The Brethren

No this is not a post about the black church. This is a post about another one of John Grisham's formula books which I do not read but they are great company for long car trips.

The Brethren is a little different, there is no court room, there are judges but no jury. As always big brother is watching and watching. But this book was written pre 9/11/01 and it is really prophetic.

It certainly provides fodder to those who believe the Iraqi conflict was contrived to insure Bush's re-election. It certainly supports the notion that Michael Moore raised in his movie that Osama will not be found because we don't really want to find him.

It was not a clean book. Everybody got what they wanted but nobody ended up truly happy and the guilty did not suffer for their sins which disappointed me a lot.

But the what really kept me engrossed for the 6 hours that listened to the book was the fact that collateral damage is viewed as the cost of doing business when America feels under attack.

It was true in the bombing of Japan (Oh well 145000 civilian lives lost--they shouldn't have bombed us)

It was true in Korea, Vietnam and Greneda (We were freeing these people from ideologies we detest, it was for their good.)

It was true in Desert Storm (So what if our smart bombs ain't so smart)

It was true in Afghanistan (We freed the women from the tryanny of the Taliban and we shut down Al-Queda)(yeah right)

and it remains true in Iraq (The Iraqi people are now free! Yippee!)