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America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
Download PDF America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
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Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 15 hours and 7 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Random House Audio
Audible.com Release Date: April 5, 2016
Language: English, English
ASIN: B01DCNDZ0I
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
Having lived through most of this I recall the sweep of these events, but the details had grown a bit fuzzy.To me the overarching theme of Western intervention has been counterproductive at nearly every turn. From the Crusades, which had no benefit to the West but did manage to bring Muslims together to oppose and defeat the Christian armies but did manage to ravage Constantinople -- the last Eastern Christian bulwark -- and eliminate its effectiveness as a buffer state protecting Europe, to the utterly insane break up of the Ottoman Empire following World War II that included the enshrinement of the Saudis, the United States' worst ally in the history of allies, to overthrowing Iran's elected government and installing a dictator in 1953.Bacevich's book starts later in the time line, around the time of the Iranian hostage crisis and U.S. support and arming of the USSR's enemies in Afghanistan. The pattern of eff-ups continues, whether they're launched with the best of intentions or in a naked grab at controlling oil or to fend off a perceived Soviet threat.Most of these events are familiar to me. Where Bacevich is instructive, at least to me, is the military history he is able to bring to bear on the subject.Unfortunately, even as I read this I can formulate what the next few chapters of this book would look like if updated 10 or 20 years from now as the current clueless moron in the White House flounders in foreign policy. Without learning about -- and for the most part being utterly ignorant of history -- the United States is doomed to fail in this region over and over.May you live in interesting times, indeed.
This is the most incisive military analysis of America in the Middle East from Carter to Obama. An expose of the self seeking and self promoting actions of our generals and politicians and the fatuous neoconservative militarism which presently guides the foreign policy of our country. Brilliant! There is no better exposition of the delusion associated with the self proclamation of critically strategic areas of the world which before the end of the Cold War held absolutely no importance whatsoever to our well being. The folly of reliance on military power to cure political and cultural defiencies, defined as an absence of neoliberal Christian democracy, and the failure to attain that objective is documented in this engrossing study of self deception and evangelization.When you finish reading this book you will understand the reasons why we cannot effectively engage middle eastern problems but also why we can't bring ourselves to disengage.When american soldiers are sent overseas and become casualties their blood becomes a symbol to shed more blood. We have seen this in every war fought since 1945. The men we elect to the presidency with the exception of Eisenhower have had no clue how to conduct foreign policy when the lives of our men and women are at risk. We seem to be caught up in some macho vendetta with the entire world. The continuation of this vendetta has proven to be very profitable for a few wealthy people far from the firing line. It has proven to be amenable to vote getting. It has proven to be amenable to the self promotion of those officers above field level command into whose hands our servicemen have been encared.It is clear that this country is in more danger today than 35 years ago when we decided to engage directly in the middle eastern quagmire. Yes, it was a quagmire before we got involved and transformed an oil protection mission into preventive war interventionism with the purpose of imposing neoliberal democracy upon Stone Age societies. Our strategy is a muddle, a chimera.All Americans have to ask ourselves some very hard questions about just what we are doing in the Middle East and how do we expect it to end.This mission cannot go on forever and Americans cannot expect to remain insulated from the blowback from the wars we are conducting.
Andrew Bacevich was a history professor at Boston University and a former army colonel. The book starts in 1980 and summarizes American foreign policy and the various military campaigns in the Middle East since then. Bacevich is controversial and brutally honest, which makes the book a fun read. He makes a good case for abandoning the Middle East. Over the years, Bacevich claims that our policy-makers and military leaders in the region have often proved clueless and incompetent. He particularly dislikes Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks.Bacevich believes that U.S. policy in the Middle East has become incoherent and questions whether we still need to be there. He argues that U.S. policy is now on auto-pilot and blames the military industrial complex. He claims that there is a bi-partisan consensus in favor of perpetual war. Nothing will change unless the public becomes wise to what is going on. He argues that one of the drawbacks of having a professional military is that the public is no longer invested in the wars. As a result, there is no anti-war movement. Most people want to be seen to be patriotic.Prior to 1980, the strategy was simple; keep the oil flowing. However, Bacevich suggests that Gulf oil is no longer essential to maintaining the American way of life. A weakness of the book is that Bacevich rarely backs up his arguments with data, so he can sound like an opinionated uncle giving you a lecture. My limited research indicates that on this issue he is right. In 2015 the Persian Gulf only provided about 16% of America’s oil, while Canada provided 40% (according to the EIA’s website). The U.S. has become an oil exporter again and no longer needs oil from the Gulf. In 2015, the U.S. was importing 1.51 million barrels per day from the Persian Gulf, but it was also exporting 4.74 million barrels per day to the world. Bacevich suggests it is time to revisit our Middle East strategy. He