Reviews for Korea

The average rating for Korea based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-06-29 00:00:00 Jeffrey C Millman Killing Hope should be read in tandem with Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes. Legacy is the more polished, unified and better argued account of the internal history of the CIA; Killing Hope is a collection of case studies of the miserable repercussions of the CIA in action -- a relentlessly grim and unjustifiable roll call of murder, rape, torture, subversion of democracy and pointless war. All the tactics that the second Bush Administration has used openly for the last eight years have been part and parcel of our arsenal to preserve "freedom and liberty" since before the ink dried on our Constitution (at least one gets that from reading Appendix II, which chronicles our CIA and military interventions from 1798 to 1945). The book is sad commentary on the corruption of power, the hypocrisy of our leaders, and the willful blindness of most Americans, as well as (in terms of practice) how "nonunique" America among the nations of the world. It also brings home impossibility of being a "patriot" in any meaningful sense. To preserve one's morality, the thinking person has to rise above the petty tribalisms of race, state or ideology and ask "Who suffers?" and "What good comes from destroying the lives of innocents?" Unfortunately, the only edition my library had brings things up to 1994. I'd like to get my hand on the latest version eventually to get Blum's take on subsequent events.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-11 00:00:00 Keryn Gibson The only reason I don't give this book 5 stars is the author gets a little carried away in his commentary. Not that he is inaccurate, only that the book would be more powerful with less sarcasm, deserved though that sarcasm may be. Killing Hope proves beyond a doubt that the United States of America is the unchallenged leader of hypocrisy in the world. And that title is well earned to the present time. Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense, department spokespersons, and all manner of government officials at home and abroad lie without qualm, they also condone acts of terror and sabotage, killings, assassinations, coups, warlords and death squads. John Yoo is nothing new. Is the Central Intelligence Agency responsible to the American people? Try asking your congressperson what CIA current missions might be. Try to get a figure on what the CIA spends. Have you ever seen the CIA in the federal budget appropriations? Think what Blackwater did (does now under a different name) was bad? It's just business as usual. George W. Bush said "We do not torture". A lie but nothing new. Pick a president - they had their hands in the dirt. Where GWB really topped the pack was in his declaration of a "war on terror" when terror has been a much used tool of American foreign policy since WW2. Blum builds an irresistible case that the United States has been empire building. The USSR and communism were never close to being the threat that they were portrayed to be. Latin American countries shed blood for decades as behind the scenes the CIA and the military, with Presidential approval, raised counter-revolutionary hell through bribery, training and equipping armies and thugs, and outright intervention across the Central and South American landscape. To this day the pointless embargo on Cuba continues. I don't believe I have ever read such a depressing book, because all of the horror visited on foreign lands has been done in my name, without my knowledge and while my elected leaders have lied to me about it all. Killing Hope is not a pleasurable read, but it should be read by all of us to understand why so many countries are less than enthusiastic about the policy (not declared but the REAL policy) of our nation. It is also an excellent example of why every effort for openness in government should be supported fully and all claims of national security examined carefully.