Cold War Blowback

Picked up a new book tonight looking to break from philosophy and 18 hours of Ricky Gervais podcasts. The book is Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi. Read through the first four chapters, should finish it on my day off tomorrow. The author's name rang a bell when I picked up the book, though I couldn't exactly place it. The first cue was in the preface when Khalidi references the Project for a New American Century. My mind immediately returned to a book by New York Times journalist George Packer, The Assassins Gate: America In Iraq, that I read a few years back and wrote quite heavily about on here. Packer interviews and quotes both Khalidi and PNAC. Key players in the Bush Administration signed on to the mission of PNAC. 

The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental proposisitions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

I believe there is little dispute that this organization guided the policy of the early Bush Administration and the key members of the administration that supported this neo-conservative thought quietly left the administration as the war in Iraq continued, most notably Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. The data today is overwhelming in how this ideology is an utter failure. You should really check out PNAC's webpage.

Today's issues are not all pervasive in Khalidi's book as it deals with historical context primarily but it consistently ties the historical context to its modern day products. The most perplexing results of Khalidi's scholarship is how we could let such daft logic in regards to history translate into foreign policy today. It seems we almost entirely dismiss academia when designing foreign policy. Let's see if the new administration continues this line. 

When I finish the book I'll summarize points that are worth reflecting when we hold our elected representatives accountable for their decisions. So far the issues that really caught my attention deal with early Saudi-American relations, how these relations were started with Truman even Roosevelt and the Arabian American Oil Company (ARMCO). Saudi-American relations kind of acted as a staging point for our hegemony in the Middle East and have fascinating consequences. I'm hoping Khalidi considers how Cold War maneuvering impacted human rights in the Middle East today but that may be a bit off focus for this book.

In my opinion a good non-fiction book keeps one finger busy guarding the endnotes for a quick reference to the author's sources. If each chapter doesn't contain at least 20 endnotes I have to question the author's generalizations.

A quick Google search on Khalidi will show how controversial he became during the 2008 presidential elections but my attention to major media outlets is dismal. 

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On a side note I was listening to Kid A while I was typing. I think the music is so creative the trance it induces lends itself to thoughtfulness. Am I going out on a limb when I say it is the best album of the new millennium? Perhaps.