Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four Stages to Moving Beyond Iraq
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Amid all the gloom surrounding the debacle in Iraq, finally here is a highly instructive four-stage plan that will help us move forward.
Now longer than the Civil War, America's conflict in Iraq seems to have no end in sight. A malaise, perhaps greater than that engendered by Vietnam, threatens to undo our national moorings. Christopher J. Fettweis, a military strategy expert, burst onto the national scene with an editorial and NPR interviews that provided an illuminating historical perspective on the ramifications of any great power's defeat. Fettweis contends that Iraq has thrown America into an unprecedented downward spiral, yet he provides a context for America's loss that few political pundits have recognized. With abundant historical comparisons drawn from the American Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, among others, Fettweis charts a natural course of defeat (denial, shock, anger, depression, and acceptance). He offers a prescriptive "grand strategy" that will help us forge a new approach to American foreign policy. This is a book no lover of history can ignore, for there may be a silver lining few have yet realized.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Surveying the American occupation of Iraq, Tulane political science professor Fettweis maintains that the war is a "lost and utterly pointless cause" and that the only rational course for America is to accept defeat and withdraw so that the process of national recovery marked by four distinct stages (shock and denial, anger, depression and acceptance) can begin. Precipitous withdrawal is possible because none of the feared consequences of such an action humanitarian disaster, regional instability or loss of U.S. credibility is remotely likely, in Fettweis's view. Linking the "debacle" in Iraq to the post-WWII grand strategy of internationalism, the author argues for a return to the founding fathers' favored foreign policy of strategic restraint. Such a retreat from the world, the author claims, is virtually risk-free because today's threats are minimal, and the resulting peace dividend would be better spent at home on priorities like Hurricane Katrina recovery. Fettweis's thesis although well-intentioned rests on several narrowly argued assumptions: the war in Iraq is unwinnable and the "national security implications will be minimal." More polemic than scholarship, this book will likely generate more heat than light.
