two books complement each other quite well.

Is Islam a peaceful religion? Are we facing a clash of cultures? Can the West peacefully co-exist with Islam? Will Islamic immigrants assimilate into America's culture? Michael Cappi addresses these and many more relevant questions--questions that the West must answer, if it is to survive.

Few Westerners have a firsthand knowledge of the teachings and tenants of Islam. Most opinions are formed by: the media; talking heads; lightweight politicians seeking votes by trumpeting that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion; well meaning naive men of the cloth; and Islamic propaganda and hired propagandists. Cappi addresses the 1,400 year conflict between Islam and the world in a concise, understandable and scholarly manner. Emphasis is placed on the last eight decades.

The reader begins his or her journey to enlightenment on the first page, followed by a list of Islam's early conquests outside of Arabia (which Muhammad had already conquered before his death in 632 C.E.). Jerusalem was one of the first to fall in 638 C.E., beginning the expulsion and domination of the Jews who had been living there for 3,000 years, and the Christians for about 600 years. Islam's tolerance of other religions and forms of government is examined next.
From page 163: "In all of the reading and research of European/Middle East and Islamic history in preparation for the writing of this book, I could not find a single instance where a non-Muslim country was able to live in peace with a neighboring Islamic civilization for any length of time."

Chapter IV, The Clash "About" Civilizations makes the early point that Islam is collectivist in every aspect of its belief system, while the nature of the West is individualist based. Within Islam, religion and the state are one and inseparable. Man exists to serve the Islamic state in the name of Allah. In the West, the state exists to protect the individual and his inalienable rights.

Cappi explains Islam's ten step plan for world domination by "peaceful" conquest of one nation at a time. Skillful application of the ten steps allows Islam to legally convert a Western nation to Islam, reducing to host nation's population to "dhimmi" or second class status. Current examples are provided.

I have been researching Islam for the past three years for my novels, however, Cappi continued to surprise me with facts and organizations I was unaware of. For example the Euro-Arab Dialog (EAD). Conceived by the French (who else?) in 1973, EAD was quickly co-opted to be a mechanism to attack Israel, and later to facilitate the ten steps in Europe. As I read further in the book, Cappi continued to impress me with his sweeping presentation of and analysis of facts--painting a vivid picture of why Western civilization cannot co-exist with Islam. A fact made clear by Islam's founder, Muhammad, when he said, "Two religions cannot exist in the country of Arabia," and since that time they haven't. Muhammad's last words, "I was ordered to fight all men until they say `There is no god by Allah.' "

Cappi asks the question: Is the West, especially the U.S., at war with Islamic terrorists or Islam? A question I address in Behold, an Ashen Horse. Michael Cappi's A NEVER ENDING WAR contains all the facts required for the reader to form his or her answer to the most serious question confronting the West in the last 1,400 years--a question each citizen of America must ask and answer--for if we do not, it will be answered for us. As Cappi says in closing his monumental work, "Islam as it is currently structured and practiced cannot exist with the culture of the West. We are in a war for survival and only one culture will be dominant in the world of the 21st century."

A NEVER ENDING WAR will challenge multiculturists and politically correct advocates basic believes. I wonder if they will have the intellectual fortitude to accept the challenge and read it?

The author's knowledge of facts and statistics is both fascinating and down right scary. As you read this book, "How can this be?" and "Why has no one done anything to stop this?" keeps running through you mind.

You will find more history and current events on one page than you will in whole chapters of other books.

Reads like a thriller novel, very hard to put down.

Vladimir Val Cymbal

Like the author, Mr. Cappi, I also came to seriously question what our politicians, college professors and media are saying about "the religion of peace," and what I was seeing with my own eyes and hearing with my own ears. I started my own personal "quest" for truth and knowledge on Islam, Muslim culture, Sharia Law, Islamic terrorism and Islamic terrorist financing, less than two years ago. I wasted the first couple of months merely spinning my wheels, while trying to slog through the copious tomes, blogs, websites, and other mediums of fact and deceit about these particular subjects. Everything must be "vetted" and challenged until you are able to corroborate the facts of any research.
Mr. Cappi has done an excellent job of taking on this challenge and compiling a wide variety of factually supported truths about the very subjects I began researching in 2006. Had this book been available at the beginning of my own search, I could have gained a great deal of this knowledge in the time it takes to read this very well written book, instead of the months I have been conducting my own research.
Mr. Cappi stated in his book that his own pursuit for knowledge of these subjects REVEALED THAT NO SUCH RESOURCE MATERIAL WAS AVAILABLE IN ANY ONE PLACE. He has certainly created exactly that in "A Never Ending War," and I highly recommend this book as a one-stop book that is loaded with facts and will save you many months of research. Excellent book!

