No single review or interview can do justice to “Pay Any Price” — the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the “war on terror.” Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity: focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive.
Published this week, “Pay Any Price” 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 — subtitled “Greed, Power, and Endless War” — zeros in on immense horrors being perpetrated in the name of national security.
به عنوان یک خبرنگار تحقیقی برای نیویورک تایمزRisen برای مدت طولانی با ساختارهای قدرت مسلط مبارزه کرده است. کتاب جدید او نقطه عطفی فوری در بهترین روزنامه نگاری پس از 9 سپتامبر است. این همچنین پاسخی عاقلانه به اقدامات سرکوبگرانه دولت بوش و اوباما علیه او است.
برای بیش از شش سال - تحت تهدید زندان - رایزن از انجام احضاریههایی که از او خواسته شده بود منابع گزارش خود را در مورد یک عملیات احمقانه و خطرناک سیا شناسایی کند، خودداری کرده است. (برای جزئیات، نگاه کنید به "جنگ دولت علیه خبرنگار جیمز برخاست"، که من با مارسی ویلر برای آن نوشتم ملت.)
خلاصه ای کوتاه در کتاب جدید او، مبارزات رایزن با وزارت دادگستری بوش و اوباما را خلاصه می کند. او همچنین گزارشی صریح از درگیریهای طولانیمدت خود با این گروه ارائه میکند بار سلسله مراتب، که برخی از گزارشهای او را برای سالها به تعویق انداخت - یا آن را آشکارا افزایش داد - تحت فشار شدید کاخ سفید.
Self-censorship and internalization of official worldviews continue to plague the Washington press corps. In sharp contrast, Risen’s stubborn independence enables “Pay Any Price” to combine rigorous reporting with rare candor.
در اینجا چند نقل قول از کتاب آمده است:
* “Obama 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’s great achievement — or great sin — was to make the national security state permanent.”
* “In fact, as trillions of dollars have poured into the nation’s new homeland security-industrial complex, the corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror.”
* “There 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.”
* “The 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.”
* “Of 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.”
به طور مناسب، کتاب با فصلی قدرتمند در مورد اقدامات افراطی دولت علیه افشاگران بسته می شود. به هر حال، افشاگری و روزنامهنگاری مستقل، تهدیدی جدی برای رازداری و فریبکاری است که به «جنگ علیه تروریسم» دامن میزند.
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, “Pay Any Price” has arrived with enormous potential to serve as a catalyst for deeper understanding and stronger opposition to abhorrent policies.
Norman Solomon, a journalist with ExposeFacts.org, is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
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