Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Right-Wing Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy

By Stephen Eric Bronner

Book Overview

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, clouds of ash blackened the skies over New York City, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania. In the wake of the destruction, the United States seemingly entered a new era marked by radical changes in the nation's discourse and in the policies of the Bush administration. With the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, and saber rattling elsewhere, America's global war on terror began to take shape. Lofty rhetoric about expanding democracy and defending freedom filled the halls of elite power and dominated mainstream media coverage of American politics. Blood in the Sand offers both an incisive analysis and a confrontational critique of America's recent international pursuits and its dominant political culture. Stephen Eric Bronner challenges the notion that everything changed in the aftermath of 9/11. He shows instead how a criminal act served to legitimize political manipulation and invigorate traditional nationalistic enthusiasms for militarism and imperial expansion. Employing his own experiences in the Middle East, Bronner acknowledges -- but refuses to overstate -- recent progressive developments in the region. He criticizes the neo-conservative penchant for unilateral military aggression and debunks the dubious notion of fostering democracy at gunpoint. While Bronner analyzes authoritarian repression, human rights violations, shrinking civil liberties, and severe socioeconomic inequalities, Blood in the Sand is neither a narrow political diatribe nor a futile exercise in anti-American negativism. The author honors America by condemning the betrayal of the nation's finest ideals by so many of those who, hypocritically or naively, invoke those ideals the most. Bronner sheds new light on those who insist on publicly waving the flag while privately subverting that for which it stands. Blood in the Sand sounds a clarion call for revitalizing the American polity and reshaping foreign policy along democratic lines. Committed to a political renewal, Bronner urges the American people to recall what is best about their national heritage and the genuine beacon of hope it might offer other countries and other cultures.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813123674
• ISBN13: 9780813123677
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Fast Read, Brutal & Riveting, A Call for Progressive Engagement

This is an absolute gem of a book, one I was able to polish off in a couple of hours before Crossfire comes on. It is brutal and riveting, nothing less than a thoughtful manifesto calling for progressive engagement and a restoration of engaged dialog. Here are a few of my summative notes that serve as a review of the author's key points, all of which I find to be admirable and well-documented: 1) US Democracy is in crisis, in part because the "Halliburton Administration" is comprised of several liars and thieves, among whom I would suggest Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are the worst. Their resignations, and the appointment of Senator John McCain as an ethical vice president, strike me as necessary. 2) The Democratic Party failed to understand that ideological passion and the Republican mobilization of their own base would more than crush the Democratic pragmatism, focus on the economic case, and a heroic but insufficient increase in registered voters. In essence, the Democratic Party relied on mobilization and failed to find its voice or its spine in 2000 and 2004. Even when the Democrats knew--as Greg Pabst documented--that the Florida election was stolen twice (one with the disenfranchisement of over 35,000 people of color, the second time with the rejection of over-count votes in pro-Gore countries--while revalidating them in pro-Bush counties), they failed to rise to the challenge. 3) The author is brutal in a very polite and professional way as he describes the origins of the neo-conservatives and their commitment to looting the commonwealth of the poor and middle class in order to fund wealth transfers to the already rich, and a larger garrison state with which to pursue imperial adventures. 4) The author provides a very helpful review of what Ghandi was trying to accomplish (see also my review of the DVD by that name) and what I took away from this chapter was that non-violence is not only moral, it is educational and pragmatic. It unites the oppressed and enlightens the oppressor. 5) In the chapter on reflections from a personal visit to Baghdad, the author makes it clear that on-the-ground eye witnesses could plainly see--as the UN inspectors saw and US Marine Scott Ritter said--that Iraq was no threat to the US. The educators also heard from taxi drivers and intellectuals who said plainly that the demise of Saddam would be welcome, but occupying forces would inspire a massive nationalist insurgency. How is it that neither CIA nor the White House heard these voices? We conclude that CIA has become stupid in its reliance of classified sources and fabrications from defectors seeking resettlement, while the White House is merely unethical. 6) In an overview of the geopolitics of the region, while the author does not fully examine the nefarious misbehavior and selfish refusal to help from the other Arab nations, all of which continue to refuse land or status to Palestinians, he provides a very interesting discussion of the po