Rating: 
Summary: What about zero stars?
Review: This book is as content-free as the 'No Child Left Behind' website...but a whole lot creepier and frightened of the wrong things. It comes across as a poorly-constructed manifesto for a fascistic (not to mention heavily subsidized and unsustainable)monoculture, though it might be put to very good use (hence, deserving of one star)by psychiatrists striving to understand how 'projection' might unwittingly entrap those wielding power in the dubious enterprise of marketing wrongs to make them appear righteous.
Rating: 
Summary: WMD armed terrorists? How to defeat them.
Review: The authors at least take seriously the threat which proliferation of WMD presents. Their critics (see Katutani in NYTimes) often fail to address their essential arguments, much less offer an alternative which would take the threat seriously, focusing their criticism instead on the authors' attitude or on ancillary points. Frum's recent article in National Review Online challenges critics to offer their own strategy for meeting the threat of WMD getting into the hands of terrorists.
Rating:
Summary: Please Wake Up!!
Review: This book is complete garbage! This war was planned even before Bush was in office. It is all disinformation! People need to wake up or we are in for one hell of a ride. National ID Cards??? This is such a joke. "Problem, Reaction, Solution" It has been done many times throughout history. Create a problem, get the people behind it and slowly take away their rights for their safety. "Incrementalism" This propaganda garbage only helps them further their Police State agenda. We are living in a Matrix-like society and we can either bury our heads in the sand or wake up and fight this New World Order! God Bless
Rating:
Summary: Where is the 'shared sacrifice?'
Review: What I find lacking in this book is any mention of 'shared sacrifice.' Here we have two high-income individuals who make their profit from other's misfortune, not once do they say what the well-off will do to be included in the 'sacrifice' other than writing books. The point I am trying to make is that once again we have privileged individuals (Frum and Perle) who have not sacrificed or served in the military telling what we (I served in the military) have to do to fight terror.
The day that Frum and Perle put on uniforms and pick up weapons is the day I believe in their self-serving message. This book gets one star.
Rating:
Summary: Needs to be Said
Review: Every policy recommendation in this book needs to be implemented if we are going to have the only peace worth having in the War on Terror: the peace that follows victory. The fact that this book and Frum and Pearle have been viciously attacked is a sign that our cultural "elites" have totally lost any ability to deal with the world as it is. The stakes could not be greater, and the arguments of the critics could not be less serious.
Rating:
Summary: Surplus of Hubris
Review: Guess we shouldn't be surprised that someone like Richard Perle would have the audacity to name his new book An End to Evil. Perle and David Frum wrote the book to share (as the book's subtitle explains) their thoughts on How to Win the War on Terror. The NYT's Michiko Kakutani wrote a scathing review of the book: "Making its points with all the subtlety of a pit bull on steroids, 'An End to Evil' is smug, shrill and deliberately provocative. Which might not be so surprising given the authors' track records. Mr. Frum, a former White House speechwriter who helped coin the "axis of evil" phrase that President George W. Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address, adopted a similarly bellicose manner in his 2003 book 'The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.' Mr. Perle, a hawkish member of the Defense Policy Board and an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration, acquired the Washington nicknames Prince of Darkness and Darth Vader in the 1980's for his combative, take-no-prisoners pronouncements." David Frum responded in the National Review Online that Kakutani's wrath stems from resentment that "The New York Times no longer decides what Americans will read and what Americans will think about what they read. Rather than look inward, they blame talk radio and the Internet and Fox TV." No, Mr. Frum, she's enraged by your astonishing arrogance. She's angered by the apparent pride with which you and Mr. Perle espouse policies which are dangerous, uncivil and outmoded. You and Mr. Perle, you just don't get it. Responding to the Economist's criticism that the book isn't "nuanced" enough, Frum says that "nuance [is] a euphemism for 'accommodationist.'" This argument is typical of the neo-cons: decry a policy as being block-headed and simplistic and they accuse you of not being prepared to defend America. Kakutani even mentions a quotation from the book to that end in her review: "There is no middle way for Americans," they write in the opening chapter. "It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory." This is the bullying language of dull punks.
