Book description
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.
"This hard-hitting and intelligent book is a remarkable
reflection on the paradoxical moment in which Americans find
themselves: citizens of the greatest power in world history, and yet
with an acute sense of vulnerability, dominating completely far-away
countries like Iraq, and yet barely in control there. Bronner's
analysis gives usthe tools to understand how we reached this state,and
how we might transcend it." -- Rashid Khalidi, Edward
SaidProfessor of Arab Studies, Columbia University, and a
