War and Politics Books

One of the most important books in documentary studies in the past few years, "States of Emergency" is well-written, profound, and disturbing. Zimmermann is opening a whole new angle on the field.

Randolph Lewis (author of Emile de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America)

We urgently need a new world image order!

(If that's not a call to arms, I don't know what is!)

So begins Patricia Zimmermann's wonderfully, powerful new expose on the current state of the world. Right from the start I was amazed at how she was able to capture an incredible amount of energy and emotion in such a simple way. The introduction absolutely blew me away. The urgency she created is unlike anything I have ever read before ... honestly. I felt like she was sitting right there in front of me, trying to drill it into my brain. AWESOME.

You have to realize, that this kind of power and urgency does NOT exist anywhere outside of academia (that I can think of). It doesn't happen in the workplace, it doesn't happen on the news, and it's doesn't happen on Oprah. It's AMAZING.

And, hello, women aren't supposed to talk like this. Especially moms that wear fashionable clothes that need to be dry-cleaned. She is taking on transnational corporations, nation states, and rich white dudes ... if I were her publisher, I would be fitting her for a bullet-proof vest right now. Hello!

Do not be fooled by any attempt at categorizing this book, they do no justice here. Zimmermann covers nearly 20 areas of studies, from film to finance from politics to health care. Think about it, how can one talk about issues in the world today without overlapping these areas of study? They are all intertwined! Zimmermann exposes the seams of the simple cause and effect relationship and why it has NEVER existed. Be ready, it will rock your world.

You know what's really incredible, Zimmermann has recorded the history of the public space in the later part of the twentieth century. She did it, it's right there! What other document has done this? Do you know how incredible that is? Do you know how many people don't want the public to know what happened? It is now impossible for them to try to re-write history. She snuck in the backdoor. There is no need to theorize about what happened, she just wrote it all down for future generations to see. That's amazing.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews, this detailed and extensively footnoted history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics is both a fine reference work for scholars, and an eye-opening, exciting narrative for the general reader. The book itself is the highest quality, made to last for generations, and includes a section of rare photographs, and an appendix consisting of a rogue's gallery from the FBN's files. The FBN, headed by Harry J. Anslinger, was the precursor agency to today's DEA. The War on Drugs that has been waged for years now, with a price is no object mentality, is now being reconsidered by more and more people as either an ill-considered mistake, or perhaps even as a Big Government/Big Brother monkey on the public's fiscal back. The War has surely not stopped the supply of drugs, and if you have ever thought that it was never intended to, but wondered why that was so, The Strength of The Wolf, will provide some answers. There are many books about drug enforcement (or lack thereof) in the recent past, but this work is unique in that it looks at what might be called the dawn of drug enforcement.

Given how much money this country spends to fight drug dealers and to lock up drug dealers & users both, I am amazed how little I hear people question the War on Drugs.

This book provides the historical framework critical to understand this, with the War on Drugs beginning as an attempt to provide what equates to trade protection to the pharmaceutical companies (who competed with the real thing of the day, opium/heroin), and how later racism led to marijuana users being targeted as well (Black Americans in Harlem and Latinos in the SW and California), and of course the violence fueled by the cocaine/crack trade made it a national buzzword.

It is a crime that this assault on our own citizens continues today - one would think that after the dismal failure of Prohibition that we would have learned our lesson.

Hopefully this book can start raising a consciousness to question it, at the very least more public debate (without the hysteria) is long overdue.

