Download or read book Winning the Unwinnable War written by Elan Journo and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight years after 9/11 and in the shadow of two protracted U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East, the enemy is not only undefeated but emboldened and resurgent. What went wrong_and what should we do going forward? Winning the Unwinnable War shows how our own policy ideas led to 9/11 and then crippled our response in the Middle East, and it makes the case for an unsettling conclusion: By subordinating military victory to perverse, allegedly moral constraints, Washington's policy has undermined our national security. Owing to the significant influence of Just War Theory and neoconservatism, the Bush administration consciously put the imperative of shielding civilians and bringing them elections above the goal of eliminating real threats to our security. Consequently, this policy left our enemies stronger, and America weaker, than before. The dominant alternative to Bush-esque idealism in foreign policy_so-called realism_has made a strong comeback under the tenure of Barack Obama. But this nonjudgmental, supposedly practical approach is precisely what helped unleash the enemy prior to 9/11. The message of the essays in this thematic collection is that only by radically re-thinking our foreign policy in the Middle East can we achieve victory over the enemy that attacked us on 9/11. We need a new moral foundation for our Mideast policy. That new starting point for U.S. policy is the moral ideal championed by the philosopher Ayn Rand: rational self-interest. Implementing this approach entails objectively defining our national interest as protecting the lives and freedoms of Americans_and then taking principled action to safeguard them. The book lays out the necessary steps for achieving victory and for securing America's long-range interests in the volatile Middle East.

Download or read book Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism written by Elan Journo and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State written by Noah Feldman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

Download or read book The Failure of Political Islam written by Olivier Roy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful argument reassess radical Islam and the set of ideas and assumptions at its core. Olivier Roy offers a challenging and highly original view that no-one trying to understand Islamic fundamentalism can afford to overlook.

Download or read book Taken Hostage written by David Farber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontation with the forces of radical Islam. Using hundreds of recently declassified government documents, historian David Farber takes the first in-depth look at the hostage crisis, examining its lessons for America's contemporary War on Terrorism. Unlike other histories of the subject, Farber's vivid and fast-paced narrative looks beyond the day-to-day circumstances of the crisis, using the events leading up to the ordeal as a means for understanding it. The book paints a portrait of the 1970s in the United States as an era of failed expectations in a nation plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. It reveals an American government ill prepared for the fall of the Shah of Iran and unable to reckon with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his militant Islamic followers. Farber's account is filled with fresh insights regarding the central players in the crisis: Khomeini emerges as an astute strategist, single-mindedly dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The Americans' student-captors appear as less-than-organized youths, having prepared for only a symbolic sit-in with just a three-day supply of food. ABC news chief Roone Arledge, newly installed and eager for ratings, is cited as a critical catalyst in elevating the hostages to cause célèbre status. Throughout the book there emerge eerie parallels to the current terrorism crisis. Then as now, Farber demonstrates, politicians failed to grasp the depth of anger that Islamic fundamentalists harbored toward the United States, and Americans dismissed threats from terrorist groups as the crusades of ineffectual madmen. Taken Hostage is a timely and revealing history of America's first engagement with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, one that provides a chilling reminder that the past is only prologue.

Download or read book Winning the Long War written by Ilan Berman and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Middle East expert Ilan Berman offers new thinking on counterterrorism strategy and provides the new administration with ways to close the gaps in current American counterterrorism strategy. --from publisher description.

Download or read book Silent No More written by Paul Findley and published by Amana Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles Paul Findley's far-flung trial of discovery, the false stereotypes of Islam that linger in the minds of the American people, the corrective actions that the leaders of American's seven million Muslims are undertaking, and the community's remarkable progress in mainstream politics.

Download or read book Iran s Deadly Ambition written by Ilan Berman and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we on the cusp of détente with Iran? Conventional wisdom certainly seems to believe so. Since the start of diplomacy between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 powers (the United States, France, England, Russia, China, Germany) in November 2013, hopes have been running high for a historic reconciliation of Iran’s clerical regime with the West. Yet there is ample reason for skepticism that the United States and its allies can truly curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions by diplomatic means. Moreover, the West’s current focus on Iran’s nuclear program is deeply dangerous insofar as it fails to recognize—let alone address—Iran’s other international activities or its foreign policy aims. Those objectives are global, and they continue to grow in scope and menace. In this sobering book, Ilan Berman illuminates the multiple dimensions of the Iranian threat and exposes the perils of lodging confidence in diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

Download or read book The Way of the Strangers written by Graeme Wood (Journalist) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group...Wood speaks with non-Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam...Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families.

