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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (47957)	9/29/2002 12:58:56 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

have you finished Pollocks book? I was reading it last night and was fascinated. Haven't finished it but I'm chugging away. I've finished with the first part, the historical part, which traces the history of US-Iraq relations. It's quite good but too brief for me. I would loved to have seen more detail on the backs and forths from the end of the Gulf War forward. I can imagine the argument to make it that brief was the focus should be on the policy options in the present and he should include only enough historical stuff to provide the proper context. But it's the detail of that period that brings policy makers like Pollock to the place they are today. They know and most of us do not. I'm now almost finished with part II which is a portrait of Iraq today. I'm like you, fascinated. It's information I have to absorb in order to think my way through this mess. So far I have two conclusions which are extremely tentative: (1) the Saddam story has not been told well to the American public--and that's a criticism of three administrations (the Bushes and Clinton), at a minimum, and (2) the diplomatic work of the Bush administration, to this point at least, has been little short of catastrophic--they've managed to tell the story which would move the US population and much of the world to their side (Pollack's rendition) in such an inept way that the main feature of it is the cowboy foreign policy of the US rather than the difficulties Saddam poses. On the Samantha Power book, I checked it out and looked it over. Decided my reading list was already stuffed so, at best I would get to it in the future. She had a long essay in The New York Review of Books which took, I assume, highlights from the book. So, were I to go back and decide whether or not to devote time to the book, I would start with the NYRB essay. Also, I think there was a review of it in Foreign Affairs. I seem to recall that tek was operating under the impression such would be the case.