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Book review Malignant consequences of an unholy alliance

Max Blumenthal's book exposes the savage global outcome of the collusion between the US, zionism and sectarian Islamist groups, says NASSER BASTON

The Management of Savagery
by Max Blumenthal
(Verso, £18.99)

“THE PEOPLE we are fighting to-day we funded 20 years ago,” the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in 2009 and, by opening his book with that quote, Max Blumenthal highlights what he describes as the symbiotic relationship between the US and violent sectarian Islamist groups.

Clinton also obliquely acknowledged Operation Cyclone, during which the US massively funded Afghan opposition groups to bring down the pro-Soviet government, a policy which contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

The stark title of Blumenthal’s work is lifted from a book by pseudonymous Iraqi sectarian Abu Bakr Naji, whose exhortation to establish a “management of savagery” as a bridge to an Islamic state is ahistorical, with no grounding in any Islamic law.

Yet the application of this nihilistic creed echoed the agenda of the ascendant neoconservatives now embedded in both US mainstream parties, and Blumenthal chronicles its consequences in continued US support for violent sectarianism up to the present day on a world-tour of Washington-sponsored terror that includes the Balkans, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The cynical support for these managers of savagery fits well with US foreign policy, spelled out in the “clean break” strategy document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Reaganite Richard Perle for Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a key player in its gestation.

Part of its grand scheme was the establishment of a post-invasion pro-US Iraq and an Islamist eastern Syria, with the latter achieved decades later with the creation of the so-called Islamic State.

Blumenthal’s pertinent grasp of Israel’s role in imperialist politics lays bare Netanyahu’s adept networking to build an alliance of US neocons, zionist Likudniks and assorted fellow travellers across the West.

The author highlights the gullibility, or worse, culpability of liberals who cheered on the interventions of empire, sanctifying them with a spurious human rights agenda.

For Blumenthal, the litmus test of liberal acquiescence is their attitude to the “national security state,” exemplified by an unquestioning endorsement of CIA statements.

Bizarrely, some liberals have now welcomed hardened neocons like the late unlamented John McCain into the “anti-Trump” resistance.

Blumenthal’s rage at these liberal collaborationists often spills over in his Moderate Rebels podcasts, where he and co-host Ben Norton are advocates of a thorough and no-holds-barred anti-imperialism.

In that vein, this book is a useful antidote to the torrents of pro-empire bilge promoted by conservatives and liberals alike.

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