I saw this book by Robert Dreyfuss listed in a podcast on the History News Network while checking out a link about Abu Gharib photos from Michelle Malkin. It seems intriguing, because Dreyfuss's claims about US policy favoring Islamic fundamentalists appear to explain a lot of things that are going wrong right now around the world from Denmark to Dagestan. Here's the blurb from Amazon.com:
The first complete account of America’s mostHere's a link to his personal website.
dangerous foreign policy miscalculation: sixty years of support for Islamic fundamentalism.
Devil’s Game is the gripping story of America’s misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. Among all the books about Islam, this is the first comprehensive inquiry into the touchiest issue: How and why did the United States encourage and finance the spread of radical political Islam?
Backed by extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, and foreign service officials, Robert Dreyfuss argues that this largely hidden relationship is greatly to blame for the global explosion of terrorism. He follows the trail of American collusion from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s Egypt to links with Khomeini and Afghani jihadists to cooperation with Hamas and Saudi Wahhabism. Dreyfuss also uncovers long-standing ties between radical Islamists and the leading banks of the West. The result is as tragic as it is paradoxical: originally deployed as pawns to foil nationalism and communism, extremist mullahs and ayatollahs now dominate the region, thundering against freedom of thought, science, women’s rights, secularism—and their former patron.
Wide-ranging and deeply informed, Devil’s Game reveals a history of double-dealing, cynical exploitation, and humiliating embarrassment. What emerges is a pattern that, far from furthering democracy or security, ensures a future of blunders and blowback.
About the Author
Based in Washington, D.C., Robert Dreyfuss has written extensively on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and national security for The Nation, The American Prospect, and Rolling Stone, and is a frequent commentator on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC.
If Dreyfuss is right, we are in trouble with a capital T...
Where's Rudy Giuliani when we need him?