The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom

Abstract

Saul LandauLondon: Pluto Press, 2003. ix, 182pp, $38.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7453-2140-2)As Michael Moore and Ann Coulter can attest, there is a lot of money in partisan political commentary. Reviews of their books on booksellers' websites run into the hundreds, usually awarding the author either a furious one or enthusiastic five stars, depending on the political prejudices of the reader. Indeed, given the enormous sales of Moore and his fellow antagonists, there is a good case for arguing that their books--highly subjective, eccentrically researched and indomitably splenetic as they are--carry more weight with ordinary readers both inside and outside the United States than a hundred erudite articles in academic journals.With The Pre-Emptive Empire, Saul Landau, who describes himself as an internationally known scholar, author, journalist and activist, is the latest writer to answer the partisan call to arms. As is typical with works of this kind, his thesis is relatively simple. George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000 as part of a malevolent corporate plot, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in pursuit of the sinister designs of a neoconservative cabal, and, perhaps even more seriously, serves as the front-man for the destruction of the world by the baleful forces of globalization and world capital.These are not, it has to be said, unusual views. Neither are they so wholly divorced from reality as to qualify their author for immediate incarceration in the nearest sanatorium. But nowhere are they illustrated by anything that might pass for solid evidence; instead, Landau relies on partisan reports from sympathetic sources, piling assertion upon assertion in a rapidly rising pyramid of self-righteous anger. Indeed, at stage is there any suggestion that Landau has actually done any very detailed research for his book; like the Moores and Coulters of this world, he had need to, because he already knew what he believed before he began writing the book. And neither is there any suggestion, however meagre, of even the slightest self-doubt or complexity in Landau's view of the world. There are heroes and there are villains; their identity is self-evident, and only a fool or a dupe could question his judgement.Landau's great hero is President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who is twice described as a religious figure and is praised for his miraculous leadership, his practical political perspective and his heroic discourse of justice and independence (pp 103-04). Never does Landau even hint at the possibility that Castro might have the odd weakness to accompany his superhuman strengths, or that the Cuban regime might be less than paradise on earth. His treatment of the book's villains is equally subtle. In early chapter, the Bush family is likened to the murderous and corrupt Mafia family from the film Prizzi's Honor. President George W. Bush is twice lampooned for his struggle with alcoholism, while his father, who served as ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China and director of the CIA, is described as having no qualifications (p 14) for the presidency he assumed in 1989. …