Ms. Alangari has produced a master work of analysis and synthesis that describes the factors involved in Ibn Saud's rise to power in spite of the weakness and original lack of cohesion and motivation among his followers and the strength of his enemies. Her research is all-encompassing: her references and bibliography are more complete than those in any other work covering the decade in question. Her conclusions regarding the nature and foundation of the political authority of the two major protagonists appear indisputable. I quote the penultimate sentences in the book: "Ibn Saud succeeded because he developed a finely-honed clarity of vision in a religiously devout society. It was this mutual affinity between Ibn Saud and his extended social groups which provided the necessary social consent to end over one thousand years of Hashemite rule." The book is not for the casual reader, but the specialist will find ample reward in a careful study of its content

Ms. Alangari has produced a master work of analysis and synthesis that describes the factors involved in Ibn Saud's rise to power in spite of the weakness and original lack of cohesion and motivation among his followers and the strength of his enemies. Her research is all-encompassing: her references and bibliography are more complete than those in any other work covering the decade in question. Her conclusions regarding the nature and foundation of the political authority of the two major protagonists appear indisputable. I quote the penultimate sentences in the book: "Ibn Saud succeeded because he developed a finely-honed clarity of vision in a religiously devout society. It was this mutual affinity between Ibn Saud and his extended social groups which provided the necessary social consent to end over one thousand years of Hashemite rule. The book is not for the casual reader, but the specialist will find ample reward in a careful study of its content

This compilation of newspaper columns over six years presents urgent reading for this year of national electoral decisions, and provides each Roman Catholic in the USA substantial theological nourishment for our present Lenten lectio divina, and for action thereafter.

Can we be Catholic and vote Republican? Can we be both Catholic and "support" in any way the continued bloody occupation of Iraq, condemned now by two of our Popes, including Our present Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, especially in the light of the climactic passages to his monumental Apostolic Exhortation The Sacrament of Charity: Sacramentum Caritatis? Is what ways are our militarist, imperialist policies around the world "stupid, unjust and criminal?"

The Reverend Father Andrew Greeley with increasing urgency and moral standing presents the clear and courageous case for Catholic moral theology within our presently morally compromised context. These essays begin with a certain nebulous and cautious approach, recognizing his readership, but by 2005 and become increasingly clear, courageous, prophetic and concrete about the moral, theological, sociological and historical reasons for rejecting absolutely our present national policy in Iraq.

The Introduction to these essays explicitly examines the reasons for invading Iraq and our immoral conduct of the disasterous occupation of Iraq in the light of the traditional "just war" criteria, which are well defined in the United States Catholic Bishops Conference document The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, No. 863). Father Greeley concisely and correctly finds no reason by these lenient criteria neither for the invasion, and no morality for our endless occupation of Iraq. He finds no justifiable reason for supporting any further (and much less from the beginning) this immoral and unjust and criminal military involvement.

The Introduction concludes with his grateful dedication to his Cardinal who has supported him in his prophetic, courageous and orthodox witness.


It is very hard to draw a few representative samples from this rich work by the Reverend Father Greeley, a work which courageously gives voice to our unvoiced US Catholic Church, silenced as Father Greeley reveals by other pressing and persecuting concerns, perhaps intended to provoke silence. We must the more gratefully receive these truths spoken without fear by Father Greeley, reflecting the policies running right up to the Vatican itself.

On whether prior US soldiers killed warrants continued warfare and occupation, Father Greeley wrote September 2, 2005: "Bush's contention that because some men and women have died, others must continue to die demonstrates just how morally bankrupt the war is and he himself is (p. 136)."


On the falsity of the reasons for going to war, Father Greeley writes November 4, 2005, as in several places, this: "The Bush administration, led by the vice president, systematically deceived the American people about the war and continues to do so. There were never any nuclear weapons, never any raw uranium, never any Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center attack. The Iraqi war was never part of a 'war on terrorism' (p. 138)."

Regarding comparative economic policies, Father Greeley wrote in November 18, 2005: "The Republican administration and the Republican Congress are presiding over a major shift in wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich. Thus, they are trying to take $70 billion from food stamps, Medicaire, education (loans and scholarships for college students) and veterans and give the money to the rich as increased tax deductions. Pension money and health-care money is being taken away from workers and retired owrkers to provide profits for badly run organizations (like United Airlines and General Motors) and their exhorbitantly compensated executives (p. 142)."

