Reference Reviews

Doug’s Student Reference Room

National Security, edited by David M. Haugen. 123 p. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2008. ISBN 13: 978-0-7377-3924-4. $21.20.

The day after the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Americans had little trouble agreeing that their national security was threatened. But almost immediately, differing perspectives arose about what to do about that threat, and more fundamentally, what that threat was. This debate, which has only intensified in the interim, forms the basis of this short volume. President George W. Bush weighs in with a 2007 American Legion speech, contending that Islamic extremism is the “gravest threat to U.S. security,” that Shia and Sunni extremists control the opposition agenda in Iraq, and that, in the end, the U.S. must prevail, because either these groups advance their interests or the U.S. advances theirs. Shibley Telhami, the University of Maryland’s Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development and an expert on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, counters with a differentiation between religious extremism and terrorism, calling for a focused strategy that does not blur the distinction between al-Qaeda followers and the majority of the Muslim world. Barack Obama contends that dependence on foreign oil and a lack of comprehensive energy policy weaken our national security stance, an argument countered in a USA Today editorial by government and public affairs professors Eric Ghols and Daryl Press. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff argues that homeland security is working, while Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook calls homeland security a failure. Paired essays argue for and against the Protect America Act—essentially a debate over national security and civil rights. The final essays warn of the national security threats posed by poor fiscal policy and cyber-terrorism, arguments offered without counterpoint. In spite of this shortcoming, the essays as a whole, contributed by national leaders on a topic of great current and historical interest, represent an outstanding introduction to the broad spectrum of views about this country’s national security. As with others in Greenhaven Press’s At Issue series, this volume concludes with a list of relevant organizations, a brief bibliography of books and periodicals for further research, and an index. Highly recommended for high school libraries.
—Doug Achterman