Sunday, October 07, 2007

Why do they hate us?


On Sept. 11, 2001 a cauldron of anti-American sentiment that had been for over a hundred years came to a head in the worst terrorist attack ever to be perpetrated on U.S soil. Although the violent methods and religious zeal of the terrorists who carried out this attack remains the domain of isolated fringe groups the anti-American fervor that griped them is widespread throughout the third-world.

This sentiment which has been widespread for some time but is just being realized for the first time by many in the west leaves many asking "why do they hate us". That question is brilliantly answered in journalist Stephen Kinzer's book Overthrow. Beginning in Hawaii in 1893 and ending with the 2003 invasion of Iraq the book tells the story of American coup's, invasions, and stage managed revolutions that have deposed fourteen governments, many of them democratic, and replaced them with brutal dictatorships and puppet states.

While Overthrow is neither a comprehensive study of American foreign policy or of the third world's grievances against the U.S it is an exhilarating and unbiased account of some of the things that are not mentioned taught in schools or mentioned in the media that are particularly relevant today in the context of the Sept. 11 attacks and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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