{"id":122,"date":"2003-11-03T01:09:38","date_gmt":"2003-11-03T06:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/11\/booknotes_james_bovard\/"},"modified":"2003-11-03T01:09:38","modified_gmt":"2003-11-03T06:09:38","slug":"booknotes_james_bovard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/11\/booknotes_james_bovard\/","title":{"rendered":"Booknotes:  James Bovard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.booknotes.org\/home\/index.asp\">Booknotes<\/a>&#8221; on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cspan.org\/\">C-SPAN<\/a> featured <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booknotes.org\/Program\/?ProgramID=1752\">James Bovard<\/a>, author of <i>Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.<\/i>  Mr. Bovard and I see differently on many domestic issues.  But I thought he made a number of interesting points in the interview, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Since 9\/11, Bush often seems blinded by <a href=\"http:\/\/us.news2.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/ap\/20031014\/capt.cdh10110140027.topix_bush_cdh101.jpg\">the glare of his own halo<\/a>.&nbsp; The moral self-adulation at the heart of the war on terrorism is a danger both to America and to the world.&#8221;  (p. 349)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>President Bush (and other politicians&#8217;) constant reference to the &#8220;goodness&#8221; of America inspires a sense of blind righteousness&#8211;a feeling that we can do no wrong.  This mindset can lead a nation down a dangerous policy road.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>An effective technique employed by politicians is to flatter those whom they wish to control.  Note how often those in power talk about Americans being the greatest people on earth.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>In his address to the nation the evening of 9\/11, Bush claimed that the reason we had been attacked was because America is a symbol of freedom.&nbsp; This assertion of motive was curious, because at that point the FBI wasn&#8217;t even sure who the attackers were.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>In July, 2001, the CIA issued a warning that Osama Bin Laden would launch a &#8220;significant&#8221; and &#8220;spectacular&#8221; terrorist attack in the coming weeks against the U.S. or Israeli interests designed to inflict mass casualties.&nbsp; The Bush administration&#8217;s insistence following the attack that they had no prior warning contributed to a greater level of faith in the government, which allowed the administration to push through the PATRIOT Act.&nbsp; Had America known at that time how many warning signals were out there, we would have been a a lot less flag waving and a lot more tough questioning.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>In October, 2001, many members of Congress voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act even though they didn&#8217;t have time to read it.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Since 1948, the U.S. has spent $240 billion (figures in 2001 dollars) on foreign aid to Israel.  Since 1978 we have sent $117  billion to Egypt and $22 billion in Syria.  We are supporting nations such as Pakistan, even though they terrorize their own people.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Although Bush said no FBI or CIA agents were to blame for 9\/11, he did blame U.S. drug users for funding terrorism.  This despite the fact that a vast majority of drug users smoke marijuana, which has no financial link to terrorism.  Since the U.S has invaded Afghanistan, opium production has increased 2,000%.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>In the buildup to the invasion war, Bush kept using the phrase &#8220;if war is thrust upon us.&#8221;  He then proceeded to launch an unprovoked attack against a country which posed no threat to America.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> Sounds like an interesting book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/11\/booknotes_james_bovard\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Booknotes:  James Bovard\"><p>Sunday&#8217;s &#8220;Booknotes&#8221; on C-SPAN featured James Bovard, author of Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil. Mr. Bovard and I see differently on many domestic issues. But I thought he made a number of interesting points in the interview, including: &#8220;Since 9\/11, Bush often seems blinded by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}