Really good and thought provoking essays. I love the early 2000's Bush-bashing writing style and it reminds me of what discourse used to be in that timeframe before it was co-opted by the anti-intelligentsia of our time (2023). Interesting take on the alphabet agencies (ATF, FBI, CIA, IRS, CCS, DOD, DOJ, DEA, NCTC, CBSA, CRA, RCMP) and the threat they pose. 20 years later, the Bill of Rights and general privacy are even more eroded in the name of judicial/observational expedience and war funding across the rich world is only going to increase as it can now be justified due to having a real adversary for the first time in 30 years in China. Bread, circuses & misinformation to spin us around as no real changes or gains are made (only symbolic ones) and citizens are continuously pushed to the wayside due to their inconvenience.

الكاتب معارض لسياسة الولايات المتحدة الهمجية فى العالم ويتهمها بالأرهاب والدولة الأكثر شرا فى العالم على غرار تشومسكى ..يتركز حديث الكاتب أكثر على حادثة تفجير مبنى الحكومة الفيدرالية في أوكلاهوما(1995)والتى أدين فيها تيموثي ماكفي ،وعن أسبابها والتى تتركز حول سياسة الحكومة الامنية والتى تسببت أحد الأجهزة الفيدرالية فى مذبحة مجزرة واكو ” تكساس1993 ” ضد طائفة مسيحية تعرف بالديفيدية نسبة لديفد كوروش وراح ضحيتها 80 شخصا بينهم أطفال ونساء وكانت سببا مباشرا فى تنفيذ المتهم للتفجير انتقاما من الحكومة .

I'm a big fan of Gore Vidal, and while this certainly is a decent book, this is not one of his best works. Rather than being about why the world truly hates us, it focuses on events (such as 9/11 and Oklahoma City Bombing), much of which is rooted in fact about why these events occurred. It is from 2002 if I remember correctly, so it is somewhat dated, yet much of which he predicted came true (I.e- Iraq War)

Reread this because it sort of ties into "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which is the book club choice for this month.

Vidal explores the WHY behind the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the Attack on the World Trade Center. The subtitle of this book is "How we got to be so hated."

Vidal actually interviewed Timothy McVeigh who states his motive for bombing the Fed. Bldg. was revenge for what the federal government did to the Weaver Family at Ruby Ridge and to the Branch Davidians in Waco.

As far as the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon... Vidal documents a list of 209 armed conflicts/wars against other countries - mostly started by USA - from the end of WWII to 2001. The book is very revealing.

"It is ironic- to use the limpest adjective- that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come to care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take 'hard' drugs on the parental ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well being have sternly, year in and year, out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service."

The collection feels a little slap-dash, lacking the coherence I associate with Vidal’s work. First, American hubris doesn’t need to have its lily gilded (so to speak) and Vidal occasionally goes over the top. Let me give you two examples:

Responding to the Bush (43) critique of Islamic terrorist, “They hate our freedoms…our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other;” Vidal stir-fried his metaphors: “At that plangent moment what American’s gorge did not rise like a Florida chad to the bait?” (Yes, I did have to go to my dictionary for “plangent.”)

To Clinton’s MTV defense of the Anti-Terrorism Act, “A lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused you have to move to limit it;” Vidal rejoined, “On that plangent note he graduated cum laude from the Newt Gingrich Academy.” (No, I didn’t have to look it up again, so I owe Vidal for having expanded my vocabulary).

My point is that, in places, the writing sounds a little tired. In fairness, Vidal turned seventy-seven the year this was published, an age at which H. L. Mencken had grown curiously silent.

This book was part of a bundle of books I bought on ebay, but even if I didn't choose to buy it, I was quite interested in reading it. A book that promised to take a critical look at the US' recent wars and the reasons for them seemed to be an interesting, and consequent, addition to the series of military and war-themed books I'd been reading recently.

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I don't know anything about Gore Vidal except for what I read about him on Wikipedia, so I didn't really know what to expect. I guess I was expecting a critical, probably somewhat negative look at the wars the US have been fighting these past decades. After all, the German subtitle of the book is "How the US harvest the hatred it has sowed" (somewhat stronger than the original "How we came to be so hated", isn't it?), and that's a pretty clear statement. Then there was the fact that this book, from what I read, hadn't originally been published in the US, for political reasons, I assume, but still, it sounded like a preventive censorship to me, and that always gets me interested. Anyway. I didn't have any prejudices against Gore Vidal when I started reading this book, and it's not because of anything that I had read or heard before that I didn't like it.