argues that the Middle East is an unnecessary distraction and America is taking its eye off the ball in other parts of the world.After the Arab-Israeli War in 1973, the Saudis decided to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel with an oil embargo. This caused economic chaos in the West and long lines at gas stations. Bacevich does not mention the embargo or that Henry Kissinger told the Saudis the U.S. would take over their oil fields unless the embargo ended. The embargo ended. The U.S. has since developed a good understanding with the Saudis probably because was mostly about oil. Washington has used a mixture of carrot and stick but left the Saudis to manage their own internal affairs. Washington also provides protection in various ways. It has discouraged the press from investigating the country’s links to terrorists or its human rights abuses. The Shah was viewed as a reliable ally and U.S. policy makers remember the chaos that occurred when he was ousted in 1979. All presidents since then have wanted to preserve the House of Saud and have cut it a lot of slack.After the Shah was overthrown and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, The fear was that Tehran or Moscow might invade the Gulf and seize the oil. When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, he became a U.S. ally. The U.S. did not want Iran to become the dominant power in the region so it provided guns to Iraq. Rather confusingly, the Reagan administration also provided weapons to Iran. Two years later, America’s ally, Iraq, invaded Kuwait. Saddam became a villain. America’s mission in the region broadened. Reagan attempted to sort out the mess in Beirut and put pressure on Libya. These efforts proved costly in terms of American lives. Reagan, despite his reputation for being a tough guy, backed down and did not retaliate. Bill Clinton supported the UN's peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, but after the Black Hawk Down tragedy, the U.S. walked away from the country.Desert Storm in 1991 was a major success and led to a considerable amount of hubris. By 2002 it was received wisdom in Washington that the U.S. had the most powerful military in history and it wanted to use that power to “shape the world order.†After 9/11 the Bush Administration adopted, what can only be called, an imperial agenda. It wanted to invade countries who did not play ball. Iraq was to be a test case. Bacevich claims that Wesley Clark, a former 4-star general, was told by the Pentagon that the Bush administration wanted to invade 7 countries in 5 years, including Iran. Bacevich claims that Bush wanted to Americanize the region.The Bush team and its supporters saw the U.S. as a global hegemon. Resistance was futile. Bush believed that America was an exceptional country and its destiny was to impose its will and democracy on the rest of the world. The backward peoples of the Middle East had to “change the way they live†and get with the program and forget Islam. If they resisted, the American military would sort them out. This sounded eerily similar to Hitler’s concept of a master race, who because of their innate superiority, could do whatever they wanted.The brutal tactics of Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, also shared similarities with the Nazis. Bacevich prints an excerpt from a report written in 2004 by the International Red Cross which are shocking. American troops would smash down doors in the middle of the night and beat up ordinary people in front of their families. They would smash their houses and whisk them away to torture factories like Abu Ghraib. This behavior helped destroy America’s moral standing in the region. It was also stupid because it just created a new generation of insurgents who hated America. Iraqis became increasingly hostile to the foreign occupation. Its people did not seem to want what America offered.Bush’s strategy was a dead-end and was abandoned because it became too expensive in terms of blood and treasure. Occupying countries and forcing the people to abandon their culture was a tall order in the Islamic world. According to Brown University, both wars cost the U.S. over $4 trillion. After the financial crash, the U.S. could no longer afford to carry on invading countries it disapproved of. It has created a number of failed states. The armies it trained at massive expense proved useless. The U.S. is still trying to put Iraq back together and is retraining a new army. The strategy now seems to be to assassinate troublemakers using drones and special forces. Eliminating potential threats before they emerge.Bacevich seems excited about the prospect of the US moving into Africa. Bacevich views European colonialism, especially British colonialism, as a root cause of the world's problems. At this point he seemed to contradict himself and appears to have learned nothing from Vietnam and the Middle East wars. Fighting in Africa could be disastrous. The former British colony of Nigeria is 41% Muslim and 58% Christian. The country has been independent since 1960. There is tension between the two religious communities. The Nigerian terror group, Boko Haram is inspired by ISIS. Nigeria's population is 180 million and is expected, by the UN, to grow to 730 million by 2100. Why would the US want to send troops to Nigeria and get involved in an African civil war? How many refugees would it generate and where would they go? What would America's end game be? Nigeria was relatively peaceful during British rule. They built schools, introduced Christianity, and ended slavery.Bacevich loves the U.S. military and blames its leadership for its shortcomings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Lebanon. He also claims that the U.S. is trying to be the world’s policeman on the cheap. That is debatable, it could be that it is not very good at fighting insurgencies. The US has been spending more than the next 10 countries combined on defense. Not that long ago the British controlled Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen with a fraction of the troops that America has to deploy. It now seems that China and Russia are stepping up their game and Bacevich may be right perhaps that the U.S. should now focus its attention on meeting that potential threat and forget about the Middle East.
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