<b>Shock and Aw</b>

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, Ron Suskind, Simon & Schuster, $13.75
In his bleak portrayal of an imperialist US, Ron Suskind unfolds the deceit that led to the Iraq war
Pulitzer prize-winner Ron Suskind’s latest journalistic epic deals predominantly with the continuing terrorist threat in a post-9/11 world. It sheds light on the Bush administration’s handling of the buildup to the Iraq war, and on its influence in recent events in Pakistan culminating in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. However, the author goes beyond the political by constructing a carefully threaded, if at times a little incoherent, multi-layered narrative that ducks and weaves through the lives of a cohort of individuals tried and tested by the unfolding events. Among those we follow are a young Sunni Afghan on an exchange programme in Colorado and a human-rights lawyer struggling for the rights of a Gitmo detainee.

Suskind tries to capture the essence of our time, but unfortunately the world described by him is distinctly American in colour. He seems to suggest that an American polity adhering to its historical ideals and values is the solution to the woes that have befallen the modern world. Conversely, he argues that the Bush Government is largely responsible for the escalation of tension between the East and the West. While few will dispute the latter, it is the former assertion that stands out as somewhat deluded, as it is hinted that George W. Bush and Co. were the first to step out of legal boundaries in their bid to ensure the continuing security of the American people. How can Suskind ignore Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, etc? Rather naively, it is persistently affirmed that the Bush administration’s record is worse than any previous government’s, and that as a consequence it has lost the moral high ground that is its duty to possess by virtue of its ideals and its position of supremacy.

Despite a US-centric metanarrative, Suskind does succeed in shedding a dark light on the motives and ideologies of Bush and Dick Cheney, through a careful deconstruction of the pre-Iraq war espionage saga. Here, the full deceit unfolds under the reader’s eyes: how British and US intelligence was rejected by a US executive in martial mode, how Tony Blair was deceived by the falsity of his “allies”, and how a forgery mission ordered by the White House attempted to “invent” WMD (weapons of mass destruction, the author’s favourite abbreviation) in post-invasion Iraq. Suskind does succeed in proving a point here, bemoaning an immoral approach to war that amplified the terms of the conflict. Because of its betrayal of its own values, he says, America has opened the door to a nuclear terrorist attack. Ironically, Suskind’s fear tactics only succeed in mimicking the administration he is attacking, an example Michel Foucault would have relished.
More interesting to subcontinental readers will be the description of events in Pakistan — Bhutto and Musharraf are depicted as engaged in a (dubious) Manichean struggle between good and evil which is supposed to echo the struggle facing Bush’s disillusioned America. That it does, as Suskind expounds that it reflected the dissensions within the US political establishment — Condoleezza Rice supporting Bhutto and democracy; Cheney backing Pervez Musharraf and authoritarianism. Thus, The Way of the World is the American way, a bleak portrayal from within of a fragmented but determinedly imperialist US, almost too surreal to be believed.

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