Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit [Paperback]

I have never read a book that educated me in such a plain and detailed way about the means and methods of Western imperialism. Mr. Elich, the author cuts right through all the theoretical discourse one could have on such subjects and gets straight to the concrete information a person needs in order to know how hegemonic power works in the current world order. Also, the fact that this book touches on a diverse array of examples/places within major areas of the world is also fantastic. Elich does so with meticulous research and intriguing literary style. This book is a demonstration of major insight by Mr. Elich to focus on some of the most misunderstood places in the world, on exactly those things that are most misunderstood about them, and how the powers that be systematically generate these misunderstandings. The title is completely fitting. Now Iam always recommending it anytime and anywthere i get the chance, Strange Liberators; Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit!

American foreign policy, especially during the Bush Administration, has been characterized as "incompetent" or "misguided," along with other such words. On the contrary, American foreign policy is actually very competent and works quite well, when its real purpose is to make the world safe for wealthy Western investors. Any country, no matter its size, that refuses to go along with America's demands is to be strangled into submission, by any means available.

Americans remember the Korean War as a limited "police action." North Koreans remember it as a time of total annihilation, when everything and anything was bombed. The seemingly irrational North Korean fear of an American invasion becomes much more rational considering that, in 1994, the Clinton Administration was very close to declaring war on North Korea, because of its nuclear program. The use of nuclear weapons to destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities would have spread radioactivity over most of the Korean peninsula, and killed hundreds of thousands of people, a fact which really didn't bother the Clinton Administration.

North Korea, in the midst of a huge energy crisis, has been willing to scrap its uranium reprocessing capabilities, in exchange for a couple of light water reactors (which are not good for reprocessing), and shipments of heavy oil until the reactors are finished. America and North Korea signed an agreement in 1994, which America promptly ignored. The American bargaining postition, from then until now, is full of bullying, and threats, and demanding that North Korea totally scrap its nuclear program, before America will agree to any kind of talks (with no guarantee that America will agree to do anything for North Korea).

The justification for the bombing and invasion of Yugoslavia was that hundreds of thousands of Albanians were being thrown out of Yugoslavia. The problem is that there was no evidence of thousands of people in mass graves, and the exodus of refugees started after the bombing. The 77 days of NATO bombing was supposed to target military facilities; nearly anything was considered a military target. Industrial plants were targeted, to cause maximum economic hardship, and all sorts of toxic materials were released into the atmosphere. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's "crime" was to put the interests of his people ahead of those of Western investors.

I thought that I knew my way around present-day international relations, but this book was a huge eye-opener. Using local media sources (Korean, Yugoslav and Zimbabwean), Elich has written an amazing book. See for yourself what "democracy" from America means to the rest of the world.

Good source book for finding out what our corporate media doesn't tell us. The focus is on three pariah states-- North Korea, Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe. If you take usual reportage at face value, you probably think these countries amount to charnel houses run by madmen and populated by fanatics. I may exaggerate, but not much.

What the book tells is the other side of the story, the one we never get to hear. Thus, Elich presents an in-depth profile of North Korea's stance on nuclear power,. Corporate media usually portrays their negotiations as irrational, at best, or bomb-happy, at worst. Actually, once the picture is filled in, Pyongyang's contributions to the seemingly endless rounds of multilateral talks become quite reasonable and rational. That alone is worth the purchase price, exposing, as it does, Washington's duplicitous game that none in our media dares report.

Similarly, we get a fuller picture of the events leading up to NATO's criminal invasion of Yugoslavia. The air bombardment proceeded, of course, under the guise of protecting Albanians from Serbian genocide. The KLA's provocative role is either ignored or minimized. Frankly, this story has been told better in other sources-- Parenti, for one. However, we do get considerable anecdotal accounts of Serbian suffering at the hands of the KLA, a key aspect minimized in Western reporting. Nonetheless, this section is the book's weakest.

Zimbabwe's inclusion is timely. Britain and the US are again turning up the heat in an effort to topple the stubbornly independent Mugabe regime. The book details the brutal economic warfare that has been waged against this former British colony over the last several decades. It also debunks and/or explains the many myths surrounding the controversial project of land reform, the cornerstone of Zimbabwe's economic democratization. It's important that the country's story gets out since southeastern Africa is a neglected region, particularly vulnerable to Western subversion.

Of course, what these countries all have in common is a state-run economy resistant to unchecked foreign investment. That alone is enough to get them on Washington's hit list as corporate America reaches for unchallenged global supremacy. The objective is clear-- all holdouts, big or little, must be stamped out in the name of "democracy" and "free markets". What's more, It's not difficult to invent cosmetic reasons when you've got a compliant communications industry to back you up (think Iraq). That's why a work like this is so important. Sure, it's got flaws-- a sometimes repetitive text, for one. But it does detail an important and largely untold story. The overriding point here and elsewhere is that Americans can still approximate the truth as long as the margins continue to be tolerated.