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Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project) (American Empire Project)
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The first complete account of Americas most dangerous foreign policy miscalculation: sixty years of support for Islamic fundamentalism Devils Game is the gripping story of Americas 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, womens rights, secularismand their former patron. Wide-ranging and deeply informed, Devils 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. 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. Devils Game is the gripping story of Americas 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, womens rights, secularismand their former patron.
Wide-ranging and deeply informed, Devils 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. "Robert Dreyfuss has taken usall of usbehind the trauma of 9/11 and shown that George Bush's failure to understand the dynamics of Islamic fundamentalism is nothing new. Our presidents have been missing the point for decades and, by doing so, have become the best allies of our worst nightmare. I would have entitled this brilliant book Dumb and Dumber."Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command "Robert Dreyfuss has taken usall of usbehind the trauma of 9/11 and shown that George Bush's failure to understand the dynamics of Islamic fundamentalism is nothing new. Our presidents have been missing the point for decades and, by doing so, have become the best allies of our worst nightmare. I would have entitled this brilliant book Dumb and Dumber."Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command "'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is usually considered unsophisticated, tribal thinking. But Robert Dreyfuss shows how, during the Cold War, precisely this principle led the United States to support anti-Communist Islamist movements throughout the Muslim worldnurturing the whirlwind we are reaping today. His book is judicious, fascinating, and deeply grounded in a little-known history that stretches many decades back from the CIA's supports for anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan. He is wise enough to know that all of the strength of fundamentalist Islam can't be blamed on American bungling, but the amount that can is appalling."Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost "A fluent tour de forceDreyfuss skillfully documents the misguided stratagems of generations of statesmen whose attempts to use the Islamic right to Western strategic advantage have helped make political Islam the formidable force it is today. He makes a convincing case that the U.S. government inadvertently played a central role in building up the forces that struck New York and Washington on 9/11, and questions whether some current U.S. policies and actions are not still strengthening rather than weakening enemies of our country. Dreyfuss's carefully researched and well-written story will be a revelation to experts on the Islamic world and a shock to concerned Americans."Chas W. Freeman, Jr., former assistant secretary of defense and U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-92 "Reagan's CIA director William Casey knew next to nothing about Islamic fundamentalism or the grievances of Middle Eastern nations against Western imperialism. He saw political Islam as a natural ally in the American campaign against 'atheistic' Communism. The costs to Americans of such misguided, secret machinations include the 9/11 attacks. Robert Dreyfuss's history is eye-opening, original, and important."Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire and Blowback "The United States government underwrote the rise of radical Islam, argues a frequent contributor to The Nation and The American Prospect. Any American who watches the news is familiar with the photograph of a younger Donald Rumsfeld looking chummy with Saddam Hussein. Forget that picture, Dreyfuss tells us. The more important photograph shows President Eisenhower looking chummy with Said Ramadan, bigwig in the Muslim Brotherhood. (If you've never heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, a militant group that among other things morphed into Hamas, all the more reason to read this book.) That photograph, states the author, shows in miniature the history of American Middle East foreign policy since WWII. Concerned about limiting the spread of communism and arresting the development of leftist Arab nationalist political parties, the U.S. has over and over again allied with and supported radical Islamic groups throughout the Middle East. The CIA, of course, sponsored the 1953 coup in Iran and financed an ayat Review:"One of the CIA's first great moments of institutional reflection occurred in 1953, after American covert operatives helped overthrow Iran's left-leaning government and restored the Shah to power. The agency, then only six years old, had funded ayatollahs, mobilized the religious right and engineered a sophisticated propaganda campaign to successfully further its aims, and it wanted to know how it could reapply such tradecraft elsewhere, so it commissioned an internal report. Half a century later, the most prescient line from that report is one of caution, not optimism. 'Possibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers,' the document warned. Since this first known use of the term 'blowback,' countless journalists and scholars have chronicled the greatest blowback of all: how the staggering quantities of aid that America provided to anti-Marxist Islamic extremists during the Cold War inadvertently positioned those very same extremists to become America's next great enemy. (Indeed, Iran's religious leaders were among the first to turn against the United States.) Dreyfuss's volume reaches farther and deeper into the subject than most. He convincingly situates America's attempt to build an Islamic bulwark against Soviet expansion into Britain's history of imperialism in the region. And where other authors restrict their focus to the Afghan mujahideen, Dreyfuss details a history of American support — sometimes conducted with startling blindness, sometimes, tacitly through proxies — for Islamic radicals in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. At times, the assistance occurred openly through the American private sector, as Dreyfuss describes in a fascinating digression on Islamic banking. But ultimately, too few government officials were paying attention to the growth and dangers of political Islam. A CIA officer summarizes Dreyfuss's case when he says, 'We saw it all in a short-term perspective' — the long-term consequences are what we're facing now." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Synopsis:The first complete account of America's most dangerous foreign policy miscalculation--60 years of support for Islamic fundamentalism--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. Synopsis:The first complete account of America's most 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 AuthorBased 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. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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