Okay, I want to preface this drunk book review by saying that I am not a terrorist nor do I support terrorism. I feel like I need to state this because it's KIND OF HARD to get on the internet, while drunk, and talk about terrorism. But I got this cool book, United States of Jihad from BFB and well, my blog is what is, as my Grandma would say. BUT, I am ALL ABOUT making America great again. And I do NOT mean that in the sense of, "Hey, let's all vote for Donald Trump!" Because THAT guy, he's a fucking terrorist.
Fuck, we're off to a really bad start. I feel like my whole preface is basically what a terrorist would say to make people think he's not a terrorist. I'm now on like 100 watch lists, and so are you. It's a good thing I'm not a terrorist. Terrorist is really hard to type whilst drunk. Too many Rs.
Let's get down to brass tacks. This book is pretty good. I saw Bergen give an interview about this book on the Daily Show a few weeks back, so I was excited to see what he had to say in long form.
The premise is home-grown terror and the spread of ISIS. (P.S. FUCK ISIS, they're the worst. You can't trust anyone without a sense of humor.) An interesting concept, especially with the upcoming election. If you watch any GOP debate, they're all for getting rid of all Muslims, and especially preventing any from coming to the country. But what's interesting about this book is how many terrorists are actually American. Born and raised in the good old U. S. of A.
The history of ISIS is pretty interesting and hearing about what they've done with social media is crazy. I still don't understand why any of these idiots would give up their lives based on a tweet, but there's a lot I don't understand about idiots in general.
The thing I found most interesting and that has been most stuck in my brain since finishing the book is the whole idea of entrapment. Bergen says that most of the planned terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11 have been through the FBI. Basically, they think someone is a terrorist, befriend them, plan an attack and get them to follow through so they can arrest them. It's definitely a gray area. On one hand, I can see the benefit of tricking these people into proving their guilt. Hey! They're (suspected) terrorists after all! On the other, would they have gone through with any of it without that push? Bergen presents some cases that cast serious doubt.
Another thing that I found interesting was the very first story in the book. It's about a young Muslim kid from Chicago that gets caught in the airport trying to leave America to join ISIS. He's arrested at the airport and convicted of terrorism. Around the same time, a very similar situation happened with a young white girl in the states, but the FBI contacted her parents several times before she was arrested, trying to talk her out of it. A whole point was raised about why the Muslim kid was not given the same treatment, why the FBI did not try to use his family to change his mind. The book definitely raised some issues that I would never have thought about, some sympathies with young people that maybe could have had a different outcome. FUCK, see what reason can do to a person???
The most upsetting thing to me was reading about a lot of the inadequacies of our current system. Most of the successful terrorist attacks have been, in some way, predicted or the government has been warned. And in almost all cases, someone from the terrorist's community or family was the one to do so. This is particularly upsetting because of the right-wing nut jobs' attacks on the Muslim community. Ted Cruz's recent schpiel about monitoring the communities, or the entire party's demands to ban Muslims seems unfounded when you look at the evidence. The Muslim community is like any other community, hoping to keep people safe, but they're mostly ignored when they try to help.
The end was a little strange to me though. I enjoyed reading the book, it was really well written, and each section lead with an interesting story, and then created a theme around that story, whether it be social media, or community, etc. However, the last section really veered off course. Bergen dropped the discussion of terrorism, saying that you're so much more likely to die from a mass shooting than you are a terrorist attack, and then began to push his agenda. And hey, I completely agree with his agenda, it just felt a little bizarre. Guns are bad, there are a lot of wack jobs in this country killing a lot of people, more so than ISIS. Bergen, we're totally in agreement. But if you wanted to write a book about gun violence and legislation in America, just do that. No one was holding a gun to your head. (OOOOOOOOOH SEE WHAT I DID THERE!)
However, it did leave me with one amazing stat: "Since 9/11, extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right-wing credos, including white supremacists, antiabortion extremists, and anti-government militants, have killed around the same number of people in the United States as have extremists motivated by al-Qaeda's ideology. As we have seen, by the end of 2015, forty-five people have been killed in jihadist terrorist attacks in the United States, while right-wing racists and antigovernment militants had killed forty-eight."
THAT IS SOME INSANE SHIT. But yeah, Muslims are the problem, not right-wing extremists that tout their second amendment right. SUUUUUURE.
I don't know. I get that terrorism is extremely dangerous, and no one wants another 9/11, but some of the measures that have been used to catch so called terrorists, based on what I've read in this book, seem sketchy as fuck. And some of the means to actually stop ALL kinds of terrorism, seem to be routinely ignored. After reading this book, I just wanted to mail it to every single Republican out there. They clearly all need some education.
Soooooo, would I talk about this book while drunk? I don't know, it's hard. I've been putting off this book review because I'm afraid it's going to put me on like every Homeland Security list. Terrorism is a tough topic, especially when you lack basic motor skills due to massive wine consumption.
Would I recommend this book while drunk? Dude, it was a super easy book to read and it was less than 300 pages. If you're interested in learning about home-grown terror, why the fuck not? I would definitely recommend it to any right-wing nut job in my life. HAHAHA JUST KIDDING, I DON'T ASSOCIATE WITH THOSE TYPES.
Fuck, that was an INTENSE book report. Terrorism really kills... one's buzz.
