The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the misuse of and the mixing of Religion and Politics.

In this day and age of partisanship I found this book to be a refreshing change. I've read some of the reviews and I guess when you are talking religion and politics that you will step on peoples toes. They want you to agree with them and attack the other side. I felt this book walked the line pretty well giving both sides praise and criticism. She is a Democrat after all and may give her side a sleight edge. The first section of the book speaks mainly to diplomacy and her views as to how it should be done using examples from history. How and why we did things right and why some of the things we did went wrong. It gave me more in site into areas like Vietnam, Bosnia and Kosovo. The real value of the book begins in the second section with her depth of understanding of foreign policy and Islamic Nations in particular. Madeleine Albright starts out by describing the history and beliefs of the Islamic faith. For those of you who haven't read anything about Islam you may be surprised how close it is to Christianity. She also covers some aspects of what is written in the Quran as well as the difference between Shiites and Sunni beliefs. She also covers how the Kurds fit in all of this. While this is a very deep subject she keeps it interesting and understandable. To give a better understanding of the Middle-East situation she then covers the area country by country and how the Muslim faith affects each in their decision making. She also mentions the effect of the Muslim faith in Europe and the United States. The book wouldn't be complete without covering Al Qaeda and terrorism and it does a very good job explaining the problem. If you are looking for a book with all the answers or to agree with one side or the other this isn't the one but if you want an easy to read book to give you a better understanding of some of the problems this is an excellent book.

Joining the already weighty bandwagon of critics against the Bush administration, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright takes umbrage at current foreign policy which ignores the role of religious faith in negotiating conflicts in the Middle East. Forever the pragmatist, she shows in her book how religion is inherent to most cross-border conflicts and how it is better to understand other faiths and try to find commonalities than to hope the differences go away. In fact, Albright strongly supports the idea of religious advisors close to the President since elements of religious history that are playing themselves out today affect the way countries behave and how the Muslims see the West. Without this perspective, she believes we continue to work in a vacuum of useless polemics. Powerful words from Albright but ones she delivers in a sensible but iron-fisted tone. With traditional wartime strategies constantly revealed to be outdated, especially since 9/11, the author provides compelling evidence that religion affects drastically how the battle of ideas is carried forward in the new millennium. She is quick to point out that her former boss Clinton understood the ongoing change quite well when negotiating between the Palestinians and Israelis. Bush, on the other hand, receives her severest criticism as she sees him projecting his own righteousness in launching the Iraq war and oversimplifying the opposing forces as good versus evil. Albright succinctly shows how he, as an evangelical Christian, invokes God as a means to increase the number of military troops in Iraq when in fact he should temper his own personal beliefs in the public realm. This is not a new way of thinking, but Albright is far more driven toward solutions unlike other administration critics. She pushes for a far more nuanced understanding of Islamism than exists now and especially how idiosyncratic those beliefs are from country to country with some like Turkey, for example, more amenable to our perspective than others. It is laudatory how she delves into the teachings of Islamism and the intertwining history of politics and religion in this country. These sections build the context for her valid arguments, and her experience in the global political arena lends the credence to make this book stand above others in its category. This is a strongly recommended read and along with two other books - Bruce Bartlett's scathing critique of current economic policies, "Impostor" and Kevin Phillips' fulsome analysis of the current administration, "American Theocracy" - a most illuminating triumvirate of current political vagrancies.

The Religious Right had co-opted the religioius movement, so to speak, hauling God over to their side, and claiming any action that the country would find "controversial" was ordained by the Almighty. Recently, this has been in dispute, with a plethora of books from a wide variety of sources, from Jim Wallis' masterpiece "God's Politics" to Phillip's "American Theocracy". Madeline Albright adds her voice to this resounding chorus in her new book "The Might and the Almighty". Madeline Albright's new book, "The Might and the Almighty", takes a bow shot across the current Presidential adminstration, with grace and intelligence. Her background and experience lend themselves to her well-thought out and crafted opinions. It's an interesting viewpoint between the state of our country and the religious right, and the current out-of-control state of world affairs. Albright holds back no opinions, and supports them with well-reasoned thinking. Will Republicans like this book? Not if they are part of the Religious Right. Others will; those who claim to love American and want nothing more than her continued success in this crazy, complicated world. We would do well to listen to Ms. Albright, and heed her lessons.

The former UN Ambassador and Secretary of State sees a place for personal faith among public officials. She believes personal faith has helped herself and many other people make very difficult decisions which impacted the world. However, she doesn't use that personal faith as a public battering ram to attack 'others' and their perspectives. Having grown up under state oppression, she knows first-hand what totalitarian states where everybody must worship one way...etc really are like. Albright did not and still does not attempt to turn her own faith into a partisan and one-dimensional caricature for political benefit. Her public faith is a civil belief in the state to advocate for the less fortunate. She understands democracy doesn't work when only talked about in the abstract. It has to be practiced. Contrasting with the current administration, she sees the world as complex and multifaceted--there are no clear-cut good and evil sides in a religious conflict. Current American policy prolongs the bloodshed by not adopting a more nuanced analysis.