I didn't like it because it isn't critical at all. It's not anything, really, except a list of statements against US foreign policies, and, no, even that is not really true. Vidal just states things. His opinions, I supposed, but without any context other than he obviously disliked the the-current Bush administration, and without any analysis of the reasons why he does, his statements are worthless to me. Some of them are also quite wrong, but hey, I'd be willing to listen even to the wrong ones, if he at least explained them to me.

And yes, I do expect critics of any kind to show me that they at least know that other opinions exist, and that they have thought about them, and decided that these opinions don't work for them. And then to tell me why.

In other words, if you tell me that chocolate is the only icecrea, flavor worth eating, and then reveal, however subtle, that you have never even tried another ice cream, and aren't sure that other flavors exist at all, you are not very likely to convince me.

And then I had to discover that more than half of the book isn't about any kind of critical dialogue about US war policy, but about Timothy McVeigh, the whacko (sorry) responsible for the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City. And, well, let's just say that a) I was rather surprised to find that story in this book (which maybe have been the fault of wrong advertising rather than Vidal's writing), and b) I really really disliked that part of the book.

Because whatever Vidal's reason for putting these essays into this particular book was, all I could see was that he was given a very detailed, careful analysis of McVeigh's life and motives, and - putting that into context with the rest of the book - it all came down to: the US deserved to be bombed by someone like McVeigh, because of the way they have been behaving (in wars and at home).

And really, that cannot be what Vidal wants to say, can it? Can it?

Because that is so plain wrong and STUPID that it wants to make me hit the guy (Vidal) over the head with his stupid book.
Which is probably the reason why he wrote such a short book in the first place - less pain when people hit him with it.

See, there is one reason, and one reason only, why I would want to read about someone like McVeigh: it is to understand his, however absurd, reasoning, in order to prevent something like that from happening again. And with prevent from happening again I don't mean "oh, he saw the news on Waco and decided to built a bomb, let's not have a Waco situation again". I mean "oh, there's a homocidal maniac growing up, let's try to stop the next one before he actually kills people".

Because in my humble opinion, and this is one of the few opinions that I hold to be absolutely right and will not argue about with anyone ever, it is NEVER right to kill people. Never.

I am not naive, and I know that there may be reasons to kill people, and trust me, there are people I would like to kill, but whatever your reasons are, it is NEVER right. It may be your only option (just think of self-defense), but that doesn't make it right.

(I know, that seems a rather odd statement coming from someone who has read so many books about war as I have lately).

And Vidal, arguing that McVeigh had valid reasons to did what he did, offends me deeply as human being.

I don't care how much you disagree with politics. I don't care what your reasons are. Killing cannot be right, and killing innocent people on top of that, like McVeigh did, is so wrong that there should not even be a discussion about the questions if he maybe had a (good) reason. Because there is none.

Mind you, I'm not totally sure that that was what Vidal wanted to say, but he sure didn't avoid giving the impression that that was exactly the conclusion he wanted his readers to get. And if he didn't, then why write about McVeigh in that much detail and in that context in the first place?

So, in conclusion, the book wasn't anywhere nead good from a general perspective, but it was also highly offensive to me from a personal perspective.

Wow. The more I think about it, the more I want to give it zero stars.

ETA: I was going to say that I cannot ofer my copy up for trade, because I don't want anyone else to read the crap that Vidal wrote, but that would be censorship, and I'm also very very strongly against censorship. So, may copy (German) is up for trade, let me know if you want it.

It isn't enough to read this book and say it's interesting or eye-opening. I suspect that Vidal knew that much of what he wrote would be criticized as left-wing or un-American. But what he was telling us is far more patriotic than silence; he saw the loss of our freedoms as the death-knell of our democracy. There is nothing wrong with seeing what needs to be fixed about America and taking a stance in favor of fixing those things. We will not see Mr. Vidal's like again any time soon. He admired this country and wanted it to be everything it can be.

Loved this! So much info and Vidal is as shady and poetic as ever. So much of this is relevant even today 20 years after this was published. It makes you
Really believe that nothing will ever change and out government will only get more totalitarian

Eye opening. Cringe worthy none- the- less, war is a dirty money making business.

As a uber fan of Vidal's Narrative of Empire series, I knew what the tone and message was going to be before I cracked this complicated gem. I could see him leaning back in his chair and pontificating and hitting some clear points, making nasty asides, and throwing a light into dark corners, all with a snooty stare. He seems so liberal, and then so conservative, and not the least conflicted. Take from this book what you will, but his writing ability is what shines.

While I agree with Vidal's argument that most Americans are blind to how the globe perceives the US, especially in the wake of 9/11, the sneering tone of the book was just too much for me. His arguments for less militaristic intervention, corrupt media, and crony capitalism would be much stronger without the leftist and unnecessary pot shots.