This GOP economic shift directly violates the statement on economic morality by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Economic justice for all: Pastoral letter on Catholic social teaching and the U.S. economy (Publication /Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, United States Catholic Conference) and also violates the recent Apostolic Exhortation mentioned above which finds our Eucharistic compulsion to alter unjust economic systems and notes with horror how a very small percentage of the military budget could relieve the suffering of so many poor. Several earlier papal encyclicals and documents support this finding as well.

This collection of writings by the Reverend Father Greeley grows more earnest and more reasoned, with each year, as his serious commitment and personal conviction on this issue grows and deepens, and his conversion to peace takes root.It is difficult to leave out any citation in this important work of applied Roman Catholic moral theology. One would like to type out at least the entire page 169, from July 28, 2006, but must be content with sharing this further and concluding passage for us prayerfully to consider, and so to act:

"Is the blood on the hands of those Americans who support the war? Again, one must leave them to heaven. But in the objective order it is difficult to see why they are not responsible for the mass murders. They permitted their leaders to deceive them about the war, often enthusiastically. How can they watch the continuing murders i Iraq and not feel guilty? How would you feel if the street were drenched with the blood of your son and daughter, if your father were in the hospital with his legs blown off? We cannot permit ourselves to grieve for the Iraqi pain because then we would weep bitter and guilty tears every day."

Father Greeley issues a collection of his essays going back to the tragic events of September, 2001. Some of his writings are prescient, some spot-on and some prove to be wrong, but he has the courage to include them all in this easily readable book. Would that all pundits issue complete collections of their political writings, and stand by their convictions as Dr Greeley does.

Professor Hafez breaks down the complex system of Iraq and the insurgency there into a very readable and well organized analysis. I have read almost every book out there on suicide bombers and political violence and this is my favorite since the author takes the reader through a systematic understanding of the motivations behind the suicide bombers.

Professor of political science Mohammed M. Hafez presents Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom, a scholarly evaluation of the all-too-real cruelty and tragedy of suicide bombing in Iraq. Suicide bombings in Iraq appear to be perpetrated largely by non-Iraqi volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Europe, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, and North Africa, and the targets are generally either Iraqi security forces and Shia civilians rather than coalition forces. Suicide Bombers in Iraq meticulously dissects and deconstructs the methodologies used to justify suicide bombing and the sectarian equivalent of ethnic cleansing, and adds to the search for means to stem the tide of such attacks. In addition to current strategies, Professor Hafez also recommends a drive to delegitimize suicide bombings, directly attacking the ideological, theological, and other justifications that the masterminds of suicide bombings rely upon to recruit volunteers. Suicide Bombers in Iraq is entirely free of illusions - whether positive or negative - about the Iraq occupation, absolute "must-read" for anyone concerned about the future of Iraq.

Who are refugees? People who fled the wars in Bosnia and Croatia are scattered in Missouri and Ontario, Germany and Austria, Israel and Pakistan, and they are displaced to other towns within their own countries. They are not voluntary emigrants whose bags are packed with hopes in search of a dream. They may be wealthy, or at least they may once have been. The refugee cleaning floors for minimum wage may have been a surgeon in her own life. The eight-year old girl may be the only one in her family who has learned English, so it is only she who can speak with government officials and store clerks. Refugees are anyone and everyone. They are professionals and farmers and little boys and criminals and poets, but mostly they are women and children and the elderly.

The Suitcase gives voice to the people "without context". They speak of their dreams and their losses. Their poems are here and sad scenes of small things washed away forever by tides of war. "War taught us a lot. How the fear makes people irrationally greedy. It is difficult to resist becoming greedy. It is almost like an instinct. To possess, to hold on to something. In shelters, to hold on to somebody. To hold on to your prayer, even if you never prayed before". Some refugees long only for the day when they can return to their hometowns to begin to reglue the shards of their old lives. Some can speak only of Bosnia's beauty or the pleasures of a cup of coffee with friends.

