Recent Reading

I haven't written recently about the books I have recently read until now, as they are somewhat contrary in their assessment of terrorism today.

The first book I read was Bernard Lewis', "What Went Wrong," about what has caused Islamic peoples to lose their superiority of culture, education and military over the past millenium. His thesis is essentially that while Europe was embracing modernity, the middle eastern peoples of Messopotamia, Phoenicia, etc. did not. In large part, Lewis says, it was essentially hubris. These peoples did not believe that the European heathens could provide anything worthwhile. By the time the Islamic peoples realized this, Europe's military overpowered the middle eastern peoples. Lewis believes this is critical to understanding Arabs and other Muslims in their behavior today, as some are attempting to reclaim their former glory.

The second book I read was "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim" This was written by Madmood Mamdani. Mamdani is a professor from Columbia University and this book gives a uniquely African perspective. Mamdani argues that the "proxy war principle" of American foreign policy is to blame for today's terrorism. This was the effort by America from the mid 1960's to the late 1980's to launch wars with non-American armies, funded in US dollars. Specifically, Mamdani cites Cambodia, Mozambique, Nicuragua, and Afghanistan. Obviously, the Afghanistan war was the most profound as we funded, trained and implanted the ideology of the mujihadeen we are currently fighting. I found Mamdani's book very interesting and informative, but thought he particularly blamed the Reagan administration more than Nixon, Ford, or Carter. His other main thesis was that the UN sanctions on Iraq was the first instance of a multilateral proxy war on Muslim peoples, causing the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi peoples, over half of whom were children. I believe this last statement goes toward the "success" of the sanctions against Iraq. Human rights organizations around the globe would adamantly disagree this was a success.

Overall, I found both very interesting, contributing to my understanding of the history of this extremism.