Rating:
Summary: Has Some Real Gems, Documents Authors' Bad Points as Well
Review:
There are some real gems in this book. The authors:
1) Document the split between the hard-line neo-conservatives who have captured the mind of 43, and their growing (and increasingly public) disrespect for 41 and for General Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State and former General Colin Powell. 2) Are correct in their condemnation of the Clinton national security team for being weak and incompetent. Any Democratic candidate foolish enough to appoint such individuals as their advisors is not smart enough to beat 43. 3) Make it clear that the top priority for neo-conservatives in the war on terrorism is not overseas action, but the implementation of a national identification card system here at home. 4) Are correct in their condemnation of US-based Muslim charities and clerics (and FBI agents of the Muslim faith) unwilling to speak out against Islamic radicalization and those who recommend jihad in America, abusing our freedom of speech. They are also correct when they propose to end all tax exemptions and breaks for those that fail to condemn terrorism and fatwas against Americans. 5) Are correct when they point out that the trillions of dollars we have spent on national intelligence have resulted in a vacuum on both Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and a lack of knowledge about terrorist financing. 6) They are correct when they emphasize the importance of funding the education and elevation of women into power within Islamic societies. 7) Are correct when they point out that with the exception of Jordan, no Arab country has been willing to give Palestinians a break--no access to schools, ownership of land, or passports. Lebanon, they say, forbids Palestinians from 72 professions. 8) Are correct when they point out that we are "fighting the war on terror with the same people and the same bureaucracies that so conspicuously failed us on 9/11." They are especially powerful when they criticize the CIA for failing to collect, read, translate, or understand the openly published writings of Khomeini during the Carter years--CIA is operating on perhaps 2% of the available global knowledge because it obsesses on spying and disrespects open sources of information in 29 languages--something Herb Meyer understood when he was Special Assistant to then DCI Bill Casey. 8) Are correct when they characterize the US Army specifically, and the entire US military generally, as "forces of the past, built to counter threats that no longer exist." 9) Are correct to emphasize how the U.S. Government as a whole is completely fragmented and lacking in an inter-agency management and coordination structure that both Kissinger and Rubin have suggested is urgently required to keep pace with the threats and demands of the modern world. 10) Are correct to slam the FBI for being incompetent at counter-intelligence, and to call for a new national homeland security agency reporting to the secretary for homeland security. They do however overlook the equal importance of funding state and local intelligence centers and counterintelligence personnel. 11) Are correct to emphasize that US free trade agreements with various nations should demand that the nations sign the same agreement with one another (e.g. in South Asia). 12) Are correct to point out that the United Nations and its focus on "armed attack" is completely out-dated, and that America should increase and sustain its support to the UN only on condition that the UN modernize both its by-laws and its operating procedures. 13) Are correct to propose that national security funding should rise to 5% of the national budget, up from 3%, but they fail to understand that modern warfare requires co-equal funding for non-military sources of power including massive preventive *peace* operations. There is, then, a great deal of good in this book. It is, however, also full of a great deal of crap. It has no footnotes, no bibliography, no index, and a great deal of either badly researched material or plain disinformation. They misrepresent or ignore a number of very important facts. On page 24, for example, they discuss the debriefing of Hussein's son-in-law, defector Hussein Kamel, and fail to mention that he told us all the stocks had been destroyed, and only the cookbooks remained. Throughout the book, while lambasting CIA for not knowing (half true), they decline to discuss the unethical and unprofessional manner in which the neo-cons not only shut out the professionals from the Iraq war deliberations, but cherry-picked and fabricated information to mislead the president as well as the American people. On page 32 and again on page 35 they lie when they say that Iraq was "one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the region." On various pages they gloss over the fact that Chalabi was both a thief and a liar, fired by CIA for stealing millions from covert funds, and ultimately found by CIA to be fabricating translations to deceive the US military intelligence people. On pages 45-46 they repeat the long proven lie about Mohammed Atta meeting an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Not only has the FBI determined that Atta was in Florida at the time, but Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, recently honored by President Bush, has repeatedly stated this did not happen. On page 155, they deliberately avoid mentioning that it was Rumsfeld who allowed 3000 Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape by approving a Pakistani air evacuation operation that went on all night. Rumsfeld's naiveté and ignorance cost us the chance to nail Bin Laden early on. There are many other points where the facts differ from their representations. The book does *not* offer a true strategy for the future of American security or even the near-term war on terrorism. It is largely a baloney justification for the war on Iraq. It fails to acknowledge that unilateralist American behavior is spawning more terrorists than we are catching. On balance, this book is worth reading to understand both the good and the bad of the neo-conservative viewpoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Read The Newspaper and Think For Yourself
Review: I was extremely disappointed reading this book. My orientation is supportive of the neoconservative perspective and given the credibility of the two authors I was expecting a well argued coherent presentation of the foreign policy problems and challenges we face today with insights such credible sources could provide. Instead, this book is a somewhat argumentative rehash of right wing editorials from the past 2 years that any relatively well informed reader could anticipate and recognize. Much like Gertrude Stein's observation of Oakland, there's no there, there, in this book. We face a significant challenge from terrorism in particular and America's role in the world. This book does little to improve my understanding of the challenges and the actions we should take. I would recommend reading books by Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami for a perspective on the Islamic world and terrorism to provide a much better examination of the challenge we face. This is a poorly thought out and developed book and both authors and their editor should have done a better job. Even under the more wide open standards for judging books on "current events," this is just a lazy effort. The conceptual, philosophical, and empirical template that structures this book is about as sophisticated as what you hear on CNN or Fox talk shows in a 2 minute sound bite. I really thought that Frum and Perle were better than this.