Others close and lock the door on the past with determination. "We arrived here safely. Everyone is fine. Please do not write us or try to contact us. We do not want to be reminded of anything", reads the postcard sent by a Bosnian family after they arrived in Canada in 1994.

The book is well-edited and well-organized along five broad themes. These are followed by three powerful afterwords, of which Dubravka Ugresic's is the strongest as she muses on the fact that the people of the Balkans are one people. Divided by the same language, they look alike, and yet "not one generation in the Balkans manages to escape war, in every family there is at least one killer and one killed, new life only begins on somebody else's dead head." There is one minor error (p.11, Vukovar was attacked in 1991, not 1992).

The Suitcase rings powerfully and true. The simple message here is that refugees are people, and the lives they lead are but a shot away for us all.

The Suitcase is a wonderful and sorrowful journey into the hearts of an oppressed and victimized land. the personal stories are of those who, throughout history have had no voice. Any person with a sense of history will surely feel the magnitude of the plight of a refugee.

Finally, a book that tells the truth about Nazis and Christianity! Mr. Walker does not really attack prople today who try to make it sound like the Nazis were Christians, but his book makes the case so strongly that no one who reads it can come away thinking anything but that Nazis hated Christians and that Christians were the only people who fought against the Nazis inside Nazi Germany and that anyone today who thinks different just does not know what he or she is talking about. Walker does not talk about religion much at all. He does not even say whether he is a Christian or not. He just talks about the plain facts of history.

This is a short book (95 pages, 5 of which are Bibliography). But it is full of extremely useful and interesting quotes and points. I had wondered how a "Christian" nation could blindly follow after such a charismatic leader but reading through this book really helped me understand that the Nazis were intent on destroying Christianity (& the Jews) and that Germany had been secular for a long time before the Nazis came to power. Indeed, there are many parallels for our time today.

I had wondered about the Catholic Church's dealings with the Nazis and this book also helped me understand more of what actually went on.

If anyone can reach Mr Walker - on P. 55 the second-last sentence of the first paragraph doesn't read properly - "The voice of conscience which Christian education would give was incompatible with Christianity."

Really recommend this book.

This book is amazing read for everyone interested in the little known and mysterious folds of Hitler's life. Mr Duffy presents at least 25 attempts to kill Hitler that had been made before the well known Stauffenberg plot of July 1944. I was surprised to learn that attempts against Hitler's life were made even in the early 1920s, that many individuals made desperate trials and paid with their lives and that even Himmler may be the mastermind behind a bomb explosion in Munich which missed Hitler only for a few minutes. The Stauffenberg affair is also analysed in a simple but terrific way, with all the interesting details. The author also gives some clues of how Hitler managed to escape death so many times and one of this is surely his love for the unpredictable: "Most assassination plots relied on Hitler's adherence to a predetermined agenda, but the assassins were invariably thwarted by Hitler's practice of avoiding routine or established schedules in his travels. Hitler's policy was to live his life "irregularly", as he put it. "Walk, drive and travel at irregular times and unexpectedly" was his personal formula for security against assassins". Some times though, he was saved just from his intuition, when he apparently sensed that something was wrong with the attitude of officers who met or invited him. The author's conclusion is very realistic and interesting: "Was Providence really on Hitler's side, as he so often claimed? In truth the answer is simple. The men who plotted the destruction of the Nazi government were simply not revolutionaries. They were not assassins. Many of them were too deeply religious to act in a manner required to bring down a bloodthirsty tyrannical government. Such an act requires men who can become as bloodthirsty as their opponents". No maps or photographs are included in the book. There are also some annoying and persistent errors, like spelling Abwehr as Abwer, or Speidel as Spiedel etc. but this is a minor problem which does not damage the excellent value of this book.