It's a crying shame that the world hosts chronic bouts of uncivil wars all over the planet, and then their atrocities vie for our attention. It's a pity that the current, most florid acts of inhumanity (via the media) hold us in thrall and divert us from the grinding pain of recovery from similar acts elsewhere. The focus on the Miedle East has distracted us from other hostilities that changed the map and twisted lives. One such conflict is the tangle of unrest among Albanians/Serbians/Bosniaks and others who share, or shared, Kosovo.

Melanie Friend has created a book of portraits (visual and verbal) that attends to the pain and confusion between 1994 and 2000 in Kosovo. Her wonderfully quiet, understated photographs do not feed the sensationalistic. They speak to the almost mundane horrors of daily living in burned out homes; hiding in sewers; trying to stay clean after escaping with only the clothes on one's back; eating only bread for an entire month; eating cherries for an entire month; occupying one's time trying to keep a refugee camp tent clean, mostly to stay busy; clinging to a shred of photograph as a talisman of hope for a loved one's survival; and surviving chronic fatiuge when one is never safe enough to sleep through an entire night.

The author's photographs are reproduced with such pristine fidelity that they are by themselves graceful studies of form, color and light. Alongside the photographs, Ms. Friend's interviewees tell their stories, narratives in the stark flatness of truth as they experience it. They don't philosophize particularly, nor do they bang their political drums particularly, although I'm sure all cherish their personal philosophies and have political perspectives. They describe what happened to them, their families, and their homes. All were victimized. The speakers survived, but none have recovered.

You will not see a single severed limb, starving child, or mangled body in the book. The book will not burden you with the type of content that increases your anxiety or "compassion fatigue" to the degree that you must turn away. Instead, in quietude, the author gives you a current history of Kosovo's war and its aftermath with respect and sadness.

"No Place Like Home" is an elegant book that informs by taking one in and quietly personalizing the experience of war in one's homeland rather than beating the reader into insensibility with atrocities so graphic that one must tune out. It is a thoughtful, painful, gentle response to victims of war.

Photographs and text: Wonderful!

This is a book about war unlike any other. You are drawn in by the photographs and, somehow, the voices of the ordinary civilians telling you about their lives under the years of repression, the war, the flight from their homes and their return to the devastated towns and villages hit you with remarkable poignancy. The juxtaposition of these extraordinary photographs and the testimonies is truly remarkable. This is not only great documentary photography, it is also one of the most articulate and profound book about war I've ever read. Kudos to Melanie Friend! Very highly recommended!

This is a fantastic book! It completely transports the reader into the lives and experiences of the people of Kosovo. They are elegantly and honestly portrayed through Friend's unique choice of medium. She juxtaposes stunning photographs and gripping testimonies of her subjects, inspiring compassion and awe from her audience. Having a degree in International Relations, I found this book offered an insightful and fresh perspective on the situation in the Balkans, while remaining accessible to a wide audience. Beautiful!

If you're a student of Cold War culture, many of the source materials used throughout One Nation Underground will be familiar to you. That's not to imply that One Nation is boring, regurgitated, or any such adjective. Rather, Rose has crafted and extremely interesting look at how fallout shelters, for a brief period of time, was on the tip of everyones tongue, and yet despite the warnings and fears, America as a whole pretty much refused to dig in. Rose not only looks at the politics behind fallout shelters, but the historical, scientific, and cultural aspects, providing many sides both for and against civil defense, and explaining why those against won the argument and America's psyche. Rose's prose is never boring and always enlightening. A must read for any CW culture afficionado.

