The Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder

... I swear to almighty God, if I ever find myself standing face-to-face with ANY of the members of the current administration "serving" our nation in Washington, D.C., I will feel absolutely compelled to ask them the following question: "Are you a HUMAN BEING?!" ... I mean, are these people HUMAN BEINGS, or what?! ... Does ANYBODY out there feel like I do, and EVER question the basic HUMANITY of these characters? I find it UNBELIEVABLE - what these individuals are doing in the name of "serving" their country. If this is SERVING your country, I can HELP MYSELF. Thank you very much! ... Gilbert Achcar has written a masterpiece which serves as a mirror to our nation, staring us in the face. Interesting, how foreigners see us more realistically than we see ourselves. In reading this book, I have come to realize - without a doubt - that what this administration is doing in the name fighting a war on terrorism is exhibiting nothing more than the old saying of: "might is right in the world of greed and lust." ... To all those reading this who disagree, I say: READ THE FOLLOWING THREE PASSAGES FROM THIS BOOK, AND CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE! ...... From page 37: "The United States is thus directly responsible for the resurgence of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism. Over the past thirty years this resurgence has flourished in two successive waves. The Iranian revolution marked the climax of the first wave, in the 1970s; September 11 and the shock wave it sent out were the peak of the second wave, dating back to the 1990s. The United States is in fact doubly responsible for them. Not only did it contribute directly to propagating Islamic fundamentalism, but by helping to defeat and crush the Left and progressive nationalism throughout the Islamic world, it freed up the space for political Islam as the only ideological and organizational expression of popular resentment. Popular resentment, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is not the culturally inevitable form of radicalization in Muslim countries; until recently most people in Muslim countries spurned the ideology. It won only by default, after its competition was eliminated by their common adversary." ... From page 58: "This method of action serves entirely rational ends, contrary to what many would like to believe. Bin Laden hoped to create a situation in which the U.S. population, weary of bearing the brunt of its government's involvement in a part of the world that it has no more interest in than it did in Vietnam thirty years ago, would put pressure on its government to disengage and get out. This is why he directed his warnings, as in his October 7 message, not only to the U.S. government and its Western allies but also to their peoples. He did so even more clearly in his 1998 statements, which called people to attention: "The Western regimes and the government of the United States of America bear the blame for what might happen. If their people do not wish to be ha

I had the opportunity to listen to Achcar lecture at La Maison Francaise at NYU, and found his view intriguing, if not entirely acceptable, and certainly worthy of inclusion into a broader worldview. His English is faltering, but the translation is excellent and the book is well structured. Also, the book is about 100 pages long, and I found it an easy read, although not simply written. Reading the book would not take a great amount of time, and it provides a wealth of solid, but little known, historical and political information.The largest takeaway from his analysis is a more balanced approach to international interactions, and a detailed analysis of the history of the Middle East and Islam, as it relates to political struggles. His analysis is akin to Chomsky's understanding of American political strategy, but also dovetails contrapuntally with more mainstream writers such as Brzezniski.