The long road to Baghdad
Subtitle: the making of America's new longest war
By: Lloyd C. Gardner.
Publisher: New Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9781595584045
Subjects: Iraq War, 2003- -- Causes; United States -- Politics and government -- 2001-
Description: In this stunning new narrative of the road to America's "new longest war," one of the nation's premier diplomatic historians excavates the deep historical roots of the U.S. misadventure in Iraq. Lloyd Gardner's sweeping and authoritative narrative places the Iraq War in the context of U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam, casting the conflict as a chapter in a much broader story in sharp contrast to the host of recent accounts, which focus almost exclusively on the decisions (and deceptions) in the months leading up to the invasion. Above all, Gardner illuminates a vital historical thread connecting Walt Whitman Rostow's defense of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, Zbigniew Brzezinski's renewed attempts to project American power into the "arc of crisis" (with Iran at its center), and, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the efforts of two Bush administrations, in separate Iraq wars, to establish a "landing zone" in that critically important region. Far more disturbing than a reckless adventure inspired by conservative ideologues or a simple conspiracy to secure oil (though both ingredients were present in powerful doses), Gardner's account explains the Iraq War as the necessary outcome of a half-century of doomed U.S. policies. The Long Road to Baghdad is essential reading, with sobering implications for a positive resolution of the present quagmire.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Contents; title: Introduction; title: Beyond Baghdad; title: the Sacred metaphor of "making progress"; title: Zbig at the khyber pass, or the last flight of the Persian rug; title: the first Gulf War, in which the "realists" make their last stand; title: The end of history, in which the theory and practice; title: Conflict; title: axis of evil, in which the nation's enemies are revealed; title: Shock and awe, in which we learn how some democracies go to War; title: The occupation, in which we learn what followed shock and awe; title: The dream dies hard, in which the administration loses the mandate of the people; title: What lies ahead, in which the meaning of the war is revealed; title: Notes; title: Index.