One Nation Underground is a fascinating analysis of the Cold War fallout shelter, the global and political milieu in which it emerged, and the pervasiveness in which the concept of protection from nuclear destruction permeated the American psyche.

I came to this book out of a recent, amusing interest in the many remaining Fallout Shelter signs still posted on public buildings in my community. Where I live, Fallout Shelter signs still appear on a derelict retail board-up in the central city, a tidy ten-unit men's rooming house, an unused police station, and numerous school buildings including my old grammar school where I learned how to "duck and cover" in the basement lunchroom.

Rose's book not only documents the American preoccupation and political developments, prompted by President Kennedy's 1961 speech, but the moral dilemmas as well. There was, after all,, a sense of doom at the prospects of thermonuclear obliteration.

The book is a serious, engrossing history that pulls from numerous sources and includes copious illustrations. It captures the fear, soul-searching, and debate during the first time in human history we faced the possibility of total destruction. This excellent book is a must read for anyone interested in American history, as well as the intellectually curious.

One Nation Underground is a fascinating analysis of the Cold War fallout shelter, the global and political milieu in which it emerged, and the pervasiveness in which the concept of protection from nuclear destruction permeated the American psyche.

I came to this book out of a recent, amusing interest in the many remaining Fallout Shelter signs still posted on public buildings in my community. Where I live, Fallout Shelter signs still appear on a derelict retail board-up in the central city, a tidy ten-unit men's rooming house, an unused police station, and numerous school buildings including my old grammar school where I learned how to "duck and cover" in the basement lunchroom.

Rose's book not only documents the American preoccupation and political developments, prompted by President Kennedy's 1961 speech, but the moral dilemmas as well. There was, after all, a sense of doom at the prospects of thermonuclear obliteration.

The book is a serious, engrossing history that pulls from numerous sources and includes copious illustrations. It captures the fear, soul-searching, and debate during the first time in human history we faced the possibility of total destruction. This excellent book is a must read for anyone interested in American history, as well as the intellectually curious.

This concise and very well written book is thoughtful distillation of the enormous literature related to the onset of WWII in Europe. The simple question, who started WWII, has a simple answer. It was Adolf Hitler. The simple answer obscures a whole series of considerably more difficult questions. How did a marginal figure and 4th-rate ideologue like Hitler come to rule the most powerful state in Europe? Why wasn't there more initial resistance to Hitler? What was the role of the Great Depression? To what extent did the post-WWI settlement lead to WWII? What was the role of the Soviet Union and Stalin? Many other questions arise. Bell deals with many of these issues in a series of well crafted chapters. The book opens by framing the issues, including a short but worthwhile discussion of historiographic issues, follows by discussing underlying factors such as ideology, economics, the role of the depression, the roles of the military postures adopted by the major actors, and then concludes with a nice narrative of the outbreak of war. Bell very intelligently extends his narrative beyond 1939 to the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, pointing out that it is these later events that allow assessment of the role of key ideological factors in the coming of WWII. This book is worth reading just for the chapters dealing with the consequences of the Great Depression. A theme throughout the book is the limited options possessed by the leaders of France and Britain. Given their internal political situations, some form of appeasement was inevitable, though consistently unpalatable. I have a couple of minor complaints. I don't think Bell deals with the uncertain nature of politics in the Weimar Republic. Hitler's accession to power was not inevitable. While some form of reactionary German government bent on reversing the settlement of WWI was probably inevitable, it could have been one dominated by more traditional conservatives. This type of leadership would have been amenable to the type of accomodation and diplomacy attempted by Chamberlain and the French leadership. It is clear also, in retrospect, that few in Europe really understood the depth of the Nazi racial preoccupations and their bizarre model of history, a tragic though understandable mistake.

This is a great book everyone should read, I salute it.

Bell does a fine job of looking at just what brought about the Second World War. He explains its connections to the Great War, by first discussing the idea of a Thirty Years War, and by then examining how the first war and its results brought about the second. Bell also provides readers with the roles and views of the various ideologies and the many desires for and against war, and also the many strategies involved with each of the main players. An excellent book for anyone wishing to better understand the differing forces and actions which brought about this war.