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.
