REVIEW: A symbol of all that is wrong with the ‘war on terror’
Review of Prisoner 345 and Lost Stories Retold
Abstract
Prisoner 345: My 2330 days in Guantánamo, by Sami Alhaj. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Media Network, 2019. 126 pages. No ISBN.
The Refugee’s Messenger: Lost Stories Retold, edited by Tarek Cherkaoui. Istanbul, Turkey: TRT World Research Centre, 2019. 192 Pages. ISBN 978-605-9984-28-7
A RECENT article in the Middle East Eye pilloried the United States lack of preparedness for the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic. Lamenting that if only the world’s richest democracy could have instead of frittering away trillions of dollars on ‘endless wars’ invested in the country’s health infrastructure, the world would be in a better place today. Washington had ‘built an entire infrastructure to counter terrorism and criminalise Muslim communities’, spending almost $6.4 trillion on pointless wars that had killed off half a million people since September 11 2011 (Hilal & Raja, 2020). Yet, which was the biggest threat – the elusive target of the so-called ‘war on terror’, or the pandemic, which killed more than 20,000 Americans and infected a further 500,000 (with numbers still rising when this edition of PJR went to press)?
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References
Hilal, M., & Raja, D. (2020, April 6). US wages endless war on terror, but fails in war on coronavirus. Middle East Eye. Retrieved from https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/coronavirus-us-prioritises-war-terror-over-health-its-citizens
Kingsley, P. (2015, February 1). Peter Greste released after serving 13 months in Egyptian jail – while others wait and hope. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/01/joy-release-peter-greste-egypt
Copyright (c) 2020 David Robie
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