Details
- Definitive collection of documents relating to the most important war in the post-Cold war era
- Well organized volume that approaches the war both thematically and chronologically
- Covers the war in its entirety, from its origins in neoconservative think tanks in the 1990s to the beginning of the Obama administration
The Iraq Papers will be the most comprehensive and best-organized document collection of America's misadventure in Iraq. The editors have organized the book around the concept of pre-emption, a policy that represented a significant break with past American foreign policy. The editors locate the intellectual origins of pre-emption in neoconservative writings from the early 1990s, and then trace how the logic of pre-emption played out across a number of arenas in the first decade of the twenty first century: the war itself, America's relationship with its allies and the UN, its dealings with Iraqi society and successive Iraqi governments after 2003, and domestic policy in the Bush-era United States. They close with a chapter on the limits of American policy as it moves into the Obama era. There are eleven chapters in total, and ten will feature a representative selection of the most important documents relating to the origins of the war-including prominent writings by early neoconservative advocates for invasion-and the war's impact on Iraq, America, and the world. Covering more than a decade, The Iraq Papers will be a definitive source for anyone interested in understanding this enormously complicated and difficult conflict.
Readership: a definitive source for anyone interested in understanding the America/ Iraq conflict.
Preface
Note to Readers
Introduction
PART I: POLICY OF PREEMPTION
1.: From Containment to Preemptive War: Iraq and the U.S. in a Unipolar Moment
2.: Organizing for Preemptive War: Iraq and the Presidency of George W. Bush
3.: International Reaction to the War
4.: Liberators or Occupiers? The Coalition Provisional Authority
5: Insurgency, Counterinsurgency, or Civil War?
PART II: CONSEQUENCES OF A PREEMPTIVE WAR
6.: Democracy from Above or Below?
7.: Imposing Free Markets? Oil and Privatization
8.: Human Rights and International Law: U.S. Methods and Operations
9.: Policing Terror vs. a War on Terror
10.: : Effects on U.S Democracy
11.: The Limits of Preemption: The United States in the World
John Ehrenberg is Professor of Political Science at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. He is the author of such books as Servants of Wealth and Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea, winner of the Michael Harrington Prize.
J. Patrice McSherry is Professor of Political Science at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. Her books include Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (winner of a Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title of 2006) and Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina.
Jose Ramon Sanchez is the author of Boricua Power: A Political History of Puerto Ricans in the United States and is Associate Professor of Political Science at Long Island University.
Caroleen Marji Sayej is Assistant Professor of Government and International Relations at Connecticut College.
"The editors of this book have created an indispensable depository of documents and commentary on what Ambassador Richard Haass has called a 'War of Choice.' Even though I witnessed first-hand some of the arrogance, incompetence and deceit that led to the war, I was still stunned when poring through the cataloguing thereof-as well as others' reaction to it. I strongly recommend this compilation to the specialist or the general reader alike-but particularly to the citizen concerned about our democratic republic."-Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and visiting Harriman Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary
"This is a comprehensive collection of primary documents that illuminate topics ranging from the ideological path to war, to the nature of the insurgency, to oil policy, to the legal road to torture. A must-read for any serious student of the War on Terror."-Karen Greenberg, editor of The Torture Papers and author of The Least Worst Place
"The Iraq Papers is an indispensable book for understanding the war in Iraq. It is also a superb book for teaching, combining an excellent selection of documents with helpful head notes that contextualize and analyze."-Marilyn Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990
"Especially valuable as a tool for college professors who teach courses on the Iraq War and American foreign policy but also a useful source of information for policymakers and concerned citizens. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal
"...it's both thorough and hard-hitting. It's hard to imagine that any of the key people in the Bush administration will be pleased with this book's release, but it should be read by people on both ends of the political spectrum." -- San Antonio Book Review
