A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy, and September 11, 2001 (Nation Books)

By Katrina Vanden Heuvel

On Tuesday morning, a piece was torn out of our world. A patch of blue sky that should not have been there opened up in the New York skyline.... Our city was changed forever. Our country was changed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560254009
• ISBN13: 9781560254003
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Nation Books
• Length: 349 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

It's High Time

Although events pertaining on terrorism have further unfolded since the publication of this book, A JUST RESPONSE is as relevant today as it was nearly seven years ago. The book is a once-in-a-life-time look at what really took place just months after 9-11, before the massive obfuscation by the mainstream media and the Bush administration. Saying that, what is gathered in this book are the most respected figures on the progressive spectrum. These men and women writers offer analysis, causes and consequences of not just what the terrorists had brought to our shores but the cover-up and misinformation of the Bush administration. A JUST RESPONSE brought together the long-needed and desperately absented perceptions of what really happened on 9-11 that have been broadsided by the bombastic and jingoism of the corporate and right-wing news media. It's provocative, audacious--and it's high time!

Beware, sceptical thoughts found here

An overview of some of the contents found in this book, a collection of writings from The Nation magazine written in the few months after the 9-11 massacres. William Greider, Bill Moyers and others address corporate knavery since 9-11. Katha Pollit asks why we have to fund barbaric dictatorships like the one in Saudi Arabia and oppose progressive forces in the ME. She points to the really unbelievably courageous work of the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan, operating for years within Afghanistan as fierce opponents of both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. She also staggers humanity by explaining why she would not allow her daughter to fly an American flag out their living room window. Victor Navasky calls for Ann Coulter to be host of "Politically Incorrect" instead of Bill Maher. Coulter was fired by The National Review Online for saying racist things that not a few readers of that great publication probably believe but don't say so loudly publicly. On the other hand Bill Maher immediately backtracked after his infamous comments after a few advertisers for his show withdrew and he said he didn't mean what he said he loves our military people and so on. At least, he says, Miss Coulter was actually being politically incorrect in contrast to the whimpy centrist liberal Maher. Chalmers Johnson, the former CIA analyst, has a particularly powerful piece. He quotes the U.S. Space Command's document "Vision for 2020": "the globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the 'haves' and the have-nots." He quotes the eminent senator from Georgia, the Hon. Zell Miller, as saying on the day after 9/11 that he didn't care if there was "collateral damage," lets bomb the hell out of everybody. He notes that collateral damage is one of those terms that isued to describe our destruction of Iraqi and Serb civillians by our high-flying plains. And that this might have been the term that our ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, might have used while he was helping coordinate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans in the 80's while Ambassador to Honduras. Richard Falk outlines his case for the attack on Afghanistan being a "just war." Numerous letters are printed in response to this including from Howard Zinn. The latter writes about the effects of our bombing: bloody young children staggering accross the Pakistani border, enitre villages and families wiped out, the evil cluster bombs, a red cross warehouse bombed. Noam Chomsky quotes the New York Times about U.S. pressure on the military oligarchy running Pakistan to close its border to truck convoys carrying food to Afghanistan. He quotes from various aid agencies which condemned the American bombing as exacerbating the humanitarian disaster by blocking the distribution of desperately needed food aid. The 2001 Fall harvest in Afghanistan was 80 percent disrupted. Other contributors point to the sleaziness of the public relations gesture in dropping 37,0