Rating:
Summary: The End of Evil
Review: Pay attention America and read this book. What they are talking about will involve your kids and their kids if the policies proffered are pursued further. Iraq was only their Act I. These may be smart men but wasn't it the "best and the brightest" that brought us into Vietnam. These people have already miscalculated the Iraq situation. Ask yourself where we are going to get the people power and the treasure to do these things. Only madmen and armchair chickenhawks would suggest blockading North Korea (which by the way has a real army)--the loss of life there would be tremendous and using nuclear weapons would be out of the question in such a populated area. Wake up America before it's too late.
Rating:
Summary: Partisan sniping and dogmatic defense of the neo-cons
Review: Those unfamiliar with foreign policy and national security studies may
interpret "An End To Evil" for what it claims to be: namely, a "manual for
victory" [against all of America's enemies.] Those familiar with foreign
policy, current and historical events, and who possess a modicum of common
sense and objectivity will see the book for what it is: namely, a dogmatic
and ideological view of the world replete with fanciful - some would say
extreme - whims about what to do about it. The authors espouse the
controversial neo-conservative political beliefs that, among other things,
America should be free to use its unbridled power (or military) to promote
its values around the world, that Israel is the focal point to bring about
Middle East stability, and that the United States is hampered unnecessarily
by international institutions and agreements like the United Nations. To their credit, the authors provide concrete examples of the roots of
terrorism around the world and the many complexities associated with
effectively dealing with this international challenge. And, surprisingly,
they make a noticeable effort to discuss non-military concerns such as
woman's' rights in the Islamic world, the religious hypocrisy of certain
Islamic nations, and also confirm what many Washington insiders believe yet
have never put into practice: namely, that despite the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security, the single greatest obstacle toward truly improving America's national security is Washington's ongoing inability to
fundamentally reform the FBI bureaucracy, culture, and operational mindset
in a way that enables the agency to support America's new homeland security
needs effectively, correctly noting that America's domestic war on terrorism
is "...being waged by the same people who so dismally mishandled it in the
1990s." These very real concerns unfortunately appear toward the end of the
book, and are overshadowed by other, more questionable, items in the pages
beforehand. Despite the aforementioned - and quite salient - observations regarding the
presence and causalities of terror in the present day, "An End to Evil"
serves as an apologist's view of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption and
unilateralism by sternly defending the Administration's stated (and
unstated) goals and definitions of national security and American interests.
The book's prescription for American "victory" essentially boils down to
this: forcing "regime change" in Iraq, Iran, and Syria; blockading North
Korea; "squeezing" China, working to force internal change in Saudi Arabia,
punitatively isolating the "cowardly" French, and participating with the
United Nations and other international bodies only on terms favorable to
American interests. Also, in their eyes, Israel can do no wrong, and as the
undeserving victim of Islamic extremism, warrants America's unwavering
support. The authors openly advocate "tossing aside" dictators and undemocratic
governments without compunction when it suits American purposes. While they
prefer that allies support American policies, they request them to refrain
from actively opposing them publicly (or by denying us military overflight
rights of their airspace.) Where they once supported a unified European bloc
earlier in their careers, they now fear one. Finally, the authors' disdain
for the State Department is obvious from the start -- unless it marches in
political lockstep with (and never offers a contrary view or analysis in
public or private) from the President, that is. In other words, if the world won't let America do what it wants, America
will go ahead and do it anyway, because nobody else can match us
dollar-for-dollar or military-for-military and because dissenting domestic
views or international calls for multilateralism are simply unimportant,
irrelevant, or made by the uninformed and for political gain by the minority
(the latter being a convenient and partisan defense of existing policies.)
The authors believe that, as the world's hyperpower, America is free to
place its own interests ahead of anyone else -- and even the cherished
tenets of international law -- whenever expedient or convenient. (One
wonders if an early title for the book was "Let Them All Eat Cake" and
written with Frank Sinatra's "My Way" playing in the background.) However, despite its glaring partisanship and selective use of facts and
memory, this book should be considered a readable (if not very disturbing)
precis of the Bush Administration's foreign policy agenda in 2004 as seen
from two people who hold the ear of the current President. Although devoid
of any overall objectivity, it serves as a valuable resource for those
wishing to understand the ideological neo-conservative perspective and
dogmatic groupthink driving America into the near future -- and into an international environment that unfortunately seems to be hurting our great
nation more than helping it.
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