City Lights Review #5

City Lights Review #5: War After War, Nancy J. Peters (ed.), City Lights Books, 1992

This is a group of short essays that have an alternative look at the Gulf War as their starting point but travel all over the landscape from there. With contributors like Noam Chomsky, Allan Ginsberg, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Winona LaDuke, the topics in this better-than-excellent anthology include: the slaughter of Iraqi civilians; America searching for a new enemy to replace Communism;  a nearly total ignorance of Islam and Arab affairs on the part of Americans; the Patriot missile was not exactly the technical marvel it was said to be (the number of Scud missiles it actually destroyed was closer to zero); a Palestinian perspective on Israeli closures of Gaza and the West Bank written by an American Jew living in the West Bank; and story after story of media manipulation by the US authorities.

This book does a very good job of blowing holes in the story of a grand international coalition coming together under American leadership to defeat this terrible person threatening our way of life. Read the official histories of the Gulf War and the biographies of the major players, then read War After War. It's a real eye-opener.