"Faith at War" NYT Book Review

[SOS]

June 3, 2005
Where the Evil Empire Is Us and the Veil Liberation

By WILLIAM GRIMES (edited for copyright rules)
Immediately after the collapse of the World Trade Center, Yaroslav Trofimov's editor at The Wall Street Journal handed him a big assignment: go forth into the Islamic world and take its temperature. For the next three years Mr. Trofimov, an American-educated Ukrainian who speaks fluent Arabic and holds an Italian passport, traveled from Cairo to Kandahar, from Tunis to Timbuktu.

The stylishly written, keenly observed dispatches that make up "Faith at War" deliver mostly bad news. The United States is regarded, across large swaths of the Muslim world, with a mixture of suspicion and hatred that military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has fanned to a white-hot intensity.
(Trofimov) is scathing about American foreign policy and tends to sneer at the people who carry it out, military and civilian, who, with few exceptions, appear clueless about the land they have invaded and tone-deaf to local sensitivities. Every day, and in every way, as Mr. Trofimov tells it, America is creating new enemies.

"So, is this liberation or occupation for you?" he often asked Iraqis on the street during the initial stages of the war..."Even if you turn this country into heaven, we don't want it from you," a tribal chief tells Bob Silverman, the American civilian administrator in Tikrit. "Just go away from Iraq and leave us alone. We've had enough of you and can't stand it no more."


A Wall Street Journal reporter spends three years on the road and returns to inform us that things are going very poorly. Meanwhile President Cheney tells us about "freedom and democracy" from his plush Washington office. The dichotomy is astounding.

Full review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/books/03book.html

[Bellamia]

1. Meanwhile, President Cheyney.........

That's the downside of Impeaching Bush, what a scary prospect!
Thanks for your Post, I like to know what the Middle Eastern part of the world is thinking. I shudder to think what the outcome might be.