CIA veteran Scheuer examines the ongoing instability in Iraq and argues that the U.S has provided al Qaeda and its allies with the one thing they want most: a safe haven from which to launch operations across borders into countries that were previously difficult for them to reach. With U.S. forces and resources spread thinner every day, the war has depleted our strength and brought al Qaeda a kind of success that it could not have achieved on its own. Scheuer takes on the questions of "What went wrong?" and "How can we fix this?" and proposes a plan to cauterize the damage that has already been done and get American strategy back on track. He lists a number of painful recommendations for how we must shift our ideological, military, and political views in order to survive, even if that means disagreeing with Israeli policy or launching more brutal campaigns against terrorists.--From publisher description.
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Mr. Scheuer reminds us of the federal government's primary responsibility in this book; one which is too often forgotten: promote the country's national (including security) interests. Too often our federal government makes the mistake that President Washington warned against about becoming entangled in other nations' affairs.
His other primary thesis in this book is that the military, through the government's mandates, has forgotten how to fight a war, and instead has become overly concerned with nation-building and international opinion.
He proposes a national conversation about what our national interests are, one that is unafraid of unflattering labels by those who have other interests than the national interests of the United States. Like “Imperial Hubris,” I found this book to be an extraoridinarily thought provoking tome and one which needs to be expounded upon in the public sphere.
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