Exile: A tale of Washington’s twisted role in the world

What Fernandez does in this book is so old-fashioned, and has so quietly evaporated from the how-to guide of being a leftist journalist, that it is worth noting. In case after sordid and bloody case, roving from Tegucigalpa to Diyarbakir, Turkey, to Beirut, she insists that the target of critique cannot simply be bad people doing bad things.

People writing on places where the US is responsible for doing bad things ought to convey the US role. It is usually enormous: shipping Blackhawks and Apaches to the Turkish counterinsurgency forces, embargoing infrastructural repair and water purification equipment from a war-devastated Iraq. In reminding us of that role, Fernandez does us all – except for those profiting from such mayhem – a great service, and it there that the book’s central contribution lies.

Read the full review here.