‘War is a Lie’: The Revenge of the Book Readers

— By David Swanson, Special to The BRAD BLOG

[Ed Note: I’ll be guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show several days this week. David Swanson will be one of my guests to discuss his new book. UPDATE: That interview with Swason, a somewhat contentious one at times, is now posted here. – BF]

I didn’t write this new book, “War Is A Lie” in order to knock George W. Bush’s offensive plagiarized package of lies and open criminality off the top of the book charts, but it certainly would have been worth the effort.

“War Is A Lie” was to be published on Monday, but on Sunday night word was spreading. At 3 p.m. ET the book ranked #1,845 on Amazon.com while Bush’s was #1. By 4 p.m. “War Is A Lie” was #1,088; and at 5:30 p.m. #696; at 7:10 p.m. #460; at 8:10 p.m. #226, and at 9:10 p.m. #130. If people kept buying books all night, and certainly if they did so on Monday, Bush was going to be uncrowned. Check where things stand now.

The throne room that Bush made of the oval office may someday be brought back within a representative republic as well.

I’ve blogged about this today over at Tom Dispatch. Or, rather, I’ve blogged about the prospects for war and peace in the coming year with the newly elected (or not, who knows?) Congress.

It’s going to be fun watching Republican committee chairs subpoena the president and people who obey him, while President Obama has adopted the Bush-Cheney position that Congress has no power over the rest of the government…

Typically, in recent decades, congressional committees do next to nothing in the way of oversight if chaired by someone in the same party as the president, or they investigate every rumor of a myth of a scandal if the chair is a Republican and the president is a Democrat. The 2007-2008 Congress was curious in that Democrats felt obliged to pretend to pursue accountability for governmental crimes but apparently did not feel obliged to follow through. So subpoenas were laughed off, and then forgotten about for the past two years of the Democrats doing nothing.

Now we may see Congress show a little backbone, but in order to investigate fantasies and delusions rather than serious abuses including the single most serious one: war. That was a topic the Democrats were eager to talk about right up until January 2007, when they acquired the power to do something about it.

But we have records of wars back through the centuries, of what was said in private and what in public. No more data is needed to establish that all wars are based on lies. I’ve sought to establish that in my new book. Here’s what some people have said about it:

• Rob Kall of OpEdNews calls it “an important, destined to be classic book.” He adds, “If there are awards for brilliant books that explode new ways to oppose the evils of this world, then David should sweep the field this year.”
• Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy, says “David Swanson is an antidote to the toxins of complacency and evasion. He insists on rousing the sleepwalkers, confronting the deadly prevaricators and shining a bright light on possibilities for a truly better world.”
• And Geoff Millard of Iraq Veterans Against the War concludes, “Not since General Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket has a simpler, more brilliant, or truer book been published.”

Please help make this book #1 on Amazon right now!

Here’s a discussion I recently had about the book with Paul Jay of The Real News…