"We are beginning to look uncomfortably close to those Nazi war criminals we helped to bring to justice at Nuremberg," Landau says. "Crimes against humanity included waging an unjust war – that's what the Nazis were accused of waging. And that's what George W. Bush is waging in the name of the American people."
"The Pre-Emptive Empire" powers through the sobering impressions of Landau's many tours to Cuba, Latin America and the Middle East. Iraq certainly wasn't the first place Bush's political ancestors tried out their neo-imperial agendas. Landau's memory adroitly serves up numerous examples of our previous efforts at Yankee-style nation-building, e.g. the 20 years in Nicaragua that multiplied into long decades of dictatorship and includes recollections of Rumsfeld's missions to Iraq in the 80s as Reagan's emissary – missions in which Rummy helped Saddam defeat Iran by facilitating sales of chemical weapons to Iraq. Landau spells out the human cost and the cultural implications of such reckless economic policies as the International Monetary Fund and NAFTA. The book lays out the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and examines Cuba's success in bucking the tide of US commercial culture.
Among its robustly detailed analyses is Landau's linking of current security doublethink to anti-Communist defense hysteria of the 50s. "Long after the Soviet Union turned into an ally," Landau explains, "we kept in place all of the security organizations we'd erected during the Cold War." Bush gives lip service to spreading freedom abroad, while Ashcroft & Co. curtail it here at home.
"Cowardly" Democrats are not spared Landau's contempt in The Pre-Emptive Empire. Ditto the American opiate-of-choice – consumerism – that Landau believes has anesthetized our political instincts. Landau manages to soften his disappointment with our collective bad faith, but just barely. The book's final chapter concludes with an impassioned call to activism, to take back the historical stage from the Texan dictator and his praetorian hawks of war. Landau urges reader to "become an actor in your world, in your time and join other participants whose efforts have brought about some victories for justice and equality."
Right on, but haven't we been there and done that? I point out that many Baby Boomers have grown cynical seeing how little was actually accomplished by those years of protesting and rallying. Landau isn't buying it.
"Former activists misread the amount of time it takes to accomplish social justice. It takes much longer than most people are willing to realize. Generations sometimes. We may not see the fruits of our efforts in our lifetimes. I believe that my doing these things will set an example for others, and at least I will go to my grave knowing that I participated in the history of my time."
For rest of article and more on this book, go here:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17332
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