Reddit reviews America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History

Definitely an event that is often overlooked, but i'm not sure what you mean by the "beginning." 1979 Iranian Revolution is a much better starting date for modern U.S. policy in the Middle East. Check out Andrew Bacevich's America's War for the Greater Middle East. It also contains excellent analysis of the Beirut bombing and associated events.

>Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq before G.W.Bush even assumed office

I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he'd been duped. But this just makes his support for it that much more inhumane, knowing fully the history of how US invasions of third world nations had gone before that. So what I'm hearing here is that he was monstrous, not credulous. Cool.

>As for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, maybe it's because I'm not American but I take a much more nuanced view on the rationale for the United States going to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq

No, it's not that you're not American, it's that you don't apparently see dead Iraqis as mattering that much, I guess? It seems like a pretty basic exercise in empathy to center the people who will suffer the most in your considerations of what actions to take or not take.

>As for Michael Moore getting people to 'wake up' to the truth IMO he's a bullshit artist and not a particularly good one either because anyone whose taken even more than a cursory glance at the history of Iraq, the Bush family connections he espouses and the motivations he suggests that the U.S government had for invading Iraq are almost all universally false and his entire case is misleading.

I mean, look at the genius speaking for himself:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/bush.war.talk/

"He tried to kill my dad" was part of the case. Who the fuck cares, George?

We went into Iraq for oil. We only care about the Middle East in general because of oil. You're a naif if you think otherwise.

Strong recommendation for this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Americas-War-Greater-Middle-East-ebook/dp/B0174PRIY4

Written by a military man who became a military historian, who lost a son in Afghanistan, if you're wondering if he's qualified to write it.

We've been in the region in an openly militaristic set of operations since the Carter administration.

Michael Moore is no worse for democracy, and I'd say substantially better, than GW Bush, Colin Powell or Dick Cheney. We'd be much better off if none of those men ever rose to power.

Ok look at Abu Ghraib then. They investigated it and marked it secret as an attempt to cover it up until it leaked in 2004. Page 264

https://www.amazon.com/Americas-War-Greater-Middle-East-ebook/dp/B0174PRIY4

Andrew Bacevich's America's War for the Greater Middle East is a good summary of Carter-to-present.

I've read great things about Andrew Bacevich's America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. It was just released a few months ago so I'm hoping it will help me better understand current events and Obama's presidency.

Also, I thought his book American Empire was interesting, which he published in 2002. Bacevich is, by the way, a conservative. I don't want to misrepresent his ideas, so I encourage you to read the book. But there's an idea I marked that I'll quote.

> When it comes to the fundamentals of U.S. policy...continuities loom large...In practice, Clinton and his advisers drew on basic ideas that Bush (41) and his team had already put in play and that, indeed, formed the received wisdom of American statecraft accumulated across a century or more.

> In that regard, five ideas stand out—each one embraced by Bush, each figuring in Clinton’s rearticulation of U.S. strategy: the identification of interdependence as the dominant reality of international politics; a commitment to advancing the cause of global openness; an emphasis on free trade and investment as central to that strategy and a prerequisite for prosperity at home; a belief in the necessity of American hegemony—while avoiding any actual use of that term; and frequent reference to the bugbear of “isolationism” as a means of disciplining public opinion and maintaining deference to the executive branch in all matters pertaining to foreign relations.

edit: i didn't mention the arab spring, as for that, i recalled a passage from a theory of international terrorism (free pdf can be found online)

> If Islamic political parties were allowed to contest elections, they are feared to win elections on anti-US and anti-Israel platforms.13 In Jordan and Egypt, for example, anti-Israel religious parties would easily sweep freely held general elections. If democratically elected Islamic parties come to power, they would denounce the peace treaties with Israel and adopt anti-US foreign policies. Knowing this, Israelis see an existential threat in democratization of the Muslim world. Since US national interests may diverge from those of Israel, a democratic Muslim world may drive a wedge between Israel and the US. If the US were to sacrifice its own interests for the sake of preserving the US-Israel alliance, a democratic Muslim world would be further estranged from the US. In either case, free democ- racy in the Middle East would pose new challenges to US military, security, and economic interests in the world. To avoid these developments, both the US and Israel support a distorted notion of democracy that suppresses religious parties from contesting elections and assuming power.

America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History