Download or read book Radical Islam in America written by Chris Heffelfinger and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The radicalization of Muslims and Islamic institutions in the United States, Europe, and across the Islamic world has fostered a new generation of Islamist activists, many of them willing to use violence to achieve their aims. In Radical Islam in America, Chris Heffelfinger describes the development of the Islamist movement, examines its efforts and influence in the West, and suggests strategies to reduce or eliminate the threat of Islamist terrorism. The book distinguishes Islamism (the fundamentalist political movement based on Islamic identity and values) from the Muslim faith and explores Islamists' substantial inroads with Muslims and Muslim educational institutions in the West since the 1960s, as well as the larger relationship between Islamist political activism and militancy. Heffelfinger argues that the West has often mischaracterized jihadists as a nihilistic, irrational force desiring nothing but death and destruction. Instead, we need to recognize that Islamists are part of a much broader struggle over the political, social, economic, and legal direction of Muslims around the world. Our failure to understand the motives behind terrorist tactics has resulted not only in ineffective counterterrorism strategies but also in the proliferation of Islamist militants and sympathizers. Among the hundreds of terrorism-related arrests since 9/11, a large number were young, socially alienated Muslims who were moved by the jihadist message but not directed by jihadist networks overseas. That phenomenon—and the ideology behind it—is what Western society and governments must fully understand in order to construct a viable policy to confront it. This book will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in global politics, current affairs, Middle East terrorism, and counterterrorism.

Download or read book Gridlock written by Thomas Hale and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.

Download or read book Multiculturalism written by Tariq Modood and published by Polity. This book was released on 2007-07-23 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modood provides a distinctive contribution to public debates about multiculturalism at a most opportune time. He engages with the work of other leading commentators like Bhikhu Parekh and Will Kymlicka and offers new perspectives on the issue ofracial integration and citizenship today.

Download or read book The Rhetoric of Failure written by Ewa P?onowska Ziarek and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This book makes a significant and needed contribution to post-structural philosophy and literary theory. In this impressive analysis that delicately weaves together philosophical and literary texts, Ewa Ziarek powerfully and persuasively demonstrates that the rhetoric of the failure of traditional subject-centered rationality does not lead to nihilism or nominalism.'-Kelly Oliver, University of Texas at Austin

Download or read book While Europe Slept written by Bruce Bawer and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2007-09-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The struggle for the soul of Europe today is every bit as dire and consequential as it was in the 1930s. Then, in Weimar, Germany, the center did not hold, and the light of civilization nearly went out. Today, the continent has entered yet another “Weimar moment.” Will Europeans rise to the challenge posed by radical Islam, or will they cave in once again to the extremists? As an American living in Europe since 1998, Bruce Bawer has seen this problem up close. Across the continent—in Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Stockholm—he encountered large, rapidly expanding Muslim enclaves in which women were oppressed and abused, homosexuals persecuted and killed, “infidels” threatened and vilified, Jews demonized and attacked, barbaric traditions (such as honor killing and forced marriage) widely practiced, and freedom of speech and religion firmly repudiated. The European political and media establishment turned a blind eye to all this, selling out women, Jews, gays, and democratic principles generally—even criminalizing free speech—in order to pacify the radical Islamists and preserve the illusion of multicultural harmony. The few heroic figures who dared to criticize Muslim extremists and speak up for true liberal values were systematically slandered as fascist bigots. Witnessing the disgraceful reaction of Europe’s elites to 9/11, to the terrorist attacks on Madrid, Beslan, and London, and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bawer concluded that Europe was heading inexorably down a path to cultural suicide. Europe's Muslim communities are powder kegs, brimming with an alienation born of the immigrants’ deep antagonism toward an infidel society that rejects them and compounded by misguided immigration policies that enforce their segregation and empower the extremists in their midst. The mounting crisis produced by these deeply perverse and irresponsible policies finally burst onto our television screens in October 2005, as Paris and other European cities erupted in flames. WHILE EUROPE SLEPT is the story of one American’s experience in Europe before and after 9/11, and of his many arguments with Europeans about the dangers of militant Islam and America’s role in combating it. This brave and invaluable book—with its riveting combination of eye-opening reportage and blunt, incisive analysis—is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of Europe and what it portends for the United States.

Download or read book Secularism Confronts Islam written by Olivier Roy and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The denunciation of fundamentalism in France, embodied in the law against the veil and the deportation of imams, has shifted into a systematic attack on all Muslims and Islam. This hostility is rooted in the belief that Islam cannot be integrated into French - and, consequently, secular and liberal - society. However, as Olivier Roy makes clear in this book, Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live concretely in a secularized world while maintaining their identities as "true believers." They have formulated a language that recognizes two spaces: that of religion and that of secular society." "Roy's rare portrait of the realities of immigrant Muslim life offers a necessary alternative to the popular specter of an "Islamic threat." Supporting his arguments with his extensive research on Islamic history, sociology, and politics, Roy demonstrates the limits of our understanding of contemporary Islamic religious practice in the West and the role of Islam as a

Download or read book What Justice Demands written by Elan Journo and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Elan Journo explains the essential nature of the conflict, and what has fueled it for so long. What justice demands, he shows, is that we evaluate both adversaries—and America's approach to the conflict—according to a universal moral ideal: individual liberty. From that secular moral framework, the book analyzes the conflict, examines major Palestinian grievances and Israel's character as a nation, and explains what's at stake for everyone who values human life, freedom, and progress. What Justice Demands shows us why America should be strongly supportive of freedom and freedom-seekers—but, in this conflict and across the Middle East, it hasn't been, much to our detriment.

Download or read book Ivory Towers on Sand written by Martin S. Kramer and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unquestionably, this is one of the most important books about understanding the Middle East written during the last half-century.Jerusalem Post