Satanic Purses: Money, Myth, and Misinformation in the War on Terror

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

Tom Naylor is a savage critic of the War on Terror and the way the
United States is waging it. His book is written to be read easily,
though its constant quips, irony, and sly digs become wearying after a
few pages. So too does his argument that the Americans have got
everything wrong from their understanding of al Qaeda (he uses different
phonetic spellings for every Arabic term commonly written in the
English-language media, something else that becomes all but intolerable)
to the ways they have tried to stop terrorists’ moving funds around
the world.

The Bush administration has made terrible errors in its intelligence
gathering, its warfighting, its anti-terrorist legislation, and its
abuses of civil rights. The impact of the pro-Israel lobby and the oil
giants is also huge. No one any longer doubts these things. But the
effect of Naylor’s book and its constant effort to subject every U.S.
action or inaction to sarcastic criticism is to make one wonder if the
Americans just might be right in their “long war” strategy. Even a
stopped clock is right twice a day, and an author who sees only
“vested interest groups” directing the flow of events risks
alienating his audience of all but the true believers.