April 26th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
I rescued Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism by P.J. O’Rourke from a Borders in Cincinnati’s airport.
In this book, O’Rourke writes includes some of his columns from The Atlantic Monthly covering various war zones such as Kosovo, Israel, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iwo Jima. There are also lighter chapters, including an essay describing America’s traditional wish to be left alone, another refuting point-by-point a letter by Nobel laureates calling for action to end poverty, and a description of a protest march on D.C. where the protesters didn’t seem to know what they were protesting.
The author reports with a straight tone the events that happen around him, but occasionally there are opportunities for levity. In Egypt, nobody begs, but everyone wants you to buy their postcards. In Iraq, the British troops stand watch while the locals wrestle food from trucks providing donations, only to step in if there’s an actual fight. As was the case in Iwo Jima, a country no longer has to station 90,000 troops on an island 5 miles in diameter to protect itself from being bombed.
There is a chapter where the author comments on the then-upcoming war on Iraq. Instead of looking for WMDs, he says we should have just come out and said we were taking out Saddam. “As a casus belli, weapons of mass destruction did seem like a pair of pants cut to the size of North Korea and into which Iraq was being stuffed.” It was good that the United Nations Security Council flagellated in its response toward Iraq so that we could see the folly of a single world government.
The book is an easy read, though I found myself looking up a couple of words, like prolixity. The humor is subdued; I was hoping for something a little more brash and irreverent, like Kurt Vonnegut or even some of P.J.’s other works.
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