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Writers' Table - Book Review

Non-Americans often joke that they should have the right to vote in US elections. Whoever comes to power at the White House, they say, can decidedly influence the course of events in a manner that affects the lives of billions of people around the world. This is too great a responsibility left to Americans alone.

So why should one man voted into power by less than 25% of American voters (barely half the voting population actually gets out to cast their ballots during most US presidential elections) or even by the Supreme Court (as some insist) be allowed to lead the us all down a path of destruction?

The US-led invasion of Iraq is just one example where the decision of a not particularly bright American president and those around him have not only led to utter disaster, staggering corruption and the wasted lives of several thousand American soldiers – and mercenaries - plus the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and dragged in dozens of other nations into the conflict. The intervention also severely distracted US commitment from the recovery of Afghanistan, which is also in a complete mess.

In his just published book The Fall of the House of Bush, American investigative journalist and author Craig Unger takes a closer look at how a band of US renegade neocons and the Christian right seized the executive branch in Washington and started their own war in Iraq.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Iraq war, the Middle East crisis, and the campaign against terror are all products of a clash of civilization between Islam and the West. But Unger, who already devled into these issues in the New York Times bestseller, House of Bush, House of Saud, believes that the conflict should be viewed as part of an entirely different paradigm, namely, an ongoing war between faith and reason, between fundamentalism (Islamic, Jewish and Christian) and the modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment world.

Now Unger vividly tells the story of how radical neoconservatives secretly forged an alliance with the Christian Right in the presidency of George W. Bush and, driven by delusional idealism, and ideological and religions zeal, waged unilateral, preemptive war in the Middle East, not to mention a domestic war against reason, science and civil liberties. It is a well-written and compelling argument that shows irrational and religious and ideological forces taking control of U.S. policy and becoming part of the problem, not the solution.

Unger, who started on his investigative career as an editor of The Paris Metro magazine in France during the late 1970s by focusing on critical – and for the French – irreverant reporting of key political issues, is no newcomer to such intrigue, notably the Irancontra Affair. As a Texan Jew, he found himself at the snarling end of Mossad efforts and the US administration at the time to cover up Israel’s involvement with Iran by stifling his reporting in the United States.

With House of Bush, House of Saud, Unger revealed startling undertakings by the Bush administration to protect leading Saudi Arabians and their families in the United States at the time of the September 11 terror assaults by surreptitiously – and illegally – whisking them out of the country, thus preventing them from being questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also focused on the highly questionable involvement of the Bush family with the Saudi royal family, including corrupt practises, such as non-accountable military and consulting deals with political friends and cronies, which should have landed Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in jail.

Unger now takes this approach much further in The Fall of the House of Bush by explaining how Cheney carried out what amounted to an executive coup by skirting past normal checks and balances designed to protect the electorate, how he effectively disabled the entire national security apparatus of the United States, and how he replaced it with a parallel national security apparatus, essentially, a disinformation pipeline. For example, Unger maintains that the infamous Niger Uranium/Yellowcake story, widely regarded as an intelligence failure befuddled by numerous administrative blunders, was in fact a successful black propaganda operation designed to help start the war in Iraq.

Unger explores other fascinating angles, notably George W Bush’s own conversion to fundamentalist Christianity, how he he provided the neocons with a perfect “blank slate” for their manipulation, and how the genesis of the Iraq war began well before the events of September 11. Among the many other key issues detailed in the book, he looks at the New Right’s multi-billion dollar effort – bankrolled by billionaire philanthropists – to completely reframe the national debate about tax policy, the economy, welfare, judiciary, foreign policy, national security, and more.

In many ways, this is a frightening book. One reason is the extent with which the American public has allowed itself to be so duped by such a corrupt regime. Even worse, is that Bush and his cronies are getting away with it.

The book also underlines the responsibility of the internatiional community, such as Britain’s Tony Blair, for playing along so uncritically with the Bush administration’s real motives behind Iraq and other policies that affect us all, in America, Europe, the Middle Rast, Africa... Whether you are able to vote in US elections or not, what Unger expresses in this highly detailed book is more than just must-read. It is a scandal.

About the author: Craig Under is the New York Times bestselling author of House of Bush, House of Saud and a frequent analyst on CNN and other broadcast outlets. He has written for the New Yorker, Esquire, and Vanity Fair. Formerly deputy editor of The New York Observer, he lives in New York.

The Fall of the House of Bush

 

The Untold Story of How a Ban of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future

By Craig Unger

Scribner

Publishing Date: November 12, 2007

Price: $27.00

ISBN: -7432-8075-X