Most books about the Third Reich mention the von Stauffenberg plot (sometimes called the General's Plot) against Hitler, and a few allude to "other" plots, but Target Hitler attempts to provide a history of not only the General's Plot, but the other serious (and sometimes tragically comic) plots against Hitler. Contrary to some other writings on the subject, Duffy & Ricci assert that Rommel was not a conspirator in the Stauffenberg scheme, but simply one of the many officers who chose to remain silent about the plot, waiting for the risks to be taken by others.

There were plots discussed here that were completely new to me, such as the bomb that appears to have been planted with Himmler's active assistance -- though it is unclear whether this was an internal power struggle of Himmler to replace Hitler, or an attempt to produce a plot for propaganda purposes, for which it was well used.

There are tragicomic efforts here, such as Maurice Bavaud's. Bavaud was an anti-Communist Swiss seminary student who sought to assassinate Hitler for cozying up to the Communists -- and thought he was going to succeed using a .25 pocket pistol, which even Bavaud knew was only accurate enough with this gun to kill Hitler if he could get with 25 feet of his target! Unfortunately, Hitler walked down the wrong side of the street in Munich in commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Duffy & Ricci also demonstrate that, contrary to the view taken by some other historians, the General's Plot was not simply the result of the German officer corps attempting to save their own necks once the war was lost, but the last in a long series of efforts made before the war to remove Hitler from power, out of opposition to the immorality of National Socialist Party rule. Much of the opposition was founded on the belief that Hitler's actions in provoking wars, passing of the Nuremburg laws, and other such actions against the Jews, were contrary to Christianity. Especially among the military and diplomatic opposition, this Christian basis to opposition to Hitler created a serious problem, because of a profound reluctance to commit murder, even of someone such as Hitler. Eventually, as the nature of the brutality of the Nazi policies became impossible to miss, the major plotters, such as von Stauffenberg, overcame their reluctance. The plot to depose Hitler became a plot to assassinate.

After the war, many officers sought to find protection in the argument, "I was only following orders." Duffy & Ricci provide an example of the traditional German military view with a quote from General Beck's memorandum of July 16, 1938:

"Vital decisions for the future of the nation are at stake. History will indict these commanders [who blindly follow Hitler's orders] of blood guilt if, in the light of their professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their conscience. A soldier's duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience, and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order."

There were many officers in the German military who, because they had sworn a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler in the early days of the National Socialist government of Germany, were reluctant to directly participate in the plot against Hitler -- but were ready to help as soon as Hitler was dead.

There were other factions as well, including labor leaders not already incarcerated, and various Social Democrats. While they and the aristocratic conservative elements that made up the plot were not able to completely agree on what the new Germany should be, they were able to reach agreement that Hitler had to be removed, one way or another.

The courage of many of the conspirators is astonishing. Duffy & Ricci recount a number of instances where high officers put plastic explosive charges in their pockets, started the fuses, then attempted to get close enough to Hitler to grab hold. Other generals attempted to enter Hitler's presence while armed, in the hopes of getting at least one lethal wound inflicted on Hitler before being killed themselves.

Hitler's luck is also astonishing. Plot after plot were foiled by Hitler's habit of changing plans and schedules at the last moment. The General's Plot, however, failed because many elements in the plot failed to take action immediately after the bomb went off -- and in failing to take action, provided enough time for Hitler loyalists to mobilize.

One annoying error is that throughout the book the military intelligence organization, which was a center of the conspiracy against Hitler, even going so far as to give military intelligence ID cards to Berlin Jews, to enable them to leave the country safely posing as military intelligence officers, is consistently misspelled as "Abwer" instead of "Abwehr." Since the authors have relied heavily on memoirs of survivors of the plots, this error is all the more mystifying.

The book concludes with a description of what finally happened to the major participants in the General's Plot. The courage of these people, confronting the Nazi People's Court, destroyed whatever propaganda value these trials might have had. As Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben told Judge Freisler, "You can hand us over to the executioner, but in three months' time this outraged and suffering people will call you to account and drag you alive through the mud of the streets."

