Eliot Weinberger’s book 9/12: New York After is a series of essays, which he refers to as ‘snapshots’, of his personal impression; and the political reactions and consequences he expected in the days after 9/11. He faithfully records with what seems a paradox of subtle irony yet startling candor on the state of New York, the state of George W. Bush’s America, and sadly the state of the world in five brilliant essays from the day after to the 16 months following the 9/11 attacks.

The absolute genius of this work, however, lies in his first ‘prelude’ essay establishing the beginning of the terror not with the much publicized airplane-burning/building-crumbling image most of us carry in our heads, but, with the election of the Bush administration early in 2001. In much of the book Weinberger avoids giving a personal critique, choosing to simply outline facts and leave the reader to come to his or her own conclusions. The facts about US foreign policies, the current government, and manipulations of mass media, although not revelations of any secrets, are nonetheless shocking. The conclusions the reader is left to draw are not ambiguous. Weinberger’s lack of confidence in the above institutions rings out loud and clear right from the title of his first essay, in which he refers to the first election (or lack thereof) of G. W. Bush as President as the first ‘coup d’etat’ in US history.

Some of these revelations, especially those about Bush Junior’s Christian ‘fundamentalist connections’, almost ‘pathological’ ignorance, and lack of concern for the environment, are all facts that should be easily available and enthusiastically reported by the much-celebrated free press. Although these essays were first aimed at an international audience, it is unnerving that the American people themselves may not know any of this information about their President. It would be infinitely more unnerving if these people did in fact know all this about Bush Jr. and so many of them still voted for him to lead their nation, and pretty much to lead the world. If any doubts still remain as to Bush’s role in terror, Weinberger’s scathing, below-the-belt comparison of the great warrior of terrorism with the world’s most popular terrorist, Osama bin Laden, will serve to convince. ‘Both [are] cut off from the world, one in a cave and one on a ranch in the middle of nowhere; one who reads no books and the other who presumably reads one book.’ Speaking of reading books, it seems unlikely that any Bush-voting Americans will be fazed in their Bush administration loyalties by this book, if they even venture a read. On the other hand, those who oppose America’s invasive strong-arm foreign policies will find within themselves resonant agreement with Weinberger’s assertions.

Many books on the shelves today speak in hindsight of the consequences of the Bush administration’s policies and the war in Iraq. At a time when the world immediately around him was falling apart, however, Weinberger saw clearly enough through the sprays of shattered glass and concrete to predict with disturbing accuracy the response of Bush and his frightfully powerful team (Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft et al). They used this attack as an excuse to throw democracy out the window, to wage an illegitimate war, and lie to the American people for so-called reasons of security.

Weinberger’s essays are a brief impassioned work exhibiting a sophisticated awareness of international affairs, and an impressive Houdini act of freedom from the constraints of his own nation’s collective false conscious. What hit home about the essays was that despite of being full of harsh facts and discouraging conclusions about the state of affairs, they still made a lot of personal connections. He pointed out that almost everyone in America knew someone who lived or worked, in or around the World Trade Center to varying degrees. You can be intellectually detached and write a literary critic, but it seems impossible to ignore all the millions of people that have been affected, not only close to home but the world over. After all, the US ‘is not a landlocked nation in the Himalayas or the Andes. Tremors here shake the world’.