The American Trajectory: Divine Or Demonic?

“David Ray Griffin has done it again. His new book should be read as aprequel to the seminal Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World.Supported by extensive research, Griffin thoroughly debunks themyth of an American Empire as a benign, exceptionalist, divinelyordained historical agent. Instead of Manifest Destiny, what reality-based Griffin charters is the ‘malign’ ways of US foreign policy sincethe 19th century; a trajectory founded by slavery and genocide ofindigenous peoples and then imperially expanded, non-stop. ‘Malign’happens to be a term currently very much in vogue acrossthe Beltway—but always to designate US competitors Russia andChina. Griffin consistently challenges Beltway gospel, demonstrating that ifthe US had not entered WWI, there may have been no WWII. Heunmasks the lies surrounding the true story of the Pearl Harborattacks. He asks: If the US was really guided by God, howcould it ‘choose’ to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, knowing that ‘theatomic bombs were not necessary to end the war?’Griffin also shows how the Cold War was actually conceptualizedseveral years before the 1950 National Security Council paper 68 (NSC-68). He revisits the origins of irrational hatred of Iran; thedemonization of Cuba; the lies surrounding the Vietnam debacle; thefalse flags across Europe via Operation Gladio; the destruction ofYugoslavia; the decades-long evisceration of Iraq; and theramifications of the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.This sharp, concise history of the American Empire ultimatelydemonstrates, in Griffin’s analysis, the ‘fraud’ of endorsing self-praising American Exceptionalism. A must read.”—Pepe Escobar, Asia Times/Hong Kong