I first became acquainted with Gatliff's work last year. His name started popping up on the internet soon after a talk he gave at Boise State University - on the topic of this very book, not incidentally - and which caused certain members of the internet political society to label him as some sort of a left-wing nut-job.

The chatter at the time seemed to suggest that Gatliff not only thought that terrorist activity might be warranted, but that it could be ethically defensible. Now, after having more fully acquainted myself with his thesis, I see that this is a gross misstatement of Gatliff's views.

In point of fact, Gatliff comes much closer to suggesting that it is ethically irresponsible for a society, community or person, to enter into those sorts of actions which might cause terrorists, or the types of activities that terrorists routinely engage in, to BECOME ethically defensible.

And it's not just terrorism that his ideas apply to. This book runs to the very heart of how "we, the people" have hitherto engaged in warlike acts. Gatliff shows that it is irresponsible for us as a society to ever become uninformed fools, knee-jerk reactionaries, or willful supporters of unlawful or immoral acts.

This is a highly suggested read for anyone interested in just war theory, or for how society willfully enters the fray.

The thrust of the principal argument presented within Gatliff's work is one of profound ethical implications. In essence, he argues both that terrorists can be patriots, and that patriots can be terrorists. But more importantly, Gatliff shows the ways in which we: citizens, taxpayers, members of the larger community, willfully engage in military operations, and as such can be held accountable for the actions of our governments, our soldiers, our armies. How should we behave? Gatliff makes assertions in that realm as well.

Showing himself to be one of the greatest minds of this, or any generation, Gatliff leaps onto the scene with a book of startling import, power, prescience and topicality.

Try reading this book. It incites the desire in me to shrink it down to something else, like any psychiatrist would approach a case of psychotic multiplicity. There are a number of individuals with credible positions presented in this book, and the summaries of those positions express matters that are highly important. The problem with the story is that, instead of hinging on the things that are important, the whole picture is in danger of becoming unhinged whenever a decision approaches the bottom line. This is like great art which has no conception that the whole world might see this picture and consider it absolutely nukers. As crazy as all the other nukers in the world might seem to us, it takes a lot of effort to keep from applying the same judgment to the system which inflicts the costs mainly on ourselves. There are things in this book, like William Greider's comment about "payoffs for layoffs" on page 200, which make it too obvious which bottom line matters. His personal suggestion to "turn out the lights rather than waste all this money waiting for world war three" (p. 201) is coupled with his knowledge of officers who "question this choice of toys over boys" (p. 202) because of what's happening: "they're being rolled by the industry." (p. 202) Even Wilson has to report that "There are too many fiefdoms." (p. 202) That might be the main conclusion here, except that it is followed by some comment about a president who would rather "chat by the side of the road until a compromise route is agreed upon." (p. 203) The index doesn't have an entry for "depleted uranium" weapons, but we are still planning for some part of the world to become a dumping ground for our bombs, and it is highly unlikely that there will be much of a chat by the side of the road before the choice of mistakes on where we can hurt our enemies the most is made. The story of how "the American military's fighting edge was being lost for lack of money" (p. 90) hardly makes sense in a world that keeps complaining when we do destroy things.

George C. Wilson is simply the best reporter alive writing about the American military. THIS WAR REALLY MATTERS brings into the cold light of day the federal budgetary process and its effect on national defense issues. The book is relatively short--just twelve chapters--and is written in the clear, easy-to-understand style of the professional reporter Wilson certainly is. He tackles the tough questions: Why is the military orgainzed the way it is? Does it have the weapons it needs to fight now and in the future? Why and how are new weapons systems procured? As you might suspect, Wilson confirms, It's the money, Stupid! THIS WAR REALLY MATTERS is a literate, lucid masterpiece that should be read by every military officer and candidate for federal office. It should also be read and re-read by every student interested in the way decisions are made in a major democracy.