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judahrice 's review for:
Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
by Spencer Ackerman
Often hard to read, but an essential crash course on the failures of the neoconservative foreign policy consensus. Makes you furious at everyone involved. Nobody is spared.
If I had one criticism, it would be more of the publisher than the author. The framing of this as another "Trump book" is a bad sell of a book that is much more. It's a stirring indictment of both the establishment of both parties, as well as of the often ineffective anti-war wings of both. The argument about how the culture of the War On Terror led to things like Ferguson, right-wing COVID response, and the January 6th insurrection is true and important, but the book also speaks at length of the failures of Obama, Clinton, and many Democratic figures in a more constructive and nuanced way than many critiques do, making a more powerful indictment of Dem foreign policy in the process, in addition to the well-covered Bush era disasters.
As someone who has grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 and the early War On Terror, this was a breathtaking read.
If I had one criticism, it would be more of the publisher than the author. The framing of this as another "Trump book" is a bad sell of a book that is much more. It's a stirring indictment of both the establishment of both parties, as well as of the often ineffective anti-war wings of both. The argument about how the culture of the War On Terror led to things like Ferguson, right-wing COVID response, and the January 6th insurrection is true and important, but the book also speaks at length of the failures of Obama, Clinton, and many Democratic figures in a more constructive and nuanced way than many critiques do, making a more powerful indictment of Dem foreign policy in the process, in addition to the well-covered Bush era disasters.
As someone who has grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 and the early War On Terror, this was a breathtaking read.