If you are in need of basic information on US foreign policy, you might want to start here:
As reviewed in Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003
The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003, 73616
The editors of the well-regarded 1991 anthology The Gulf War Reader have done it again. This new collection of statements by experts, opinion-molders ranging from neoconservatives to liberal internationalists, and the actual decision-makers flows in a smooth chronology, beginning with the run-up to the first U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The subsequent selections are organized under several rubrics: the 1991 war and its aftermath, including the issues of sanctions and inspections; the impact of September 11, 2001; the Bush doctrine; the U.S. public and Congress on preemptive war; Washington working with and then going beyond the un; and, finally, "The Future of Iraq" and "The Future of Pax Americana." Appendixes include key UN resolutions and an especially apt "Who's Who of the Iraqi Opposition." The many distinct pieces in this big book blend, like a mosaic, into a dramatic picture of how the U.S. government acted and justified its actions in its extended encounter with Saddam's Iraq -- and what the American public thought of it all. |
