{"id":24401,"date":"2014-10-14T06:53:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24401"},"modified":"2014-10-14T06:53:27","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:53:27","slug":"risens-new-book-exposes-corrupt-zealotry-of-us-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/14\/risens-new-book-exposes-corrupt-zealotry-of-us-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Risen\u2019s New Book Exposes Corrupt Zealotry of ‘US War on Terror’"},"content":{"rendered":"

No single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War <\/em><\/a> \u2013 the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the \u201cwar on terror.\u201d Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity: focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive.<\/p>\n

Published this week, Pay Any Price<\/i> throws down an urgent gauntlet. We should pick it up. After 13 years of militarized zealotry and fear-mongering in the name of fighting terrorism, the book \u2013 subtitled \u201cGreed, Power, and Endless War\u201d \u2013 zeros in on immense horrors being perpetrated in the name of national security.<\/p>\n

As an investigative reporter for the New York Times<\/em>, Risen has been battling dominant power structures for a long time. His new book is an instant landmark in the best of post-9\/11 journalism. It\u2019s also a wise response to repressive moves against him by the Bush and Obama administrations.<\/p>\n

For more than six years \u2013 under threat of jail \u2013 Risen has refused to comply with subpoenas demanding that he identify sources for his reporting on a stupid and dangerous CIA operation. (For details, see \u201cThe Government War Against Reporter James Risen<\/a>,\u201d which I co-wrote with Marcy Wheeler for The Nation<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A brief afterword in his new book summarizes Risen\u2019s struggles with the Bush and Obama Justice Departments. He also provides a blunt account of his long-running conflicts with the Times<\/em> hierarchy, which delayed some of his reporting for years \u2013 or spiked it outright \u2013 under intense White House pressure.<\/p>\n

Self-censorship and internalization of official worldviews continue to plague the Washington press corps. In sharp contrast, Risen\u2019s stubborn independence enables \u201cPay Any Price\u201d to combine rigorous reporting with rare candor.<\/p>\n

Here are a few quotes from the book:<\/p>\n

\u201cObama performed a neat political trick: he took the national security state that had grown to such enormous size under Bush and made it his own. In the process, Obama normalized the post-9\/11 measures that Bush had implemented on a haphazard, emergency basis. Obama\u2019s great achievement \u2013 or great sin \u2013 was to make the national security state permanent.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, as trillions of dollars have poured into the nation\u2019s new homeland security-industrial complex, the corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. But they have done so quietly. . . . The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money. . . . They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of the government in its endless war on terror, possibly the worst has been the war on truth. On the one hand, the executive branch has vastly expanded what it wants to know: something of a vast gathering of previously private truths. On the other hand, it has ruined lives to stop the public from gaining any insight into its dark arts, waging a war on truth. It all began at the NSA.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Fittingly, the book closes with a powerful chapter about the government\u2019s extreme actions against whistleblowers. After all, whistleblowing and independent journalism are dire threats to the secrecy and deception that fuel the \u201cwar on terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, James Risen is in the national spotlight at a time when the U.S. government is launching yet another spiral of carnage for perpetual war. As a profound book, \u201cPay Any Price<\/a>\u201d has arrived with enormous potential to serve as a catalyst for deeper understanding and stronger opposition to abhorrent policies.<\/p>\n

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include<\/i>War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War \u2013 the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the \u201cwar on terror.\u201d Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity: focusing on realities that are pervasive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24403,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24401\/revisions\/24403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24401"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}