March 1, 2021
Ackerman, a multi-award-winning national security correspondent, shows how the nativist sentiments amplified by the War on Terror, both here and abroad, through drone strikes, digital surveillance, and torture, not only fractured America but led to the emergence of a demagogue like Donald Trump. With a 35,000-copy first printing.
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May 24, 2021
Bigotry, loss of freedom, government overreach, and Donald Trump’s presidency are the fruits of the endless “war on terror,” according to this sweeping indictment of post-9/11 politics. Journalist Ackerman’s debut rehashes 20 years of disastrous, abusive policies following the September 11 attacks, including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the CIA’s torture of terrorism suspects, President Obama’s drone strikes and their civilian casualties, and the NSA’s warrantless surveillance programs. More deeply, he contends, the demonization of imagined Muslim enemies fueled currents of anti-immigrant nativism and white supremacism that culminated in Trump’s MAGA movement. Ackerman’s critique of specific elements of the war on terror are incisive, if sometimes lurid—“Coked-up naked gym rats on heavy steroidal doses would run onto Green Zone balconies and, screaming, fire AK-47 rounds into the Iraqi night sky,” he writes, describing American military contractors in Baghdad—and spares neither Republicans nor Democrats. Unfortunately, his promiscuous applications of the trope (“Coronavirus was the public health equivalent of the War on Terror”) and blanket allegations of racism (“only white supremacy can truly explain the depth of right-wing fury at Obama”) lack nuance. By explaining everything in terms of counterterrorism and white supremacism, Ackerman ends up obscuring more than he clarifies. Agent: Laurie Liss, Sterling Lord Literistic.
June 15, 2021
How Osama bin Laden helped bring about not just 9/11, but also the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Donald Trump, writes Daily Beast senior national security correspondent Ackerman, "understood something about the War on Terror that [others] did not"--namely, that underlying it was the view that the enemy comprised non-White groups and nations "from a hostile foreign civilization." Read: Islam. Certainly, that's how many Muslims read it, and though Trump decried America's foreign wars, he did little to rein in the hyperactive military. Anti-Muslim sentiment long predated 9/11, but when the towers fell, the resulting "Forever War," its targets almost exclusively Muslim, backfired. It was ill defined and essentially unwinnable, "intolerable for a people accustomed to thinking of itself as exceptional." While that war was fought abroad, it reverberated powerfully at home, where a surveillance state developed that had unprecedented police powers and "an atmosphere of paranoia that frequently turned conspiratorial." As Ackerman rightly points out, the paranoia was directed toward Muslims but also toward liberals who were presumed to coddle the enemy. It was pointedly not directed at the domestic right-wing terrorists who have worked just as much mischief as al-Qaida. Immediately after the tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre denounced federal agents in their "stormtrooper uniforms" as enemies of "law-abiding citizens," a view very much in evidence today. Meanwhile, hate crimes against Muslims have steadily risen, fueled by nativism, evangelical zealotry, and racism, all of which congealed in the cynical MAGA movement, which brought the world the spectacle of the right-wing extremist invasion of the Capitol and ongoing attempts to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election--even as the Trump administration branded peaceful protestors as insurrectionists. Ackerman capably connects seemingly disparate elements without forcing issues so that readers will see how such matters as the Branch Davidian siege of 1993 helped fuel White supremacist movements today. An intelligent, persuasive book about events that are all too current.
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Starred review from August 1, 2021
Attempting the near impossible, national-security correspondent Ackerman offers a book stuffed to the brim with details discussing the events leading to 9/11 and how America's response paved the way for the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency 15 years later, while still acknowledging his project's incompleteness. The bulk of the book focuses on how the political left and right each chose to frame the War on Terror and how the Security State continues to entrench itself in daily life. This book is often a grim recitation of how facts are conflated with political maneuvers, like equating Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda and then-President Bush asserting that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. But Democrats Clinton, Kerry, and Biden also acquiesced to the war that followed. CIA machinations thread through every chapter, especially when the wrong people are spied on for the wrong reasons. The book gives readers a deeper-than-headlines take on Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange. Ackerman asserts that Trump used the War on Terror as an ""instrument of his will."" This book does a masterful job communicating how nothing is as it seems. As for what to make of that assertion, the onus is on the reader.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from August 1, 2021
National-security reporter Ackerman delivers a tour-de-force about the transformation of the United States in the two decades since the September 11 attacks, that thoroughly and comprehensively examines how the post-9/11 security state has engulfed society. Measures that are supposed to give a feeling of security have instead created an unnerving apparatus that destabilizes societal norms, Ackerman contends, pointing to a few key moments in early 21st-century history, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Iraq War (2003-11), and the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. What Ackerman does best is explaining how political discourse fed into keeping the security state colossally unchecked, with no defined end point. Both liberals and conservatives receive blame here, especially in Ackerman's discussion of the war on terror. He concludes that the monstrous security state has turned in on itself with the rise of nativist violence, militarized policing, and fractured governance. VERDICT An essential work that encapsulates the trajectory of American politics in the first two decades of the 21st century, and the lasting impact on everyday life.--Jacob Sherman, Univ. of Texas, San Antonio
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.