Americas Secret War - George Friedman
My Dad gave me this one to read a while ago. It’s circa 2004 so alot has come to light recently that would challenge many assumptions made in this book, but I do think many points it makes are valid.
It studies both Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to the war on terror, reaction to 9/11 and the Bush administration’s final solution for the Middle East.
The chapters on Afghanistan I found to be most interesting. Afghanistan seems to be somewhat an enigma for western politics to deal with. Certainly there were mistakes made in the strategy selected to deal with the Taleban and Bin Laden, but perhaps the biggest mistake made was the mere assumption that the US could come close to succeeding in Afghanistan.
The Russians had proven that it couldnt be done, even with 300,000 troops. What were the US thinking?
One thing this book proves is that the US has embarked upon two big missions in the middle east and has failed miserably at every level, planning, strategy, implementation and achieving the goals they set out to.
However I believe George Friedman has made a fundamental error in his summation of why the US invaded Iraq and why it wishes to maintain its presence there. The ‘elephant in the room’ as it were, is of course Oil, which George conveniently mentions in passing only a few times. His belief is that the US invaded Iraq to place pressure on Saudi Arabia for its support of radical islamic elements.
To believe this is to buy the line that the US went into these conflicts, primarily, with the innocent motive of wanting to wipe out terrorism. While partially this accounts for some of the motive, it must be by far a much smaller consideration than that of access to cheap oil.
By its obvious focus on the middle east, this book has probably overlooked some of the wider global factors at play here. Im sure the US did want to place pressure on Saudi Arabia, but invade a country and commit yourself to a long term conflict because of it?
For me, this book suggested at least one path forward for the US in Afghanistan in particular. Stop trying to take the fight to the Taleban and go after Al-Qaeda properly. The Taleban as a government are no worse than the Saud’s, negotiate a ceasefire, let them go about their day in exchange for permission to operate against Al-Qaeda in the highlands.
Its not that I support the Taleban’s reinstatement, but lets compare thier fundamentalist rule to that of Saudi Arabia. Can you tell me the US is not engaging in some kind of hypocritical foreign policy bullshit?
If they kept their eyes on the prize they could have dealt Al-Qaeda a much harder blow. By its very nature, Al-Qaeda is probably undefeatable, but if the US is serious about counter-terrorism, they need to focus better.
3/5
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