Total Insecurity: The Myth of American Omnipotence

Brightman, Carol

ISBN 10: 1844670104 / ISBN 13: 9781844670109

Published by Verso, 2004

Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G1844670104I2N00

Synopsis:

Now that we know the public was duped by an administration looking for politically saleable motives for a “pre-emptive” invasion of Iraq, the question is: Why did the US invade?

Carol Brightman takes us through the various stages of the war, documenting the unexpected defeat of the “coalition” at the hands of the Iraqi resistance and pondering the significance of this loss for America’s vaunted military supremacy. She then returns to confront the unanswered question with another. Why, in spite of both military and political defeats, does the US want permanent bases in Iraq? The answer is the great fear that OPEC will switch its international transactions from the dollar to the euro. Iraq actually made the switch in November 2000 and, given the dollars steady decline, did well. Now it has paid the price. Iran did similarly in the summer of 2003 and it, too, was targeted by the White House, but the resistance in Iraq has delayed further adventures, for the moment.

Carol Brightman has been a leading critic since the Sixties. She contrasts the new movements with the old, writes passionately on the reawakening of dissent brought on by the Iraq war, and coolly suggests that it will take more than regime change in Washington to bring Americas fears to the table.

About the Author: Carol Brightman edited Viet-Report in the 1960s and is the author of Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She wrote Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure and edited Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy. She received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and lives in Walpole, Maine.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Total Insecurity: The Myth of American ...
Publisher: Verso
Publication Date: 2004
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket